Jake Arnott - The House of Rumour

It seems odd now but once powered flight had seemed to bring such hope. Like the aeroplane writing in the sky in Mrs Dalloway ; the great women pilots Amelia Earhart and Amy Johnson. Well, Earhart and Johnson are dead and all around us is the devastation brought by the air raids. Of course it became a symbol of failure with Chamberlain (‘If at first you don’t concede, fly, fly, fly again’). And in K’s novel the Sacred Aeroplane of Munich becomes a holy relic of Hitlerism.

K took a long time to leave the carriage & as we walked along the platform she again declared that she ought never to have let Victor republish the novel, that she knew it would mean trouble, etc. There was a crowd huddling around the barrier & we stood for a while waiting until all the other passengers had gone through. I grabbed her hand & held it tightly &, checking that nobody was looking in our direction, sneaked a kiss on her cheek. She smiled & pulled me along, turning to point at the poster that said: IS YOUR JOURNEY REALLY NECESSARY? & we both broke out into a short salvo of much-needed laughter.

Arrived at the Gollancz offices in Henrietta St at about 3 p.m. The place was almost deserted, just a secretary who served us tea with condensed milk. Victor’s moved most of his operation out to his country house in Brimpton. He seemed in an ebullient mood though, saying the Left Book Club edition of Swastika Night had sold over seventeen thousand copies & how this was impressive for sales in wartime etc., but K was impatient to get to the heart of the matter — the nature of Victor’s strange summons. It appears that there has been a request via the War Office for an interview with ‘Murray Constantine’ by an intelligence officer. This rattled K & she once again made clear her reasons for continued anonymity. He tried to reassure us but we know the drastic measures that many of us have considered if the worst was to happen. Victor himself has boasted that he’s got hold of a ‘poison pill’ & is ready to take it if we lose the war. There is this Gestapo list everyone talks of — it’s the reason that K used a pen name in the first place. He doesn’t even know what exactly the matter with the WO might be. K tried to insist that her confidentiality be maintained though Victor pointed out that this might be difficult if it was a ‘matter of security’. An ominous phrase. Agreed for Victor to arrange a meeting on Monday.

On the way to our hotel K appeared distracted & vague. That queer manner she adopts, as if possessed, when she is about to compose something. I tried to lighten the mood & joked that she looked as if she had ‘a book coming on’ & she suddenly snapped out of it. Something was stirring her imagination, she told me. Not an idea for a story, though. ‘What then?’ I asked & her face creased in self-astonishment. ‘An awful premonition,’ she said.

Thursday, 27 March 1941

To Margaret Goldsmith’s who seems v. keen to work with K again on another book. But now K seems adamant that she has given up writing ‘for the duration’ & will instead engage in war work (though quite what she has in mind escapes me). Can’t help thinking that this business with the WO has thrown her. Margaret went on to recount a particularly gruesome Blitz tale — the Café de Paris in Leicester Square caught a direct hit a fortnight ago (it had been thought safe because it was in the basement of a cinema). A note of hubris in the story — the rich in the West End enjoying themselves while the East End bears the brunt etc. A sense of Grand Guignol too, scores of bright young things killed, the bandleader decapitated, looters robbing the dead & dying etc. And oh the irony of it all — the dance hall had been modelled on the ballroom of the Titanic ! There’s a certain relish in the way the liberal left dwell on such examples of punished decadence.

With careful diplomacy we asked after Frederick Voigt & she told us that he is now employed in a research unit in some secret location involved in propaganda & is rather appalled at the level of lying and duplicity. Thought for a moment that Frederick might be useful in advising us on this possible ‘security’ matter & that it was a shame that he & Margaret are now divorced. Didn’t articulate the latter sentiment, needless to say, or that we are to visit Vita Sackville-West tomorrow — knowing how awkwardly Margaret’s affair with her turned out.

Quiet night & no air raid.

Friday, 28 March 1941

Arrived at Sissinghurst late morning. Glorious day & Vita led us around the grounds. She has had a wretched time of it this week — one of her Alsatians killed another dog & had to be put down & her budgerigars are all dying (she can no longer get the correct food for them or something). Yet despite (or maybe because of) this she seemed deliberately effusive & gay. She showed us where she planned to plant her great ‘White Garden’, gesturing at imagined white clematis, white lavender, white agapanthus, white double primroses, anemones, lilies & a pale peach pulverulenta. A rather wondrous scheme — though she has neither the resources nor the labour to carry it out at present. ‘Let us plant & be merry,’ Vita declared, ‘though it all might be destroyed in an instant.’ K spoke of gardens as utopias. ‘A small patch of Earthly Paradise.’

‘Yes,’ Vita replied, ‘amid the sorrow of war, small pleasures must correct great tragedies.’

‘ Il faut cultiver notre jardin ,’ I chipped in clumsily.

Vita: ‘Oh yes, darling, we’ve got to dig for victory & that doesn’t just mean beans & potatoes.’ But soon a bleakness caught up with us. ‘I’ve asked Hadji how on earth we are going to win this war,’ Vita said (using her pet name for Harold Nicolson), ‘and he’s hard pressed to give me a straight answer.’

There’s a general feeling that recent events in the Med. & N. Africa have turned very badly against us. Once again desperate measures are mentioned. Vita & Harold too have their suicide pills — the ‘bare bodkin’ they call it (after a line in Hamlet ). K complained of a migraine & went indoors to lie down. She is so affected by this gloomy talk of suicide and I feel that she really doesn’t approve of it.

Vita spoke warmly of K, and of how much she admires her writing. ‘I’ve been inspired to write my own cautionary tale. Another meditation on what might happen if we lose this wretched war. I hope she won’t mind.’ Mentioned that we had seen Margaret G. in town & Vita’s smile seemed at once knowing & wistful. She breaks hearts & yet feels sorry for it — maybe out of guilt, but more likely because she hates it when anyone she has loved withdraws their affection. ‘I never like to completely drop anyone,’ she confided. ‘Instead, well, they keep part of myself. Emotional alimony, Margaret used to call it.’

‘I hope you don’t think that you owe me emotional alimony,’ I retorted with mock indignation (while all the time remembering old wounds).

‘Heavens, no,’ she replied. ‘You’d hardly need it anyhow. I’ve scarcely seen two people so deeply in love’ (meaning me & K). ‘The desire & the pursuit of the whole, that’s what Plato called it,’ she went on.

‘Called what?’

‘Love. With me it’s complex. It’s Hadji, of course. And the garden. And all my foolish affairs. And—’ She let out a deep sigh & confessed to me that Violet Trefusis wanted her back. ‘I love her perennially but I can’t trust her or allow myself to…’ Vita trailed off then burst out suddenly: ‘She’s like an unexploded bomb! And I don’t want her to explode. I don’t want her to disrupt my life again.’

K slept through the afternoon & woke up dazed, her eyes wide & filmy. ‘I had a drowning dream,’ she told me drowsily. ‘Or a dreaming drown.’