Stephanie Barron

by The White Garden (v5)

  She directed Peter around to the greenhouses, and with no small feeling of trepidation, led him and Margaux toward the Head Gardener’s office.

  “Is Imogen here?” she asked one of the staff gardeners who was busily watering some cuttings set out in trays.

  “She’s over at the test border,” the young woman said. “Just behind the Powys Wall.”

  The test border was a disciplined proving ground for new perennials. Imogen planted specimens that interested her there, and watched them for a few years before deciding whether they merited a spot in Sissinghurst’s beds. They found her deadheading a clump of pale green Echinacea—a type Jo recognized as Coconut Lime—with the withered stalks lying about her Wellies like sheaves of threshed wheat. She glanced up as the little cavalcade approached, and scowled.

  “Not again!”

  “Hello, Imogen,” Jo said. “I owe you an apology, and I’ve come to make it. I’m truly sorry for all the trouble and worry I’ve caused.”

  Imogen studied her skeptically, then thrust her clippers in a pouch that dangled from her belt. “Yes, well, words are grand—but where’s the notebook, I’d like to know? In the hands of the bloody experts. I don’t know how I’m going to explain it all to the Trust—”

  “What I did was wrong,” Jo interrupted. “I took advantage of your kindness and went off on a wild-goose chase. If I can help set things right—talk to people at the Trust, or to The Family—”

  “Good God, no,” Imogen retorted, shocked. “You’ve done enough damage.”

  “I can vouch for the fact that you weren’t involved,” Jo persisted. “I can shoulder the blame.”

  Imogen’s eyes narrowed; she glanced at Margaux Strand and said, “You put her up to this, didn’t you? And who the hell are you?”

  Peter gave her a wry smile. “One of your hated experts.”

  “Has he got it all sussed out, our Marcus? Does he know whether Woolf really wrote that daft diary?”

  “Not yet,” Peter replied.

  “Ah.” She tugged off her garden gloves. “Then until he informs me of where we stand, I’m barring the lot of you from the premises. Can’t be too careful. Something else might go missing.” There was belligerence in her voice; and something else. Pain.

  “Imogen…” Jo reached a hand toward her. “We’re here to ask for your help.”

  “And from past knowledge of my stupidity, you assume you’ll get it. I’ve reformed, however. Cheerio!”

  “I rather think,” Margaux intervened pointedly, “that you ought to listen to her, love. Remember what Graydon Westlake said? That we should all work together? Lest any of us suffer individually? You’ll find words to that effect in those papers you signed.”

  Jo murmured, “So Gray got to you, too—”

  But Peter interrupted her. “What papers?”

  Margaux turned on him. “Ones your precious auction house dredged up. Outlining exactly who owes what to whom. I get sole academic access to the Woolf manuscripts, in exchange for my expert opinion. Imogen gets to look like the saint who made the discovery, instead of the git she is.”

  “And Jo?” Peter said hotly. “What does Jo get?”

  “Immunity from prosecution.—Which is quite enough, I think, for somebody who’s bollixed things up as much as she has.”

  Peter stepped toward her. “Marcus agreed to this?”

  “Marcus drew up the papers.” Margaux studied him coolly. “I would never have signed, of course, if I hadn’t assumed you knew all about it, Peter. Before you ever left London with Jo. I thought I was simply doing what you wanted—what you’d arranged—”

  “Oh, for the love of—” Imogen snorted contemptuously. “You’ve been hand in glove with those rogues in London, dearie, for the better part of the week. Sugarcoating their nastiness. Simpering in their laps. Don’t try to lie about it now. You’d roll your Manolos in pig shit and wear them to Prince William’s wedding if it got you what you want. So what do you need, Jo? I’m in a mood to disappoint our Dr. Strand.”

  “We’d like to examine the statue of the Little Virgin,” Jo told her. “We’ll probably have to move it.”

  “Move it!” Imogen was appalled.

  “Lift it, anyway. Would you or Terence be able to help?”

