The House of Rumour A Novel

6

the lovers





Wednesday, 26 March 1941

‘Bloomsbury’s blown to bits,’ K blurted out as our train pulled into Paddington. We had been talking of our last sortie to London, at first in a flippant & almost jolly manner, but by the time we had reached the suburbs of the besieged city the mood darkened considerably. K seemed gripped with a dread of arrival and recalled the horrors we had witnessed last September – all the wrecked buildings in West Central & fires everywhere from the incendiaries. But I remember that it had been the time bomb in Mecklenburgh Square that had disturbed K the most. She had fancifully imagined that the Germans had come up with a secret weapon that had some means of exploding time itself. Of course, given the way that she has played with that dimension in her own work, it was hardly surprising that she might conjure up such a curious conceit. I first thought that she was making a joke, but she was genuinely disturbed by the notion & I had to try to explain that it was merely the business of a delayed fuse. The whole area had to be roped off, which was a disaster for the Woolfs Wolves (!) who had only recently set up a new office for the Hogarth Press in the square. Then a month later their house in Tavistock Square took a direct hit. Trust K to come up with a grim formula that trips so lightly: ‘Bloomsbury’s blown to bits.’

It seems odd now but once powered flight had seemed to bring such hope. Like the aeroplane writing in the sky in Mrs Dalloway; the great women pilots Amelia Earhart and Amy Johnson. Well, Earhart and Johnson are dead and all around us is the devastation brought by the air raids. Of course it became a symbol of failure with Chamberlain (‘If at first you don’t concede, fly, fly, fly again’). And in K’s novel the Sacred Aeroplane of Munich becomes a holy relic of Hitlerism.

K took a long time to leave the carriage & as we walked along the platform she again declared that she ought never to have let Victor republish the novel, that she knew it would mean trouble, etc. There was a crowd huddling around the barrier & we stood for a while waiting until all the other passengers had gone through. I grabbed her hand & held it tightly &, checking that nobody was looking in our direction, sneaked a kiss on her cheek. She smiled & pulled me along, turning to point at the poster that said: IS YOUR JOURNEY REALLY NECESSARY? & we both broke out into a short salvo of much-needed laughter.

Arrived at the Gollancz offices in Henrietta St at about 3 p.m. The place was almost deserted, just a secretary who served us tea with condensed milk. Victor’s moved most of his operation out to his country house in Brimpton. He seemed in an ebullient mood though, saying the Left Book Club edition of Swastika Night had sold over seventeen thousand copies & how this was impressive for sales in wartime etc., but K was impatient to get to the heart of the matter – the nature of Victor’s strange summons. It appears that there has been a request via the War Office for an interview with ‘Murray Constantine’ by an intelligence officer. This rattled K & she once again made clear her reasons for continued anonymity. He tried to reassure us but we know the drastic measures that many of us have considered if the worst was to happen. Victor himself has boasted that he’s got hold of a ‘poison pill’ & is ready to take it if we lose the war. There is this Gestapo list everyone talks of – it’s the reason that K used a pen name in the first place. He doesn’t even know what exactly the matter with the WO might be. K tried to insist that her confidentiality be maintained though Victor pointed out that this might be difficult if it was a ‘matter of security’. An ominous phrase. Agreed for Victor to arrange a meeting on Monday.

On the way to our hotel K appeared distracted & vague. That queer manner she adopts, as if possessed, when she is about to compose something. I tried to lighten the mood & joked that she looked as if she had ‘a book coming on’ & she suddenly snapped out of it. Something was stirring her imagination, she told me. Not an idea for a story, though. ‘What then?’ I asked & her face creased in self-astonishment. ‘An awful premonition,’ she said.

Thursday, 27 March 1941

To Margaret Goldsmith’s who seems v. keen to work with K again on another book. But now K seems adamant that she has given up writing ‘for the duration’ & will instead engage in war work (though quite what she has in mind escapes me). Can’t help thinking that this business with the WO has thrown her. Margaret went on to recount a particularly gruesome Blitz tale – the Café de Paris in Leicester Square caught a direct hit a fortnight ago (it had been thought safe because it was in the basement of a cinema). A note of hubris in the story – the rich in the West End enjoying themselves while the East End bears the brunt etc. A sense of Grand Guignol too, scores of bright young things killed, the bandleader decapitated, looters robbing the dead & dying etc. And oh the irony of it all – the dance hall had been modelled on the ballroom of the Titanic! There’s a certain relish in the way the liberal left dwell on such examples of punished decadence.

With careful diplomacy we asked after Frederick Voigt & she told us that he is now employed in a research unit in some secret location involved in propaganda & is rather appalled at the level of lying and duplicity. Thought for a moment that Frederick might be useful in advising us on this possible ‘security’ matter & that it was a shame that he & Margaret are now divorced. Didn’t articulate the latter sentiment, needless to say, or that we are to visit Vita Sackville-West tomorrow – knowing how awkwardly Margaret’s affair with her turned out.

