The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf

Chapter Twenty-Two

MARGAUX STRAND’S HEELS CLICKED FURIOUSLY across the paving stones of the King’s College quadrangle. There was a don at King’s she badly wanted to consult named Nadia Fenslow, who’d gone antifeminist and now made a career of celebrating the distinguished males who crowded the English canon in a slavish sort of neo-lit conservatism. Margaux had hoped she might be available, might remember the boozy lunch they had shared during last year’s MLA conference. Nadia of all people would be up to her eyeballs in Apostles, swooning over E. M. Forster in a way that turned Margaux’s stomach, or suggesting that Woolf was but a pale shadow to Lytton Strachey, who’d probably taught Virginia how to spell when she was just a little thing in white muslin. Nadia might have a notion what Apostles Screed meant. Only Nadia was in Reykjavik until the start of Hilary term, and the don who’d borrowed her office had smirked at Margaux as though she were Nadia’s long-lost lesbian lover.

Margaux was seething.

Somewhere a bell tolled three o’clock. She was aware of an insistent curl of hunger in the pit of her stomach, ignored out of long dieting habit. What she wanted was a good glass of Bordeaux and a bit of cheese, possibly some biscuits, with a clever partner to gaze at her over candlelight. She needed somebody who understood her vocabulary and caught her references and knew where to look for the missing half of Woolf’s notebook without demanding to share the limelight. That was the essential difficulty in Margaux’s world at the moment: She had been sharing too much for too long. Other people’s triumphs, for instance. Other people’s credit. She’d contributed modestly to an article chiefly written by someone else, or shored up the course load of those too distinguished to be bothered with students anymore. She’d scrambled for a few crumbs of the Oxford pie to savor all by herself. At this point in her career, Margaux had reached the point she thought of as Lady Macbeth’s Choice: Crush all obstacles in her path to power, or exit stage right, on maternity leave. Having jettisoned Peter, the latter choice was probably out for the nonce. Single motherhood was far too impoverishing.

Peter had looked quite forlorn, poor poppet, she decided fondly — trailing into her rooms with that regrettable American in her corduroy trousers, staring at Margaux with the eyes of a wounded hound, and handing her the means of being feared and envied for the rest of her literary days. Peter was too endearing; a failure in his own right, of course, but endlessly devoted. It was comforting to have a Peter in one’s past. Just as it had been essential to leave him behind.

Margaux lurched suddenly as her stiletto caught between two paving stones. She cursed explosively. Across the quadrangle, a startled undergraduate turned his head. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen. They were such children these days.

She balanced precariously on one foot, wrenched the other out of its granite vise, and swore again as she glimpsed the heel. The expensive leather was torn, the white plastic shoddiness exposed; and with her gift for the interpretation of metaphor she saw immediately that this might be construed as a statement about her life — possibly even about herself. She pushed the thought aside. Better to concentrate on finding that drink.

Limping slightly, she reached the quadrangle gate just as Sotheby’s phoned her.

THE CHAMBER OF THE ARK, AS JO WOULD THINK OF IT EVER afterward, was low-ceilinged and medieval, the sort of room that demanded an ecclesiastical sound track — monk’s chanting or plainsong. The golden light came from an old oil lamp, set in the middle of a round oak table at the center of the room. Electric bulbs were easier on the eyes; but the Apostles, Jo was quickly discovering, were all about atmosphere.

Lining the walls were glass-fronted cabinets with Gothic arches; inside stood rank upon rank of rectangular cases, tooled in leather, and stamped with a date in gold. 1827. 1843. 1896. 1907…

“Did you talk to her?” Peter was saying.

“Margaux? Avoided her like the plague,” Hamish growled. “She wasn’t here long, mind you. Forty minutes, perhaps. Bit peevish as she left. Had words with our porter.”

“Maybe he found something in her bag that didn’t belong to her,” Jo said.

Hamish gave her a wolfish smile. “I’m off. Back in an hour. Have to lock you in. Don’t panic — nobody will hear you if you scream.” A flicker of amusement crossed his blunt features — the shoe, Jo realized, was now decidedly on the other foot — and then with a salute, he pulled the heavy door closed.

Neither of them spoke as Hamish’s footsteps shuffled down the dirt passageway. Peter drew his cell phone from his pocket, as if to call Margaux one more time — then thrust it away in disgust. There would be no signal so far underground.