  THEY WAITED UNTIL THE VERY LAST PAYING CUSTOMERS had been waved through the turnstile at the garden entrance. One of these recognized Imogen as the Head, and was inclined to linger in order to interrogate her on rose replant disease; but happily the old gentleman’s daughter, who’d driven him down from London, was impatient to be gone and broke off his chat with a peremptory “Come along, then, Dad. You’ll be wanting your tea.”

  Jo felt a scattering of rain against her cheek. She glanced around, at the Top Courtyard and the arch to the Lower one; at Vita’s Tower soaring against the farmland and the Weald. The day had turned lowering and gray. No matter how many days in the future she might visit Sissinghurst, in spring and sun, she would remember it best as a creature of autumn, rising from a skirt of mist, as mythic as Avalon and as lost to time.

  “Ter!” Imogen bellowed into her hand radio. “You’re wanted in the White Garden.” She flicked Margaux a glance. The don’s lips were turning blue from the chill. “Cozy enough for you, Dr. Strand?”

  They followed her, broad-hipped and sturdy as a field marshal, across the Lower Courtyard. Peter’s fingers grazed Jo’s as they walked. “Can you feel her? Virginia?” he murmured. “She’s watching us.”

  The Yew Walk was shining faintly with the rain. As they turned into it, again Jo had the sensation of descending through a tunnel, no relief from the dark hedge pressing in on either side until the sudden deliverance of the doorway cut into the green wall. The entrance to the White Garden.

  The rose arbor was directly ahead of them. Terence stood by it, his arms slack, a hessian square filled with perennial cuttings at his feet.

  “Eh, Miss Bellamy,” he said, with obvious pleasure. “I thought you’d done with us.”

  “Never so lucky.” Imogen sighed. “Ter, these people want to examine the Little Virgin. I’m here to make sure she’s not tampered with. You’re to do a bit of heavy lifting.”

  Terence shrugged, and pulled on the gloves he’d tossed near his tip bag. Jo glanced at Imogen, who inclined her head dismissively and took no step farther; after a second, Jo turned left along the slate path and then right, onto the pavers that led to the Little Virgin. The others followed.

  She was standing as she had for sixty years, face almost obscured by the weeping pear.

  Jo stopped short, gazing at the dull gray figure. Peter studied the Virgin for a second, then reached out and touched the gunmetal skin. “This wasn’t always here, is that correct?”

  “Has been since the making of the White Garden,” Imogen returned, “the bones of which were laid in ’49 and ’50, on the site of the old Priest’s House garden. The roses that used to be here were moved up to what was the first kitchen garden, near the Yew Rondel—it’s called the Rose Garden now. If you’re asking where the statue was before all that—”

  “We know,” Peter said. “Virginia told us. It was just to the north, outside this bit’s hedge. But you couldn’t see her legs from the path because of a drop in elevation. I understand why Vita moved it; the Virgin ought to be surrounded by white.”

  Imogen scowled at him. “This whole scheme was worked years after that Woolf woman died. It’s got nothing to do with her, nor the statue neither.”

  “How wrong you are,” Margaux said sweetly.

  “What do you lot think to find?”

  “Something that was hidden before the statue was moved,” Jo said, “in a place only a gardener would know. It’s a hollow lead casting, right?”

  “If it were solid, nobody’d ever budge the thing. Terence,” Imogen said, “I gather these fools want you to tip the lady over. Can you do it without breaking her neck?”

  Peter helped the undergardener shift the Little Virgin gently toward
the slate path. The lead was slippery with rain and the slim figure heavy. Imogen swore audibly as the statue descended earthward, but in a matter of minutes it rested facedown on top of the hessian bundle, cushioned by the season’s last cuttings.

  “Here.” Peter tossed Jo his penlight. She knelt near the statue’s base and flicked on the beam.

  The interior of the statue was narrower than she expected, and fluidly formed; a cleft in a manmade rock. At first she saw only lead, convoluted as it hardened in the mold so long ago; and then she noticed, far up in the torso of the figure, what looked like pillow stuffing. She reached her hand inside the aperture and pulled a bit of it out.

  “What’s this?” she asked, handing it off behind her.

  “Wool,” Margaux said. “Vita kept sheep, you know; she used to send knitting yarn to Virginia.”

  “Stinks to high heaven,” Imogen observed. “Wonder how long it’s been in there?”

