Vanessa and Her Sister (34 page)

Virginia just returned from Cambridge. Hilton Young finally proposed. And she refused. So she is willing to wait for the right love after all. Clive is smug and relieved and has been whistling all day. He hopes she refused for love of him. He does not understand her at all.

I felt scooped out, hollow, and detached when she told me. I heard myself offer pale platitudes and empty words of confidence. I am becoming someone I do not recognise.

CLARISSA

9 October 1909—46 Gordon Square

J
ust back from Seend and the horrors of the Bells. Clive’s family do not improve with time. How is it that they are able to spend their days gossiping, shooting, and wondering if it will rain and then go to sleep, wake up, and do it again? It eludes me.

Now home and we are having a party. I say “we,” but Clive had to stay in the country. So who is coming? Ottoline and Philip, Walter and Henry Lamb, Lytton’s sisters Pernel, Pippa, and Marjorie (Lytton is in Cambridge), Duncan and Maynard, Adrian, Morgan, Gwennie Darwin, Saxon and Virginia, Bertrand Russell (but not his wife, Alys, whom he does not love any more), Irene Noel, and Tudor Castle, who is mild but very funny and definitely my favourite of Adrian’s Cambridge set. Desmond and Molly missed their train this afternoon and so cannot come. I know the evening will be fraught as Ottoline and Henry Lamb are having a stormy affair and poor Irene is desperate to catch Tudor’s attention. It will be a grim coupled-off evening.

I wish Clive were going to be here to smooth out the social crinkles, but he has to stay in Seend to take care of some family business for his father. I know he is really going to be spending his time with his battleship-bosomed, double-chinned Mrs Raven Hill, but I was too proud to say so. She is overblown, flashy, and extroverted, but I remember
her being amusing in a crass sort of way. Perhaps I was the exception all along and his tastes truly run to that sort of showy woman?

I suppose the real trouble for him is Virginia. I am certain that Clive has been unable to seduce her. Virginia’s resolve is steeled by distaste rather than virtue. But it hardly matters. Intention is the thing that harms us.

Since the summer I have been trying to accept Clive’s view of modern marriage. The notion forces me to run anti-clockwise and upends all that makes sense in my mind, but at least we have honesty between us again. That alone sits well with me. He is Julian’s father and my husband, and so there we are.

Later

It was an awkward party. I tried to coax the evening into a proper shape, but it refused. Ottoline and Henry sat far apart but kept staring at each other while Philip and Walter made stilted conversation. Pernel, Pippa, and Marjorie spoke to Bertie Russell and Morgan about women’s suffrage
all
evening. They were uninterested in speaking to anyone else about anything else. Wonderful if one is at a political rally but difficult at a party. I know Maynard was disappointed, as he had just finished Morgan’s extraordinary futuristic story, “If the Machine Breaks,” and wanted to speak to him about it but never got the chance. It is different from anything else Morgan has written. It is his answer to H. G. Wells, and it is terrifying.

Irene was laughing too loudly, trying to interest Tudor Castle, and Ottoline watched disapprovingly. Ottoline draws her lovers in with melancholy sensuality rather than brash sparkle, but Irene does not have the nuance for that. Virginia tried to ignite a whispered conversation with me, but I refused. Beyond that, both she and Saxon remained stubbornly silent. Adrian and Duncan sat in a corner talking together, and Maynard and Hilton wandered out to the balcony. I was worried it would be awkward between Hilton and Virginia, but it was not. Virginia was in a difficult mood to start with so perhaps the tension with
Hilton simply got folded into the mixture. I am sure she was put out that Clive was not here.

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.

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.”