Flowers of Darkness by Tatiana Rosnay (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📗

She didn’t tell Mia White that she suspected her father had taken her on this trip because he was aware of how unhappy she was. And it was true to say that the beauty of the garden had given her some peace.

Margaret had opened up the door to the house, and they had followed her in. Clarissa remembered there were few other visitors that day. They were practically alone. In the little entrance hung the particular odor of an old countryside home, one that was loved and looked after, kept spick-and-span, with nothing dusty and neglected about it. The house was alive. It breathed. Margaret had explained that everything had been preserved to look exactly as it had in the Woolfs’ day. A person lived here year-round, even during the winter, when the premises were closed to the public. The living room walls were green, a color Virginia loved, said Margaret. A radiant green called “viridian,” which Vanessa Bell, Virginia’s sister, who was a painter, had gently mocked. The ceilings were low, garnished with rafters. Under their steps, the waxed floorboards creaked. Clarissa felt as if Virginia Woolf might turn up any minute. She’d stride in, carrying the flowers she’d just cut, her shears still in hand. She’d arrange them into a pretty vase. She’d sit in the large chintz armchair near the high fireplace, and she’d pick up a book. Later, she’d look at her correspondence, placed in the open secretary chest.

There were books everywhere, on the shelves, on the small low tables, but also on the steps of the stairs. The true home of a writer and an editor. As of 1929, Margaret said, the couple had gradually started renovating the house, thanks to Virginia’s increasing royalties, from Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and especially Orlando. The kitchen was entirely redone, a dining room was created, and a bathroom with a toilet was installed on the first floor. Margaret said Virginia adored spending time in her bath. She would stay there for hours, and their maid could hear her talking to herself, trying out scenes from her books. Another link to Romain Gary, who had also worked from his bath, and Clarissa acknowledged the unexpected connection between the two writers, which pleased her. She could now put her finger on it; what she relished here, what she hungered for was the private story spinning behind the public figures, linked to the homes they lived in, slept in, and wrote in.

Margaret told them that later the house was added on to. A room was built in the attic, and it became Leonard’s office; then a square brick extension formed a first-floor bedroom giving directly on to the garden by a flight of stairs, Virginia’s room, where she slept. Clarissa had asked to see that room, and Margaret had answered, courteously, that it was rarely open to visitors. Clarissa had been disappointed. She had insisted. With a firmer tone, Margaret had said it was impossible, and to change the subject, she led them to the writing lodge at the end of the orchard, where Virginia worked. With her finger, Clarissa had gently touched the chair, the inkpot, the reading glasses. She knew full well these objects had not belonged to Virginia, but the literary staging was a pleasant one. Virginia had written Mrs. Dalloway within these walls, and while a bee droned against the windowpane, it seemed to Clarissa that the writer’s shadow, an angular sentinel, loomed behind each garden rose.

This writer, whose books she had never read, whom she knew little about, inhabited this place with a singular intensity. Unlike Romain Gary’s flat, where Clarissa had perceived vestiges of the past, something else was at stake for her here and now, a fork in the road, a turning point, but what, exactly? She couldn’t tell. Her father had asked her if she was feeling all right. She looked odd, he said. How could she explain there was a density here pulling at her, reeling her in, like a fish caught on a hook?

Had she uttered those sentences out loud to Mia White? She hadn’t meant to. It had been part of the darker, inner stream she hadn’t planned on mentioning. She carried on swiftly, going back to what Margaret was telling them about the house, that it was a private place of intense creation and work. Friends did come to stay occasionally, but for the Woolfs, this was their intimate shelter, their little haven. The villagers had gotten used to seeing Mrs. Woolf walk quickly along the Downs with her dog, in all sorts of weather, muttering to herself. Here was where Virginia felt closest to her own life, Margaret had pointed out. In her letters, in her diary, Virginia had described the treasured hours at Monk’s House, no talking, diving deep into reading, into writing, into pure, translucent slumber, into the green of the Downs and the trees, with no one around to disrupt it all, no noise, only the sovereignty of silence.

And then Margaret had said cheerily, “Monk’s House is such a happy house; don’t you feel it?”

Her father and Clarissa had both said that yes, they felt it.

“That’s how we want to think about it. A happy house. All of us who work here, we don’t often mention Virginia’s death. We like to think more about her life.”

Clarissa had glanced at Margaret. Virginia’s death? What did she mean? Margaret looked surprised.

“You mean you don’t know?”

“Know what?” Clarissa’s father had said.

“How Virginia died,” said Margaret.

A hazy memory came whirling back, an image Clarissa had seen in a film, a long time ago. But she couldn’t place it. She asked Margaret what had happened. Margaret lowered her voice, as if she didn’t want to be overheard. They were standing on the small terrace in front of the cottage. It had happened on March 28, 1941.

For a reason that was unknown to her, Clarissa felt an urge to understand what had taken place, while she was still on the