by William Boyd
“Interesting,” Bole said. “I didn’t know that. Nice detail.” He forked a piece of kidney into his mouth and started chewing vigorously, an action that made his beard bob disconcertingly, Elfrida thought, and she bent her head to concentrate on her liver and bacon. She wasn’t very hungry, she realised. She poured herself another glass of Gruaud-Larose.
“It is an interesting detail,” Elfrida said, “because it rather proves that her suicide wasn’t something she did spontaneously. She clearly wanted to die and the large stone was meant to make second thoughts impossible.”
“Good point,” Bole said, frowning. “Or to make the end swifter.”
“Exactly.”
Bole resumed his narrative. Leonard Woolf came down to lunch at the usual time and found the letters.
“A suicide note?” Elfrida asked.
“I believe so. Whatever she wrote was enough to make him raise the alarm. But she’d disappeared. Gone.”
“How awful,” Elfrida said, suddenly transported to the banks of the Ouse. A fur coat, wellington boots, a large stone in a pocket.
“You don’t happen to know what type of fur coat she was wearing, do you?” Elfrida asked.
“Sorry, no. Is it important?”
“Well, for a novelist it might be. Was it mink, musquash, rabbit? God is in the details, you know.”
Bole looked at her, mystified.
“The body wasn’t found for three weeks,” Bole said. “Even though they dragged the river again and again.”
“How do you know all this?” Elfrida said. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I spoke to her cook, Louie Everest. She was very forthcoming. Very happy to chat about it all.”
“Louie Everest. What a name. So, she had staff.”
“Only the one—Louie. She would pop in every day to cook lunch. The live-in maid had left at the end of 1940. Apparently—Louie told me this—Virginia Woolf actually liked doing housework. Really liked it.”
“Now, that is interesting,” Elfrida said. “Fascinating. What kind of housework?”
“What kinds of housework are there? Dusting, polishing, washing dishes, tidying, laundry. I don’t suppose she had a vacuum cleaner in Monk’s House.”
“Not in 1941, no.”
“Did they exist?” Bole seemed genuinely interested.
“Oh, yes. But they were luxury items. It was a bit of a social brag: ‘We have a Hoover.’ ” Elfrida tried to imagine a Hoover in Monk’s House. “She might have had a carpet sweeper, however,” she said. “You know—push-pull.”
Bole thought. “I can’t quite see Virginia Woolf with a Bissell, can you?” He was beginning to seem quite animated—perhaps he was thinking of another pamphlet, Elfrida wondered: Household Appliances in East Sussex Between the Wars.
“I suppose a Hoover would be unlikely…” Elfrida tried again to picture Virginia Woolf doing housework. “Do you think she might have done some housework that day?”
“Who knows?” Bole said, dabbing at his mouth and horrible beard with his napkin. “If it’s a novel you’re writing you could have her doing a bit of dusting or polishing the silver.”
Elfrida made a note: “Housework?”
Bole was looking at the menu again, considering a dessert. Elfrida topped herself up, realising the bottle was almost empty. She felt charged with a strange energy that she hadn’t experienced in years. She knew what was going on. Her brain was working, exploring the possibilities of a fiction. Virginia Woolf was going to do some housework before she killed herself. Wonderful detail. She emptied the rest of the bottle into her glass.
“According to Louie Everest,” Bole confided, “she was very affected by the war—in a bad way, I mean. Her house in London was bombed—destroyed—and the Ouse Valley was right under the flight path of the German raiders.”
“The Battle of Britain,” Elfrida said. “Of course.”
“Bombs were dropped. Planes crashed.”
“Must have been terrifying, sometimes.”
“Oh yes, the wider conflict came to East Sussex,” Bole said a little pompously. “I’ve written a pamphlet about it—East Sussex at War. Sells very well, if you’re interested.”
“I may very well be.” Elfrida wondered if she dared to order more wine.
“As I said, bombs were dropped on villages—incendiaries—there were machine-gunnings of traffic and streets. Aircraft crashing—dead pilots and aircrew. Air-raid warnings all day and night. It got to her.”
