Стефани Баррон - The White Garden - A Novel of Virginia Woolf

They were mounting the stairs. A series of bedrooms. Clive’s, with its painted bed and riotous textiles. The green bathroom, with a sprawling Duncan Grant nude on the tub enclosure. More paintings on the walls — none of Virginia. Duncan’s room. Portraits of Vanessa: As a young woman. As a middle-aged woman, in a batlike gray cloak, hunched at her easel. Then regal as a queen on a throne, her hair gray and her eyes forbidding.

Abruptly, they came to the spare bedroom. Or what looked like a spare bedroom.

“This is Maynard Keynes’s Room,” the guide announced, in what was obviously a memorized spiel. “John Maynard Keynes, the brilliant architect of the economic theory that bears his name, Keynesian Economics , was a great friend of Vanessa and Clive Bell. He was often at Charleston, and the family set aside this room for his use, although other family members certainly slept here. Baron Keynes later purchased Tilton House, not far from here.”

It was a low-ceilinged room, with a single narrow bed covered in what looked like Indian cottons. There was a bookcase and several paintings, one of which Jo found vaguely troubling — two male nudes, sprawled on a brown bank, toweling their ribs after swimming. It might have been painted by Seurat; it reminded her somehow of crucifixion.

“The Bathers,” Peter observed. “That’s one of Grant’s? He was quite close to Keynes, I believe?”

“Yes,” the guide said primly, and closed her lips.

“Grant was gay,” Peter explained for Jo’s benefit, “regardless of his relationship with Vanessa. Most of male Bloomsbury slept with him. Including Keynes.”

“I see,” Jo managed. It was clear the guide had no intention of adding to Bloomsbury gossip, and would have liked them to move on; but still Jo lingered by the doorway. The room was somehow restful. It was so white . It murmured of sleep…

White. The walls were completely white.

“Peter,” she said suddenly. “Don’t you think it’s weird? How unpainted this room is?”

He turned back and stood for an instant in the doorway, staring at the pristine walls. “Yes. Very weird. In a house where everything is daubed, a white wall screams for notice. I wonder…”

A cord across the doorway barred entrance. Birdlike, Peter peered over it, his gaze fixed on the whitewashed walls.

“It wasn’t always plain,” the guide said. These four words were the first unscripted ones she’d managed. She looked almost appalled.

Peter turned slightly, one shoulder propped against the doorframe. He did not quite look at her; but something about his silence must have been encouraging.

“There was a mural,” the guide added. “Of a religious nature. Quite out of the common way, for Charleston. They weren’t religious people.”

“No,” Peter agreed.

Jo felt her heartbeat quicken. She was waiting, with a sense of suspense, for the important thing she knew was coming.

The guide folded her arms protectively beneath her breasts. “Mrs. Bell whitewashed the walls the year Maynard Keynes died.”

“When was that?” Peter asked easily.

“Nineteen forty-six.”

“Ah. So it was. Just after the war. Keynes saves the economies of the Western World with the notion of deficit spending, and goes home to Tilton to die.” He nodded casually at the sterile walls. “Sad, that so much valuable art should be lost.”

“She was always painting over things. We’ve found pictures inside of pictures. Canvases reused. Nobody knows how much there might have been.”

Pictures inside of pictures . Jo almost said: Were any of them of Virginia? But something about Peter’s face — a careful, listening quality — stopped her.

“There’s a photograph on file,” the guide offered. “Of the mural, I mean. If you’d like to see it.”

“How enchanting,” Peter enthused. “We’d love to.”

CITIES MADE IMOGEN CANTWELL UNCOMFORTABLE — the excessive traffic, the narrowness of certain streets, the confusing directional signs. A bare fifteen minutes into the heart of London she was cursing foully at the windscreen, which was spattered with the first drops of rain. The fact that she had forgotten to prepay the central London congestion charge, and would now owe a late fee in addition to the usual eight-pound toll, infuriated her further; she ought to have taken the train in from Kent. It was idiotic that she had chosen to drive. The miscalculation betrayed her country manners, her lack of sophistication, her general backwardness. It also further eroded her faltering self-confidence.

So that by Tuesday afternoon as she stood in front of Cissy, doorkeeper of Sotheby’s Books and Manuscripts department, Imogen was flushed with self-loathing. Broad-hipped, in khaki trousers and a cotton jumper, her grizzled hair lank with rain, she seethed before the reception desk, while Cissy made a show of studying her computer screen.

“Have you an appointment?”

“No. I have not.”

“Then I’m afraid you must schedule, madam. The Experts are all booked — ”

Cissy’s languid drawl; her Sloane Ranger hair, carefully blonded every three weeks; her suggestion of being merely on loan to Sotheby’s in the odd interval between modeling gigs — all infuriated Imogen. She leaned heavily over the reception desk, her breath coming in rapid snorts through her nose. “I’m here on a matter of some urgency, love. You people have nicked something that doesn’t belong to you. And I want it back. You can turn me away now if you like — but it’ll be a police matter before long.”

A faint crease appeared between Cissy’s perfect brows. She stared coldly at Imogen, then extended one polished talon to her phone. “If you’ll sit down, madam, I’ll inquire.”

“Right,” Imogen boomed. “Inquire away, love. And tell them it’s about the Woolf notebook you’re sitting on, the lot of you.” She cast a defiant look around the paneled waiting area, the row of comfortable seats dotted with well-heeled clients. None of them was sodden with rain. None looked ill at ease. One actually rose, as though to offer her a chair: a dark-haired man of middle height and wordless authority.

“Did you say Woolf notebook? As in, Virginia Woolf?” he asked.

“That’s right.” Imogen eyed him dubiously. “Could be priceless. And I’ve reason to believe it’s here.”

“Or perhaps in Oxford.”

“ Ox ford?”

The man smiled at her disarmingly; she realized, with sharp misgiving, that like Jo Bellamy he was American. He turned to the blonde at Reception. “It’s all right, Cissy. I’ll just bring Miss…?”

“Cantwell.”

“… in with me.”

“Very well.” Cissy dimpled at him, and cradled her phone. “Marcus would be delighted to see you now, Mr. Westlake.”

THE PHOTOGRAPH OF THE MURAL PAINTED ON THE WALLS of Maynard Keynes’s bedroom was obviously quite old.

The Charleston House guide — who informed them that her name was Glenna, that she lived nearby in Firle and had taken the job half-time during the winter months, now that her youngest was at school — led them to a small office area crammed with heavy oak furniture that might once have belonged to the Bell family.

“We’re a private trust,” she explained, “sustained by publications, charity, and various Bell grandchildren. So we make do. Most of the funds go towards repairs, of course, and the maintenance of the garden, or recovery of paintings by artists associated with the house. So many canvases were sold — once English Post-Impressionism fell out of fashion, Vanessa and Duncan were rather hard up. They had to work to live.”