The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“DID I DISTURB YOU, NANA?” JO ASKED.

It was barely six A.M. in the Delaware Valley, but Dottie was an early riser. She suffered from insomnia, a liability of old age, and often sat up in the middle of the night reading. Jo could imagine her: half-glasses poised on the bridge of her nose, faded pink nightgown beneath a sensible bathrobe, hair in pin curls. Her hands ropy with veins where they held her book.

“Sweetie!” Dottie cried. “Are you calling from England?”

“Yes, and I’m using a friend’s phone, so I’ll have to make it quick.”

“Are you having a good time?”

How to answer that question?

“It’s certainly been interesting,” she said faintly. “I have loads to tell you. But I called with a question, Nana. About Jock. Did you know he worked at Sissinghurst when he was young?”

“Sissinghurst? Where you’ve been working? I had no idea. What was he doing there?”

“Gardening. It must have been right before he joined up. Do you have any idea when that was — when he ran away to the army and lied about his age, I mean?”

“Well, it was 1941,” Dottie said doubtfully, “but I couldn’t give you the day and hour. Summer, I think. He used to say he decided to fight Hitler when the Russians did. If I’m remembering right, the Nazis invaded Russia in June. Did you learn anything about his letter? All that talk about the Lady?”

“I’m still working it out. Listen: Have you found anything else since I left home — anything of Grandpa’s, I mean? Something he wrote, maybe? Or… I don’t know. Anything that you can’t explain?”

There was a brief pause.

“No,” Dottie said, with that same doubtful tremor in her voice. “ — Not that any of his writing would be of help. He wasn’t in a mood to tell us much. I loved Jock dearly, Jo, but I wonder how well I actually knew him. He wasn’t himself in those last days. I mean, you wouldn’t have said he was religious, now, would you? Never went to church at all. And if he were getting that way — thinking of his Maker, and so on, and turning to the Lord — why take such an awful step as kill himself? Churchgoers call it a sin. It doesn’t make sense.”

“But Grandpa wasn’t religious — ”

“I know! But I found the oddest thing in his tool shed the other day. You said you wanted his old things, remember — and they have to be valued by an appraiser. It’s part of the settlement of the estate.”

Disgust, now, in Dottie’s voice; left to herself, Jo thought, she’d have thrown everything in black trash bags and left it all by the curb. Estate. An archaic word, better suited to the people who’d employed Jock Bellamy.

“What did you find, Nana?”

“A small statue,” she said. “Of the Blessed Virgin. And you know he wasn’t Catholic, Jo. It’s the oddest thing.”

THEY DROVE DOWN TO SISSINGHURST, ALL THREE OF THEM packed into the Triumph, on what Peter freely admitted was a hunch. “But if we’d waited for solid evidence,” he said, “we’d never have got this far.”

It was possible, Jo knew, that they’d reached the end of Virginia’s trail. It was more than likely they would never learn how or why she met her death. But they had so little left to lose.

“There’s everything to gain,” Margaux remarked sensibly. “Push on, and at least we may solve a mystery. Besides — why not spend the final hours of a swift November day in the most beautiful garden in Kent?”

They arrived just before closing time. It was curious, Jo thought, how strong a sense of homecoming she felt as the car approached Cranbrook, and the exterior of the George Hotel came into view. This corner of Vita’s world had come to mean too much to her: a link with her dead grandfather, a link to a barely glimpsed past. She would give anything to spend another week trolling with her laptop through the castle garden, absorbing the rich sights and scents as autumn came to a close. But this was Sissinghurst’s last open weekend of the year; as of Monday, it would go dark until March.

She directed Peter around to the greenhouses, and with no small feeling of trepidation, led him and Margaux toward the Head Gardener’s office.

“Is Imogen here?” she asked one of the staff gardeners who was busily watering some cuttings set out in trays.

“She’s over at the test border,” the young woman said. “Just behind the Powys Wall.”

