Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

ANGELA

Virginia was hyperaware of odours. Chemical odours, not her own. She found the interiors of buildings stifling. I took her for a walk in Central Park. She became so elated I started to worry.

VIRGINIA

Free at last! We had been walking for an hour and still not reached the northern tip. It was almost like being in the country. (Not quite: running people kept passing us, covered with sweat, attached to machines.) Spring had scattered the park with beauty — as we entered from Fifth Avenue, the sun on the plane trees was fresh & bright, each tiny leaf was blowing, dancing — the stuck traffic had turned to a procession, yellow taxis played their horns, blinkered horses shook coloured plumes & even the plastic flowers on their carriages shone with life, quivered like feathers — sea-winds had blown the grime away — everything looked crystalline. A fur of tiny yellow-green crystals electrified the outline of branches, mauve and white crocuses starred the grass, there were dazzling mirrors of silver-blue sky on the frieze of pale towers around the edges.

ANGELA

She knew about plants, much more than I do. ‘Oh, look at this darling maple,’ she cried, pointing to a gnarled, slightly stunted tree that in close-up was covered with vivid red-yellow flowers that burst straight from the wood, small tufts of tassels.

VIRGINIA

So fiercely young. A wrinkled black tree bleeding bright blossom before it had leaves. ‘It’s an old tree that can’t wait to be young.’

ANGELA

So many things made her laugh with pleasure. Her teeth were bad, grey-blue and yellow, but her face was still astonishing, transfixed with joy in this New York morning –

Why did I feel — excluded?

Perhaps I was losing my joy in living, the magical thing that Gerda has. Was it because I was responsible, and always thinking about someone else? First Gerda, of course, but now Virginia.

I worried about her, so very happy, too soon after being so sad.

The rest of that day went on practical matters. We needed violet ink and dip pen. Virginia simply could not comprehend that a pen and ink might be difficult to find.

‘It won’t be a problem. Everyone needs pens,’ she kept insisting, obstinate.

‘Actually, Virginia, no, they don’t.’

‘But children can’t use those electric writing-books’ (at first she called my computer that, because to her it was a book on which one wrote.)

‘Actually, Virginia, yes, they do. It’s a laptop, as I said. A laptop.’

‘Laptop,’ she said. ‘Yes, I like it. Short, and final, open and shut. Like “lapwing”, yes, a bird on the lap. A flap of the wing, it’s done. Laptop.’

‘Nice, Virginia, yes. To us, though, it’s just — functional.’ It was slightly annoying, the way Virginia arrogated to herself the role of poet. I could have thought of all those things. But because she got there first, I didn’t.

In Bloomingdale’s, though we were looking for ink, Virginia was constantly distracted, astonished by the wealth of the twenty-first century. ‘The colours are so — dense and deep,’ she said. ‘So bright as well. You’re drenched with colour.’ She kept crying out and pointing: curtains of peacock-blue moiré satin, piled cushions of crimson devoré velvet, pale lemons, terracottas, all peculiarly bright and clear against Bloomingdale’s sharp black-and-white floor-tiles. Crystal, silk, soft leather. Gleaming porcelain, gold and silver. The blaze of electric light dazzled her. ‘How do they make the lights so bright ?’ Of course, her last memories were of the war, the browns and greys of the austerity years. Her eyes widened further when she saw the prices.

‘Is everyone in New York a millionaire?’ she asked.

‘Manhattan is mostly the rich and their servants.’

(Perhaps no world should have so much money? The bit of me that grew up working-class still had an appetite for more. New York — the city with everything. Things were less comfortable when one was with Virginia.)

And could we find pen and ink? We could not. It was as if our world no longer needed to be written. It was simply there , solid, confident, lush.

We tried in Sachs, we tried Bergdorf Goodman — everywhere we went, the idea of ‘pens’ was met with polite astonishment.

‘We used to stock them, but not for years.’ There was a tacit comment: you’re out of date , and of course, Virginia was out of date, it was one of her plus points, really, being vintage –

But had I become vintage without noticing? I had a pen in London, I used it for signing, a beautiful Waterman with a gold barrel that Edward gave me for a wedding present — and for heaven’s sake, I was not exactly old.

I was only forty-nine, and on Facebook and Twitter!

Going round with her must have made me seem older. I suppose, age-wise, she looked like my mother, but in some respects she felt like my child. I was her midwife in the twenty-first century.

After hours of searching and repressed irritation, — why did she never stay where I left her? — we found the pen in the oddest place, thanks to a recommendation from the Waddington doorman, who bought razors there. It was a first-floor business up a dark stairway on Fifty-seventh called ‘Shaverland’, which had a sideline in antique pens. An old man who introduced himself as Moshe nodded and frowned when we told him what we wanted. Sighing, he got up and stood on a chair, huffing and puffing alarmingly, to pull out drawer after drawer of pens. Each time he heaved himself up, swearing, lurched perilously back again, then finally laid down the drawers side by side, with a triumphant crash, on the glass of his counter.

‘Dat’s all I got,’ he lamented. ‘Once I had ten times more of dese things. Take your pick lady, just take the lot. It kills me getting up dere after them.’

‘I don’t care to write with fountain-pens,’ said Virginia, unmoved by the effort he’d made. ‘I have used them, but they make a mess.’

‘Well fountain-pens is what I got,’ he said. ‘You want computers, you go elsewhere. De udder lady asked me for antique pens. Course all pens is antique nowadays.’

Not hoping for much, I explained what we wanted — ‘Dip pens.’ His eyes lit up behind crusted spectacles. Wrapped in a soft, ink-stained pink cloth he kept half a dozen old dip pens, which he spread triumphantly in front of us, then limped off to fetch a big bottle of black ink, an aged, moth-eaten piece of blotting-paper, and a lined notebook. ‘See, lady?’ he said to Virginia, who was still looking sceptical, ‘we got da lot here, we got it all.’

‘Choose, Virginia. Try one out.’

Sulkily she chose two or three. She had evidently taken against this process. I was so looking forward to seeing her writing, but she dipped the first pen, scratched it on the paper, frowned, dipped and dipped again, an irritable bird bent over the inkwell.

‘Your ink has run out,’ she said crossly.

‘It ain’t!’ he protested. ‘You’re doin’ it wrong.’

They glared at each other over the counter. ‘She is a professional writer,’ I put in.

‘If ya don’t want it, don’t take it.’

‘Take it, Virginia. Choose one or two.’

‘How can one choose when one cannot test it?’

‘It’s OK,’ I told the man. ‘These will be fine.’

‘Your friend don’t know how to use a pen.’

‘I most certainly do!’

‘Ya don’t.’

‘She is actually a very well-known writer.’

‘Yeah? What’s your name?’

She stared at him, then with deliberation enunciated ‘Virginia Woolf.’

‘Virginia Who? I ain’t heard of you. You’re not Jackie Collins. You’re not Stephen King.’