Angelica Garnett

THE old farmhouse called Charleston stood with its barns at the foot of the South Downs in Sussex, a huddle of flint, brick and red tile in a heady smell of cows. A large pond lay in front of it, and orchards straggled to one side. It might have been any house in the area, save that when the small windows swung open they revealed walls of yellow ochre and Indian red, stuffed bookcases painted with putti and flowers, doors covered with dancing nudes—and on the north side, in the walled garden, a riot of statues and fanciful mosaics among the half-wild red-hot pokers. This, between the wars, was the Bloomsbury group's retreat, where colour protected them like an electric fence.

In that garden there also lurked a child. She hid behind the pampas grass or in the potting shed, the princess of the place, in a grown-up's silk jellabah with a flowering artichoke for her sceptre, listening for the squeak of the gate. She was too shy, too inconsequential, too inadequate, to interrupt the men who smoked and read their newspapers on the terrace: Lytton Strachey with his intimidating long beard; John Maynard Keynes, who had once poured bath salts over her; Roger Fry with his kites and misbehaving motor car; Leonard Woolf, who sternly handed out striped humbugs after tea; and tweedy Clive Bell with his pink, perfumed hands. Clive was her father, she was told, but he was curiously detached about it. He indulged her, as everyone did, letting her run as free as a young deer, but it was something less than love that he gave her.