Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar Read Free Book Online

waiting impatiently for a good reason to come down. Desmond, unhurried and late, sits on the farthest sofa and stretches forward his loosely jointed limbs. I am sure he spends the evening hoping that no one will ask about whatever article he has failed to turn in that week. I sit in one of the basket chairs by the tall windows looking over the square and do my best to say shocking things. All assembled, we begin.
Darling Duncan—a new initiate—is urbanely unbothered by the tension. My dear, there is ferocious tension—a paramount need to say important things and discuss worthy subjects: Good, Beauty, Truth—all very Keatsian. The stakes are high. One feels quite gladiatorial stepping into this arena of ideas. It is not an easy win. A subject is introduced but often flames out. Another is offered, volleyed, but fails to catch. But from these clipped efforts grows a rhythm, an unshelling, a feeling of group endeavour. Eventually the air takes, and the evening finds its shape.
Bell, usually so bluff and unflappable, has been out of step recently. I met him the other night on my way to Gordon Square. I do not often bump into him, as he approaches from King’s Bench Walk and I come from Gray’s Inn Road, but on Thursday I found him lurking in the square behind a boxwood hedge. We stood in the shadows like assassins and he told me the source of his agitation. It is Vanessa, the Goth’s sister. It is, I think, obsession rather than love but he insists it is the one wrapped in the other. He is determined to act despite almost certain failure. He sent flowers that were either ignored or misconstrued and then were elbowed out by some of Virginia’s meadow weeds. He is now in search of a more telling declaration and is talking about armfuls of roses. He might have remained in Paris overlong.
I do see it. Vanessa is an ocean of majestic calm even if she does not know it. Virginia envies her sister’s deeply anchored moorings. Nessa is powered by some internal metronome that keeps perfect time, while the rest of us flounder about in a state of breathless pitching exaggeration, carried by momentum rather than purpose. I do not see her accepting Bell, but I was touched by his earnest, lemming-like determination.
Must go and nap as the afternoon is so hot.
Yours ,
Lytton
    Saturday 8 July 1905—46 Gordon Square
    Clive stopped by to see Thoby again today. The third time since Thursday. Our conversations are broken, short, and familiar. Great swathes of a subject go unsaid but are understood just the same. We spoke of Wings of the Dove .
    “So much more there than in The Ambassadors ,” he said while he was waiting for Thoby to come down. “I understand how Kate could risk him in order to keep him. She believes that if they really love each other, they can go through anything. The thing with Milly wouldn’t matter. Shouldn’t matter.”
    “But how could it not matter?” I interrupted him. “She loves him. How can betrayal be irrelevant?”
    “James comes back to that subject, doesn’t he?” Clive said, leaping up to pace the drawing room. “Look at The Golden Bowl .”
    I was aware of Virginia listening. Books are her domain.
· ·
    W E SPEAK ONLY FOR a moment or two while he is here, but once he goes, I press Thoby for news of him. What am I hoping to discover?
    And —I have been thinking. Since we have already shocked our more conservative family and friends with our racy, mixed Thursday literary at homes, perhaps we should take it further and have a Friday evening club for artists?
    Later
    Thobs says that Clive hated the Watts exhibition at the Academy. So did I. I feel of a pair. But I do not feel a certainty. I cannot see my life ahead with this man, or any man, really. But then I do not imagine myself becoming a spinster. I thoughtlessly assume I will have a husband and children, but I do nothing to make that happen. I do not understand how one gets from here to there.
    Neither of us has mentioned the flowers.