he didn’t do his share of the household chores – but he was also accident-prone, and health and safety were not his forte. He was cavalier about equipment, and frostbite, and when I fretted, called it ‘fussing’.
What if I just read about his death in the papers? Did he, or his team, know where I was? I’d left my new mobile number with the neighbours, but had Edward actually noticed our neighbours? Men could be impervious. I didn’t want to hear the news from strangers. How could I ever tell Gerda?
It would break her heart. She loves her father.
10
VIRGINIA
1941. I am back in the gyre, water corkscrewing towards perdition. I am fifty-nine. I will never be older.
The thing I wrote before I set out. That day in March. I remember it.
The skies were clear, blue and bright, a great blue blank bearing down on me, dazzling, blinding, and naked terror, everyone would know, everyone would see me
everyone would say the book was no good
The day before, I had seen the doctor. Octavia asked me to
take off my clothes take off my clothes so she could see me what did she know? too young to be a doctor!
I told her no, there was nothing wrong.
Why did Leonard make me visit her? sharp eyes peering at my nakedness that terrible look of pity, kindness, yes yes Octavia, yes, thank you, thank you, my hands are always cold (thank you, that hardly proves your brilliance)
(I didn’t say it, I was polite) Leonard had told her to ask me to rest I saw his careful hand behind it now they would all gang up on me
she asked me to ‘Try, try for Leonard’
That night I could not sleep at all
The morning, clear everything clear it was very cold
I fetched my fur I needed one last touch of comfort
flowers in the garden were too bright fat yellow daffodils, harsh, triumphant
Yellow varnish this yellow room
cruel that Octavia asked me to try ‘for Leonard’, as if I had no care for him, and she, a stranger, knew everything
I have tried so hard. I can try no longer
The Furies waiting where the path disappears
The hideous old women bare their claws at me, wet-mouthed, whispering as they crawl towards me, brown scaly talons and hanging flesh
I could smell their furious iron-rich breath, the great blades of their scissors wet with light, the hellish light of the blue spring sky, gnawing my fate before I was ready
I loved my life but I had to go, once the Furies smell you you can only flee. I knew that day I could not outrun them, the sky was cloudless, they had me at bay –
I wrote to Leonard & I wrote to Vanessa. Words I had practised many times. With the breath of the Furies hard in my ears & their split yellow nails, like torn bamboo, sharpened ready to gouge my eyes out.
In this hostile, stinking, yellow room the dreadful words return to me, words that can never be unsaid, the deed, once done, that can never be mended
the wound I dealt him, the grief I gave him
darling Leonard how I struck at his heart
knowing I must hurt him, I pulled on my coat, thrust my hand deep into the pocket as I almost ran down through the meadow, it was ready now for the fate it must carry, yes, I had gone too far to go back,
a tiny voice like the voice of a child that wanted to be born
was crying Stop a tiny part of me cried in the night
small, stubborn, a scintilla of light
trying to escape me, trying to get out
but the path led straight to the river bank the Furies behind me every step of the way behind me, ahead of me, snapping at my ankles, tearing at my stockings like vicious brambles, battering my ears with icy hatred, whipping me onwards, flee, flee
this time I knew they would never release me
the river roaring
full of crazed blue light Omega chunks of blue and brown
feel certain I am going mad again
can’t go through another of those terrible times
begin to hear voices can’t concentrate
I am doing what seems the best thing to do
You have given me the greatest possible happiness I don’t think
two people could have been happier
could have been happier
this terrible disease
I can’t fight any longer
ANGELA
After a long silence, her voice came, hoarse. ‘I did it, didn’t I. That terrible thing.’
VIRGINIA
Sitting on the woman’s ugly bed, which was broken-backed under a yellow-gold cover, with nameless shadows, wine or blood – it groaned beneath me like the sea, as if my grief was too heavy for it, & I groaned louder, I groaned like old metal, I groaned like banks of black stones on a beach, moaned in pain like a wounded beast
I remember
the clumsy walk at midday with the voices shrieking and baying behind me, the yelps of the Furies hounding me down through the meadows I had loved for so long, the skin on my back crawling with terror, Virginia, you’re mad again
I remember
thrusting the stone in my pocket
large, heavy, waiting for me, the stone like a toad on the river-
bank
I held it weighed it in my hand
blind, brutal I choose you
forcing the stitches of my pocket apart and as it started to tear, as I heard the silk split, I stopped myself, gently, be gentle with it, yes, I controlled it, the heavy bludgeon
remember
the brute knocking
