“Live,” I said.
IMOGEN CANTWELL LOOKED UP FROM THE PAGES INTO JO’S anxious face. “Devilish hard to read, isn’t it? She could have tried for neater handwriting. But I thought it was a garden book — a diary of some sort.”
“So did I.”
“Why would Vass have kept this?”
“He didn’t.” Jo reached for the notebook as though she couldn’t help herself, couldn’t leave it in Imogen’s hands a moment longer. “The boy she writes about — Jock — that was my grandfather’s name. He would have been seventeen. Sent over from Knole, where he grew up, to work here during the war.”
“Ah.” Imogen leaned on the handle of her grubbing hoe and studied Jo frankly. “A personal interest, is it? That’s why you’re so keen to see our records from the forties. It’s not about the White Garden at all.”
“It may be. Remember the title of this.”
“Title?” Imogen frowned. Notes on the Making of a White Garden. “You think it’s… some sort of fiction? But the writer mentions Vita. That’s real enough.”
“Yes. And she’s careful never to mention her own name at all. Who would have been close enough to Vita Sackville-West in 1941 to arrive at Sissinghurst on the strength of a telegram, and be immediately welcome?”
“A lover, you mean? Vita took them in scores. Mostly women, though the odd man does come up.”
Jo turned the book in her hands. “Only one of them could write like this.”
Imogen stared at her, thinking. Like everybody who’d made Sissinghurst their world, she’d learned a lot about The Family along the way. It was impossible to sustain Vita’s garden without knowing about Vita herself. She was everywhere: in the roses, the heavy Bagatelle vases that dotted the landscape, the looming shadow of the tower. Imogen had read the biographies. Lord, she’d even read Vita’s poetry, which almost nobody bothered with now. What was Jo saying? A lover of Vita’s, who’d had the ability to write?
“We should tell The Family,” she decided. “This might be valuable. If it really is…”
“… a lost manuscript of Virginia Woolf’s?” Jo finished.
The two women stared at each other in silence. The American’s eyes had gone unfocused again, Imogen noticed, and her own mind was racing. Virginia Woolf. Vita’s friend and correspondent for two decades. Vita’s lover, until she moved on to everybody else. A manuscript of Virginia Woolf’s, however partial, abandoned in the tool shed with the mice and spiders? Which reminded her —
“So it’s not Jack’s Book written on the notebook label,” she attempted, “but Jock?”
“I think so.”
“How did a gardener’s lad get his hands on this?” Imogen demanded. “Oh, Jo. It can’t be a Virginia Woolf — ”
“Imogen,” she said hurriedly, gripping the notebook, “I know you’ve got to tell The Family. I know it’s terribly important. I know you owe me nothing — you’ve already done me several favors, and I’m very grateful. But if you could manage just one more thing — if you could give me twenty-four hours, to finish what’s here and learn what I can about my grandfather — it would mean everything. Everything,” she repeated.
Imogen glanced over Jo’s head, toward the oast houses. Notes on the Making of a White Garden. Which hadn’t existed when this journal was written. What in all that was holy did it mean? And why should she do anything for Jo Bellamy, who kept more to herself than she was willing to share? If it was a lost Woolf manuscript… and she, Imogen, was credited with the find… the publicity would be enormous. For Sissinghurst. For the gardener.
“Can’t you ask him? Your grandfather, I mean?”
“He’s dead. We found him hanged in the garage. The morning after he learned I was coming here.”
“Bloody for you.”
“I can’t shake the thought that I’m somehow responsible. That the news of this trip triggered his death. Do you see why I have to know?”
Imogen shivered suddenly in the October sun; the American’s expression was too intense, too painful to bear.
“Twenty-four hours,” she relented. “No more. But then you bring that book back, understood? I’m jolly well not going to lose my place over you, Jo Bellamy.”
Chapter Seven
PETER LLEWELLYN WAS HALFWAY THROUGH HIS PAIN au chocolat that morning when she walked into the café.
He was late for the Group Meeting. He should have forgone his breakfast entirely; but he had no desire to listen to his Director, Marcus Symonds-Jones, summarize the results of a recent sale. He liked eating his pain au chocolat at his usual table in the house café, with a pot of Assam; and why provide Marcus with another opportunity to demonstrate Enlightened Management? Marcus was one of the new breed of directors at Sotheby’s UK; he had suffered through a four-day training course in New York last summer, and consequently assured his subordinates that they were All On One Team, Although Competition Among Equals was Quite in Order. Marcus had perfect teeth, which Peter found suspect. He hewed to an extreme of Savile Row tailoring, but affected a proletarian accent. Peter judged him false from shell to core. Marcus was a rousing success at Sotheby’s, however; and the slight suspicion that he, Peter, was simply jealous of Marcus’s ease, made him vaguely uncomfortable, as when he’d once disturbed a fellow seventh-former wanking off in a neighboring stall. Peter averted his eyes from Marcus when the two came into contact; the Results meeting would be sheer torture, Peter twiddling a pencil between his thumbs as Marcus spoke roundly of Better Than Projected Earnings. Far wiser to finish his breakfast and get on with the appraisal of the Broadwell collection.
Later he grew accustomed to the tentative expression Jo Bellamy wore whenever she was far from a garden; but that morning, as she hesitated in the café doorway, Peter took in the corduroy jeans, the mud-spattered Merrells, and the tied-back hair and concluded that an American tourist had lost her way between the Oxford Street tube station and Thomas Pink’s on Jermyn. Sotheby’s clients tended to dress for New Bond Street; they were careful to betray their ability to meet their financial obligations, before they breached the doors of the auction house. Whereas this woman’s appearance suggested she was in search of cab fare home.
As Peter sank his teeth into his final bite of pain au chocolat, however, the stranger met his eyes and smiled. His throat constricted from sheer surprise, and he gagged. Spluttering, he half rose from his table as she hurried toward him.
“Mr. Llewellyn? Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Peter gasped, peering at her through his glasses. “But I’m afraid I don’t… that is, I’m not sure — ”
“They told me I’d find you here,” she said. “Table in the corner, pastry and tea, blond hair and glasses. I’m Jo Bellamy. Would you have a moment to talk?”
Peter cleared his throat, released the death grip he’d fastened on his napkin, and gestured toward the opposite seat. “Do sit down. Cissy sent you, I suppose?”
“Cissy?”
“Department coordinator.” He sketched vaguely at his necktie. “Pearls. Twin set.”
“How did you know?”
“The rest of the Department will be in a meeting. I’m playing truant.”
“I see.” She smiled again as she pulled out her chair, and absurdly, Peter’s heart raced. He ought to have drawn the chair for her. But perhaps Americans ignored such things. And he was too late, in any case.
“How may I help, Miss…?”
“Bellamy.” She slid a large leather shoulder bag to the floor. “I don’t really know. I’ve never done this before. I’m not… good at things like auction houses.” She glanced around the café apprehensively, as though an alarm might go off; the tentative look was back again.