The Lost Garden: A Novel by Helen Humphreys

Author:Helen Humphreys
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2003-10-16T21:00:00+00:00

18

Mrs. Woolf is dead. It is broadcast with the war news on the evening of April 21. She has drowned in that Sussex river after all. Her body was found by children.

I cannot believe it. I don’t want to believe it. I am unexpectedly angry at her for dying. And I keep confusing her death with the war dead. She died during the war, I think, pushing my head against the stiff chair back when I hear the news—not from the war. But what can be separated out any more? It’s all the war.

I leave the wireless room, go out into the night, where the sky, weighted down with stars, sags black over the courtyard.

Dear Mrs. Woolf.

You weren’t perfect. You got some things wrong in your books. I never believed the point of view from the flowers in Kew Gardens. Flowers would not think like that. They’re not about thought at all. And I know To the Lighthouse was meant to be set in the Hebrides, but it couldn’t have been. You got the flora wrong. There are no elms or dahlias in the Hebrides. And no carnations.

I walk over the grass of the quadrangle. It is starting to get long and should be mowed soon. I can feel it brush against the sides of my boots as I walk past the stables and through the opening out to the gardens.

Dear Mrs. Woolf.

Some of your books I didn’t even like very much. I found Night and Day a bit dull, and The Voyage Out not that interesting, although I liked the part about the Thames.

I walk down to the South Garden. From there I can see the dark tilt of the fields below. I stand under a tree already delirious with blossom. The chestnut trees are out. Dear Mrs. Woolf, I think, but there is nothing really to say. The connection I felt to her words can never now be told to her. She will never know I followed her one summer evening in London through the square. She will never know how I felt when I read her books. I remember the delicious fall into Mrs. Dalloway, how I kept expecting the story to drop me, but it held me up, kept me buoyant.

Dear Mrs. Woolf.

There’s the sound of a nightingale, rising from down near the fields. Each note as melodious as water. And then, above that sound is another sound, one I can’t at first place. A thin, droning whine, growing in intensity and frequency. It’s a sound I am familiar with from London. Bombers. A raid of bombers on their way to, or back from, patrolling the Devon coast. The nightingale keeps singing. I wait for it to stop, as the planes roar towards us and are then directly overhead. But the nightingale keeps up her song. Perhaps even nature has become inured to this war. Or perhaps the nightingale needs to sing so desperately that nothing will silence her. The planes pass over, high above us, and the bird keeps singing, is still singing, as I walk back up towards the buildings.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.