She still cannot accept it, though it had happened a year ago nearly to the day—all these morbid anniversaries—but she knows well enough what it had been for. The necessity of using force against fascism. That had been Julian’s line, and the thing that had brought him into conflict with Virginia and others, in person, over many a vituperative dinner, lunch and tea, as well as in writing, the letters, the essays, the articles.
“Violence must be met with violence,” he’d railed, “when the perpetrators are beyond human decency.” He’d detested what he called the insular humanism and conciliatory nonpolicies of the residual Left, who he’d said still blindly clung to the threadbare pacifism of their youth, as a child does to his blanket when the monster is beneath the bed. “Well,” he’d scolded, “this monster is no longer bound by the conventions of fairy tales. He is not beneath the bed. He is tearing apart the room all around you, yet you remain holed up in your cribs, squeezing your eyes as tight as they will shut, and clutching the covers over your heads, in the infantile hope that the scary thing will simply be a good chap and go away.”
It was, of course, his generation’s view of theirs (i.e., Bloomsbury), though Julian had mostly excepted Leonard from this attack on account of what he’d called (and rightly so) Leonard’s longstanding penchant for seeing sense and for taking a well-informed and consequently more nuanced view of the lessons of history. Still, they had all been squabbling like relatives—cleaving the age-old rift between parent and child—for the better part of the decade. But now there was no more talk. Action had taken its place, and duly exacted its consequence.
The death of one’s child. There is no name for it. Children without parents are orphans. Spouses are widows and widowers. But a mother who loses her firstborn child, what is she? Her condition is unspeakable, yet she is the very essence of tragedy, and therein she is given many proper names: Medea, Clytemnestra, Niobe.
But Nessa is none of these. Hecuba bears the closest resemblance. Her Hector also died in war. But Julian was no Hector, even if he fancied himself as such. He did not die hot and quick on the sword of a demigod. He went slowly cold on a slab, riddled with anonymous shrapnel—it had been too far-flung to know whose, as if that would have somehow made a difference. Though maybe it would have. It might have seemed less futile if they’d at least known who the bastard was—the Hans or the Hermann or the Heinrich, for it had been a German plane, they knew that much—who’d dropped the bomb that had landed in Julian’s plot and thrown its scraps into his lungs.
Damn it all, it will not go away. War and peace. She can keep having this same argument, heedlessly, endlessly—she does, in fact, almost daily, traipsing over the downs, rowing openly with Julian’s ghost. And who cares who sees her. Who cares that she had bled it all out again publicly in Three Guineas—for Julian, to Julian—or that most of the cognoscenti, and even many of her friends, had deemed it a load of tripe. The book is her child, and for the child, and the child is her property. For her, there is no argument about that.
It is like Thoby dying all over again, and at nearly the same age—Julian was so like him—except that now she is nothing like the young Virginia who mourned her brother’s death as a contemporary. Now she is a fifty-six-year-old woman, a veteran mentor, disputant and aunt, who never felt right in any of those roles. Whereas Julian had been the young poet, threshing his own course, as young men must, defining himself against everything his elders stood for, yet also asking for their response, their advice, their—no, not their, her—her criticism, her match for his intellect, his ambitions and his art. He was the phantom limb that ached, and right in that telltale part of her where no limbs had ever grown.
Now she must go on comforting Nessa. She has been doing so all year, and in that time she has been tortured by the duty, which by rights should have been the most natural, most reciprocal of acts. Yet it has often felt like something out of Dante, a diabolical ordeal devised for the punishment of special sins.
To Virginia, as much as nursing Nessa has been tender, at times wrenchingly so, it has also been nothing short of perverse. Now, as never before, their bond has developed a caterwauling life of its own, and seems always to be flipping capriciously between extremes, so that one moment she feels almost subversive, like the mistress ministering to the wife, and the next she is just the sister again, shoring up the sibling who had done the same for her.