“Where do we start?” Jo asked quietly.

“Nineteen forty-one, I should think.” He crossed to the Gothic cabinets, scanning the volumes as he loosened the knot of his tie. He’d already undone the top buttons of his shirt, and the effect, Jo thought, was of the true Peter emerging from the shadows. All his attention was fixed on the task, but his elegant fingers were so blindly languorous that for an instant, Jo had to close her eyes. When she opened them, he had stuffed the tie in his coat pocket and dropped the coat itself over the back of a chair. He was briskly rolling up his sleeves, determined to get down to work. “Bring the oil lamp,” he said, halting before one of the cabinets.

Jo snatched at it with trembling fingers; the knowledge that Margaux Strand had actually been in the chamber recently enough to leave her scent was infuriating. If they’d been quicker, Jo might have gotten Jock’s notebook back.

“Better take 1940 as well,” Peter said, and drew two leather-tooled cases from the shelves.

“What if Margaux took what we need?”

“She’d never recognize it,” Peter replied. “She’s good enough at literary analysis — Woolf’s obsession with drowning reflects the independent female’s fear/fascination with orgasm, the unwillingness to submit to the annihilating vortex of the male psyche, and so on — but terrifically dull when it comes to puzzles. I’ll lay odds she completely missed whatever’s here. Hence the row with the Wren porter. She’d need to rip up the closest available minion.”

“Unless, of course,” Jo murmured as she stared down at the empty interior of the case labeled 1940, “she just picked off everything available.”

Peter stared at her wordlessly for a second, then lifted the lid of 1941.

“Fucking Christ!” he spluttered, and shoved the empty case away.

“SO YOU SEE,” MARCUS SYMONDS-JONES WAS SAYING, “what we chiefly need is your help.”

Margaux kept walking straight down King’s Parade, away from the college and its beastly gate, her mobile pressed to her ear. If Peter’s boss wanted to find him, then Peter hadn’t given up and taken his gardener back to London. He might be searching for her and the Woolf manuscript even now. Bloody hell, he might even be in Cambridge — Peter was no fool. Margaux’s impulse was to tell Marcus Symonds-Jones to shag off, thank you very much, but before she stabbed the End Call button she hesitated. She did need help —

“What’s it all about, Marcus? Has Peter been naughty again?”

“So naughty he’s about to be arrested for theft,” the department head retorted tartly, “and you with him. It was you that Peter and his client Jo Bellamy consulted in Oxford last night, wasn’t it, Margaux?”

Shit. Shit shit shit —

“You do realize,” Marcus went on, “that the actual owner of that possible Woolf is either the National Trust or the Nicolson family, neither of which is going to take kindly to Peter’s pilfering?”

“It’s not Peter who’s stealing, it’s that American,” Margaux sputtered indignantly. “She may look naïve, but I’ll bet my knickers she’s no innocent, Marcus. You know what Peter is. Always bending arse backwards to be of help — ”

“So you did see him.”

“What if I did? He’s my ex-husband.”

“Where he is now, Margaux?”

Her stiletto caught again in a paving crack, and Margaux lurched painfully. “I don’t know. That’s the truth.”

“Look — Margaux…”

She remembered this wheedling tone; it was the one Marcus always used when he wanted sex. It meant that he needed her. Margaux was suddenly acutely alert. She came to a halt beneath a Tudor window, nursing her ankle, and listened.

“You wouldn’t like Peter to lose his job. Or, heaven forbid, go to jail. Would you, Margaux?”

“I don’t suppose so.”

“What if I told you I had a deep-pockets buyer for the item who might be willing to put everything right? No loss to the Trust, no loss to The Family, no loss to you or us — Provided, of course, the Woolf is genuine?”

Margaux hesitated. “Money isn’t the point, Marcus. My work is the point. My reputation — ”

“ — Will be rubbish, if the tale of this theft ever gets out.”

The wheedling note had vanished. But Margaux’s mind was only half on Marcus’s threats. She was thinking more clearly now. No more sharing.

“ — As I’m afraid it will, if Peter isn’t found. That’s where you come in, Margaux. Find Peter, won’t you, darling? Before we’re obliged to call in the police?”

“Poor Marcus,” she said, her heart suddenly lifting. “So thick, always. Peter is irrelevant. Why bother with him when I’ve got everything you could possibly need?”