  Peter was watching Jo. He had noticed that she was pulling more of the stuff out of the Little Virgin, the penlight abandoned by her knees. “What’s behind it?” he asked.

  “A bundle of some kind,” she said. “A wallet, maybe. Or, no—”

  She withdrew her hand. She was clutching a roll of brown leather, tied with twine.

  Wordlessly, Imogen pulled her shears from the pouch at her waist.

  Jo cut the bundle free. It dropped at her feet like a severed hand.

  “A garden glove?” Peter crouched beside her.

  “There’s something inside,” Jo said.

  IT WAS A ROLL OF PAPER, TIED WITH MORE TWINE. Fingers shaking, Jo slipped the string from the roll.

  “Careful,” Margaux said sharply over her shoulder. “There’ll be damp.”

  There was damp. The pages—each no bigger than the palm of Jo’s hand—were closely scrawled in lead pencil that had faded over the years. She played the penlight’s beam over them—it was now quite dark—and said, “It looks like Jock’s handwriting.”

  “Let’s go inside,” Imogen said brusquely. “You can’t read that out here. Ter, take care of the Virgin, will you?”

  Peter helped right the statue before they left the White Garden. Jo waited; it did not seem fair, after their long hunt, to steal a march on Peter. She kept the bundle of paper swaddled in the ancient glove as they trekked back to the Powys Wall.

  Terence parted from them at Imogen’s office. “If there’s nothing else, I’ll be off.…”

  “Go on, then,” Imogen ordered.

  Jo reached for him impulsively and hugged him. “If you ever give up your dream of L.A., I’d be happy to see you in Delaware. And thanks, Ter. For all your help.”

  “S’nothing. Come by the pub later and we’ll pull a pint.” He grinned at them and disappeared in the direction of the greenhouses.

  Jo set the garden glove carefully on the staff table. Peter peered at the bundle.

  “Cigarette papers. Can you believe it? Must’ve been the only paper he had. Did your grandfather smoke?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Everybody rolled their own during the war years. Even Vita,” Margaux observed. Then her expression changed. “My God—I bet those are Vita’s cigarette papers.”

  “—The habit of stealing being one that runs in the Bellamy family,” Imogen said dryly. “But don’t admit it too loudly. You’d have to hand over that packet to the Trust.”

  Peter glanced at Jo. “You can decipher the script. Why don’t you read this aloud?”

  “I’ll make tea,” Imogen suggested. “It’s downright cold now we’ve turned the corner to November. Sorry I’ve nothing stronger.” It was a peace offering; and she seemed remarkably unconcerned about setting limits on their access, now they’d actually found something in the Little Virgin.

  Jo drew out a chair and took the first small sheet between her fingers.

  2 April 1941

  The worse bit about living on your own is that there’s nobody to talk to. If it were home, I’d say, Da the Lady’s come and asked me to keep something for her, and he’d say, Give it here, then, Jock, there’s a good lad, and that’d be an end to it. Or Mum would say, Poor old dear, she’s a bit wanting in the upstairs, isn’t she? You’d best tell Miss Vita. And so I’d go and do that. But there’s no one. I could write to Mum and ask but I’d never write to Da; he’d be that put out at me acting foolish. When you’re man enough to work and live on your own among the gentry, you’re man enough to know what to do with the puzzles they put in your hands.

  Besides, I like the Lady. She’s daft, right enough, and she looks like a walking skeleton when you see her across the garden, but there’s a look in her eyes when she talks that makes you listen. I was asleep when she came to the barn door tonight but I got up and pulled my trousers on because it seemed like she needed help. That’s the other reason I don’t like to write to Mum—she’d call it indecent, the Lady looking for me like that, after the Family’d gone to bed. If I can’t write to Mum I might as well write to myself, so says I. Maybe then I’ll sort it out.

  Jock, she says, standing at the foot of the hayloft stairs with her hair all wild and her fur coat on, will you drive me to the station?

  At this hour, ma’am? I says. It’s gone past ten, and there’ll be no trains till morning.

  She looked around her then like all the demons of hell were after her, and ran out of the stable. That’s when I pulled on my clothes and went after.

