Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

New outer garments were more of a problem. There was really no necessity, my suit would be good for several more years. I did not want to be obliged to her, and of course she was using her own money until I had managed to get some of my own.

I resisted, but she insisted, so we ended up back in Bloomingdale’s.

And then my mood underwent a sea-change, for oh, the glory of Bloomingdale’s! One particular colour called to me; one particular part of the spectrum. I wanted to be warm again. I think I had been cold for such a long time. I wanted to be in summer, although of course this was still only spring. Anything from yellow through orange to pink. The sunshine colours. An Italian wall. A street of Spanish orange trees. Angelica’s cheek on a July afternoon. Apricot: marrying pink and gold. It called to me from a satin hanger. Golden blush on a warm pink silk that glowed in their white extravagant light. A shirt, long-sleeved, with curved reveres that had something dashing, something dry about it — I tried it on last of a pile of things, I was about to take it off and leave, but at the last second I turned up the collar in the mirror of the changing-room — and in that instant, looking back at me, boyish, over my shoulder was the ghost of a self I had been once, witty, wide-eyed, mischievous, young. I peered through the curtains and summoned Angela.

‘I want to keep this,’ I said, and laughed.

‘Why are you laughing?’ She sounded suspicious. ‘Did you choose the most expensive one?’

It wasn’t her fault. Though she had good points, she constantly showed a side that was — common. I don’t like to use that word, of course one’s egalitarian, but Angela was obsessed with money. Perhaps she could not sell her books. When I inquired, she got rather angry & claimed she was actually ‘a best-seller’. I was fifty before I started making money, so I tried to judge her less severely.

Today I will have money of my own! One does need money — I’ll try that again. We all need money and a room of our own — I must remember not to use the ‘one’, I have noticed it’s fallen out of fashion, as if no-one wants to be singular now. Everything is ‘we’ — they feel things in herds, the citizens of the twenty-first century.

Regrettably, her guess about the blouse was right! ‘That will be $400, Ma’am.’ ‘ $400 ?’ Angela stared, her mouth tightening like the mouth of a purse.

I didn’t actually see her pay, she just gave him a small plastic card on which I suppose her address was written. The man put her card into a tiny machine that must have printed her address for their records. I would learn to do all these things in time — one would have to learn, if one was to stay.

To me, the prices made no sense at all, they were all unimaginably enormous, but she acted as though I had done it on purpose. For some reason I found that amusing, as if I were a young girl laughing at Nurse, so we left Bloomingdale’s with her in bad humour and me snorting quietly behind her.

But for me, the shopping trip was a success. I had a new skirt as well as the blouse, quite hideous but serviceable, in olive-green wool, which had the advantage of covering my knees, & it did go well with the apricot shirt, like leaves and fruit, like a late warm summer –

(if I were with Nessa, it would have been fun —)

This morning, the woman was annoyed again. Apparently I’d ‘spoiled the effect of the new clothes’, by snatching up my old tweed jacket at the last moment as a cover-up. I don’t know why, I suddenly felt naked, as if I might be laughed at in my brand-new get-up. With my tweed jacket, I had an old friend.

She sat as far away as she could on the seat of the yellow taxi. Because I knew she was trying to help me, I turned to her as we stopped at the traffic lights — curious traffic lights they have, bright yellow, suspended from blue sky, thin air — and said ‘You see, this jacket is moral support. Because I’m going to lose my books. They’re all I have left from — the old world. My jacket keeps me company.’

And at once she melted, and smiled at me kindly, and said ‘Of course, I understand. It’s just, that blouse cost $400. I’ve never spent that much on a blouse. I suppose you can’t understand our money. Perhaps you will, when you have some of your own. Before you know it, it will be gone.’

And then she said something more interesting. ‘You don’t have to worry about losing your books. You’ll be able to buy copies in any bookstore. Lots of people read you, as I said, Virginia. At least, those people who still read. We’ll go and buy you new books today.’

America wasn’t as I had once imagined, cars streaming smoothly to their destinations — ‘seventy abreast’, I think I wrote — no, they all cut across each other, and every ten minutes they all ended up in a blank stand-off of honking metal, noise I had never heard or imagined, the driver of the taxi-cab was swearing loudly and I said we should get out and walk, but Angela told me it was perfectly normal, ‘Sit tight, Virginia, it won’t take long. New York is like this every day. I don’t want you to get there looking wind-blown.’

It seemed I had to play the lady.

ANGELA

I didn’t want her to look like a loony. Getting a great writer into the shower is not the easiest thing to do, but I had managed that semi-successfully — her hair looked sweet and fluffy at breakfast, and without the odour, her beauty shone through — then at the last moment, what did she do? She only snatched up her pondweed jacket.

Yet I was growing fond of her.

The trouble was, she took up all my time. I was busy with her from morning to nightfall. I vowed that day I would update Gerda. I hadn’t been reading her emails properly. Not that I needed to worry about her. She had been so happy at all her schools, whereas other mothers had been through hell.

I said, ‘Virginia, about my daughter — ’

But at that moment, the taxi stopped, I saw the dark towers, we were there.

GERDA

Gerda and the Furies,

Part the Third

Childe Gerda to the Dark Tower Came

(This is a quote I have borrowed from Byron, which is one of the Best Bits in English.)

So we’ve come to the part where Cindy and her sidekicks gave me the ‘Special Present’ at breakfast. And I was confused about what to do, as they seemed to expect me to open it at once, with everybody looking, but I felt embarrassed, and besides I wanted to save it till later when there wasn’t so much to be happy about.

I did feel happy that Saturday breakfast. It was just because they’d taken trouble. Someone had really thought about me, though Mum had vanished across the Atlantic and Dad was working at the North Pole (this isn’t a joke, he’s a climate scientist, quite famous actually, Edward Kaye).

You could see from the envelope that they’d taken trouble with my name, written in beautiful lettering, probably by Cindy, who is artistic, though the art teacher hasn’t noticed it. So I thought that what was inside could only get better, and I always save the best till last.

So I just got up and said ‘Thanks a lot, I’ll open it after morning lessons,’ and they looked disappointed, but that seemed normal.

But actually I couldn’t wait. Only Cindy was in my set for English and she stared at me through the whole lesson. I thought it was a look of adoration, and I kept on waving and smiling at her (I am a Dimwit. I AM A DIMWIT! WRITE THAT OUT FIVE THOUSAND TIMES).

But I’m not a Dimwit, remember. They are.

Because when I finally got to my room after lunch, I couldn’t bear to wait till bedtime, and besides I wanted to tell them I liked it, because that would make them happy too.