“Got on her nerves in a real sense. Yes, I can understand that.”
“Louie Everest told me that it was obvious for about two months—since the beginning of 1941—that she was close to a crack-up. Another nervous breakdown. Louie knew the signs.”
“My God, yes…” Elfrida thought: you find you’re going mad and the world around you has gone mad. Why not jump in the river?
Bole ordered apple crumble and custard.
“Can I tempt you to a brandy? A cognac?” she asked.
“Lord, no! That would kill me off.”
“I hope you don’t mind if I partake.” Elfrida smiled and signalled for a waiter. She was celebrating—the book in her head was taking shape. Life was suddenly worth living again.
24
The sun was shining but the day felt strangely cool, Anny thought. Maybe it was her proximity to the sea—green-blue, choppy, endless—that was making her shiver. It was only the English Channel, she knew, but from where she was sitting on Brighton’s Esplanade the horizon promised its usual imitation of infinity. It could have been the sea, pistachio-coloured, with darker shroudings that hued the water, like blooms opening, dark sea-flowers opening below the waves, changing the light, changing the temperature…
She stopped herself. What was she thinking? She looked at the open script in her lap. There were a lot of lines to be remembered in this upcoming scene and she was having trouble retaining them in her mind, urge herself on as she might. She was sitting on a folding canvas chair amongst the usual clutter and paraphernalia of a film shoot—cameras, generators, sound recorders, a make-up tent, great coils of cable and stacked arc lights—positioned close to the entrance to Brighton’s West Pier. She could see, twenty yards away, Jacques and Troy in earnest conversation, Jacques gesturing eloquently; Troy listening, head cocked, hands clasped behind his back, as if he were a student being hectored by his professor. What could they be talking about? she wondered, vaguely concerned. She looked down again at her script. This was the big reconciliation scene between Emily and Ben, hence the three pages of dialogue. It was ostensibly taking place forty-eight hours after Emily had slapped Ben’s face, boarded a bus and disappeared. She subsequently experienced a series of strange, surreal encounters (yet to be filmed) and then had telephoned Ben and instructed him to meet her under the pier. She had tried to learn the lines last night and failed because of Jacques’ arrival. His presence seemed to fill her hotel suite like perfume, like smoke.
After Troy had left they had ordered some food and more wine from room service. When they went to bed, eventually, she had told Jacques that her period was about to start. Jacques said fine, don’t worry, chérie, and admitted he was very tired himself. The relief was immense. As she lay beside him in the dark, awake for hours, it seemed, listening to his gentle snores, she kept pushing away memories of herself and Troy and their lovemaking in that very bed a few hours previously. She pushed away guilt, also, and set her mind to neutral. No wonder she couldn’t learn her lines, she thought, with everything that was going on, all the multiplying complications of her life. She stood and went to find Rodrigo.
Rodrigo was very understanding when she told him she had a bit of a migraine and that she was having trouble remembering her lines.
“It’s not a problem, honeybun,” Rodrigo said. “Most of this scene is in long shot. You and Troy ca
n say anything you like—rhubarb, rhubarb, you know—and we’ll dub it all in during post.”
“What about the close-ups?”
“We’ll write everything down on idiot boards. No, I don’t mean that—I hate that expression. Sorry. We’ll have your lines on boards behind the camera.” He smiled benignly. “Actually, I prefer it this way. You get more spontaneity.”
“Great. Thanks, Rodrigo. It’s just like my head feels full of hot concrete.”
“Migraines are a fucking nightmare. You leave everything to me, sweet angel.”
She could now see that Jacques was wandering over to them. When she’d first introduced him to Rodrigo he claimed to have read Jacques’ book, Black Skin, White Heart. “One of the great books,” he had said. “Exceptionel, incroyable. A privilege to meet you, sir.”
Jacques had always told her that he’d be a rich man if the number of people who claimed to have read his book had actually bought it and done so.
“How’s it going?” he said, finding a chair and sitting down beside her. “Ça va?”
“What were you talking to Troy about?” she asked.