Quiet night & no air raid.

Friday, 28 March 1941

Arrived at Sissinghurst late morning. Glorious day & Vita led us around the grounds. She has had a wretched time of it this week – one of her Alsatians killed another dog & had to be put down & her budgerigars are all dying (she can no longer get the correct food for them or something). Yet despite (or maybe because of) this she seemed deliberately effusive & gay. She showed us where she planned to plant her great ‘White Garden’, gesturing at imagined white clematis, white lavender, white agapanthus, white double primroses, anemones, lilies & a pale peach pulverulenta. A rather wondrous scheme – though she has neither the resources nor the labour to carry it out at present. ‘Let us plant & be merry,’ Vita declared, ‘though it all might be destroyed in an instant.’ K spoke of gardens as utopias. ‘A small patch of Earthly Paradise.’

‘Yes,’ Vita replied, ‘amid the sorrow of war, small pleasures must correct great tragedies.’

‘Il faut cultiver notre jardin,’ I chipped in clumsily.

Vita: ‘Oh yes, darling, we’ve got to dig for victory & that doesn’t just mean beans & potatoes.’ But soon a bleakness caught up with us. ‘I’ve asked Hadji how on earth we are going to win this war,’ Vita said (using her pet name for Harold Nicolson), ‘and he’s hard pressed to give me a straight answer.’

There’s a general feeling that recent events in the Med. & N. Africa have turned very badly against us. Once again desperate measures are mentioned. Vita & Harold too have their suicide pills – the ‘bare bodkin’ they call it (after a line in Hamlet). K complained of a migraine & went indoors to lie down. She is so affected by this gloomy talk of suicide and I feel that she really doesn’t approve of it.

Vita spoke warmly of K, and of how much she admires her writing. ‘I’ve been inspired to write my own cautionary tale. Another meditation on what might happen if we lose this wretched war. I hope she won’t mind.’ Mentioned that we had seen Margaret G. in town & Vita’s smile seemed at once knowing & wistful. She breaks hearts & yet feels sorry for it – maybe out of guilt, but more likely because she hates it when anyone she has loved withdraws their affection. ‘I never like to completely drop anyone,’ she confided. ‘Instead, well, they keep part of myself. Emotional alimony, Margaret used to call it.’

‘I hope you don’t think that you owe me emotional alimony,’ I retorted with mock indignation (while all the time remembering old wounds).

‘Heavens, no,’ she replied. ‘You’d hardly need it anyhow. I’ve scarcely seen two people so deeply in love’ (meaning me & K). ‘The desire & the pursuit of the whole, that’s what Plato called it,’ she went on.

‘Called what?’

‘Love. With me it’s complex. It’s Hadji, of course. And the garden. And all my foolish affairs. And—’ She let out a deep sigh & confessed to me that Violet Trefusis wanted her back. ‘I love her perennially but I can’t trust her or allow myself to . . .’ Vita trailed off then burst out suddenly: ‘She’s like an unexploded bomb! And I don’t want her to explode. I don’t want her to disrupt my life again.’

K slept through the afternoon & woke up dazed, her eyes wide & filmy. ‘I had a drowning dream,’ she told me drowsily. ‘Or a dreaming drown.’

Saturday, 29 March 1941

Harold arrived from London at lunchtime. Much talk about Vanessa Bell’s daughter Angelica now living with Bunny Garnett. Given that Bunny once had an affair with Angelica’s father, the situation seems rather complicated. Inevitably the conversation moved to Virginia W. Vanessa had apparently mentioned on her last visit to Sissinghurst that she feared her sister was becoming ill again & on the verge of a nervous breakdown. ‘But she was fine when I last saw her,’ Vita said. ‘And I had a jolly letter from her only last week.’

Harold has spent all week at the Min. of Information, keeping quiet about British & Commonwealth troops landing in Greece. He is confident of the long term but only if we can hang on. His worst fear is that we might get so worn down by foreign campaigns that we keep losing & will be so starved out by the bombers & U-boats at home that we might be forced to accept terms. K vehement that we must carry on the war. Funny, she used to be such a committed pacifist. All those years we spent being for peace & now so determinedly in favour of fighting.

We talked of this paradox on the train back to town. It was the twisted minds of men that got us into this mess, the cult of the male that made fascism possible. And yet we now have to watch our men fight with no power of our own. How do we fight? With our minds, of course, with our imagination that might realise an alternative in the future. K declared that she was tired of this mental struggle, tired of writing. She wants to do something practical, until the war is over at least. She is v. sensitive to any collective feelings of despair, the allusions to suicide & madness. ‘I can imagine giving up for good,’ she told me with a sad smile, ‘letting the current pull one under, the water closing above.’

