by Priya Parmar
Saxon was the last man standing, and I finally went up to bed and left him in the drawing room. He can be difficult to dislodge, and it is best to leave him be. The evening never happened. Not a success.
67 BELSIZE PARK GARDENS
HAMPSTEAD, N.W.
TEL.: HAMPSTEAD 1090
19 October 1909
Dearest Leonard,
I have returned to Cambridge for the autumn and find myself wondering why we ever left. I have taken over a fallen angel’s rooms for the term. George Mallory. He is not mine, but oh how I wish he were. I am staying at the Grantchester Arms, as beautiful Mallory does not vacate the rooms until Friday.
Today I sat in the autumn sunshine and thought of how happy we were in this small city. Life in London is uneventful at present. Or rather, it is lacking in pleasant events. Adrian is leaving for America. Clive has taken up with a terribly vulgar woman, and although Duncan has discarded Maynard, he does not want me. I speak of you often to Virginia. She has refused Hilton Young. I tell her she is waiting for you.
Yours,
Lytton
Tuesday 9 November 1909—46 Gordon Square
“You’re back!” I said, pleased. He had stayed on to meet an artist and an art dealer in Bath, and I had not expected him until the end of the week. Clive crossed the room to kiss me and then sat on the small sofa and pulled out a handkerchief. It was one of the monogrammed ones I ordered for him last Christmas. I must remember to order some new ones this year.
“Yes, the painting was not nearly as good as I thought it would be, and the painter was unimaginative and thick. I missed you. Let’s move to Paris.”
“Because the painting was poor?” I laughed, putting away the last of my brushes. Clive always wants to move to Paris.
“I am serious, Nessa. You and me and Julian. We could live in St. Germain, we could breakfast at Closerie des Lilas, you could paint, I could write, and we could be part of the most fascinating circle of artists in the world. Let’s move to Paris.”
He was serious. Clive suggests moving to Paris at least twice a month, and every time we go there, he looks at apartments. But we always come back to the security, convenience, and familiarity of London. I felt fragile green shoots of hope push to the sunlight. I know this was his attempt to save us. To repair us. But it is too big a risk. In Paris, Clive would just be unfaithful with some chic Frenchwoman, and I would be away from here and even more alone. No. I sidestepped the question.
“The painting was bad?” I asked, leaning down to kiss him.
“Awful,” he said, pulling me onto his lap the way he used to.
We went into our room and closed the door.
Wednesday 8 December 1909—46 Gordon Square
Julian has learned to climb up the furniture in the drawing room. I spent the morning moving all the ornaments off the lower branches of the Christmas tree as he kept breaking them.
Later (three pm)
Damn. On Tuesday, Adrian arrives back from his American holiday on the Mauretania, and Virginia has already invited Violet for supper that evening. I wanted to have them both over to celebrate Adrian’s return.
Duncan had a postcard from Adrian last week. He has taken up fly-fishing, whatever that may be.
12 December 1909—46 Gordon Square
Home from an evening in Fitzroy Square where I spent most of the evening talking to Duncan. I told him how I hoped to show my work, and he cautioned me, “Once you offer a painting to the world, it stops being yours.” His reputation has been gaining lately—he did not sound pleased about it.
25 December 1909—46 Gordon Square (Christmas Day)
“Virginia has gone to Cornwall,” Clive said, waking me up with my Christmas breakfast on a tray.
“What?” I had slept late and could not make sense of what he was saying. “She was here last night and never mentioned it.”
“Yes, it seems she was walking in Regent’s Park this morning and decided that being in London was silly when Cornwall exists, and so she went home, told Adrian, and hopped on a train.” Clive sat on the bed beside me. “Adrian just sent a note round so we would not expect her for supper.”
“Did she take her spectacles? Book a hotel?”
“I can’t imagine she did any of those things. She just left,” Clive said, concerned. “Adrian says she did not pack a bag. She won’t have combination underwear, her washing kit, her books, warm clothes, or anything.” Clive ran his hand through his hair in agitation. “Nessa, does she even have her chequebook?”
“I have no idea,” I said, feeling flooded with guilt.
“I can’t think why she would do this,” Clive said.
“I can.” I turned to face him. “I should have told you before her, and I am sorry for that.”
“Told me what, darling? You can tell Virginia anything. I don’t mind.”
“Clive, last night I told Virginia I am pregnant.”
Later (three pm)
Clive went out. I know where he has gone.
Tonight the house is not making that rattling hollow silence it usually does. Instead my mind thumbs through names. Angelica? Angelica, archangelica. Like roots and sky.
Even later (eleven pm)
Clive was with his whore. A brutal, seedy word, but it is how I have decided to refer to her. From what I can tell, it is an essentially unromantic relationship defined by sex, so lover is all wrong. If anything, Virginia is his lover, she is still the one he loves. And I still am the wife. If Virginia were not my sister, we would be a pedestrian cliché. Instead, we are a bohemian nightmare. Nevertheless I wait for his footsteps on the stairs, and the day does not feel over until he is home and the door is bolted behind him. The small day-to-day details of a family continue even when the heart of a marriage has broken.
