Read Online The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf by Stephanie Barron - Free Book Online Page A

she’d learned a lot about The Family along the way. It was impossible to sustain Vita’s garden without knowing about Vita herself. She was everywhere: in the roses, the heavy Bagatelle vases that dotted the landscape, the looming shadow of the tower. Imogen had read the biographies. Lord, she’d even read Vita’s poetry, which almost nobody bothered with now. What was Jo saying? A lover of Vita’s, who’d had the ability to write?
    “We should tell The Family,” she decided. “This might be valuable. If it really is…”
    “… a lost manuscript of Virginia Woolf’s?” Jo finished.
    The two women stared at each other in silence. The American’s eyes had gone unfocused again, Imogen noticed, and her own mind was racing. Virginia Woolf . Vita’s friend and correspondent for two decades. Vita’s lover, until she moved on to everybody else. A manuscript of Virginia Woolf’s, however partial, abandoned in the tool shed with the mice and spiders? Which reminded her—
    “So it’s not Jack’s Book written on the notebook label,” she attempted, “but Jock?”
    “I think so.”
    “How did a gardener’s lad get his hands on this?” Imogen demanded. “Oh, Jo. It can’t be a Virginia Woolf—”
    “Imogen,” she said hurriedly, gripping the notebook, “I know you’ve got to tell The Family. I know it’s terribly important. I know you owe me nothing—you’ve already done me several favors, and I’m very grateful. But if you could manage just one more thing —if you could give me twenty-four hours, to finish what’s here and learn what I can about my grandfather—it would mean everything. Everything,” she repeated.
    Imogen glanced over Jo’s head, toward the oast houses. Notes on the Making of a White Garden . Which hadn’t existed when this journal was written. What in all that was holy did it mean? And why should she do anything for Jo Bellamy, who kept more to herself than she was willing to share? If it was a lost Woolf manuscript… and she, Imogen, was credited with the find… the publicity would be enormous. For Sissinghurst. For the gardener.
    “Can’t you ask him? Your grandfather, I mean?”
    “He’s dead. We found him hanged in the garage. The morning after he learned I was coming here.”
    “Bloody for you.”
    “I can’t shake the thought that I’m somehow responsible. That the news of this trip triggered his death. Do you see why I have to know?”
    Imogen shivered suddenly in the October sun; the American’s expression was too intense, too painful to bear.
    “Twenty-four hours,” she relented. “No more. But then you bring that book back, understood? I’m jolly well not going to lose my place over you, Jo Bellamy.”

PETER LLEWELLYN WAS HALFWAY THROUGH HIS PAIN au chocolat that morning when she walked into the café.
    He was late for the Group Meeting. He should have forgone his breakfast entirely; but he had no desire to listen to his Director, Marcus Symonds-Jones, summarize the results of a recent sale. He liked eating his pain au chocolat at his usual table in the house café, with a pot of Assam; and why provide Marcus with another opportunity to demonstrate Enlightened Management? Marcus was one of the new breed of directors at Sotheby’s UK; he had suffered through a four-day training course in New York last summer, and consequently assured his subordinates that they were All On One Team, Although Competition Among Equals was Quite in Order. Marcus had perfect teeth, which Peter found suspect. He hewed to an extreme of Savile Row tailoring, but affected a proletarian accent. Peterjudged him false from shell to core. Marcus was a rousing success at Sotheby’s, however; and the slight suspicion that he, Peter, was simply jealous of Marcus’s ease, made him vaguely uncomfortable, as when he’d once disturbed a fellow seventh-former wanking off in a neighboring stall. Peter averted his eyes from Marcus when the two came into contact; the Results meeting would