Summary
First line
I am lying on my back on the grass.
Details
- Title Vanessa and Virginia
- Author Sellers, Susan
- Binding Trade Cloth
- Edition [ Edition: First
- Pages 224
- Language EN
- Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, MA
- Date 2009-05-14
- ISBN 9780151014743
Excerpt
I AM LYING on my back on the grass. Thoby is lying next to me, his warm flank pressing into my side. My eyes are open and I am watching the clouds, tracing giants, castles, fabulous winged beasts as they chase each other across the sky. Something light tickles my cheek. I raise myself onto my elbow and catch hold of the grass stalk in Thoby’s hand. He jerks away from me, and soon we are pummeling and giggling until I scarcely know which of the tumbling legs and arms are Thoby’s and which are mine. When we stop at last, Thoby’s face is on my chest. I feel the weight of his head against my ribs. His hair is golden in the sunlight and as I look up I see the blazing whiteness of an angel. I loop my arm round Thoby’s neck. For the first time in my life I know what bliss means.
A shadow falls. My angel disappears. I recognize your snake-green eyes. You want to lie between us and when I push you away you jump up and whisper in Thoby’s ear. He lifts his head and looks at you. I see from his expression that your words have captured him. I know that you will lure him away with one of your daredevil plans. I roll over and press my face into the grass. The blades prickle my eyelids and I concentrate on the sharpness. When I turn round again the two of you have gone. I sit up and spot Thoby perching precariously on top of the garden wall. His hand clutches at the branches overhead as he tries to steady himself. I hear him shrieking with daring and fear. I want to shout to him to come and play in the grass with me. Then I watch you catch hold of Thoby’s leg and pull yourself up beside him. You wobble for a moment before you find your balance. I know that now you will turn and wave to me in triumph. I lie back on the grass, feigning indifference. Not for the world will I let you see my tears.
Always, Thoby goes first. I watch him pulled into the curve of Mother’s arm, closing my eyes to imagine the silky feel of her dress, her smell of lavender and eau de nil. When I open my eyes her fingers are stroking his hair. I do not question why it is always Thoby who is first, or why, when Adrian is born, he takes his place after Thoby. I sense that this is the order of things and that here my wishes count for little. Yet when Thoby is relinquished with a kiss and Mother holds out her hand to you it is as if a promise has been broken. My stomach clenches and a hot spurt of indignation surges to my cheeks. I am the eld-est. I should come before you. As Mother lifts you onto her knee your dimpled hands reach for the ribbon she wears at her throat. Checked by her reproving frown, you lean forward and kiss her. Her smile is like sunshine on a winter’s afternoon. You seem to spend an eternity in her arms. Your palms clap together in a rhyme of pat-a-cake, and when Mother praises you I wonder what would happen if a spark from the fire were to catch your petticoat. I picture your clothes igniting and your red hair blazing and Mother in her alarm hugging me to her breast.
There is a knock on the door. Ellen, slightly breathless from the stairs, holds out a card on a tray. Mother sighs and reaches for the card. When she has finished reading it she puts it back on the tray and tells Ellen that she will come straight down. She lifts you from her lap and with a final instruction to the nursemaids follows Ellen onto the landing.
I stare after her. You crawl toward me and your hand reaches for the buckle on my shoe. Quick as lightning, I kick back with my heel and trap your fingers under the sole. Your howl voices what I feel. I count to five before I lift my foot. Then I reach down and pick you up and carry you to the chair Mother sat in. I settle you on my lap and rock you backward and forward until the soft lullaby of your breathing tells me you are asleep.
Mother.” I lean back into the warmth.
You consider my answer, squeezing the damp from your hair.
I prefer Father.”
Father?” I sit up quickly. How can you possibly like Father best? He’s always so difficult to please.”
At least he’s not vague.” You spin round and look at me directly. I sense that you are enjoying this discussion.
But Mother is . . .” I search for my word. I think of the arch of her neck as she walks into a room, the way the atmosphere changes as she seats herself at table.
Is what?” Your eyes are daring me now.
Beautiful.” I say the word quietly.
What does that count for?” You do nothing to hide your contempt. Mother doesn’t know as much as Father, she doesn’t read as much. At least when Father settles on something you know he isn’t going to be called away.”
I want to rally, hit back, protest how self-centered Father is. I want to declare Mother’s goodness, proclaim her unstinting sense of duty, her ability to restore order when all is in disarray. Instead I stare in silence at the water. From the corner of my eye I can see that you are smiling.
