Chapter Text
Vita hadn’t answered the messages.
Virginia thought to herself as she stood outside a small shop, a few streets down from Ducan's house. She was supposed to buy some dresses, she needed them for Nessa’s exhibition on Saturday, her sister insisted she finds herself in something other than the torn blue dress that Virginia bought about two years or so ago for Mrs Lucas’s wedding with her distant cousin. She checked her phone. Those little blue dots kept popping up as if Vita was reading. She didn’t reply though. The shop was right at that corner. Virginia reminded herself. Would Vita come?
The blonde woman stared at the shop’s window. There was a fine dress inside, hanging just nicely on a dead mannequin. A muted yellow and black dress. A bit short on her, Nessa would say that. She looked closely at the neck of the mannequin. Would she need a printed scarf? Those little flowers painted on it reminded her of dried dandelions pressed between Jane Austen's novels, young girls with dove eyes and a vague yearning to love. But Vita had that habit of describing them in such vivid details, she often talked of those flowers with rapture interest and tried to picture them with an intense focus almost too technical and biologically structured for a novelist. Dandelion to her was nothing more than the most vital nectar source for a wide host of pollinators in the early spring. What a strange relationship between the flower, bees, and us watchers. She wondered what Vita regarded herself as in that complex business of nature?
Vita Sackville-West had been a peculiar force. Virginia smiled a little as she thought about her. This foolish longing though, it made her want to light a cigarette. The blonde woman was waiting for Vita. She insisted on coming to her shopping trip at their meeting last week. Virginia convinced herself that Vita would keep her promise. She hated standing here alone in the silent corner of this busy street.
Virginia let the smoke blur her eyesight. She bored herself staring at people who passed by. The hurry one, the young one, the student, and the elder man in the suit, all randomly stumbled here, in Berwick street, at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, Thursday, March 9. She glanced at them and thought of what if. Virginia let endless scenarios appear in her mind. Both the worst tragedy and the happiest moment, a son dying in his father’s hands and drunken men chasing gooses. She wondered what kind of past they had and whether they were interlinked.
Yet how did one count the seconds, the minutes, the hours just to sink into the depth of time and desperately grasp for a reminder of the reality that was already placed upon its own eyes? Virginia knew she was asking herself a nonsense question. It’s clear that Vita wasn’t here now and would not be here any time soon. She never did.
It angered her. Virginia knew she would keep looking for the silhouette of Vita in the crowd of solemn passengers walking past her. She thought of such hope and excitement as the undying habit of new love. Perhaps that was what was happening between her and Vita. She didn’t really know.
A woman laid her gloved hand on her shoulder, breaking Virginia of her thought. The mischievous brown eyes stared at her. “Hi.” Vita said and leaned forward, a smirk appeared on her velvet lips, showing her perfect white teeth and implying a question Virginia had grown tired of answering. Virginia turned her head, avoiding the kiss. “You’re extremely late.” She gave Vita a condemned look, but the short woman only shrugged.
“And you missed my birthday.” Vita put her lips on her cheek and glanced at her as if challenging. It was March 9 and two hours before Vita’s birthday party. Virginia had refused to attend such an event despite the shorter woman's multiple attempts at convincing her otherwise.
“Would you come? For my sake, if there is no other reason?” Vita asked again. “Please?” Her rich brown eyes sparked with childish excitement and expectation. She gave her a charming smile and a great long look of forbidden promise, almost like a dare she often sends to her lovers. Virginia couldn’t really pinpoint whether she was curious at that offer or whether she already knew what that implied. She shook her head at Vita’s tactic.
“I could barely stay in the crowd of hundred aristocrats emptying their souls with expensive champagne and dancing until their laughter became ghost sounds and white noises,” Virginia told her. “And I could barely stand your constant nursing toward me.” She tilted her head and stared down at Vita as a habit.
“You should know it’s just because I care for you, Virginia. A fabulous lot.” Vita leaned forward and held her face in her soft hands, its warmth reached a place deeper inside her. Virginia stared at her own reflection in Vita’s brown eyes and mocked herself for the genuineness and honesty she found in those orbs. Such pure adoration and admiration made her want to forget the dreadful feeling of being abandoned each time their dance went further than it should be. For this moment, at least, Virginia convinced herself to believe in those sweet words. And believing as she was doing, this raw feeling scared her.
“I” Virginia answered with struggle. “...” She felt lost for words again as if she was suddenly pulled back in the process of reaching for the flow of language and becoming incapable of coming up with a sentence, an agreement, or a compromise to Vita’s insistence of sort. “I don’t…” She repeated, trying harder “in that place of all else.” Virginia looked directed at Vita. She thought of Knole, its hundred rooms and dozens of staircases, more like a town than a house where King James’s silver lay untouched for centuries. She remembered the past that followed her every step, not dead at all. Knole held the fragments of memory, of Vita standing in the Chapel as a married woman, holding her hand out for the lover, for her. An unsuitable heir and her mistress. Neither belongs.
