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

grounds. She was taken over by an imperious sensation. She wanted to know. She had to find out. Margaret continued whispering. Virginia hadn’t been well, for a long period; she was a fragile person, with “a medical history.” She was fifty-nine, and had suffered several depressions. She was slowly sinking into gloom, despite the joy she found in writing.

Clarissa had listened to Margaret’s gentle tone, and her eyes had wandered to a portrait of the writer glimpsed through the living room window—the long, tormented face, the mouth with its bitter lines. She had seen Romain Gary’s features superimpose themselves upon Virginia’s, imbued with the same troubled wistfulness. Margaret said that a few days beforehand, Virginia had come back drenched from a long walk in the rain. Her husband had become worried when he saw her arrive, like a pale, thin sleepwalker. He had instantly obtained a consultation with their doctor in Brighton. Dr. Wilberforce prescribed rest, after finding Virginia feeble and strangely distant.

On March 28, a Friday, in the secret of her writing lodge, Virginia had written two letters—one for her husband, the other for her beloved sister. She had told her husband she was going to do a bit of housework, then go out for a short walk before lunch. Leonard had gone up to his office. At eleven o’clock, their maid saw Virginia head out toward the fields, wearing her fur coat, carrying her walking stick. She was striding with her usual energy and seemed to know exactly where she was going.

“Virginia left the house by that door, here,” Margaret said. “Then she went out by the garden, in front of the church, just there.”

“Show me,” said Clarissa, and it was the property surveyor talking, whose eyes were now measuring the exact steps Virginia had taken, drawn over the earth in an indelible ink mark only Clarissa could see.

Margaret indicated the way, and Clarissa pursued it, just like she had mentally followed Romain Gary after his lunch on Tuesday, December 2, 1980, when he had walked along rue de Babylone to reach rue du Bac, on his last day alive.

Mia White stared at her, giving Clarissa her complete attention, her cup halfway to her open lips. Clarissa had to concentrate, focusing on keeping separate the two threads unraveling in her head: the one she mastered and wasn’t frightened of, smooth-running, unchanged, and the other thread, darker and more disturbing, which had surfaced as she trailed Virginia’s ultimate path to her death, with Margaret at her side, and her flummoxed father in suit, and which was resuscitating now, in this peaceful tearoom, opposite this young woman and her enormous eyes.

Margaret had explained that Virginia went straight to the river, which took her twenty minutes or so from the cottage. As she listened, Clarissa saw the scene from above, high up over the fields, and she felt she could make out every single step Virginia had taken to get to the banks of the Ouse, a long, thin line of black ink etched along the ground, which drew her like a magnet. She had asked to see the river, which that day ebbed low and smooth, not at all like it had been the day Virginia died, all bubbly and wild, bursting its banks, flowing fast and strong, according to Margaret. All around them was a flat and bare landscape, with hardly any trees. Somewhere along this austere riverbank, Virginia had picked up a large stone, shoved it into her pocket; she had left her walking stick on the ground, and she had descended into the water. She had let the waters close up above her and she had drowned.

Clarissa remembered her father had been concerned, looking at her constantly while Margaret spoke. Had it been a good idea, bringing his daughter here, on the trail of another fragile woman? This she did not tell Mia White, or did she? The two threads of her story were now intertwined, coalescing, and she found it confusing to keep them separate. Margaret had pointed to the wooden and iron bridge that spanned the river. This was where Virginia’s body was found, three weeks later, by a group of picnickers. Three weeks, Clarissa had thought. An agonizing wait. She kept thinking of Leonard coming down to lunch, wondering where his wife was, and finding the blue envelope with his name on it on the mantelpiece. Inside was a heartbreakingly beautiful farewell letter. Margaret said that Leonard had rushed down to the river, in a panic. He discovered Virginia’s footsteps on the bank, and her stick where she had left it. He had hoped against hope that she had ended up running away, that she was still alive.

Margaret led them back to the house. Clarissa remembered that no one spoke as they walked up the path in the fields. When they got to the cottage, her father had taken Margaret aside. He had spoken to her privately, and Clarissa couldn’t hear what he was saying. But whatever he had said worked. Margaret came back to Clarissa and put her hand on Clarissa’s arm, saying she was happy to show her Virginia’s bedroom, which was seldom revealed to visitors. Her father said he’d wait in the garden. Clarissa followed Margaret’s bony back, overwhelmed by her father’s initiative.

They had gone up the slim outdoor stairs and Margaret had unlocked the door. Clarissa had observed the white-tiled fireplace decorated with a lighthouse and a ship, the large bookshelf, the night table, the pink curtains. She had asked Margaret if she could stay there alone for a few moments. She was expecting the young woman to refuse, but Margaret ended up consenting, saying she’d wait downstairs with Clarissa’s father.

Clarissa had found herself alone in Virginia Woolf’s bedroom. She sat on the narrow bed covered with a white quilt, where Virginia had slept, where Virginia had dreamed. Then she had lain down. The large open window was on her left, nearby. At night, Virginia had probably looked up at