Tenderness, page 61
Among the geraniums, bright as torches,
,edis yb edis tis yeht
they sit side by side,
hcuoc eekrooR s’ynoclab eht no
on the balcony’s Roorkee couch
.eredevleB onilliV eht ta
at the Villino Belvedere.
,thgin eht otni erats yehT
They stare into the night,
,sdlofnu ehs dna
and she unfolds,
the rose of herself,
leaf by leaf,
Sepal by sepal. Petal by petal.
Pistil. Stigma. Stamen.
xxi
The unfolding.
She tells him that…when she was small, her father called her ‘Rosebud’.
In the hour she was born, new and furled, he measured her length and breadth. He recorded the circumference of her head, and the position of her ears in relation to her crown. He was a sculptor, and these truths carried more meaning in his heart than the weight recorded by the midwife on the kitchen scales.
She tells him that, when she was a child, they lived in Surrey on a half-acre estate by a sandy heath, a murky green canal and a little wood which formed the geography of her dreams for years and years.
The heath seemed to stretch away into infinity, and was populated with firs, oak and white birch coppices. In the autumn, the purple of the heather was like a sea as she ran and rolled. Its purple made her want to draw and paint, and she did endlessly, because she and her sister Joan had a governess, whom they always outran.
Unlike other girls they knew, they wore Liberty smocks and Natureform shoes. They used to run from poor Miss Henderson into the wood or up to the heath, where they’d hide in the heather or climb a tree.
Sometimes, during hot summers, fires swept the heath. Then she and Joan and her brother Oliver would watch from the nursery as their father and neighbours went out to beat back the flames before they could reach the houses. Entire trees would burst into sheets of fire, just like Harriet the little girl in the Penny Dreadful who plays with matches and goes up in flames until she is only a pile of smoking ashes next to a singed tree.
She used to adore the pictures in that story.
Slowly, the lights go out over Florence, but his arms, his chest, are warm.
As girls, she tells him, they weren’t allowed fashionable dresses and hair-styles – ‘how I wanted ringlets!’ Their hair hung loose and natural. ‘But Mother did used to make us the most wonderful costumes for special occasions. I envied Joan her Lady Jane Grey gown terribly.’
She tells him her parents had many lovely parties and, as children, on still summer nights, they’d fall asleep to the clacking of croquet balls on the lawn and the sounds of adult voices and laughter. A neighbour on the heath, a female composer, would always be the last to arrive, in dinner-dress on her bicycle, and Ros would strain to stay awake to listen to her sing Brahms and Schubert on the terrace below the nursery window.
‘My mother would be beautiful in a silk dress, with her hair held up with such mystery I couldn’t fathom it. She wore a touch of boracic powder on her nose and cheeks, and had lovely straight white teeth. On special occasions, her ear-rings and pendants emerged, glittering, from velvet boxes, an expensive cook was hired, and we were not allowed anywhere near the kitchen.
‘But my mother was entirely without airs. I remember watching her, in her best Henrietta Maria dress, as she taught Thomas Hardy – who was then nearly sixty! – to ride our neighbour’s bicycle in the road outside our house, while all our other guests launched into charades in the garden. The game was specifically organised by Father as a form of cover for Mr Hardy’s lesson. And Mother did teach him too! Mr Hardy wobbled along our road while I clapped and shouted encouragement.
‘My first real glimpse of my father as a person in his own right was when we all went down with a bug and he, feverish himself, went about in his nightshirt and smoking-jacket, looking after us with hot drinks, cold face-flannels and steam kettles. To teach us astronomy, he set up a miniature solar system of balls, of various colours and sizes, spinning in their orbits on the breeze. He suspended hammocks among the trees where we could daydream and read. It seems to me that my father, his sculpture aside, had more talents than any one man had a right to. He could fell a tree, lay a hedge, puddle a pond, make a haystack, remove a wasps’ nest, handle a scythe and skin a rabbit.
