The Transit of Venus

Ted is in bed with a girl he met at a conference. She asks if he has ever loved anyone besides his wife. He alludes to Caro and admits he never slept with her. She implies that he should act on his feelings for Caro because “you only live once, for Christ’s sake” (254).  

Caro is translating the Latin American poet Ramón Tregeár’s work from Spanish into English. He delivered the work to a friend before his arrest, who then passed it on to Caro. Tregeár sends Caro a note saying that if his death is “spectacular” she will better be able to publish the poems (261). When Tregeár dies an atrocious death, his work has a favorable reception. 

Ted returns home from the conference to find that Adam Vail has died of a stroke. He realizes that he has to write a comforting letter to Caro and that he loves her as much as ever. When he goes out into the garden, his wife’s beauty strikes him. He begins to tell her, “If you knew your beauty” (266), and they both know that he means that if Margaret knew her value, she would find a man who could love her as Ted cannot.

When her youngest son Rupert has back trouble, Grace befriends and falls in love with his Scottish doctor, Angus Dance. Grace finds Angus fascinating and thinks that her life pales in comparison to his, as though “years were missing, as from amnesia, and the only influential action of her life had been the common one of giving birth” (270). Grace finds ways to be close to Angus, including inviting him to her birthday party. In the presence of her husband, she wears a revealing black dress and thrills at the kiss Angus gives her.

Angus and Grace meet after the party, and in a rain-soaked rendezvous, he tells her he loves her. Though they go to a hotel, Angus insists that he will remain in the bar and will not commit adultery with Grace, however much she wishes it. He also says that he is going to Leeds to accept a promotion. Grace reflects that Christian has also been given a promotion, frustrated that men get to move and improve themselves while she must perennially stand still. Angus says that Grace’s seeming fulfillment as a housewife makes her unable to understand his solitude or despair. However, when he goes, she feels completely lonely. 

In a letter to his mother, Monica, Paul Ivory writes about seeing Caro at a party and says he wants to “do something with [the encounter]” (291)—perhaps write a play.

Caro and Ted talk, and while Ted is as much in love with Caro as ever, she asks after his family, whom she has never met. Seeing Paul Ivory produces complicated emotions in Caro, who feels “a sense of the long accident of life, and of Paul’s claim on her memory till death” (292). Caro is still mourning Adam’s death and plans to visit Josie in Sweden, where she has just had a baby. When Caro and Ted separate, she looks back, knowing that he will be there to watch her disappear. 

Paul and Caro meet in New York, where Paul is with his son Felix for leukemia treatment. Paul asks to see Caro the next day at her home. There he confesses that he let a man die when he was 25, and that he had a gay relationship with Victor Locker, the grandson of the couple who helped with Paul and Tertia’s engagement dinner at Peverel. Paul used to meet Victor at Kennington. Paul ended up paying blackmail the Lockers so that they didn’t ruin his reputation or land him in prison. Victor was also counting on Paul to provide his pension plan.

Paul learned that Victor was afraid of water and could not swim. When he spotted Victor sleeping under a tree, he did not warn him that the river would soon be flooded; he let Victor drown to free himself from his demands. Paul got away with his crime and found the deception thrilling, feeling as though he was capable of controlling mankind and defying natural laws. This was around the time that Paul married Tertia, who knew “[his] duality of tastes” (308).

Paul reveals to Caro that the one man who witnessed his act was Ted Tice, incorrectly assuming he has already told Caro about it. When Paul saw Ted at Peverel that day prior to his engagement party, he felt terrified and threw himself into his work and his affair with Caro. However, Paul did not confide in her, his reason being that she told Ted’s secret about the German soldier and so would likely tell Paul’s too. 

Caro visits Grace in England on her way to see Josie in Sweden. They go to visit Charmian Thrale in a nursing home. Afterwards, they go to Grace’s for tea. Grace and Christian note that Caro looks more beautiful than ever. Meanwhile, she is thinking of Ted Tice and the secret strength in his ability to keep a secret. The sisters talk about potentially visiting Australia, as they have been thinking about it more and more. 

Ted and Caro meet in Sweden and confess their mutual love. Caro tells Ted Paul’s story, just as Paul had predicted: “[O]ne day you will love someone else and tell my story” (332). They grow superstitious and fear that something will happen to kill one of them off and prevent a relationship. Ted claims that he has telephoned Margaret and told her about his reunion with Caro. He tells her to go and meet him at a hotel in Rome. He says goodbye to her at the airport barrier, and the last image is of Caro boarding the plane with “a long hiss of air […]” like “the great gasp of hull and ocean as a ship goes down” (337).