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

who did not notice, John lunched alone with her at Pruniers. Una did not eat and complained that John cared only about Evguenia’s feelings, not hers. John told her again that she was in love with Evguenia without whom she had no life.

But Evguenia after two years of tension was less keen to have sex. On 22 June John called unannounced at her flat. Evguenia was alone but not pleased to see her. John’s violence erupted. It equalled her mother’s. She trashed the flat. She destroyed things she had given Evguenia, tore up photographs of herself, some of her letters, her own books. She broke the frames of pictures and etchings, cut up the crocodile bag she had given her for Christmas. In the desk she found only letters in Russian which she could not read. ‘She appears to have wrecked the whole place with incredible strength and persistence’, Una wrote in her diary. ‘But I think she had had long and sore provocation.’ Next day, Dr Fuller asked if they had had a peaceful time in Grasse.

There was summer to consider – where to go. John suggested St Odile, a religious retreat. As ever, Evguenia’s lack of documents was a problem. John decided to adopt her to give her nationality. She wanted to be Evguenia’s next of kin, her mother perhaps, or her father, or her husband. Una thought her parenting aspirations would be viewed with suspicion. She asked Dr Fuller if he knew of any ‘respectable Englishwoman’ who would adopt Evguenia for £300. He suggested one of his patients. Rubinstein quashed the plan. He told John adoption did not confer nationality in either America or England.

They set off again in July, this time in a hired car, with a trunk each, seven pieces of hand luggage, a dog, its basket and two birds. St Odile was full of tourists and dogs were not allowed. They moved to the Grand Hôtel de Bains du Holswald, 600 metres up in the Vosges. There were green meadows, canteen food, ‘bourgoisie’ and torrents of rain. They moved to the Grand Hôtel des Trois Epis, 700 metres above the valley of Munster. Una was fed up with it all.

In the two years since Bagnoles we have hardly been out of hotels. Paris, Beauvallon, Sirmione, Padova, Venice, Grasse, Cannes, Trois Epis, packing and unpacking in hotel bedrooms, fitting our possessions in inadequate accommodation, bargaining for prices and scanning large bills with anxious eyes, eating in uncongenial dining rooms, over-rich and unwholesome hotel food. A dreary perspective behind us and ahead of us for many months to come. A beloved home of our own which for all the good we get out of it is non-existent.

She was forty-nine, John fifty-five, Evguenia thirty-one. John would not return even for a few weeks to England until she felt sure that Evguenia was cured. She said she did not care if the Forecastle burned down. Una told her she was abrogating her genius and must stop living like a satellite in the orbit of ‘this wretched girl’. Total sales, worldwide, of The Sixth Beatitude were only 6,249. Una deplored ‘this strange and sudden incursion of the sex element from this Russian mediocrity’ and pined for how she and John once lived. She read again The Ladies of Llangollen and evoked ‘the great fight of The Well for themselves and all their kind’.

A letter was forwarded from a woman commissioned by Mrs Visetti to write a life of Alberto. She asked John to describe the influence of her stepfather on her career and to offer ‘any suitable anecdotes’. Una told Rubinstein to reply that John forbade mention of her name in the book and to remind the woman that John’s letters were controlled by copyright: ‘We cannot allow her to be made ridiculous in connection with that dreadful, cretinous, lecherous old man, or any lies to be published concerning his fictitious influence.’

For a few days John and Evguenia went away alone to Ballon d’Alsace. They enjoyed each other’s company, walked and took photographs of medieval buildings. But then John worried that Una would be fretting. She could not choose between them and she hurried back to Una. ‘Had things been different my life might have been so contented, so peaceful’, she told Evguenia, without focusing on what those things might be. ‘I could not do much for her but be there’, Evguenia said. ‘She needed me like water, like air, it seems, and yet she would not give allowance for my own feelings when I was cooped up with them both. She knew that she was asking too much, I suppose, in the very deepest of her heart, but would not admit it to herself.’

Back in the hothouse of Una’s hostility and Evguenia’s discontent, John broke down. She cried when her morning coffee came without milk. She was pale and intermittently weak and exhausted. She walked like an invalid with trembling legs. Her eyes were inflamed and Una made a great display of bathing them. She spoke of life having defeated her and rounded on Una whose reproaches, jealousy and stranglehold she said made life hell.

Una fought back. She was, she said, totally cut off from normal life and had no one to talk to for advice. John would have to accept that she could not be calm and cheerful, that she would have to be superhuman not to mind. Twenty years’ mutual fidelity had not prepared her to expect or endure all this. She dreamed she was a nun being stoned to death in Rye, suspected, wrongly, of having sex with the priest. His name was Father Martin but she called him Henry. He kissed her on the mouth which she felt to be wrong. ‘We shall be apart in body but together in spirit’, she told him, then was carried into the house of a woman who let her die there out of charity.

In September news came via Rubinstein that Mrs Visetti had a fractured hip, was