The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf

Chapter Five

WHEN A BODY DIES THE GHOST IT IS SAID SOMETIMES haunts us. But when a book is read, and shut up and put away, what happens to that ghost? The life we have known solely through words, may yet haunt the mind; it jumbles with our days, becomes something else entirely, unrecognisable.

It would be an achievement, she thought, to be unrecognisable.

It began as the desire for escape — from her husband and the smears of lead on his fingers. From the boiled cabbage smell of the kitchen. From the perpetual fear of the creeping water spreading like infantry across the meadows, creeping up to the house under cover of night. The ruin of the smashed dykes, the water no one could contain. She had never felt safe when the water was rising.

Escape, then, from the dead pages and winter. Put on the old furs, limp as stoats piled carelessly by the gamekeeper’s back door — her husband was notoriously mean with his money, he never allowed her to buy anything new, she had to beg for her fare to London sometimes. For weeks, now, in anticipation of freedom, she had been careful with her shillings and pence; she had gone the length of selling ration tickets in the village.

Pull on the stout Wellingtons, smelling of rubber tyres, of war fare and aeroplanes. Take up the walking stick; you might hit him if he comes after you. Hurry, hurry, he’s working still before lunch, Hurry up it’s time, leave the note with your shaking fingers he will look first above the mantel. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.… Run from the hanks of wool, sewage-coloured, in the knitting basket beside the chair —

The writing broke off. Or trailed away, perhaps, was more accurate. The whole passage was difficult to read — Jo had to study each word, search for context, and still the writing made no sense. She had expected something forthright, something about Sissinghurst and Jock that would explain her grandfather’s suicide.

Carefully, she set the old copybook on her knees and turned a yellowed page. She had bolted her dinner in the George’s bar and retreated immediately to her room so that she could open this book. It had seemed wrong, somehow, to leaf through it as she ate her meat pie and the locals pulled their pints. But now, propped up against the pillows, she felt the thin wedge of disappointment. What was all this? Should she skip ahead — look for the word Jock again, somewhere in the middle?

If it had not been for the bird singing, she might have gone into the water that day. She had been looking for stones to weight her pockets, something heavy, she might have slid them into her Wellingtons. What was it? A thrush? Nondescript, English, like the flooded meadows. Brown as dyke water. Life! it sang. She could not quite meet its sharp black eye. Had the bird flown, leaving her to Fate with an indifferent wing, she would have set her foot upon the muddy bank and closed her eyes.

The bird did not fly.

Life! it sang. Vita!

She gave herself up to the pure liquid sound, so different from the metal drone of aeroplane engines. A great peace descended. It filled up the meadows like clear water. She did not hear the warring voices, accusing, arguing. She did not smell the smears of lead on his fingers. Her sagging flesh. The hopeless despair, heavy as coffins.

Yes, she thought. I shall go to Vita.

And she tumbled the stones from her pocket.

In her bedroom at the George, Jo Bellamy held the fragile notebook directly under the circle of her bedside lamp. The faded chocolate ink — had she read it clearly? The name was certainly Vita. Written with a sharp stab in the initial V, the T rakishly crossed. The book, and its writer, had found their way to Sissinghurst; and not for the first time, it seemed.

Jo smoothed the crinkled page.

Haste, haste, to the village station. Trudge through the muddy meadows, the path submerged. Tempting, the river always tempting — Swing your stick the bird has flown. Cowering near a platform pillar, hat pulled low. This is no time to smile at the station master, he cares not a snap for your kindness, the entire village thinks you mad. He will read the note when you fail to appear for luncheon. He will come hunting. Lapinova in the snare.

To London, first. The ruins of Mecklenburgh Square. I should like to touch the stones. An ordinary death, a death like anyone else’s, it might have been an accident, there was nothing we could do for the lady, sir, she was blown to bits packing books in the cellar —

The Lady.