I watch him. He does everything that a husband should. He speaks to me about the wine and the tailor and the traffic in the square and the new painters he meets and the draught from the nursery windows, but his affection is a habit now, a routine and not an engine. Our life has taken on the heavy immobility of a load-bearing wall. We are no longer an adventure.
I had fallen asleep on the velvet sofa in the drawing room and did not hear him open the door.
“I’m sorry,” Clive said, kneeling on the floor beside me.
“Why? What have you done?” I asked, sleepily.
“I think you know.”
“You were with Mrs Raven Hill.”
“Yes,” Clive said, meeting my eyes.
“I forgive you.”
“Why?” Clive said, surprised by my prompt response. “I thought you did not subscribe to my modern ideas on marriage.”
I laughed. Infidelity was hardly modern. “Do I have a choice? I am married to you.” I took a slow breath, deciding to speak the unspoken. “Anyway, your affair with Virginia is what ended our marriage, not Mrs Raven Hill.” I paused, waiting for him to deny it but knowing he would not.
“Ended?” he ventured cautiously.
“Evolved. Is that better?”
“Evolved.” He considered the word a moment. It was vague enough to placate him. “Yes. Evolved. You are a rare and fine thing, Vanessa,” he said, looking at me as he sometimes still does. He affectionately tugged at the end of my messy night braid. He did not try to convince me that our marriage was unharmed. Nor did he pretend to be other than he was. My last hope fell from the sky.
“And you are really pregnant?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Good,” Clive said. “That can only lead to good.”
26 December 1909—46 Gordon Square
A letter from Virginia arrived in the first post. She has washed up at the Lelant Hotel in St. Ives and is the only guest. She made no mention of the baby and insists that Cornwall is at its best in winter. She does have her chequebook, but she did forget her spectacles. I shall have to ask Adrian to send them.
Later—after supper
“What about Clarissa?” Clive said.
An olive branch name. He has never liked it, but he knows I do.
“Yes. Clarissa.”
A MEETING ON A TRAIN
Sunday 9 January 1910—46 Gordon Square (two am)
“It was splendid! He has the most magnificent mind,” Clive said, leaping up to refill Adrian’s glass.
We were in the chilly drawing room at Gordon Square, discussing our encounter with the art critic Roger Fry. We met him this morning on the 9.15 train from Cambridge. I recognised him standing near us on the platform. He remembered me and greeted me warmly and knew of Clive from his recent article for the Athenaeum. He and Clive struck up an animated discussion about modern French art. I stayed largely quiet and marvelled at the way Mr Fry listened. It was an active, thoughtful listening rather than the passive pause while one waits his turn to speak that you see so often in great men.
“You know, he is really serious about this exhibition of modern French art,” Clive said, coming to sit by me. “French art has moved beyond Impressionism. It is not relevant any more. It is no longer modern.”
“Who is he looking to show?” Desmond asked. I had forgotten how sincerely he cares about paintings.
“Manet, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh primarily, although he may include newer paintings by Matisse and Picasso,” Clive said. “I hope he does—they are genius. You liked the Matisse we saw in Paris, Nessa, didn’t you?”
I looked at Clive. He knew I had adored it. The bright palette, the thick paint, and the unexpected perspectives were astonishing. He was trying to include me. He had noticed my reserve and was drawing me out. “Yes, I thought they were revolutionary and beautiful,” I said simply.
“Didn’t you meet him at our house, Nessa?” Desmond asked.
“Mr Fry? Yes,” I said. “At your dinner party, years ago. Before he left for New York. He was with his wife.”
“Sad business,” Desmond said, reaching out to squeeze Molly’s hand.
“Is she at home now?” I asked.
“Helen Fry? I think since her relapse a few years ago, they have tried their best to keep her home, but she has had to return to the mental hospital for long stays several times,” Molly said. “The last time we saw him, she was to spend Christmas with the children, so she may be at their home in Hampstead now.”
“Darling, don’t you remember, the Frys have moved,” Desmond said. “Roger designed and built that huge Arts and Crafts house in Guildford—tall ceilings, heat under the floorboards, modern kitchen. I found it weirdly spare, but it grows on you. It is called Durbins. I am not sure if Mrs Fry has yet lived there or not.”
“Terrible thing to live with such uncertainty,” Clive said, looking at me.
“We should invite him to speak at a Friday Club meeting,” Molly said.
“I already have,” I answered quietly.
And—It seems that Lytton’s sister Dorothy and her husband, the artist Simon Bussy, have been corresponding with Mr Fry for years. Lytton did not seem impressed with our new acquaintance, but Lytton has been out of sorts lately.