Julian had always been the focal point of all their love and conflict, the nexus of everything sweet and ugly that had ever been between them, the support, the competition, the camaraderie, the jealousy, the passion, the hurt. But now that he was dead, all of this had been magnified tenfold, had become more convoluted and—this was the most difficult part—instantaneous than she had ever thought possible. It is as if everything from the past, the present and even the future is capable of happening all at once, at any time, and exploding between them without warning. This newly old relationship with Nessa is more difficult, and more charged than any she has experienced, Vita included. Perhaps it always had been, but it has taken this atrocity to synergize the whole.
“Mrs. Woolf?”
The voice is startlingly close, and Virginia jumps at the sound of it. She might have thought it was one of her own, were it not for the formal address, but it is only Louie calling from somewhere on the stairs. “Mrs. Bell has arrived.”
In fact, Nessa had arrived a quarter of an hour before, but Virginia has been in the lavatory all that time, and Louie knows from experience not to disturb her there unless it is a matter of life and death. But Nessa’s presence in the house has made Louie anxious, partly because she does not wish to be perceived as a servant who, at this late date in her tenure, is incapable of performing the simplest of tasks, such as announcing a guest, especially this guest, whom she knows so well, and knows to be in no fit state to endure much of anything. But she is also nervous because she knows that Virginia has been in the lavatory for much longer than a quarter of an hour.
She knows, too, that Virginia has not been bathing in there or answering nature’s call. It had been she, Louie, after all, who had first answered the telephone this morning, and given the familiar caller’s famous name. It had also been she who, while upstairs making the gentleman’s bed, had heard Virginia stomp across the hall, slam the lavatory door and begin retching like a dog. The retching had gone on fitfully for some time. And yes, she had heard the lady talking to herself as well. She has heard her do so many times before, and not—begging your pardon—because she has been listening, but because it can sound as loud as the pub at last orders in there when ma’am is going strong.
“All right,” Virginia calls, trying to sound gathered, but she sounds throttled instead.
By now Nessa, too, knows that all is not well, and she does not expect Louie to intervene. She can deal with this herself. She has followed Louie onto the stairs, and hearing Virginia’s gurgled reply, she pushes past the servant and takes the rest of the stairs by twos. When she reaches the top, she flings open the lavatory door and glares across the threshold.
Again Virginia jumps at the sound of the door as it bangs against the far wall. Terrified, and still clinging to the toilet, she turns to see her sister standing with her legs sturdily apart and her arms stiffly crossed, looking like a murderous landlady.
“Nessa!” she gasps. “You frightened me.”
At nearly sixty, Nessa is still a very attractive woman. Her greying hair is gathered at the base of her neck in an elegant chignon. She is wearing little or no makeup, yet her pale skin and hair are so clear, and they complement each other so becomingly, that she glows with the lustrous monochrome of a photograph. Age has merely softened her beauty into the comeliness of a life well lived.
“Yes, well,” she says hotly, “I wasn’t going to wait down there any longer. Not with you up here doing your usual God knows what.”
Taking in the view of Virginia on the floor, hovering over the dregs of her vomit and gazing into the bowl as if she
thinks she can read her fortune there, she adds, “Honestly, Virginia, must you always be so eccentric?”
This breaks the tension and makes them both erupt with laughter. Nessa rushes to her sister’s side to lay a nurturing hand on her shoulder. “Dearest, come away,” she says. “Shall we sit in your room?”
Virginia nods and allows Nessa to help her to her feet. As Nessa turns Virginia around and begins guiding her toward the door, she reaches behind and pulls the toilet chain.
When they are comfortably installed across the hall in Virginia’s room, Nessa in the writing chair, Virginia on the edge of the bed, Nessa says, “This isn’t over something to do with Ottoline, is it?”
“Ottoline!” Virginia scoffs. “God. She died in February and, would you believe it, I’m still quite over it.”
Nessa frowns.
“Oh, I know, I know. I’m wretched, and you know I don’t really mean it. But how could you think that I would be sick over Ottoline? Unless, of course, her journals have been unsealed.” She makes a scandalized face and covers her mouth coyly with her hand. “What then?”
