The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf by Stephanie Barron Page B

the leaded windows, the dourness of Sunday gone like a passing thought. Vita’s Alsatian trotting across the barren steppe of the roses, narrow shoulders slumped in misery. There had been two of them once, hadn’t there? The loneliness of the left-behind .
    “To Vanessa, as well,” she persisted. “Did I mention I’ve also had The News from your sister, in this morning’s post? — You left a note for her, too, I presume?”
    “I hoped she’d comfort Leonard. Tell him he did all he could, always.”
    “Then you lied, dearest. The failure of a marriage is never one person’s fault.”
    “I ought not to have married him.”
    She laughed. “It’s a practice I can’t recommend to those who like having their own way!”
    “Then why did you do it?”
    She moved restlessly towards the window. “Good Lord—only think how Hadji and I live! In our separate spheres. I never go up to London if I can help it, unless it’s to talk about marriage for the BBC. He comes down on the odd week-end and digs the garden; we each have our studies where neither may enter; and the boys take care of themselves. That’s why I’m devoted to Hadji—he has never interfered in my splendid realm, but he adds to it immeasurably. Rather like a prime specimen tree set off to advantage by surrounding bed-fellows. What shall I tell them, your helpmeet and sister? That you’re alive and well and breakfasting somewhere near Cranbrook?”
    “You’re lucky, Vita. You haven’t the hatred that spoils relationships. Or the need either.”
    “I’m a cold fish, in other words?”
    Vita, who will sit at my feet and allow me to brush her hair? Vita of the sensual eyes and drooping mouth? “Coldness… that’s a word for me, not you. I’m girlish, Leonard says. Inviolate . Impenetrable . When what he means is cold . Vanessa says it, too.”
    “He tried, I suppose? Early on?”
    I knew what she meant. The maidenhead. Impenetrable. My frantic anxiety those nights in France, the misery of his hands, our honeymoon, my every muscle flexed and fighting him .
    “I was such a coward, a sexual coward. Don’t you see,” I went on, “—what we desire in others is what we lack in ourselves? And end up resenting. Hating. I have hated Vanessa for her children—even when poor Julian was killed, I envied her grief. Leonard—”
    “Was never in love with his wife’s sister.”
    “No. That was my crime. I fell in love with Clive.”
    “Oh, darling—call it wanting , surely? Not love. An hysterical impulse. ‘ I must have what Vanessa has. I must have it .’ Fairly typical of the age, I should think. And of sisters.”
    I worried a bread crumb with my fingernail. Vita was lavish with butter; we never saw it in Rodmell unless Vita sent it; she kept cows. They would be dead soon if the Germans landed, stomachs bloated and hooves sticking straight up into the air. “To cast out and incorporate in a person of the opposite sex all that we miss in ourselves and desire in the universe and detest in humanity is a deep and universal instinct on the part of both men and of women.”
    “You’re quoting somebody.”
    “Myself. I wrote it ages ago.” I unfolded from the table, drifted towards the garden door. “Send whatever you think proper to Vanessa and Leonard. Condolence. Sympathy. Guilt-ridden regret.”
    “You want me to pretend you’re dead?”
    “Maybe I am. Haunting Sissinghurst. A pale shade in a paler garden.”
    “You’re very cruel, you know.”
    “I was taught to be.”
    She said nothing as I went out. Not yet noon, and already Vita reaches for the sherry decanter .
    I STOOD AT THE GATE TO THE NORTH OF THE PRIEST’S HOUSE; there is a statue worth looking at, half visible from here. My arms wrapped in my cardigan. Shivering. The Little Virgin, Vita calls her. Cold as lead. Draperies swirl about her knees, coy, suggestive. She is not for touching. I wish to be dead to Leonard and Vanessa .
    The boy Jock was working in the garden—a