  She was hurrying down the drive to the road. I’d no business telling the gentry what to do, but I didn’t like the look of her, nor her being all alone in such a state, and I reckoned Miss Vita would be angry if I said I’d seen the Lady go and lifted not a finger to stop her. I caught her up and said, Now, ma’am, can’t it wait till morning, and she said I’ll be lucky if they don’t find me before then. I said, Who? But she didn’t answer, just turned round wild-like and clutched my jacket with her hands. Jock, she says, Don’t ever trust the men of Westminster, no matter what they offer. Westminster men lie.

  Do they now, I says, as though she’s talking how deep to plant bulbs before the first frost. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind. But it’s five mile and more to Staplehurst, and a long enough wait for the first train. Do you stay warm inside, ma’am, and I’ll come find you at first light. You’ll be much more comfortable in the pony trap, or Miss Vita’s car.

  Why do you call her that? she asked. Not Mrs. Nicolson, but Miss Vita?

  It’s what we all called her at Knole, I says. I’m a Knole lad, born and bred.

  She’s not to know, the Lady said, nearly in tears. She’s not to know. It was a terrible mistake to tell Harold. I’ve written it all down.

  She tapped something she had under her arm, and I saw it was a copybook, like we used in school.

  That’s all right then, I told her, like she was a little child. If you’ve wrote it all down. That’ll keep till morning.

  I made so bold as to take her by the arm, and turned her towards the house, thinking that if I talked to her gentle-like she might come back the right way so I could settle her and get Miss Vita to call Doctor. But she dug in her heels and shook her head and said I can’t stay in this place, I’d be a fool to stay here now Harold’s gone.

  What, I says, with me and Hayter and Miss Vita what can handle a gun, and that Home Guard fellow posted in the tower? You’re safe as houses, ma’am.

  Don’t lie to me, Jock, she says too quiet.

  I put my hand on her arm again. If you go I shall have to rouse Miss Vita. It’s as much as my place is worth, you leaving and me saying no word.

  She seemed to fall in like a wilted flower at that, her shoulders hunching and her head drooping on her thin neck, and I was afraid she’d started to cry. I asked if she was all right and she said in a kind of whisper My head aches so, it’s the voices clamouring, every hour, they never stop no matter how much I plead.

  That sent a chill up my spine and I said, I’ll get Miss Vita. But the Lady swayed where she s
tood and I had to reach for her, sure enough, before she swooned. Come along, I said, trying to keep the scared out of my voice. You have a liedown and we’ll set you to rights.

  A slow walk back to South Cottage, me holding her upright and her breathing hard. I looked at her face once and it was dead pale, shining like a ghost in the night, though there was no moon. When we reached the door I rapped on it, hard, and rapped on it again.

  Jock, she says faintly, I’m not well. Take the book, Jock. Keep it safe.

  She fainted then right enough. But it was Miss Vita who put the Lady to bed, and Miss Vita who kept the book, sending me about my business once I’d helped her carry the Lady upstairs.

  I’m not easy in my mind. Not liking to fail her.

  Miss Vita gave me a shilling, and said as how I was a good lad and to say nothing more about it.

  She threw the deadbolt on the cottage door as I left.

  4 April 1941

  I fetched Mr. Harold from Staplehurst this afternoon, him coming down as usual for the Saturday and Sunday. Very absent-minded he was, and Is the Lady still unwell? he asks, as soon as I’ve seen his traps into the cart. He’d had a letter from Miss Vita, seemingly, them being the sort to write to each other every day. I told him I hadn’t seen the Lady since Wednesday night when she’d had her fit, me being that busy with turning the kitchen garden, but I hoped as she was on the mend. He called me good lad as he stepped down from the box, but when I carried in his things I heard him talk low to Miss Vita. Quite out of her head, Miss Vita said, and it’s clearly a return of the old trouble; do you think we should write to Leonard?

  I’ve written to Maynard, he says. That should settle her.

  When they saw me they fell quiet and I hurried with the bags, not liking to put my nose where it wasn’t wanted.

  I hope they have her book put by safe. Maybe it’s fretting after it that’s driven her out of her senses.