The simple words pulled Jo’s mind from the text and back to Jock: what was it he had written in his wartime letter? Something about the poor lady’s huge eyes, how he’d tried to help her, but had only made things worse. “Lady” was a common-enough word; the two references might have nothing to do with each other. But she needed to reread Jock’s letter; it was tucked into her suitcase.

The train pulls in with a failing sigh. She mounts the steps of the second-class carriage. The station master is busy with an Important Person, a man for Westminster, all black leather cases, he sees nothing of her treacherous escape. She is mad in any case, the whole town knows. The mad are so difficult except when they write. She takes her seat in the compartment, a seat near the window, her gaze fixed on the countryside. If the bomb fell now and took the train no one could blame her. The station falls back, the speed mounts like a horse between her thighs. He has not looked for her. He has not run screaming behind the train, his right arm raised.

Another ghost, shut up and shelved…

“But a ghost from a book?” Jo murmured, frowning. “Or the ghost of someone real?”

She had no idea. The fragments of strange script swirling across the fragile pages might be an attempt at fiction. Or they might be an account of something else. A woman who felt hunted to the point of drowning herself; a woman who escaped in fear. To Sissinghurst?

She flipped to the back of the notebook and felt her stomach plummet.

A chunk of paper had been torn from the spine, wrenched out, it appeared, by a dull knife or a vicious hand. Scrawled on the inside of the back cover were the words Apostles Screed. But that was wrong; surely the term was Apostles Creed?

The story she’d only just started, had no ending.

The cell phone lying under the circle of light shuddered visibly, skittered on the tabletop, demanded Jo’s attention.

“Good evening, Mr. Westlake,” she said, with deliberate lightness. As though the formal address could recast their relationship. As though it were still possible to be just a gardener and her potentate.

“It’s morning where I am. Where are you?”

“In my room.”

“Then I’m not distracting you from work. Good.” He paused. “What would you do, Jo, if I showed up on your doorstep?”

“You mean… here?” She sat up straighter against the pillows, reached unconsciously to tidy her hair, as though he could see her. “In Kent?”

“Or London. Or the middle of the Atlantic, if you happened to be there.”

“Is Alicia flying over for another auction?”

“Alicia’s at Canyon Ranch. For the next ten days.”

Jo gripped the phone spasmodically. There were several possible meanings behind the careful words. “But you’re in Argentina.”

“For the next few hours. Then… who knows?”

She could almost see him, in that half-remembered, half-imagined way the mind supplies: a wing of dark hair, peppered silver; white cuffs rolled back to reveal his forearms, tanned from sailing. But no — it was morning in Buenos Aires. He’d have his jacket on. A tie, Windsor-knotted. The cell phone resting against his crisp collar…

“You want to see the garden?” She was stalling, and knew it.

“I want to see you.”

Gray was extremely good at dropping sentences like bombs. Assessing the damage.

“What are you saying?”

He laughed.

That quickly, she could see the quirk of the lips, the amusement reserved for himself alone. The essential unreachability of the man.

“You think I know? What am I saying? That if I rang your English bell — ”

“ — You wonder whether I’d… open the door?”

“Exactly.”

Jo’s gaze drifted over the half-timbered walls, the deep orange of the plaster. It was not a restful room, this hip outpost at the George. Her mind was full of an unknown woman, a hunted creature gone to ground. The impulse to tell Gray what she’d been doing — the research, the notebook she’d found in a dusty cupboard, her grandfather’s suicide — was strong. But she couldn’t. The world of water and singing birds, train rides to nowhere, had nothing to do with Gray. They’d never talked about her, Jo. She’d never told him anything real. They didn’t know each other at all. They shared a spark — a sexual frisson of recognition, completely wordless. Gray liked it that way.

Did she?

If she let him in, when he knocked at her door?

Sex. Entanglement. Deception.

And all the possibility of Gray’s world. Power. Privilege. Being wanted —

What was she afraid of? Walking in too deep. The water closing over my head —

“Jo,” he whispered. “Where am I flying tomorrow?”

“Let me sleep on it,” she said.