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

“Now you’re threatening me.” She took another step backward. “Which do you need more in your women, Gray — fear, or gratitude?”

“I’m the reason you came to England in the first place!”

“And for that I’ve been grateful. But I’ve also been confused. Because I shouldn’t have to thank a man for hiring my professional skills. I shouldn’t have to sleep with him to keep his business. You wouldn’t manipulate a guy that way, Gray — ”

“I don’t fall in love with guys.”

“And I don’t fall in love with control freaks. Good-bye, Gray.”

“Did you sleep with Llewellyn?” he shouted after her.

She turned. “Go home, Gray. I’ll send the White Garden drawings to your wife.”

WHEN SHE GOT BACK TO THE READING ROOM, PETER and Margaux were gone.

Jo stood in the doorway, staring at the carrel where she’d left the English don, the oilskin package, and Leonard Woolf’s letter. Not even an empty coffee cup remained.

Of course. They had called in Gray to deal with her — to persuade her to let this bizarre adventure go — while they skedaddled with Leonard’s bound volume. They were probably halfway to London by now. Or, Christ — why stop at London? They could be halfway to Fiji. The sky was the limit when you had an unknown Virginia Woolf to sell.

Jo sank down in a chair, a painful knot tightening in her throat. She’d probably be arrested for artifact theft, and she was close to weeping. Not just because Jock’s notebook was gone — but because, despite everything, she had trusted Peter. Admired his authenticity. Mooned about his taste in functional buildings and the way his rolled shirtsleeves graced his wrists. It was so obvious, suddenly, how neatly he’d managed her — whisking her from Sotheby’s to Oxford, where he’d succeeded in passing the first part of the manuscript to Margaux, then trailing around the countryside with her bits and pieces of clues until they culminated in a hole in Leonard Woolf’s back garden. Making her actually believe he wanted to cook for a living.

Why was she always such a jerk?

She’d sacrificed her best career prospect — the White Garden — and a man who’d apparently wanted her, for a wild-goose chase with a charlatan in glasses. Hadn’t she learned anything about men in her long life?

“There you are,” Peter said briskly behind her. “We’ve moved downstairs to the Reference section. Hurry up, Jo — your coffee’s getting cold.”

“FUNNY LEONARD SHOULD WRITE THAT AT THE VERY END of the book,” Margaux was saying. “About turning the page, and so forth. And looking for her in the garden. It’s almost an exact quotation from his journal in the days following Virginia’s death.”

“The part about stupidity and selfishness is what interests me.” Peter’s finger trailed across the page. “That used to be read as Leonard’s admission that he kept Virginia alive against her will — by thwarting her attempts at suicide. But I’m thinking now it might have more to do with the bonds of Apostle friendship.”

“Could do,” Margaux agreed. “But these finds will turn all sorts of academic assumptions on their heads. Makes one positively giddy to read them.”

“Is that why you agreed to call Peter?” Jo asked. “So you could get first crack at the material? Is that what Gray promised you?”

There was a pregnant pause. Jo waited for Peter to defend his ex-wife, but he was merely frowning at Margaux.

“Naturally,” Margaux said crisply. “And as you’re the one who called me this morning, and require my help, I think you should shut up about motives, don’t you?”

“Gray?” Peter said. “How does your bloody client know Margaux, Jo?”

“Former client,” she corrected. “He just fired me.”

“Hell.” Peter grasped her shoulder. “I’m so sorry. Really, Jo — ”

But she was looking at Margaux, who was suddenly far less defiant.

“Peter darling, can you ever forgive me?”

He groaned. “Don’t tell me. You slept with this Westlake moron, didn’t you?”

“Of course not!” Margaux protested, with an attempt at dignity. “But I ran into him at Sotheby’s, and when he understood I knew you, he asked me to… keep him informed. If you got in touch. So I did . But now I’m with you again, I can’t bear to have any secrets from you, sweet.”

She reached impulsively for his hand. “I’ve… missed you so, darling. Truly I have. It hasn’t been the same since we split. Don’t you hate it?”

“I’ve hated a lot of things,” he answered quietly. “But this isn’t the place to talk about them, Margaux.”

“You’re right. Of course.” She gave him a brave smile. “We’ll have loads of time later. What matters now is our find.”

“Our find?” Jo repeated.

“Look,” Peter said patiently. “We haven’t much time. Let’s concentrate on the text, all right? And try to learn what we can from it?”

Neither woman answered.

“Jo?” he said.

“Okay.”

“Margaux?”

She held his gaze for a smoldering moment and then said, “A few things leap out. Little things, but hallmarks of Virginia’s style nonetheless. The quotation from The Wasteland , ‘Come under this red rock,’ would fit, of course; T. S. Eliot was a friend of the Woolfs’ and the Hogarth Press was one of the first to publish him. Then there’s her reference to Westminster, or the men of Westminster; that’s drawn from one of her short stories, about a young woman writer who’s despised by a politician she meets at an evening party. Westminster came to symbolize for Virginia everything she hated about male dominance, convention, the establishment world she regarded as hostile to art — ”

“She refers to Harold Nicolson that way.”

Margaux glanced at Jo. “Of course. He was a man . And a government official. Virginia mistrusted both on principle, even those she regarded as friends. Maynard Keynes would fall into the same categories — he was the ultimate Westminster man.”

“That helps us tie the work to Woolf,” Peter said, “but it tells us nothing more about how or when she might have died.”

“What we’ve got to reckon is the time frame.” Margaux peered at the screen of her Reference computer terminal, all business. “I’ve jotted down key dates. We assume Virginia was alive at Sissinghurst on the first and second of April, correct? Because this little book tells us so. And we know her body was found in the River Ouse on the eighteenth of that month. She was cremated three days later, somewhere on the south coast — Brighton, I think.”

“That was quick,” Jo observed.

“Quick and dirty. Only Leonard was in attendance. The bastard.”

“No Vanessa?” Jo demanded, astonished. “Not even Vita?”

“Not even the odd mourner hired off the street for the sake of appearances,” Margaux retorted. “Leonard informed no one of the funeral arrangements. He could never bear to share Virginia with anybody — and so of course he deprived her of the memorial service she ought to have had, among the people who knew and loved her best. God , how I despise that man.”

“Oh, now, Margaux — ” Peter began.

She turned on him furiously. “Don’t start, Peter! You know how he stifled her genius — lived to control her — and when at last she abandoned him in death — escaping by the only means in her power — he was so angry he got rid of her as quick as a dead cat. Don’t start.”