Nessa smiles weakly, knowing, as everyone does, that Ottoline’s infamous journals are rumored to contain more incriminating information about the whole tangled web of Bloomsbury—at whose center Ottoline lurked like a black widow for more than thirty years—than the files of British Intelligence contained about the Nazis. And they had been sealed every bit as tightly, too, at her behest, by her husband Philip, who, without exception, did absolutely everything he was told.
But Nessa has never been attracted or susceptible to the martial art of gossip the way her sister has. Virginia might pretend otherwise when it suited her, but Nessa knows that a good chin-wag has always been a favorite pastime of hers. It was the virtual linchpin of her friendship with Lytton—perhaps “friendship” is the wrong word—and the coven she assembled with Ottoline. Virginia had wasted a great deal of time and idle talk with Her Ladyship over the years, and in the blood sport of society she had given every bit as good as she’d got. She did not like to be reminded of this fact.
Nessa, meanwhile, had always thought of herself as actually living the life—and happily—that so many others had lived only vicariously—or in Ottoline’s case, relived convalescently—by yapping about it. The postmortems of love affairs have never interested Nessa much, but when it comes to Virginia (vide Vita), she knows that there is often a great deal more than hurt feelings at stake, even just in what she overhears.
“So, what’s happened?” Nessa asks.
Fiddling with the lamp cord on the night table, Virginia says nonchalantly, “Well, I suppose it does have to do in some manner with Ottoline. But then”—she laughs—“what doesn’t?”
They both smirk at this, Nessa less so than Virginia, and Virginia goes on, trying to distract herself from the mild constriction that is still there in her throat.
“You know she filled Vivien Eliot’s head full of nonsense about Carrington after she and Lytton died.”
“Well, she would, wouldn’t she?” Nessa says. “You said they’d been lovers once.”
“Who?” Virginia cries. “Vivien and Ottoline?”
“No. Of course not. Don’t be a fool. Ottoline and Carrington.”
“Oh, yes. That. Well, as I said, Ottoline had her hand, so to speak, in every pie. But I mean something else.”
She pauses here, still fiddling with the cord. After a moment, she adds sheepishly, “I mean how badly Ottoline and I treated Vivien after all that. After Tom left her.”
“But that’s ancient history,” Nessa says, not wanting to discuss Ottoline any more than necessary. She is pressing for the real cause of this morning’s events. “Why are you thinking of that now?”
“Not that ancient,” Virginia balks. “Anyway, I feel awful. It’s all a muddle. Everything is bound up with everything else, and I’m thrown over. I just—”
“Virginia,” Nessa interrupts sternly, “what have you heard?”
Throwing up her hands, Virginia says, “I received a phone call this morning from Tom.” She looks candidly at Nessa, as if this should say everything, but it is obvious that she has stopped short of the main thing.
“And?” Nessa prompts. “What did he say?”
This is more difficult than she thought it would be to repeat. She is beginning to feel sick again at the thought of it. She swallows hard several times to clear the saliva that is filling her mouth, and takes several deep breaths.
“Virginia?”
“Yes, all right,” Virginia snaps, cracking the cord against the nightstand and nearly toppling the lamp. Nessa leaps up to steady it. Virginia takes full advantage of the delay, and the fact that Nessa’s attention is, for the moment, focused elsewhere. She breathes deeply several more times, and clutches at her throat and belly in a way that she is relieved Nessa doesn’t see.
When Nessa has retaken her seat, Virginia swallows again and says, “Tom said that Vivien has been committed to an asylum.”
The words “Oh, dear” slip out before Nessa can stop them, and Virginia’s eyes pop up at her. “You see?” she says accusingly.
But Nessa immediately recovers. “I see that it is a very sad thing for Vivien and for Tom,” she says, pausing to emphasize her verdict. “And that is all.”
“That is not all,” Virginia cries.
Nessa starts slightly at this and tries to soften her tone. “I know it isn’t. I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t want you spinning this out, making more of it than there need be. You know that at times like this you blame yourself for everything. You must stop this now.”