Well at least we needn’t fight about who we like.” Sure of your victory, your tone now is conciliatory. I get out of the bath and wrap myself in a towel. As so often happens, our argument has made me miserable. I press my forehead against the glass of the window and watch the branches of the trees make crisscross patterns against the sky. I do not like this sifting through our feelings, weighing Mother’s merits and Father’s faults as if the answer to our lives were a simple question of arithmetic. Not for the first time, I find myself fearing where your cleverness will lead.
Vanessa! This is the second time of telling! You will please stand up and recite the kings and queens of England in order and without error!” I jump out of my chair. Your eyes are fixed on me and I sense you willing me to remember. I stammer the names of William and Henry and Stephen then grind to a stop. Before Mother can scold, you come to my rescue.
Please, I have a question.” We both look at Mother, who nods.
Is it true Elizabeth the First was the greatest queen England has ever known? Was she truly a superlative monarch?” Mother smiles at your eloquence and I slink back into my chair, dejected as well as relieved. You have your permission to proceed and your eyes shine in triumph. I know that nothing will stop you now.
Do you suppose it was because she was a woman that she achieved so much? I mean, it’s true, isn’t it, that she never married? I suppose there wasn’t a king who was good enough for her. If she had married she would have been busy having -children and so wouldn’t have had time for her affairs of state. The people called her Gloriana’ and she had her own motto.”
Semper eadem’!” Father stands in the doorway, applauding your performance. He has the book from which he is teaching us mathematics under his arm. Always the same.’ It was the motto she had inscribed on her tomb. So it’s Elizabeth the First, is it? The Virgin Queen. In that case, perhaps you had better come with me and we will see what we can find for you in my library.” You slip from your chair and take the hand Father holds out to you. I see the skip in your walk as you accompany him out of the room. The door closes behind you and I turn my attention back to Mother. I try not to hear her sigh as she begins to reread the list of names.
You never ridiculed Laura, I remember. Once when Thoby tried to imitate her stammering and pretended to throw his food in the fire you were so angry you slapped him. He turned to you in disbelief but the indignation on your face was real.
The day Laura was sent away you stayed in our room. It was one of your curse” days, and when I went to see if you wanted anything I found you lying with your face buried in your pillow. As I tiptoed toward your bed you turned to look at me.
Have they sent her to a madhouse?” I did not know the answer any more than you but shook my head.
How could they?” I saw then the anguish in your eyes. As I put my arm around you it was my fear as well as yours I was shielding.
The darkness is so intense it seems to be alive. I think of the silver candelabra, drawing those seated round the table into a circle of light. A floorboard creaks and I turn toward the sound.
Mother?” I whisper.
Your hand is on my arm. I have forgotten you in my musings. I pull back the bedclothes and make room for you. We lie shoulder to shoulder, comforted by each other’s presence. You clear your throat and begin.
Mrs. Dilke,” you say in your storytelling voice, was most surprised one morning to discover that the family had run out of eggs.” I settle back on my pillow and let your words weave their spell. Soon I have forgotten the darkness and Mother’s broken promise. I am caught up in your world of make-believe. I fall asleep dreaming of hobgoblins and golden hens and eggs fried for breakfast with plenty of frizzle.
I stand by the window that allows us to see into the drawing room from the conservatory where we work. Mother is in her armchair, the latest copy of our newspaper on the table beside her. She has a letter in her hand and I can tell from the movement of her lips that she is reading parts of it aloud to Father. He is in the armchair next to her and appears engrossed in his book. You are crouching on the floor beside me, your hands pulling nervously at a cushion. Your agitation surprises me. The newspaper is something we have compiled for fun. I peer through the window.
She’s finishing her letter, folding it back into its envelope.”
And has she picked up the newspaper?”
I stare at Mother. She has leaned her head back against the chair rest and closed her eyes. I watch her motionless for a few moments. You pummel the cushion in desperation. I can bear your anxiety no longer.
Yes,” I lie. She’s opening it now.”
Can you see what she’s reading? Is it my piece about the pond? Does it make her laugh? What’s the expression on her face?”
I turn back to the window. Mother still has her head resting against her chair. I watch her rouse herself, pick up the newspaper, glance at its headline, then let it fall unopened on her lap. I cannot tell you what I see.
She loves it,” I say. She turned straight to your story and now she’s laughing her head off.” I pull the curtain firmly across the window and turn away.
You smile as if what I have told you is the most important thing in the world.
Go on,” I nudge you gently, carry on with the story.”
Did you not hear me?” Father’s cheeks are flushed from the exertion of chasing us across the garden. There is a glare of thunder in his eyes. You watch me intently for a moment. I gaze at the grass.