“Paris. He had no idea what had happened in May. No idea at all. It’s like he’s living on a different planet.”
“He’s a pop singer.”
“It’s not an excuse.”
“You’re too stern. Too implacable.”
“I think I’ll go back to the hotel,” he said. “I’d forgotten how incredibly boring it is to be on a film set.” He gestured. “What are all these people doing, standing around—eating, smoking, drinking coffee? And they’re all being paid. It’s like a circle of hell.”
“You’re too stern, I told you so,” she repeated and encouraged him to go back. In the scene they were about to shoot she and Troy had to kiss and she wasn’t sure she wanted Jacques to witness it. In their relationship—in the year or so of the intensity of their relationship—she hadn’t made a film so this was something new to him. Jacques had been part of the solution to the monstrous success—and the monstrous intrusion in her life of the monstrous success—of The Yellow Mountain. When she was with Jacques she could almost forget that she was an actress, a “star.” So Ladder to the Moon was the first time he had seen her at work. He kissed her on both cheeks, squeezed her hand, allowed his knuckles to brush her breasts and said he was going to explore this curious town, and looked about him, as if deciding which way to go. Just then Talbot Kydd appeared.
“Anny, good afternoon. Lovely day. All going well?”
“Perfect.” She stood up and introduced Jacques.
“Talbot, this is my friend Jacques Soldat. He’s visiting for a few days.”
“Hello,” Jacques said. They shook hands.
“Talbot’s the producer of the film.”
“Ah. The man with the real power,” Jacques said.
She saw Talbot smile.
“It’s a fantasy we like to encourage,” he said.
“The fantasy of power,” Jacques said. “It could be the title of my next book.”
“La Fantaisie de Pouvoir,” Talbot said. “Or would ‘puissance’ be better? ‘Hégémonie’?”
“No: ‘pouvoir.’ I’ll steal it from you.”
“Je vous en prie.”
“I’m going for a promenade,” Jacques said.
“Un flâneur à Brighton. Not such a good title.”
The two men laughed. For some reason, Anny felt glad that they had met—they seemed to like each other, she thought. At least they responded to each other. Most people who met Jacques seemed in awe of him, like Rodrigo; they wanted to be acknowledged somehow, as fans, supplicants. Talbot didn’t. She liked him for that.
Jacques said au revoir and wandered off and Talbot went to talk to Rodrigo. Then Shirley appeared and said Anny was wanted in hair and make-up for final checks.
An hour later she was standing under the West Pier, listening to the rattle and shift of the pebbles being rearranged by the small waves, as if some giant maracas were being gently shaken. She was wearing silver pointed boots, red flared trousers and a short purple kaftan shimmering with sequins and tiny mirrors stitched into the fabric. Rodrigo wanted her and Troy to wear the brightest clothes, all primary colours. The other characters’ costumes verged on monotone—greys, browns, sludgy greens. It was “symbolic,” he said, when she asked why, and added nothing more.
She shivered. There were arc lights on her but underneath the pier it was damp, seaweed hung from the metal piles supporting the boardwalk like wet beards, she thought. She could see small crabs moving about in the fronds and there was a strange smell in the air—fishy and industrial at the same time—as if diesel fumes were drifting down from some machinery above her head. She heard the shout of “Action!” and looked up the beach for Troy.
This was the long shot, the master shot with two cameras on them, so there were no crew near her. Troy was walking towards her, still a hundred yards away, vivid in his cerise hussar’s jacket, white jeans and red boots. He had to walk a long distance along the shingle towards her—music would be playing over this scene, so Rodrigo had said. They would confront each other under the pier, talk, and then kiss and make up.
As she watched him steadily drawing near she felt a strange emotion begin to come over her—a kind of relief, a relaxation. Nobody else had ever made her feel so calm. Why did he have this effect on her? Or maybe it was because Jacques had left on his promenade through Brighton.
Troy was here, now. He stopped.
“ ’Ello, darlin’,” he said, in a cockney accent. “We just have to talk nonsense, according to Rodrigo.”
“What were you and Jacques discussing?”
