It was a stark admission. And it was just not true that Evguenia had pursued John. John’s efforts at detachment were on her own account.
On John and Evguenia’s return they all went to the Home Office. ‘Lord what a jam, jews, jews, jews waiting to know how and where to find refuge’, Una wrote. John convinced a Mr Perks that Evguenia was her ward and a major beneficiary of her will. An unconditional visa was granted that gave her resident alien status. John was euphoric. ‘I have no words to express my gratitude to God’, she said. But over tea Evguenia lamented how she had wanted a French passport and French nationality. She said she would have been all right if left to manage her own affairs. Una said, ‘Well you didn’t seem to have managed very well when we met you.’ A row followed.
Evguenia went back to France with Europe on the verge of war. The Duce expelled all Jews from Italy. John and Una listened on the wireless to Hitler at Nuremberg. ‘This stupendous and terrible pageant’, Una called it. They heard again the overture to Wagner’s Meistersinger, the shouts of ‘Heil, Heil, Heil’. ‘He is an hysteric,’ John wrote to Evguenia, ‘I think an epileptic, a patriot in the extreme sense of the word and a fanatic.’
Chamberlain went to Munich to appease Hitler; ‘God bless Chamberlain’, Una said. There was mobilization on land and sea. Gas masks were distributed in Rye. John lost pounds in weight worrying about Evguenia. She appealed to her to come to Rye at once. Roosevelt appealed to Mussolini and Hitler to settle disagreements by discussion. And then on 29 September Chamberlain, Mussolini and Hitler signed the Munich Agreement. War seemed to have been averted.
John and Una left for Florence within days. Evguenia met them in Paris. She had filled their rooms at the Vouillemont with flowers. She seemed resigned to working as a nurse as the price of independence. John had a small growth on her lip which a Dr Ries excised. She smoked eighty cigarettes a day but no biopsy was taken.
In Florence bells pealed and the air was like champagne. John and Una marvelled at the cheapness of everything and the elegance of their flat in via dei Bardi. They bought furniture for what seemed like no money: a fourteen-foot sofa in blue damask, a twelve-foot Renaissance refectory table, a Venetian carved and painted bookcase. They acquired a poodle called Fido, which had pustules between its toes and which hated their other dog, Mary. They displayed their photographs of Mussolini, d’Annunzio, themselves, Ladye and Evguenia, the ivory statues of St Anthony and the usual votive offerings. But John, when unpacking, found that a textbook on flowers of the Dolomites had been left in Rye. She blamed Una. She became grey, incoherent and gasping with rage. She threw things round the flat, gripped Una by the shoulders and threatened to throw her into the street.
Evguenia wrote reiterating what she had tried so many times to say. She would not be coming to Florence for the winter. John had her book to write. They would only quarrel and accuse each other. Evguenia truly wanted to change their relationship. John went into black misery. She cried for two days. Her eyes were bloodshot, the lids puffed out. She wanted to go to Paris. She sent a wire asking Evguenia at least to write, at least to let her know where she was. Una with ‘sheer hatred’ rang Evguenia. Evguenia then wrote that if John wished she would come for a few days, as Una suggested, but what purpose would it serve?
She came from 13 to 20 November. John booked her a room at the Gran Bretagne. On an evening together there Evguenia told truths that it hurt John to hear. She was more normal than John thought and she did not want to have sex with her any more. She felt uncomfortable at being in a same-sex relationship and wanted if possible to marry a man. She hoped they would stay friends, go on seeing each other and writing letters but she was adamant about not being in the same town with Una for more than brief periods. John should accept that she herself was not free.
John went to Una in despair. Only involvement with a man could explain such rejection. Evguenia must be having an affair with a Russian soldier. She wanted to kill him. She herself was not going to live without sex, she would get it where she could and did not care who with. Una told her she was fifty-eight and should exert self-control or she would make life hell for herself. They got to bed at two in the morning.
Una was worn out. She could not bear to witness John’s suffering and abasement, ‘the pain of her caring so intensely for another, the ever recurrent doubt how can her affection for me be anything but a habit and a sense of duty. Would she really care deeply if it were I whom she must lose? Life is no easy road to travel these days.’
John said she wanted to spend Christmas at the bottom of the Arno. There was to be no tree, no presents, no festivities of any sort. The lavatory overflowed, Mary was given away for yelping and incontinence and Pearl Buck won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Then Evguenia wrote that because John sounded so depressed and was ‘pig pining’ so badly, she would come out at Christmas, take her holiday and stay into the New Year. Una felt panic and despair. ‘In the weeks to come I shall owe any hours alone with John to Evguenia’s wish to be away from her or with others.’
John resurrected. She wired money to Evguenia,
