Sweet Sorrow Read Free

exhaustion.’
    ‘What about courage?’ Charlotte asked, still rather put out. ‘People are brave in war, aren’t they?’
    ‘Some people are brave but most just endure,’ Verity replied soberly.
    ‘Well, I’ve still got to finish the damn thing – the book, I mean. I’ll see you at Monk’s House around eight. Don’t dress up – it’ll just be us and maybe Byron Gates, the poet. Do you know him?’
    ‘I think I met him once, very briefly.’
    ‘Well, anyway, Adrian will probably insist on wearing his smoking jacket with paint on it and Leonard wears a moth-eaten corduroy thing.’ She looked at a pile of black cloth on the floor. ‘What’s that?’
    ‘It’s for the blackout. Colonel Heron dropped in and reminded us that, when war is declared, we’ll have to keep any lights from showing. He took one look at our curtains and said they were much too thin. Next week he’s expecting to receive a new batch of gas masks to distribute. It’s so awful. One can’t think of war when it’s like this – the sun shining and the birds twittering and all that.’
    ‘You don’t fool me, Verity. You are longing for it – the excitement . . .’
    ‘No, Charlotte, you are quite wrong. I saw enough of it in Spain to know that war destroys everything it touches. I hate it.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Charlotte said, realizing that she had upset her friend. ‘I shouldn’t have joked about it. You’re right of course. The truth is we’re all terrified of what’s to come but we have to put on a brave face.’
    Virginia and Leonard had bought Monk’s House in the summer of 1919 for seven hundred pounds. It was a modest brick and flint two-storey building – little more than a cottage – weather-boarded on the street side. As she and Edward strolled the short distance from the Old Vicarage, Verity wondered if their hosts would resent them buying a much grander house than theirs.
    They were let in by Leonard himself, although Verity caught sight of a maid bobbing around behind him. He was a gaunt, monkey-faced man with sharp intelligent eyes and a thin mouth, but his smile was attractive and she knew immediately that she liked him without his having said more than a word of welcome. He ushered them into a low-ceilinged, oak-beamed drawing-room apologizing for Sally, his cocker spaniel, who jumped up at them. Virginia rose to greet them and, holding out her hand to Verity, said how very much she had been looking forward to meeting her.
    ‘I read your reports from Spain and I was about to ask you to write a book for us when I was beaten to it by Gollancz.’
    The Woolves had started a small publishing firm called the Hogarth Press and Verity was flattered that she had even been considered as a possible author.
    ‘It was so kind of you to have sent me books when I was ill, Mrs Woolf,’ she replied. ‘Although, I have to confess, I would always rather be “doing” than reading. Still, being laid up for so long, I was able to do something about my education – or lack of it.’
    Verity found it almost impossible to take her eyes off Virginia. She thought she had never seen such a remarkable face, full of pain, lovely and remote. She became aware that she was being introduced to a handsome man in his early forties whose face she recognized.
    ‘Miss Browne – sorry, I mean Lady Edward – you won’t remember but we met at the BBC two years ago – Byron Gates. You were being interviewed about the war in Spain.’
    ‘Of course I remember. I didn’t know you lived near here until Charlotte – Mrs Hassel – mentioned it this afternoon.’
    ‘We’re just across the road from the pub – Ivy Cottage. Mrs Woolf was kind enough to find somewhere for me, my wife and daughters to take refuge. You must have come to the same decision, to leave London to the mercy of the Luftwaffe.’
    ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ Verity said, frowning. She did not like to be accused of running away. ‘My husband and I need a