Honest Doubt by Amanda Cross Page B

of Tennyson.”
    â€œBloomsbury?” I said, sneaking a look at my watch. Please God, I said to myself irreverently, don’t make whatever he plans to say about Bloomsbury important; I was too tired. But tired or not, it was clear Rick was getting to the heart of the matter, and I had better pay attention. I signaled the waiter for coffee, and looked at Rick with what I hoped would pass for eager anticipation.
    â€œDecaf ?” the waiter asked, responding to my summons.
    â€œCertainly not,” I barked at the poor man. “Perhaps you can double the caffeine.”
    â€œGetting sleepy?” Rick asked, not quite mockingly. Thanking what powers there be that I hadn’t drunk much, I denied this charge with vigor, and urged him on to explain what he meant by Bloomsbury.
    â€œThey were a group of clever people—geniuses, some of them—in England between the wars. Who they were doesn’t matter. Virginia Woolf was perhaps the most important. She and her sister Vanessa Bell, an artist, and various relatives and friends, liked to put on plays. Virginia wrote them, Vanessa designed them, and they were produced in Vanessa’s studio. The cast of this particular play included Duncan Grant, who was an artist, Vanessa’s longtime lover, a homosexual, and the father of Angelica, Vanessa’s daughter, who was in the play, together with Vanessa’s son Julian, by Clive Bell, her husband, and Virginia’s nieces, the daughters of her brother Adrian.”
    My eyes were rolling. Perhaps I had overlooked a few of his drinks. “Were these people in the English department?” I asked.
    â€œYou haven’t been listening carefully,” Rick said, sounding not the least drunk. “Although I admit it is confusing at first.”
    â€œI should think it would be confusing forever,” I said nastily.
    â€œNever mind all that. I’m telling you about Bloomsbury, which included the aforementioned as well as others. They didn’t go in for conventional sexual morality, but that’s not the point right now. The point is that this group put on a play called
Freshwater
, which had Tennyson in it as a character, mocked—lovingly mocked, but mocked. Virginia had grown up with ‘Maud,’ and was only joshing at what she loved, but Haycock could hardly be expected to understand that. It increased his hatred of Antonia and her part in the play, and everything and everyone she touched.”
    â€œWho is Maud?” I said, though I hardly dared to ask.
    â€œOh, Jesus,” Rick cried—a name I never evoke in anger. I’m not religious, but there is such a thing as respect. I frowned.
    â€œSorry,” Rick said. “
‘Maud’
is a poem by Tennyson; a famous poem: ‘Come into the garden, Maud, / For the black bat, night, has flown, / Come into the garden, Maud, / I am here at the gate alone.’ Those are the lines quoted in the play. Antonia and Catherine and Frank and I put it on once, for an audience of friends; we had a few others in the cast, of course.”
    â€œOf course,” I said.
    â€œDon’t you even know
‘Alice’
?” he asked, as though suddenly considering whether or not he had been wasting his time, and whether the people who hired me ought to have their heads examined. “ ‘She’s coming! cried the Larkspur, I hear her footstep, thump, thump, thump, along the gravel walk,’ ” he quoted happily.
    â€œRick,” I said. “Could we put this into context for a simple soul like me? It’s getting late, and we should think of leaving. Could we sum it all up?” The great thing about New York restaurants is that people go on eating all evening, the later the better, so the waiters don’t start glaring at you if you stay awhile. They’d like new customers and new tips, but when leaving a tip I always take into account how long I’ve been hanging around taking up