Scenes I Left Behind.
2. A visit to Charleston, home of the Bloomsbury Group
Second in this short series of scenes I cut from my forthcoming novel WHERE THE SEA LAVENDER GROWS is a scene where my character Elise visits Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex, England. Charleston Farmhouse was the rural retreat and studio for artists Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell - members of the Bloomsbury Group - from 1916 - 1978. The house, which the couple transformed into a living art work, complete with hand-painted interiors and furniture, was the inspiration for Marsh House, in Where The Sea Lavender Grows.
I’ve visited Charleston several times myself - I went to art college in Brighton in East Sussex, and one of my tutors had a personal connection with Charleston. I love Charleston; nestled at the foot of the South Downs, it’s wonderful to tour the house and garden and to imagine this community of artists and writers living their lives there. Sadly, I can’t show you images of the interior as these are subject to copyright, but here are some picutures of the house and garden, and a painting by Roger Fry, another member of the Bloomsbury group, of his children eating breakfast at Charleston.
In WHERE THE SEA LAVENDER GROWS, my character Elise has been appointed to restore the murals and hand-painted decorations at Marsh House back to their former glory, and in this - now cut - scene, she travels to Charleston Farmhouse for inspiration together with Sam, the carpenter employed on the project.
‘This room is now set out as Clive Bell’s study,’ Marie said in her best tour guide voice. ‘When Duncan and Vanessa first lived here, it was the lounge. That inlaid table is in Nineteenth Century Dutch Style. It was a wedding present to Vanessa and Clive.’
The table – a skilled example of marquetry and woodcraft – drew Sam like a magnet. Elise went over to look at the hand-painted door panels, which were amongst her favourites in the house. She’d lost count of how many times she’d admired them over the years, and wondered now why she liked them so much. It was their colourful energy, she supposed. The picture on the top panel was of a still life of a bright red poppy flower in a vase in front of a window, and the bottom panel depicted a tumbling acrobat wearing skimpy blue trunks.
Sam joined her, and she saw her grandmother had been detained by one of the other volunteer tour guides.
‘They’re beautiful panels,’ he said.
‘Yes, I love them. The lower one is actually a replacement. Vanessa Bell’s sons kicked it in accidentally when they were playing, so Duncan Grant painted the acrobat instead.’
Sam laughed, smiling at Marie as she joined them.
‘The boys were actually re-enacting the Sacking of Rome actually,’ she supplied, launching into a long tale, and Elise left Sam to it, crossing to the window to study the hand-decorated shutters.
How perfectly simple the decoration was – just hand-painted lines and blocks of watery colour – and yet, with the sun shining across the painted surfaces, the effect was fresh and beautiful. The shutters could have been decorated the previous week, not almost a hundred years previously. She wanted to run her fingers over the painted surfaces, but restrained herself.
Once again, Sam joined her. ‘Sylvia wants me to put shutters on all the windows at Marsh House for you to decorate,’ he said.
Elise felt a stirring of excitement. ‘I shall really enjoy doing that.’
‘Shall we go to the Dining Room now?’ Marie asked, leading the way out into the corridor and into a room with walls covered with bold stencilled wallpaper and a huge, hand-decorated dining table in the centre.
As she toured the room with Sam and her grandmother, half-listening to the facts Marie was sharing and half-thinking about how all of these ideas might be used at Marsh House, Elise began to feel that maybe it wasn’t just the project that was going to work out for her, but today, too. She hadn’t been expecting to enjoy this visit, but she was. It was always so good to see her grandmother, and Sam was good company too. And then there were the wonderful, treasures contained in the house. Yes. So far, it hadn’t turned out to be the painful endurance test she had dreaded it might be.
But then they went into Vanessa Bell’s bedroom and Elise immediately saw the little hand-painted cupboard next to the sink – three poppies in a line-drawn vase – and realised how very wrong she had been. Lying on top of the cupboard were two simple cups and a jug, left there as if by Vanessa after her morning ablutions.
It had been one of these cups Charlie had picked up on their visit two years previously. When he’d been well, his cancer in remission. With no hint that any other state of being would exist.
Why did this scene have to be cut? Well, repetition of Elise’s grief about her son again really. That and the fact that, in the end, it felt best to keep my characters in Norfolk, with the focus on Marsh House and its inhabitants, past and present. Sometimes, writers just have to make difficult decisions!