The Trials of Radclyffe Hall by Diana Souhami (interesting novels to read txt) 📕

of residing in France, of going to the Riviera, of Evguenia getting work there. Una feared the financial and emotional dependency John was encouraging. She thought her demoralized by idleness. John disliked to be reminded of work or her literary career. She was no longer interested in Ladye, Mrs Leonard, or religion, except to ask St Anthony for help with Chinkie Pig’s naturalization, and she never now read a book or wanted Una to read to her. ‘Holy Mother of God, where will this thing end and where is it leading us?’ Una wanted to know.

John told her, ‘You’re quite right, I really don’t want to do anything in the world but play around with that girl.’ Una marvelled that the greatest living English novelist, whose whole life had been dedicated to genius, beauty, loyalty and profundity, could be in thrall to ‘a completely uninteresting, no worth little mediocrity, who even sometimes goes so far as to criticise her and find fault with her in my presence’. Evguenia, she said, ‘has no idea that she has been privileged to touch the hem of greatness’. She lacked ‘even the dawning of an understanding of genius’. Evguenia had suggested John write a film script to make money. John said she found her refreshing. Which Evguenia was. It had proved a trial for Radclyffe Hall to try to live up to Una’s projection of her. Perhaps it was like living a lie. Perhaps playing around with this girl made her feel more real.

The plans John made extended to winter and beyond. They were all built round Evguenia, her problems with visas and statelessness, the need to be with her. Una, who feared separation for even a day, was to tag along. She was to shuttle between England and Paris then go with them to the South of France for an indeterminate time. Before leaving Paris for London and Rye, John remarked that Evguenia’s clothes were shabby. Una helped choose a model coat from the Samaritaine de Luxe and half a dozen hats to be sent to Evguenia’s flat for her to try on.

31

How long O Lord, how long

Alone in London with Una at the end of March, John inveighed against the climate, traffic, theatres. She gave up the London flat to save on rent and servants’ wages. ‘O for the south and you, sunshine heat and you’, she wrote to Evguenia. ‘Don’t you know that I am keeping myself free in order to be near you?’ She saw her accountant and stockbroker and found she would pay no income tax if she stayed out of England nine months of the year. She arranged for the bank to increase Evguenia’s allowance to 2,050 francs a month and told her not to let her Russian friends wangle the money out of her. In daily letters she fussed that Evguenia must eat two hot meals a day, keep her flat well heated, wear her fur coat, not sleep with her head near the window, travel on buses or go to cinemas, must ‘beware of polotics and of all those fools who meddle in polotics’ and ‘remember she was a White Russian and hold her tongue’.

Evguenia must also hold her tongue about what she was up to with John. She now played table tennis with Natalie’s lover Nadine Wang. ‘Please, oh, please be jolly cautious what you say to her or before her. She is the person above all others who simply must not suspect our relationship. Via her and Natalie it would be all over Paris in 24 hours.’

‘France and Russia can do no wrong’, Una complained. John told her she wanted to be free of any ties that separated her from Evguenia. In London the two of them shopped for their journey south à trois: trousers, panamas and shirts for John who had put on weight and could not get into last year’s clothes, a brick-red dress for Evguenia, a white rabbit coat for Una.

Una was glad to go home to Rye if only for four weeks. Mabel Bourne had lit fires, the garden was full of daffodils, narcissi and primroses. Una dared to hope that what had been her life might be restored. She woke to birdsong and to sunshine on the pear blossom and the marsh. Together she and John gardened and went to mass. But one morning she caught her crying because she was missing Evguenia so much. John asked her if she would keep the house if she ‘lost’ her. Una supposed she meant by death. It would be her only possible refuge, she said. Her heart palpitated. Dr Curtis was called and prescribed bromides.

Disheartened by Una’s criticism John gave up on Emblem Hurlstone. She began The Sixth Beatitude which featured Rye landscapes and their working-class neighbours in Hucksteps Row. There was no hint of Evguenia in it and Una thought it inspired. ‘God has spoken and I feel we shall come to a safe port.’ She read it aloud and praised the descriptions of marshland and river, the snow over Rye, the smallpox epidemic, the demolition of cottages.

Life fleetingly seemed back to normal. ‘I scarcely dare to think it though, or set it down.’ John bathed in Una’s enthusiasm, called her ‘the womb of my spiritual children’ and said she owed her career to her. She warned Evguenia of the competition: ‘I wonder how you would endure being with me when I am working at this terrific pressure? I am irritable – I can’t eat my food, and sometimes I just fly out over nothing. I know this you see, but I simply can’t help it. Una has had to endure it for years.’ Evguenia offered to type the manuscript. Una kicked out. ‘If she was to trespass on that ground also I might as well retire or offer my services to an orphanage.’ She was the architect of John’s career, her amanuensis, reader and muse.

Fear of abandonment haunted her. The trials of John’s childhood became