She had meant to express her sympathy and the profound understanding that she has gained by helping Virginia through these bouts since they were adolescents, but by the time she finishes, she is surprised to find herself nearly shouting.
Julian’s death has both sharpened and dulled her. She feels less, she rages more. She can seldom suppress the tantrums that seem to lurk most threateningly when she is with Virginia. The persuasion of her grief is too strong: This is not your burden anymore, it tells her, this constant shoring up of your sister. You are the one who is destroyed. You have known the blankness of actual pain.
In this mindset she has very little of her famous patience left. She can no longer tolerate these petty exacerbations.
“Oh, Nessa,” Virginia moans, fearing Nessa’s thoughts. “It is I who am sorry. I didn’t intend to tell you. Not like this. I didn’t mean for you to find me as you did. I know that all of this is nothing beside Julian.”
Nessa feels the momentary urge to contradict, but there is no real feeling behind the impulse, and so she merely stares at the floor beneath Virginia’s feet.
“It was you, you know,” Virginia says softly.
“Me what?” Nessa says without raising her eyes.
“Who saved me from ending like Vivien.”
At this, Nessa looks up with a puzzled expression. “Saved you?”
But Virginia only returns Nessa’s gaze, her own eyes filling with the sudden tears of gratitude that have overcome her.
Nessa can feel a shudder of discomfort go through her, and then a hot surge of resentment overtaking it, thickening in her throat and filling her ears with blood. It is too typical. She is being ambushed yet again by a show of unaccountable emotion whose true cause Virginia refuses to expose. But she will not let herself be thrown. With a stilted matter-of-factness that for the moment conceals her displeasure, Nessa says, “But of course it was Leonard who saved you.”
Virginia smiles. “Yes,” she says. “But it is more complicated than that. Our family. Oh, Nessa, it frightens me so even now just to think of it.”
This sends another rush, this time of near fury, up Nessa’s spine. Her brain is beginning to simmer. There will be no avoiding this scene, but she will not be the one to provoke it.
Looking at Virginia now, Nessa sees her sister’s strangely pained expression, as though she is trying to sweep asi
de her first feelings as quickly and ruthlessly as possible to make way for a more dispassionate pronouncement. This has a slightly cooling effect. Nessa settles in the chair and lets the cushions plump soothingly against her stiffened back.
“It is always the men who appear to be in control of these decisions,” Virginia resumes at last. Her tone is now pedantic, but forced. “And, ultimately, they are in control, of course. The doctors, the fathers, the husbands, the brothers are all holding the keys, but—and this is part of what I have been sick about this morning—perhaps it is in fact the women, the mothers and sisters”—she pauses briefly to say the next words with special emphasis—“or the stepmothers and half sisters, who are turning those keys in the locks. Might it not, in the last analysis, be the acquiescence of one or more female relatives that permits, or overlooks, or obscures, another female relative’s confinement? Vivien’s mother, Lucia’s mother and, not least, let us say it aloud for once, our own mother, poor Laura’s stepmother—where were they?”
“Lucia?” Nessa says, because she does not want even to begin to entertain what Virginia has just suggested about their half sister Laura and their mother. They have not spoken of Laura in many, many years. The mere mention of the name is evidence enough to Nessa that Virginia is much farther afield this morning than she realized.
“Lucia Joyce,” Virginia says perfunctorily. “Never mind her. It’s just . . . I wanted you to know that I know that it was you.”
Still Nessa says nothing, though she is looking searchingly and skeptically into Virginia’s eyes. Why is she on about Laura?
“Don’t you see?” Virginia says. “Laura lived with us. She was there with us in St. Ives. And then, magically, she was not there. She was put away, and long before Mother died, when we were too young to know what it meant. Then Mother died, and sister Stella died not long after, and it was only us, you and me, with the boys and Father. Then Father died and Thoby died, too, and we were left at last only with Adrian, who, you’ll agree, was always a nonentity, and with George and Gerald Duckworth, who, well, we know what they were.”
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