Yes, Father,” I begin, we did hear you. We are very sorry we disobeyed you.”
The look you turn on me is one of unmitigated scorn.
This one,” you say, as if the beads are a rosary, is for Mother.” I gaze at the jewel’s violet sparkle. Mother who loves the beautiful Nessa more than she has time to say.” Your words hit home and I grasp for the necklace. You swing it out of reach and continue your litany unperturbed. Nessa the bountiful, Nessa the good. If only Mother wasn’t so busy.” Your tone is artful, wheedling, malicious. Shall we see who else loves our sister?”
You dangle the beads and your voice tails to a seductive murmur.
Ah, now who have we here? A poor, orphaned goat, bleating most piteously for her dolphin mother. Someone who would rather Ness didn’t scold quite so much, someone who wishes Ness would stop drawing and put her lovely arms round her and pet her.”
I know where you are heading and try again for the necklace. You jump off the bed and dart to the window. Before I can say anything, you have climbed onto the ledge, the beads swaying from your fingers.
Goats are good at climbing, remember. And at leaping.” I watch you measure the distance to the chair, and I dart to the window to stop you. You laugh as I catch you round your waist. Your weight drags us to the floor. You clasp my wrists and let your head fall onto my chest. I feel your lips nuzzle my cheek but I am in no mood to baby you. Eel-like, I twist on top of you and use my shoulder as a clamp. Then I seize your fist and prize the necklace loose.
You wait a week for your revenge. We have been walking in Kensington Gardens and are exhilarated by the gift of a balloon from the old woman who sits at the entrance. As we round the corner into Hyde Park Gate we argue about whether or not we should tell Mother about the gift. Your list of reasons for keeping silent is compelling, and as we hang our coats in the hall I acquiesce in the hiding of the balloon in the chest. We remove several rugs in order to accommodate the balloon, and when, later, Mother finds them in our room I feel obliged to confess.
Is this true, Virginia?” Mother hates deceitfulness and her tone is stern. You glare at me before you answer.
What you see before you, Mother,” you say, with a spiteful glitter in your eye, is a devil and a saint!” You take a mock bow then point to me. To my amazement, instead of chastising you, Mother laughs. That evening your phrase is repeated to Father, who claps his hands at your wit. Soon he is calling me saint” and winking at you. George, Gerald, even Thoby join in the taunt. I feel constrained by your tag but do not know how to retaliate. Any suggestion that you might be a devil seems to slip from everyone’s mind.
Inside the train everyone talks at once. We count the stations, straining for a glimpse of the sea. Father sets his books aside and takes hold of Mother’s hand.
On holiday in St. Ives we do not keep to our rigid London schedules. Guests come and go according to the dictates of the trains and not the immutable pattern of meal and visiting times we live by at home. Even Father appears released from the relentless burden of work that oppresses him in London, finding time for walks, outings, games. We are given an unprecedented freedom to roam the garden and neighboring beach almost at will. The house is light and airy, the rooms opening out of each other like origami boxes. Somehow Mother makes all the piecemeal arrangements coalesce.
It is here that I come alive. Shut up all year like Persephone, it is as if my reward for the sacrifice, the absence of horizon, is a sudden baptism of light. Like a starved prisoner I drink it in. All summer long I try to bottle the light, store it up, capture it in my sketches, so that I can take it back to London with me and feed on it during the dreary winter months. In St. Ives I am at liberty to draw and paint all day. It is here that I do my first serious exercises, Stella guiding my hand as I discover new shapes to fill the dark.
Did we long to follow Thoby to school? It is a complicated question. Part of me yearned to break free from that dark, imprisoning house and discover life for myself, while another part drew back, reluctant to relinquish the familiar template. There is no doubt that his going sealed us even more completely into our pact. We became each other’s mirrors, as our lessons and walks marked the contours of a day in which we were required to depend largely on ourselves. We spent hours alone together in the small conservatory, you reading aloud while I sketched, hours open-eyed in our adjacent beds at night, your tales the only glow in the unremitting black. To this day, when I read it is your voice and not mine that I hear, your pitch inflecting the thoughts that beat in my head as I drift off to sleep.
There was an arrogance in our complicity. We had no external reference but each other, no guide to direct us, no check on our imaginings and delusions. We were pitiless with the failings of others. Metamorphosed in the mill of your descriptive genius, the weaknesses and foibles of those around us became props to shore up our own faltering self-images.