The test border was a disciplined proving ground for new perennials. Imogen planted specimens that interested her there, and watched them for a few years before deciding whether they merited a spot in Sissinghurst’s beds. They found her deadheading a clump of pale green Echinacea — a type Jo recognized as Coconut Lime — with the withered stalks lying about her Wellies like sheaves of threshed wheat. She glanced up as the little cavalcade approached, and scowled.

“Not again!”

“Hello, Imogen,” Jo said. “I owe you an apology, and I’ve come to make it. I’m truly sorry for all the trouble and worry I’ve caused.”

Imogen studied her skeptically, then thrust her clippers in a pouch that dangled from her belt. “Yes, well, words are grand — but where’s the notebook, I’d like to know? In the hands of the bloody experts. I don’t know how I’m going to explain it all to the Trust — ”

“What I did was wrong,” Jo interrupted. “I took advantage of your kindness and went off on a wild-goose chase. If I can help set things right — talk to people at the Trust, or to The Family — ”

“Good God, no,” Imogen retorted, shocked. “You’ve done enough damage.”

“I can vouch for the fact that you weren’t involved,” Jo persisted. “I can shoulder the blame.”

Imogen’s eyes narrowed; she glanced at Margaux Strand and said, “You put her up to this, didn’t you? And who the hell are you?”

Peter gave her a wry smile. “One of your hated experts.”

“Has he got it all sussed out, our Marcus? Does he know whether Woolf really wrote that daft diary?”

“Not yet,” Peter replied.

“Ah.” She tugged off her garden gloves. “Then until he informs me of where we stand, I’m barring the lot of you from the premises. Can’t be too careful. Something else might go missing.” There was belligerence in her voice; and something else. Pain.

“Imogen…” Jo reached a hand toward her. “We’re here to ask for your help.”

“And from past knowledge of my stupidity, you assume you’ll get it. I’ve reformed, however. Cheerio!”

“I rather think,” Margaux intervened pointedly, “that you ought to listen to her, love. Remember what Graydon Westlake said? That we should all work together? Lest any of us suffer individually? You’ll find words to that effect in those papers you signed.”

Jo murmured, “So Gray got to you, too — ”

But Peter interrupted her. “What papers?”

Margaux turned on him. “Ones your precious auction house dredged up. Outlining exactly who owes what to whom. I get sole academic access to the Woolf manuscripts, in exchange for my expert opinion. Imogen gets to look like the saint who made the discovery, instead of the git she is.”

“And Jo?” Peter said hotly. “What does Jo get?”

“Immunity from prosecution. — Which is quite enough, I think, for somebody who’s bollixed things up as much as she has.”

Peter stepped toward her. “Marcus agreed to this?”

“Marcus drew up the papers.” Margaux studied him coolly. “I would never have signed, of course, if I hadn’t assumed you knew all about it, Peter. Before you ever left London with Jo. I thought I was simply doing what you wanted — what you’d arranged — ”

“Oh, for the love of — ” Imogen snorted contemptuously. “You’ve been hand in glove with those rogues in London, dearie, for the better part of the week. Sugarcoating their nastiness. Simpering in their laps. Don’t try to lie about it now. You’d roll your Manolos in pig shit and wear them to Prince William’s wedding if it got you what you want. So what do you need, Jo? I’m in a mood to disappoint our Dr. Strand.”

“We’d like to examine the statue of the Little Virgin,” Jo told her. “We’ll probably have to move it.”

“Move it!” Imogen was appalled.

“Lift it, anyway. Would you or Terence be able to help?”

THEY WAITED UNTIL THE VERY LAST PAYING CUSTOMERS had been waved through the turnstile at the garden entrance. One of these recognized Imogen as the Head, and was inclined to linger in order to interrogate her on rose replant disease; but happily the old gentleman’s daughter, who’d driven him down from London, was impatient to be gone and broke off his chat with a peremptory “Come along, then, Dad. You’ll be wanting your tea.”

Jo felt a scattering of rain against her cheek. She glanced around, at the Top Courtyard and the arch to the Lower one; at Vita’s Tower soaring against the farmland and the Weald. The day had turned lowering and gray. No matter how many days in the future she might visit Sissinghurst, in spring and sun, she would remember it best as a creature of autumn, rising from a skirt of mist, as mythic as Avalon and as lost to time.