Sunday, 30 March 1941

An air raid this evening (the first one we’ve witnessed this time in London). Talk has been that the Luftwaffe have been busy pounding the provinces & the capital has been quiet for the past week – well, they’re back again. Made our way to a public shelter. V. gloomy with frightful stench of humanity & carbolic. We heard a strange groaning from a darkened corner & at first thought someone had been taken ill. Soon realised that it was a couple having sexual relations. Strange how plaintive & mournful the act sounds when overheard. All-clear sounded at 4 a.m.

Monday, 31 March 1941

To Gollancz for this meeting with the intelligence officer, a certain Commander Fleming. K insisted that I be present so we both waited in a room that Victor had made ready. Both v. nervous but from the outset this interview had all the makings of a delightful farce with themes of mistaken identity & gender transformation that could have come straight from K’s fiction. Commander Fleming entered, expecting presumably to meet a male author, only to be confronted by not one but two women. He quickly realised something was afoot & for a moment was clearly flustered. Then when he finally asked which one of us was Murray Constantine, I was tempted to add another twist to the deception & confess to being him myself but K spoke out first. ‘Surely you must be used to cover names in your line of work,’ I said after K had identified herself.

‘Of course,’ agreed Fleming then turned to K & asked: ‘But why a man’s name?’

K replied that at first she reasoned that male authors are always taken more seriously than female ones & added that she always felt that ‘the writer is essentially androgynous’. The commander looked mildly shocked at this. K went on to explain that also, since the Spanish war & all the events since, it seemed wise to continue to use a pseudonym.

‘Well, you certainly offer a harsh critique of fascism,’ he concurred & then went on to talk about Swastika Night, calling it ‘astonishing’ & praising K for her grasp of ‘ideology & geopolitics’. I mentioned our past friendship with Frederick Voigt, who had been diplomatic correspondent to Germany for the Manchester Guardian when Hitler came to power, & also pointing out that he was now working for some intelligence dept. Fleming made a note of this but now seemed concerned with specific details in K’s book. He asked about the use of the name Hess for one of the characters – the ‘Knight’ in the story & a reference to this man being a descendant of Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Führer.

‘It’s set in the future,’ K explained.

‘Yes, but was there any reason why you chose Hess out of the entire Nazi inner circle to provide the ancestor for your character?’

‘I call him von Hess, actually.’

‘Well, this Hess, or von Hess of the future, suddenly leaves the inner circle of the Nazi Party and flees to Scotland. What inspired you to write that?’ K shrugged & Fleming went on: ‘All I want to know is, did you get the idea from anybody else?’

‘No. I mean, all of my stories come from somewhere else. I’m not sure where. They visit me.’

‘Like a premonition?’ the man asked.

‘Perhaps. Though the word premonition always seems a little hopeless. I mean, we can never know what we predict until it happens.’

‘Indeed,’ Fleming agreed, looking rather intense and intrigued.

I added that K’s creativity was much like tuning in to some radio wave, that the writer in her was like an alien being. He then asked about the process of writing. ‘Why are you interested?’ K retorted. ‘Are you working on something yourself?’ At which the man looked rather sheepish.

‘Do you discuss it, with your, um—’ He nodded at me, clearly unsure of our relationship.

I fully expected K to describe me as her ‘companion’ but instead she reached out, took my hand & declared: ‘With my lover, you mean? Oh dear, that does rather put us on the Gestapo list, doesn’t it?’

The commander was completely taken aback by this & he struggled to regain his composure, forcing a smile & nervously flicking at a stray curl of hair at his brow. One noticed for the first time how handsome he was. Men can be quite charming when they drop their guard. He brought the interview to a close & assured us that everything said in the interview was in strict confidence & implored us not to talk of it to anyone else. And that was that. After he had left we said our goodbyes to Victor & got a taxi to Paddington.

We found a corner seat in a packed carriage on the train home. ‘Back to our lives as eccentric country gentlewomen,’ K joked. I told her that I was glad she had said what she did. ‘About being lovers?’ she rejoined. ‘Well, I don’t suppose we should shout it from the rooftops too often.’

Thursday, 3 April 1941

Short report in The Times this morning: ‘We announce with regret that it now must be presumed that Mrs Leonard Woolf (Virginia Woolf, the novelist and essayist), who has been missing since last Friday, has been drowned in the Sussex Ouse at Rodmell, near Lewes.’ It seems clear that she took her own life. Terrible sense of shock & grief. Well, Bloomsbury really is blown to bits now. And after all the past week’s talk of suicide there’s an irrational feeling of complicity. K feels certain that Virginia was in some sense a victim of a collective despair and says that she felt some kind of premonition. She points out that it might well have happened that afternoon at Sissinghurst when she had her ‘drowning dream’.