You were the one with words. You were the one who knew how to take an event and describe it so that its essence was revealed. I do not have your talents. If you were here you would know how to tell this tale. You would find a way of penetrating to the truth and enclosing what you found in words of such poetry that one’s heart would sing, even as it wept.
Who can tell me what day it is?” There is a timorousness in her voice, a plea to be listened to and liked, which you find infuriating. You mutter something under your breath. Julia Martin steps forward.
Please, Miss Mills, it’s Easter Friday.”
Miss Mills beams and looks up at the ceiling, as if she is communicating with a higher power.
Exactly. The day our dear Lord died on the cross. Good Friday.”
Good?” I hear you snort with derision. You draw a question mark in the dust with your toe.
Who is that talking?” When she realizes it is you, Miss Mills takes on the air of a beleaguered captain who knows from past experience that this will be a difficult skirmish. What is it, Virginia?”
Her lips are set in a line of firm resolution. Something in her expression fans your sense of the ridiculous, and you stuff your cuff in your mouth to stifle your laugh. In a moment I am seized too, shoulders twitching as I try to conceal my mirth. We stand together, heads bowed, allies against the preposterousness of the world.
We are mechanical figures, you and I, controlled by an invisible puppeteer. We listen and observe, saying only enough to keep the ball of conversation lopping backward and forward across the table. We are its reluctant guardians, required to keep it always in motion, suppressing any desires we might have to send it spinning out of orbit or to allow it to settle for a moment at rest. We must pat it to the shy young woman in the corner, judging our stroke so that it will land gently enough to encourage her to raise her racket and participate in the game. We must sequester it away from the monopoly of our aunts batting it conspiratorially between them, somehow prevent the young men sitting with Father from stealing it to show off their learning.
You are better at it than I am. You become a mistress of disguise. I am astonished, as I listen to you, at the way you weave your barbs into a fabric of such loveliness that your interlocutor is left wondering whether it is a compliment or an insult you intend. I lack your subtlety and skill.
You were to record, later, the impact that tea-table training had on your writing, so that you never felt able to give yourself free rein. You had words at your disposal nevertheless, and you found a way to survive. For me it was different. I had to fish in precisely that area of myself where I felt most ill at ease. I was always running out of things to say, straying into territories I knew were forbidden and where I exposed myself to censure, or coming aground on the banks of an unstoppable pause. Increasingly, I copied Mother, adopting her silent attentiveness as my costume for those apprenticeship afternoons.
We learned even as we despised. Young, earnest, eager to please, we were like fledgling birds watching for the clues that would enable us to fly. We caught occasional glimpses of the dancing kite tails of our lives in the space ahead of us, and our hearts quickened in response. We longed to take the leap that would allow us to chase after them, yet we clung to the safety of our nest.
You see, even after all these years, I wonder if you really loved me.
Media reviews
Praise for VANESSA AND VIRGINIA:
"Sellers's impressionistic prose evokes the near-magical artistic world the two innovative women inhabited. She highlights the interplay of their creative thinking and ways in which they inspired each other... A thorough portait of the complicated dance of sisters."--More Magazine "Instant Classic"
"Sellers beautifully imagines what it must have meant to be a gifted artist yoked to a sister of dangerous, provocative genius."--Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A simple and yet magical tribute to a writer's life."--Seattle Times
"Vanessa and Virginia captures the sisters' seesaw dynamic as they vacillate between protecting and hurting each other, depending on who is up and who is down. For all their competition--each picturing the other as more content and successful--they are as intimately connected as twins. Through it all, work is their refuge--from their lives and themselves."--Christian Science Monitor
"Sellers’s elegant first novel imagines life in Britain’s Bloomsbury circle from the point of view of Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf’s older sister... The amazing aspect of this novel is its painterly quality. As Vanessa recalls her life, layer upon layer of memory is applied to create a portrait of color and shadow, a process that is mirrored in the narrator’s descriptions of her methods of painting...Highly recommended for collections of literary fiction-particularly where Woolf is popular."--Library Journal
"A delectable little book for anyone who ever admired the Bloomsbury group... a genuine treat for Bloomsbury fans."--Publishers Weekly
"[A] beautifully written exploration of tortured talent, sibling conflicts, domestic discord, disappointed love affairs, and emotional despair."--Booklist
"Virginia Woolf may have overshadowed her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, in popular cultural history, but Vanessa was a talented artist, wife, lover and mother in her own right... [Sellers] artfully presents Vanessa, not as a frame to further explore and enhance her more famous sister, but through a full and authentic portrait of a woman whose life has been shaped by tragedy as well as a creative freedom remarkable for her time."--Bookpage
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