‘Although I didn’t follow him into sculpture – none of us did and that was a sadness for him – he did teach me a great deal about drawing: the seven-and-a-half heads of human proportion; how to “lose and find” a line; the convex versus the concave; how to capture an action before or after it, rather than during, and why that at times is the more powerful choice.
‘He was a natty dresser, my father, even when only on his way to his studio, although once there, he’d change into his linen smock. Typically, he wore a pink silk tie run through a ring, and in the evenings, a green velvet jacket, which was splendid with his headful of auburn hair. On his train journey into the studio in the warmer months, he always filled his pockets with wildflower seeds, and would scatter them from the carriage window along the more dismal stretches of the line into London, through Kensal Rise and Willesden. To this day, I can hardly think of a lovelier thing to do for strangers.
‘When I was sixteen, I was sent to a grand Surrey boarding-school – to rid me of my bumpkin ways, I expect. Mrs Burton Brown was second in command, and she was also the art mistress. She encouraged me a great deal. My best friend, Bridget Tallents, was very pretty and winsome. Although of course it was against the rules, she agreed when I asked if she would model for me. At the appointed hour, I went to her cubicle in the dormitory where, with only a little hesitation, she stripped to the waist and reclined on the bed.
‘We had always had nude models, half-robed, walking about our house as we grew up, both men and women – often Italians who came especially for the work – and we thought little of it. But alas, the episode somehow reached the ears of the “very disappointed” Mrs Burton Brown, who summoned me for a walk in the woods – an unexpected break from lessons – where she told me that Bridget and I had done something “very, very dangerous indeed”. She spoke at great length about two girls behaving in such a way, and I had no idea what she meant. But my drawing of Bridget was marvellous, and I hid it under my mattress till the summer hols when I smuggled it out.
‘As young men and women, we attended the Fabian Nursery. H. G. Wells himself used to address us. My husband, Godwin, joined our gang after my uncle introduced him during one of our musical evenings in Hampstead. We were, all of us then, seized by the possibilities of a free and natural life, and we spent almost every weekend together, walking over the Sussex Downs. We even started taking tents and a Primus cooking stove.
‘But the first time we camped out, at the top of Ashdown Forest, everything was very rugged. So Godwin and I made ourselves a bed of moss with a roof of evergreen boughs, then lay down in the darkness and listened to the yearning of the wind in the fir trees. It was weird and magical. I can still feel the charge that hummed in the space between our bodies, and yet it wouldn’t have occurred to either of us to act on it, and perhaps it would have spoiled things if we had. We were all curiously idealistic.
‘Then, as I said, we had a great snowy winter, the toboggans came out, Godwin walked me home and, when faced with four feet of snow blocking the road, he simply scooped me up and carried me the half a mile to my parents’ door.
‘That was more or less it, I suppose, although my father never warmed to him, and I couldn’t understand why. Godwin was a medical student, a talented singer, hale, hearty and admired by all. But my dear pa saw Godwin’s weaknesses long before I could, although he refused to enlighten me in any detail. So I dismissed his concerns, imagining he would one day see what a good husband Godwin was. I believe it broke my dear father’s heart to give me away, and I regret that now. Yet I cannot regret the marriage itself, for I have my darling girls.’
He nods. ‘The three Young Graces! What’s more, you are free to shape your life, to live it.’
She rests in his arms, and although he is so different in form from Godwin, she is drawn to the lithe energy of him.
No one, she thinks, has ever spoken to her so directly, so honestly. All the pretences of the world drop away as he speaks, there in the quietude of the night, on her small balcony, a ledge in the darkness.
For nearly a year, he has been offering her guidance by letter and stalwart directives from a distance. Such communication has been possible because they share a connection: Bertie Farjeon, playwright-friend to Lawrence since his Greatham days, and husband to Rosalind’s sister.
By letter, Lawrence first recommended Italy to her, as a place of escape after the War and in the aftermath of her separation from her husband. He wrote to say, indeed, he might opt for Italy too; then, that he would travel ahead, and send guidance for her solo journey with Ivy the nurse and three little ones.
