Vita was up early, at work in her garden with the boy Jock. What is to be done in time of war, in such a place? Weeding. The cutting of hazel from the coppice below the meadow, and the setting of stakes in the herbaceous border. A cool breeze buffets her hair and cheek, which are no longer opulent, no longer the trappings of the harem. The bones of her fingers are knobbed and the skin tough and spotted. She has left off wearing gloves but still sports her jodhpurs, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth as she digs. It is healing for her, this plunging of hands into the soil, and perhaps even the boy is healing — his uncomplicated strength, his willingness to lift and carry without comment, his deftness with the spade and pruning knife. Jock whistles as he trundles barrows in the garden. He does not dream of horror at night. In this he reminds me of Julian, who was like a bear in his strength, who went laughing to his death in Spain.
But for myself I think that to make things bloom while the bombs are falling is so much whistling in the dark. I could almost despise Vita for it.
I told her last night about November. The boy falling from the sky. The sprained ankle and the smell of fear and white patches around his mouth where the gag was bound. The men coming in the night in black cars and the boy whimpering as they bundled him into the back. You wouldn’t like it, I said. If it were Ben or Nigel or even Jock. A few days after I’d finished Between the Acts, I said, and the typesetting already begun. The smell of lead on his fingers when he put his hands over my mouth, to stop me screaming.
“Oh, my dear,” she said absently, her eyes on the burgeoning yew, “I should stay out of it all, if I were you. Surely they know best, these people from M15?”
But she must have telegraphed to Harold. There he was this afternoon, fresh from the 3:35 train, wandering up to take tea with us in the Priest’s House, the boy Jock having fetched him from the station.
The spring day had quite faded by that time, and it was chill, with a mist off the moat; I wrapped a sweater of Vita’s about me and hugged myself, the tea incapable of warming.
How to describe Harold Nicolson?
There is the obvious: black bowler hat, excellently tailored suit appropriate to Westminster, but rather worn, now, given the shortages of wartime and funds at home; the soft tissues of the face and the wide, mild eyes; the correct moustache — Harold’s attempt at manliness, I always think, a gesture he shares with Maynard Keynes. There is the weakness about the mouth and the softness of the fingers and the sense of warmth whenever he greets one — Harold cannot hide his easy affection, his interest in everything, though he attempts to do so with his studied wit.
He adores Vita and could not live, I think, without her, and yet she is the most supremely selfish being one could possibly meet; even when he ran for Parliament she politely declined to mount the hustings at his side, she magnificently ignored the gossip regarding their unusual marriage and would not play at the dutiful wife. She has discarded his name and resumed her own. She is steadfastly unfaithful with a variety of lovers, as he generally is with men and boys; and yet not a day passes without their exchange of letters. In their deep loyalty and constant choice of one another’s friendship, Harold and Vita are unassailable. He accepts her narcissism and worries about her drinking; she ignores his perpetual unhappiness at the failure of his career.
And it is a measure of how much he cares for her that he dropped everything at the Ministry of Information this morning, and came down to Kent the moment she summoned.
“Hallo, darling,” he said as he bent to kiss her cheek. “Hallo, Virginia. You’re looking fit. So happy you could keep Mar company in her castle. She grows quite fidgety with all the regulations. Men posted in the tower. Rations. Been working the garden, Mar?”
Mar is his particular name for Vita; Hadji is hers for Harold.
“Virginia thinks we should plant white flowers,” Vita said, gesturing out the cottage window, “so that the glow might light our way to bed.”
“Then by all means, set Jock to uprooting the roses,” Harold suggested. “Care to take a turn in the garden, Virginia? You might show me what you intend.”
As I guessed poor Harold had come expressly from London to give me a scolding, I felt obliged to rise from my chair and saunter with him into the chill of the falling dusk, the bare rose canes enmeshing us with all the splendour of the trenches. Vita stayed behind. I had an idea of her reaching for her hip flask, and spiking her tea with brandy.
“And so you’ve run off, have you?” Harold took my cold fingers between his own and chafed them gently. “Poor Virginia. Has Leonard been beastly to you?”
I said nothing. I would consent to listen, but not to speak. Not yet. There was too much I feared. The complicity of the men of Westminster.
“You’ve upset everyone terribly, you know. Leonard’s dragging the river. There are parties of men and dogs along the banks.”
This last brought me up short, my hand at my throat. Dogs. Torches. The flickering silhouettes of the search party and the sound of baying on the air. Slavering jaws mouthing the cold flesh —
I retched.
Harold’s arm came briefly to my back; a faint pressure of comfort. “You must write to them. You must explain. It would relieve their minds — ”
He strolled onwards, serene and infallible, while I stood like a plinth in the midst of Vita’s garden. He did not look back as he walked, a darker shadow in the deepening dusk, past the Chinese jar and through the gap in the hedge that led to the statue of the Little Virgin.
I knew that spot well. Beyond the garden gate and several feet below its level; beyond the sight of the Priest’s House windows. We could be private, there. I could tell him what he asked to know.
I took my courage in my hands and followed him.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“I LOVE THIS OLD LADY,” HAROLD SAID, STROKING the statue. “Vita would say I prefer Dionysius, but she’s wrong. The Little Virgin’s my pet.”
“How did she come here?”
“A fellow named Tomas Rosandic carved her for us out of wood. But I had the original cast in lead, some years ago — wood never lasts.” He glanced around. “I’m not happy with her here. The drop in grade means her legs are all but invisible from the gate — and that seems a shame, doesn’t it? A statue should serve to focus the eye, draw the viewer along an axis. This is all wrong.”
“She belongs in the White Garden — when you make it.”
“Have you seen Delos? Vita’s Attic Wilderness?” He took my hand, and tucked it under his arm. “It’s even more hopeless now there’s nobody to cultivate chaos. Let’s stroll, shall we?”
The footing was very bad, and I clung to him. The night, and this familiar stranger; my heart beat quicker. Harold was silent.
“How are things at the Ministry?” I asked.
“Funny you should ask,” he murmured. “Only a writer of novels could understand — I’ve become a vehicle for falsities and lies and hopeful declarations. I am never so full of bile as when forced to censor an upright journalist, before his truth terrifies half the kingdom.”
“Hypocrisy,” I said.
“Oh, yes — much more than I found in all my years with the Foreign Office. But perhaps I was simply callow, then, and unaware.”