Can we never get away from Una and think only of ourselves? Even if she did hate you, which I absolutely deny, can’t my adoration for you make up for any hatred in the world? What does it matter so long as we two love each other? Oh, I know that it would be happier for you if my circumstances were different – if I were free; I know this and I sympathise with all you feel: but am I to be sacraficed to my circumstances? No my honey-sweet, you cannot, you will not do this thing. Why can’t we be at peace – Oh, give peace to your poor John who loves you. I can’t eat, or sleep, let alone work, for my heart is never certain or at rest. Would it help at all if you tried to look upon me as a man who was already married when we met? Had I been a man I should have married Una and then met you and loved and loved you and forced you to love me back – as I have done. The result would have been that I could not have divorced a faithful Una even had I wished to. She on her part would never have divorced me, she is a Catholic & would not divorce Troubridge. So our situation would have been much the same as now, only with more scandle. There are many people living à trois here in this very town, I find, but they generally all manage to keep on terms. That is all you need do, just be on terms with Una. She matters so little to you really, you know – I do feel you give her undue importance …
There were conundrums, lies and leaps of logic. Una imputed Evguenia with cunning tactics. She thought her stance a ploy to get John for herself. Una knew that the problem of their triangle was now irresolvable. The point of its resolution had passed. Now, no side of it worked without the other. Una feared that if Evguenia left, John would be so desolate and their own relationship so intolerable she would have to let John go. John, when Evguenia withdrew, found it impossible to be alone with Una. She vented anger and disappointment on her. She told her she intended spending six months of the year with Evguenia.
Then my nerve went after these four weary years and I cried and stormed as I never thought or meant to do and could not get my control, while John raged that she would go away with Evguenia whenever she felt inclined. That she was going to Paris, would live there, that Evguenia should not be asked to live where she did not like.
Thus the well of woefulness. And the games people play.
The Forecastle seemed dead and the garden empty of flowers. Annie the maid was dour and there were moths in the carpet and in the rugs of the car. John did not want even to unpack. Her consolation was that Evguenia had agreed to join her for a fortnight’s holiday. She was to take her to Malvern, the place where she liked to declare love to her women, where she had lived with Dolly Clarke, then Mabel Batten and where with Una she had ‘broken faith’ with Mabel Batten in 1915.
Contrite that she had caused Evguenia to lose her chance of French nationality, she battled with the Home Office on her behalf. She told them Evguenia would never depend on the state because she guaranteed her in every way. She saw Harold Rubinstein and changed her will to make ample provision for her after her own death. Una professed to be glad. ‘I should not like any eventuality to leave the matter in my hands and so compel contacts I should rather avoid.’
John willed half her capital to Una and Evguenia. Dividends from the other half were to serve covenants for Mrs Visetti and the medical needs of them all. After the death of her beneficiaries that half of the capital was to go to the Sisters of the Poor Clares in Lynton.
At Smallhythe Edy Craig asked where Evguenia was. John said she was coming over on 15 August and that she was going away alone with her for a fortnight. She said Malvern was ‘too high’ for Una. Edy replied that it was not high at all. She wanted to know if John planned to leave Una. Olive Chaplin wondered how John would manage without her. ‘It was all to me inexpressibly humiliating, painful and degrading’, Una wrote.
John humiliated Una as she had humiliated Mabel Batten twenty-three years previously. It was hard to believe there was not some level of intended punishment, some score to settle, some test of acceptance or equation of revenge. When she left to meet Evguenia, Una spoke of writing to her while she was away. John said, ‘You aren’t going to pursue me with letters are you?’ Such notes as John then sent were instructions to a secretary. Una was to return John’s revised will to Rubinstein, check with the Home Office about Evguenia’s visa, check with Cook’s about Evguenia’s ticket to France. Alone at Rye Una found philosophical consolation. She interpreted events to suit herself and she apportioned blame:
I shrink under the consciousness that to outsiders we are just one of so many couples where the male dashes off to fresh fields and the female remains at home, enduring because she must, and trying to hide her hurts. And yet what is known, and will be assumed, is not the truth either, for no one will ever realise that in John fidelity and faithfulness go hand in hand. The physical never mattered to me anyway after the first misery and in any case was so small a part of our mutual devotion that