‘If you think of starting very soon,’ he wrote, ‘wire me tomorrow, and I could look after you at Turin or Rome: otherwise I should write you immediately I have an address. Your luggage you can send direct. Will you take Ivy? Watch the Italian exchange and buy before it goes down. A good bank should give you 51 Lira – but ask them first. Your father or Godwin might do that for you. It is perfectly easy getting the visas at the Italian Consulate, but go pretty early in the morning. Push forward, ask the clerk if you can go inside the barrier to fill up the inquiry form. Don’t forget – you want an extra photograph for each visa. D.H.L.’
Then: ‘The journey to Italy is all perfectly easy – only slow slow – slow. No bother at frontiers – only rather a crush. Change a little French money on Dieppe boat in 1st Class saloon – get ready to disembark as boat draws near, and move to the passport gangway on boat – near the lower deck (1st class) cabins, in front. Seize the first porter the moment you get anywhere & make him do everything for you. They are very trustworthy & sensible. The Customs is a very slight business – so is passports – only the crowd – which is not so bad on the trains. Take three or four bags in the train with you – porters will cope with them. Also take some nice food. Any English Tommy will tell you everything you might need to know. Italy is nice – very nice indeed – lovely lovely sun & sea. I’ll tell you when I have an address, in Florence, I expect. Au revoir, D.H.L.’
He himself had originally planned on America as his place of escape – and Frieda was off to family in Germany – but he changed his mind and decided on Italy again. Rosalind had been offered a house in Picinisco for her and the children. Should she take it? ‘Primitive,’ he said after he’d travelled to survey it on her behalf. ‘Staggeringly’ so.
Had he privately determined that Florence would be the setting for their encounter?
‘I think you might like Florence for a couple of months – there is an English Institute, everything English you need for a start. I feel one must coast around before settling on any permanent place. Florence is a good town, the cheapest in Italy probably. I would really advise you to try it. There are a good many English people around, but one needn’t know them.
‘Frieda will come here, in Florence, next Wednesday. You might possibly arrive before we leave – fun it would be. You change at Pisa for Florence. At Pisa, you must wait unfortunately, till 8.30 p.m., arrive Florence 11.50 p.m. If you like, I will meet you in Pisa, if we are still in Florence. We could have a meal, look at the Cathedral, & so to Florence. If you wire, say if you will bring nurse—& for how long here. No doubt you could come at once.’
Frieda had taken to the notion of Sicily for the two of them. In any event, they couldn’t afford Florence. It was not as cheap as he’d suggested to Ros, but then, she was not as penniless as he.
Rosalind arrived in San Gervasio, a village overlooking Florence, at the start of a new year and new decade, 1920.
‘Frieda,’ he wrote to her, ‘loves it here in Taormina. Etna is a beautiful mountain, far lovelier than Vesuvius, which is a heap. We’ve got the house for a year. The summer here will be very hot. Will you still be in San Gervasio? Shall we plan to come and see you in the hot summer weather? We must meet in Italy, now we are here. I expect the babies will hold you faster here even than in England. Do you think you could manage to get to Taormina? There is room if ever you could. How is Godwin’s divorce proceeding? It all seems far away and unreal doesn’t it – a weariness of the flesh.’
In May of 1920: ‘Cara Rosalind, are you over your flue? Was it bad? Did Joan and Bertie enjoy their Italian interlude? Joan sent word from Siena to say you might all dash south to us. Then – not a word. Why not? What are your summer plans? Where are the three Graces to frolic? We have a large garden shaded by almond trees. It will be harvest time and we can whack the branches to our heart’s content. I assure you, it won’t be a furnace here. The house is cool and spacious. We are high up on a steep slope – we catch the breeze off the sea. Why not come? Or shall we meet in July? Where will you spend the winter? How long is your lease on La Canovaia? We must rendezvous somewhere. Send your plans by return. In attesa di una sua pronta risposta, D.H.L.’
