The House of Rumour A Novel - By Jake Arnott Page 0,51

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