“Ter!” Imogen bellowed into her hand radio. “You’re wanted in the White Garden.” She flicked Margaux a glance. The don’s lips were turning blue from the chill. “Cozy enough for you, Dr. Strand?”

They followed her, broad-hipped and sturdy as a field marshal, across the Lower Courtyard. Peter’s fingers grazed Jo’s as they walked. “Can you feel her? Virginia?” he murmured. “She’s watching us.”

The Yew Walk was shining faintly with the rain. As they turned into it, again Jo had the sensation of descending through a tunnel, no relief from the dark hedge pressing in on either side until the sudden deliverance of the doorway cut into the green wall. The entrance to the White Garden.

The rose arbor was directly ahead of them. Terence stood by it, his arms slack, a hessian square filled with perennial cuttings at his feet.

“Eh, Miss Bellamy,” he said, with obvious pleasure. “I thought you’d done with us.”

“Never so lucky.” Imogen sighed. “Ter, these people want to examine the Little Virgin. I’m here to make sure she’s not tampered with. You’re to do a bit of heavy lifting.”

Terence shrugged, and pulled on the gloves he’d tossed near his tip bag. Jo glanced at Imogen, who inclined her head dismissively and took no step farther; after a second, Jo turned left along the slate path and then right, onto the pavers that led to the Little Virgin. The others followed.

She was standing as she had for sixty years, face almost obscured by the weeping pear.

Jo stopped short, gazing at the dull gray figure. Peter studied the Virgin for a second, then reached out and touched the gunmetal skin. “This wasn’t always here, is that correct?”

“Has been since the making of the White Garden,” Imogen returned, “the bones of which were laid in ’49 and ’50, on the site of the old Priest’s House garden. The roses that used to be here were moved up to what was the first kitchen garden, near the Yew Rondel — it’s called the Rose Garden now. If you’re asking where the statue was before all that — ”

“We know,” Peter said. “Virginia told us. It was just to the north, outside this bit’s hedge. But you couldn’t see her legs from the path because of a drop in elevation. I understand why Vita moved it; the Virgin ought to be surrounded by white.”

Imogen scowled at him. “This whole scheme was worked years after that Woolf woman died. It’s got nothing to do with her, nor the statue neither.”

“How wrong you are,” Margaux said sweetly.

“What do you lot think to find?”

“Something that was hidden before the statue was moved,” Jo said, “in a place only a gardener would know. It’s a hollow lead casting, right?”

“If it were solid, nobody’d ever budge the thing. Terence,” Imogen said, “I gather these fools want you to tip the lady over. Can you do it without breaking her neck?”

Peter helped the undergardener shift the Little Virgin gently toward the slate path. The lead was slippery with rain and the slim figure heavy. Imogen swore audibly as the statue descended earthward, but in a matter of minutes it rested facedown on top of the hessian bundle, cushioned by the season’s last cuttings.

“Here.” Peter tossed Jo his penlight. She knelt near the statue’s base and flicked on the beam.

The interior of the statue was narrower than she expected, and fluidly formed; a cleft in a manmade rock. At first she saw only lead, convoluted as it hardened in the mold so long ago; and then she noticed, far up in the torso of the figure, what looked like pillow stuffing. She reached her hand inside the aperture and pulled a bit of it out.

“What’s this?” she asked, handing it off behind her.

“Wool,” Margaux said. “Vita kept sheep, you know; she used to send knitting yarn to Virginia.”

“Stinks to high heaven,” Imogen observed. “Wonder how long it’s been in there?”

Peter was watching Jo. He had noticed that she was pulling more of the stuff out of the Little Virgin, the penlight abandoned by her knees. “What’s behind it?” he asked.

“A bundle of some kind,” she said. “A wallet, maybe. Or, no — ”

She withdrew her hand. She was clutching a roll of brown leather, tied with twine.

Wordlessly, Imogen pulled her shears from the pouch at her waist.

Jo cut the bundle free. It dropped at her feet like a severed hand.

“A garden glove?” Peter crouched beside her.

“There’s something inside,” Jo said.