“You liked it the first time I took you, Virginia.” Vita said, her voice holding a truth that expected no argument. She looked her in the eyes. It was difficult to explain. “...” She said nothing in reply. She simply wished she could call Leonard, go home and escape this intense question of Vita. It had become unbearable for her.
But then Vita just shrugged as if she understood. “Okay.” The smaller woman said and let go of their close promiscuity. The ghostly smile on her powdered face brought out some unpleasant feelings in Virginia’s body, she wondered what Vita’s puzzling look meant. She felt the subtle anger radiating from the smaller woman. Virginia wanted to lay a silent question onto the air, asking which one of them would give in and what would come after. What was the point anyway?
Vita reached for her hand and she let the woman lead them both into the shop. Her hand felt small in hers. The tall woman looked blankly at the wooden shelves of vintage clothing and accessories with hats and purses that Vita would like to own. She thought of what this spacious room had once been, it smelled like medicine, cheap perfume, and dust. Her eyes fixed on the printed photograph on the wall, a woman showing her shoulder and wrapping herself in only satin and pearl. Her facial structure reminded her of the ancient English race.
She let go of Vita’s hand as something caught her interest. Virginia picked up a silver ring and placed it on her own finger. The cold metal sent a rush through her skin. She reached for the hand of the mannequin, feeling its plastic touch and admiring the piece it wore. A muted yellow and black dress. The one she found from outside the shop’s window. “Not that yellow one, Virginia.” Vita pulled her hand again as she realised Virginia had abruptly stopped. Virginia nodded her head and followed Vita inside.
They walked past the clotheslines. She held her hand out to touch the fabric and felt the roughness of the denim and glossiness of the silk. Vita turned her head to look at her, gentle and unreadable this time. She asked Virginia for colour preference. “Blue.” She said, like her old dress. “Or that yellow one.” She pointed at the mannequin. Vita gave her an unapproved look. Virginia nodded again, saying nothing.
She walked behind Vita and stopped as she seemed to suddenly take an interest in headpieces. “How about this brown hat?” Vita asked as she tried to put the hat onto her head. Virginia bent down to help her. “It makes you look like a scarecrow.” The woman acclaimed. Vita once said how she dressed quite atrocious, perhaps it implied how Virginia had no taste. She never seemed to mind though, sometimes Virginia thought Vita enjoyed her odd sense of fashion.
“Do you like it?” Vita asked again, joking this time. Virginia stared down at her, unamused. “Maybe.” She told her upon seeing her reflection in the mirror. She looked like herself that time they went to the theatre together to be drunk on old comedies and bad jokes. Virginia had looked all tall and skinny with that ridiculous hat. Vita had cried her eyes out in laughter that day but she had mustered sweetly how much she loved her outfit. “This one then.” Vita told her with a happy tone, she laid another kiss on her cheek and started to walk her through some dress preferences and inquired about Nessa’s exhibition.
Vita continued to ask whether they would have dinner together after the exhibition and if they allowed, she could catch up with them before dessert. She had to take the kids to her mother that afternoon and could not join them on time. Vita said she wouldn’t mind staying the night. Virginia raised her eyebrows. “If you spare me a spot on your bed?” Vita gave her a cheeky smile this time. Virginia decided to give her no reply.
She changed as Vita picked up some of the long dresses. Vita’s light-headed laugh rang in her ears, she could hear her talk with the girls from outside. She caught the dry phrases of compliments and imagined how Vita would look with a smile so wide that it became empty. Virginia knew of the woman’s aristocratic manner, something like an actress’s - no false shyness or modesty - the one that made her and any other girls feel virgin, shy and schoolgirlish. Those girls would giggle with Vita's charm and let the woman take her fill of youth just so she could leave them to rot with the promise of her affection later. It was cruel and intoxicating. Virginia wondered why she slept with them and came back to her.
Virginia heard they exchanged phone numbers. She thought of herself doing the exact same when Vita asked her a few months ago. She was never spontaneous and Vita had made her. And that woman, she was never monogamous. She didn’t know why it felt different between them.
Virginia came out of the changing room, wearing a silk slip-dress that hung on her body like a skeleton in its burial clothes. “I want this.” She said, Vita’s left hand was playing with her pearl neckline as she saw her, the woman bit her lips as if trying to hold her chuckle. “I know you would adore it.” Vita said sweetly. “Just this one?” She asked again. “Yes.” Virginia answered her question.
xxx
Virginia came back to her shared flat with Leonard with a few bags of clothes. She opened the door and came across a white box with a note tucked on its ribbon. “Dear Virginia,” it said, “not that yellow one I’ve already bought for you.” She opened the box to see the muted yellow and black dress carefully folded inside.
“What is that Ginia?” Leonard called out from the kitchen. “It was delivered for you a couple of hours ago.” He told her. “A gift from Vita.” She raised her voice so he could hear. Virginia chuckled to herself, wondering when Vita had had the time to visit the shop. “Is that for Nessa’s exhibition?” He continued to ask. “No, for me.” She said.