The Trials of Radclyffe Hall by Diana Souhami (surface ebook reader .TXT) 📗

In March 1952 Evguenia lost her job at the BBC. She asked Una to increase her allowance to £250 a year. What about income from boarders, Una wanted to know. She declined the request and wrote a letter of reproof at Evguenia’s less than grateful response to her Christmas present of £5.

Una liked to buy Nika costumes for his operatic roles: silk shirts for Boris Godunov, a crown that she said looked as if it was from Cartiers, an orb, a cloth of gold with mock sapphires, emeralds, diamonds and pearls. ‘He looks so beautiful in it all. There is no doubt that Nika transfigures on the stage as Nijinsky did and becomes from a fine-looking young man inclined to be fat, something so beautiful that one is spellbound.’

In 1956 he married Virginia Zeani. She was Cleopatra and he the title role in Handel’s Julius Caesar at La Scala. Una absorbed into their family and was godmother to their child. ‘Nika asked me what I did with my life when he was away and I told him generally – of reading & seeing Florentine friends – but he does realise that he is my occupation and I can feel is glad of it.’

‘She lived my life,’ Rossi-Lemeni said of her. Only Evguenia intruded on this transference of devotion. In October 1956 a letter came from her saying she had cancer. A colostomy had been performed. She could not hope fully to recover. She would welcome financial help from Una for medical and living expenses.

‘There is the usual appeal to sentiment’, Una wrote in what she still called Letters to John. ‘Of course she may die “and go straight to dear Johnnie”. After nine years of abominable cruelty she left you even when you were in extremis and came to me directly after your death to see what she could get.’ Una said she would ‘detest’ going to England about this matter. She wrote to Armando Child and asked him to obtain a full medical report from Evguenia’s surgeon and doctor. She wanted to know her health prospects, what state assistance she could get and what her husband earned.

Her decision that she will be an invalid or a semi invalid for the rest of her life requires investigation, as she would be the last to inform me of any total recovery. If, as I hope and suspect, a very small tumour has been removed with assistance of a temporary colostomy she may recover entirely and never look back. I pray God and Our Lady it may be so for my sake as well as hers.

Armando Child wrote back that Evguenia’s colostomy was permanent and that she could not be expected to work. Una gave her what she called ‘the unemployment allowance’ of £250 a year. This was £74 a year less than John’s basic allowance of twenty years previously.

On 9 January 1957 Una wrote to Stanley Rubinstein. She asked him to ascertain Evguenia’s state benefit entitlements. Ten days later she loaned Nicola Rossi-Lemeni three million lire (£1,800) for the down payment on an apartment in Rome in the Piazza di Novella. Una took an adjacent apartment for she now did not countenance life apart from him. Nika would pay her back as he could afford to, or as she wanted him to. ‘After all, the money lies idle anyway’, she wrote in her Letter to John. She made a codicil to her will leaving her effects to him though not her capital (that was to go to the Sisters of the Poor Clares in Lynton). She left her burial arrangements to him and was ‘pleased that he wants me near him after death’. Ladye, John, Our Three Selves and the Highgate catacomb were all forgotten now.

In the summer Evguenia became ill again. She was seen, she wrote to Una, by ‘a young and bumptious internee’ who told her there was nothing wrong with her. She then went to a private physician and asked Una to pay his bill. Una wrote one of her startling letters of refusal. Evguenia replied to it on 8 July:

Please forgive me for having ‘sprung’ on you as you say in your letter these additional expenses but I was always under the impression that John wanted me to turn to you if I were in distress especially if I were ill. Had she been alive she would have done everything to alleviate my pain. Please forgive me and forget I have asked for help. I shall pay my physician somehow.

Una might persist with her Letters to John. Evguenia had kept every one of her Letters from John. Wronged by Una one time too many, she now wanted these published. They were her side of the story. Though mortally ill she began to type them out. To do so made her ‘terribly sad’. It was, she said, ‘a torment, a gruesome task, to relive those past years again’.

On 6 September 1957 Una received a letter from a lawyer representing Vladimir Makaroff. He understood Radclyffe Hall had made provision for Evguenia in her will. Evguenia was now critically ill and required medical treatment, convalescence and nursing care. Una saw the letter as attempted blackmail. She passed it to Stanley Rubinstein and stopped all correspondence and all contact with her. ‘I am willing to make her presents of money but not to recognise any obligation’, she wrote to John. ‘She must have recourse to National Health which I feel she is determined not to do. Also one doctor said she was being hysterical and we know she can be.’

A month later another letter came from Stanley Rubinstein. Makaroff had called to see him with a copy of Radclyffe Hall’s will and some of the letters Evguenia was now typing for posterity. He told Rubinstein that Evguenia was very sick, needed care and believed Una had not observed the spirit of Radclyffe Hall’s will. The letters spoke most clearly of Radclyffe Hall’s ‘wishes for the welfare of the said Evguenie