“Oh, yeah. He was telling me about these amazing riots in Paris, in May. All these schoolkids and students rioting, trying to start a revolution. I must have missed it.”
“Don’t you watch television?”
“Of course I watch telly. Top of the Pops. Nature programmes. Lots of sport.”
“What about the news?”
“I don’t really like watching the news, to be honest. It depresses me.”
“I know what you mean.”
They stood there for a while facing each other, smiling. How stupid I am, Anny thought.
“I suppose it should look like we’re having a bit of an argument,” Troy said, and waved his arms about, randomly.
Anny pointed at him, then put her hands on her hips as if she was offended. As far as she could remember, Ben was apologising and Anny was to be unforgiving before she yielded.
“I miss you, Anny,” Troy said. He drew a line with his finger across his eyebrows. “I’m up to here with unused spunk.”
“That’s disgusting,” she said. “Is this how you charm me?”
“Can I sneak in tonight?”
“Jacques is staying with me. How can you ‘sneak’ in?”
“You could sneak into my room.”
“He won’t be here long. He has to go back to Paris.”
Troy nodded. “Is the revolution over?”
“Seems to be. I’m not sure what’s going on now.”
“You’re fucking beautiful, Anny. Anyone ever told you that?”
A shout came from the esplanade.
“OK! Kiss now!”
Troy stepped forward and took her in his arms. He kissed her neck.
“I’ve creamed my jeans,” he said.
She turned his face and kissed him hard, her tongue deep in his mouth. He responded and held her tightly. Anny closed her eyes and surrendered herself to the moment, sensing the weakness in her spine, the lung-heave of desire, of oxygen-need.
“OK! Cut!”
They broke apart.
“That was a nice long one,” Troy said. “I suppose it’ll have to do for a while. Iron rations.”
She turned and looked up to the esplanade where the crew were beginning to shift all the equipment down onto the shingle for the close-ups. She felt her neck stiffen.
Jacques was standing there on the edge of the esplanade, his hands in his pockets, staring at her. Even at this distance she could feel his cold scrutiny. She waved at him and blew a kiss. It was a futile gesture, she was fully aware. Jacques would know, now. All doubts gone, all suspicions confirmed.
25
“Virginia Woolf stirred, grunted and shifted in her bed as the faint spring sunshine created a thin lemon-yellow rectangle on the wall of her bedroom. She sat up slowly, blinking, her arriving consciousness chasing away the dream she was having from her immediate memory. She could not grasp that fleeting, fleeing dream, try as she might, and then she remembered that this was going to be the last day of her life.”
Elfrida put her pen down and exhaled. Now she saw that her penless right hand was shaking, vibrating, and she quickly picked up her vodka and tonic. She raised the glass to herself.
“Welcome back, Elfrida Wing,” she said. She would stop drinking soon, she promised herself—perhaps when she had a full chapter done and the book was more of a reality; when more black was on white. Now she’d just started she didn’t think the time was right to put the extra pressure of abstinence on herself.
And she had started—the dam had broken, the mists had cleared, day had followed night—and whatever other cliché would serve, she thought. She gave a little loud whoop of pleasure and then felt self-conscious.
She turned back a page of her notebook and looked at what she had written.
THE LAST DAY OF VIRGINIA WOOLF
a novel by
Elfrida Wing
She banged her fist on her desk, both elated and angry with herself. Why had it taken a decade of silence to produce these few dozen words, these three sentences? There was no rational answer—but time, circumstance and the aleatory, unfathomable workings of her mind had combined to deliver this…this recension. Was that the word? She went to her bookshelf and took out her dictionary. No, not really. “Recension” meant the editing of a text, or more generally, “a revised or distinct form of anything.” Not quite. “Recessional,” then. She checked: a hymn sung at the end of a church service. There was something hymn-like in what she had written, she supposed, it provoked a real form of rejoicing. But no, “transfiguration” was the word she needed. It had been a transfiguration, a transformation, something beautiful, sublime, had happened—a metamorphosis. Something dry and sterile had experienced a transfiguration and had become fecund, glorious and full of promise.