Saturday 5 February 1910—Peppard Cottage, Oxfordshire
The trouble with a Saturday-to-Monday country house party in February is that it will probably rain. Since we arrived this morning, there has been a steady grey Oxfordshire drizzle—depressing. But the indoor amusements are not to be sneezed at. Ottoline chose her guests well. Lytton and his sister Marjorie are here, Irene Noel and Tudor Castle, who are not officially engaged yet, as well as Desmond and Molly. (Like us, they left their baby, Rachel, at home with her nanny.) Duncan, Maynard, and Adrian arrive tomorrow. Ottoline and Henry Lamb circle each other discreetly—I have noticed that Ottoline is much more circumspect when she entertains at home. We have spoken several times, and I find myself warming to her. Roger Fry has also come along, and he and Ottoline have been chattering about art and friends in common and country houses they both know and like. It gives a particular kind of pleasure to introduce people who then become friends.
And—Virginia has borrowed the name Rachel for her heroine. Now she has to come up with a surname. She says she wants something lean, slicing, and elegant, like a paperknife.
UNION POSTALE UNIVERSELLE
CEYLON (CYLAN)
5 February 1910
Kandy, Ceylon
Lytton,
I have such news, my friend! I have just secured a long leave to return to England. Charlie-the-dog and I will be arriving in April or May of next year and will be home for several months. My mind flops like a fish with excitement. I would come sooner, but last year I embarked on an ambitious education project and have now made primary school mandatory in the town. We are opening a government school to accommodate all the children, and it should be in hand by this time next year. It is one of the few things I have done here that feels like true good. I will sail for England as soon as it is up and running.
Do you think your beautiful Miss Stephen will agree to meet me again? Will she remember me? Do you think she will still be unmarried and unengaged? So many questions about a woman I have hardly met—forgive me. Please do not tell her this, but she is beginning to haunt my thoughts daily. Thank you, Lytton, for that, no matter where it leads. It will be wonderful to see you, dear man.
Yrs,
Woolf
Sunday 6 February 1910—Peppard Cottage, Oxfordshire (still raining)
“Nessa?” Ottoline lightly rapped on the door to my room. “Are you awake?”
“Yes,” I called. I was taking advantage of one of the few luxuries accorded married ladies in formal households and was enjoying a breakfast tray in bed. Unmarried ladies like Irene have their breakfast in the dining room. “Come in!” I said, realising that she was waiting for my invitation.
“Clive went walking early with Roger and Desmond,” she said. “He asked me to tell you that he would be back before luncheon.” Ottoline began to drift about the room, like a great paper bird. Her dark red hair floated around her angular, strong-featured face in airy curls. She is not pretty but it is impossible to look away from her. She looked, in truth, worn out. Her heavily hooded eyes were circled with delicate lavender saucers, and her shoulders sagged with exhaustion. Her clothes stood out in defiance of her weariness. She wore a cinched poppy-red morning dress and a striking amber choker at her throat.
“Ottoline,” I began, not knowing quite what I wanted to say. “Are you having a good time?”
My question caught her off guard. She abruptly sat down on the bed, jostling the breakfast tray. I was startled. Sitting together on the bed changed the tenor of the conversation. The room became charged, intimate. “Not really,” she said frankly. “I tend to worry so when I give a house party.”
“Worry?” I asked, although I well understand the rankling, trivial worries of a hostess.
“About silly things. The food, the weather, the guests, the conversation …” she trailed off.
“And of course, there is the intrigue,” I said.
“Yes,” she laughed, plucking at the counterpane. “There is always the intrigue.”
And then it all spilled out. Her difficulties with Henry: his unpredictable temper and her easily wounded heart, their tentative reunions, his flirtation with other women and her devotion to him, his dissolving marriage and her unexpectedly successful arrangement with Philip, his art and her artistry, his talent and her fine sense of beauty, and their jealousy. This is not her first affair.
“Nine?” I repeated, making sure I had heard correctly. “Nine affairs?”
“While I have been with Philip?” she asked. “Yes, Henry is the ninth.”
There was a profound dignity in the way she said it. This is not a sordid nor a loose woman, but a woman searching for a particular brand of love. Love mixed with art and ideas. Love sketched in paint and ink. Love to share unreservedly with another human. She was not ashamed of her quest, only disappointed in her failure. And why should she be ashamed? I thought, reproaching myself for my instinctive disapproval. She was not
betraying Philip. They had come to an agreement. I was surprised. I had not expected such a brutally large number. We all talked of setting aside the constricting confines of traditional marriage and society in favour of genuine connection. We all talked about the paramount importance of personal relationships—but so far my steps have been small and my life tightly seamed with convention. Ottoline has quietly lived her life outside such structures.
“And you?” she asked, prompting my confession.
“None,” I said quietly. “Until recently, I have found so much happiness in my marriage. And now Clive has been … distracted,” I said, hedging past the truth.
Ottoline looked at me with disappointment. I had met her honesty with evasion.
“Clive has become lovers with a Mrs Raven Hill,” I said with clear candour. “And he has fallen in love with my sister.” I felt flushed with truth—purged clean of the shadowy secrets. But there was also a loss of control, of discretion; a diminishment. But why should I have control? Why should I be discreet? These are not my misdemeanours. I was stating what was true. I do not owe the world a happy marriage, a perfect family. That is not my job.