June: ‘Where do you want to go for little Bridget for the sea for winter? Why not come here? I can find you a house, and Taormina is simply perfect in the winter. How much does it cost you to live in San Gervasio? It will be far less here. Are the three Young Graces well?’
July: ‘Dear R., Your letter this morning – sorry you won’t come here – could have found you a house, very nice. F. thinks of going to Germany second week in August or thereabouts. Where will you be? I might come & see you – I shall come north, I think, but shan’t go out of Italy. Perhaps to Florence, perhaps to Venice. Give me your La Canovaia address at once – & I might meet you about end of August or September. I feel all unstuck, as if I might drift off anywhere. It isn’t at all unbearably hot here, in the house. How are the unstoppable sugarplums? Write at once with your plans, post is slow. D.H.L.’
* * *
—
And now, the geraniums burn, Florence sleeps, she hears his voice in the darkness, and feels it resonate from his chest as she reclines in his arms: ‘What’s more, you are free to shape your life, to live it,’ he is telling her.
‘I hope so,’ she says. ‘Yes, that is my hope, certainly.’ And yet, inwardly, how frightened she feels in that moment, as if she were poised, not on a beautiful Italian balcony, but in the grip of a hungry, roaring wind.
Her feet rest in his lap. His hands cup her ankles and are warm. They stare out at the night, both close and solitary. They listen to the melancholy pulsing of the crickets. A pair of tawny owls, male and female, call to each other – tu-whit! tu-whoo! – and he speaks again: ‘I imagine you must feel something of a paradox to yourself these days.’
She turns to him, her eyes wide and wondering.
‘Living as a demi-vierge,’ he adds.
‘A demi-vierge!’ replied Connie vaguely.
‘Without sex, I mean.’
Oddly, she does not mind his curiosity. It surprises her that she does not. She laughs. ‘Well, I should like to have it again, naturally.’
‘What’s stopping you?’
‘I’m not sure anything is.’ She lifts the weight of her hair from her neck. ‘Only one has to be discriminating.’
‘Of course. One can hardly bear to share a bus seat with most people, let alone a bed.’
‘Precisely. And at a certain age, one wants more than dew-drops of flattery and off-to-bed-we-go.’
‘I agree: that’s tawdry. Love is a force. Impersonal, to some extent; something sprung from the elemental world. What are we to it?’ He pauses. ‘It’s up to you.’
She turns to him, and can make out only the white of his brow and the gleam of his eyes. Their lantern smokes.
Now, in the court, as the former Rosalind Thornycroft Baynes watches the girl – Miss Wall – step down from the stand and cross to the door, she sees, too, with her cloudy eye, the vision of Lawrence, still in the dock. He has taken off his jacket and stands, in his shirt-sleeves, like a working man. His eyes still burn.
The scene returns to her, not with the force of a memory, but with the direct sense of feeling moving through her: the sense, from that long-ago night, of life being given back after the grief and humiliation of her marriage; after what had felt like the theft of her future, when she had resigned herself to lovelessness – except as a mother – and sexlessness.
She hears him again, his words in her ear.
He is married. She still is married herself. It is said that Frieda has liaisons, often, and that Lawrence does not forbid it. Even so, it would be – it is – wrong to be with him. His wife’s dalliances have nothing to do with her own conscience, and can be no excuse. She has already scandalised society with the affair she had with Kenneth, her childhood friend, at the Savoy that night, 13 October, 1917, when her husband, a medical officer, was en route to the East with the troops.
‘Another man’s! What other man’s?’
‘Perhaps Duncan Forbes. He has been our friend all his life…’
She was jubilant when she found herself so quickly pregnant. Delighted at the prospect of a third child. And relieved because not even Godwin could overlook the fact of an illegitimate child on the way. Or so she assumed.
‘So don’t you think you’d better divorce me and have done with me?’ she said.
‘No! You can go where you like, but I shan’t divorce you,’ he said idiotically.
He was silent, in the silence of imbecile obstinacy.
‘Would you even let the child be legally yours, and your heir?’ she said.
‘I care nothing about the child.’
