Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

The lobby staff seemed to adore Virginia. They obviously thought she embodied Olde Englande, and bathed her in courtly bows and beams whenever we left the hotel together.

(Yes, very sweet, but Virginia milked it. Sometimes I felt I hardly existed.)

She was learning to do things solo, thankfully. Which was a relief, since now I had only two and a half days left in New York. The conference was preying on my mind. I still hadn’t finished revising my paper, though I was getting my quotes together. The hostile critics could be so savage! Sometimes I found that rather bracing, and allowed myself a horrified snicker. Of course I didn’t say a word to Virginia.

As things were, would I be able to leave her?

‘Virginia, we must make a plan.’

GERDA

I have received an email from my mother. I am obviously Concerned about her, which is what she sometimes says about me, when she is on the phone to other mothers, but she doesn’t mean it, she is just getting in on whatever they say they are worried about, eg. Drugs, Sex, Boys etc., though I have never done any of that.

I WILL FIND A WAY TO WORRY HER LATER!

Hallo Sweet Pea! (It’s what she calls me, I TOLD her not to)

Thank you for your lovely story which I read quite quickly — I will soon re-read it but life is rather rushed just now. I read all three bits and it’s really funny. How ever do you think it all up? You really are a genius.

(But she doesn’t mean it, she’s just saying it, whereas I AM a Genius, with a Genius IQ. My old school told her, but she forgot. I TOLD HER THE STORY REALLY HAPPENED TO ME. SHE REALLY IS UNSATISFACTORY. Or perhaps she has lost her glasses again, and I’m not there to help her find them.)

How’s school? Now I have to explain something very important and peculiar which is happening to me. Only you in all the world will believe me. Please do believe me, darling, I’m counting on you.

(Yes, but she didn’t believe MY story!)

You did know who I meant by Virginia Woolf? Or possibly you’ve googled her? The most famous woman writer of the last century, she’s brilliant, I’ve always admired her, she’s said to be a snob but she’s beautiful and clever and her face is all over twentieth-century university literature courses, as you will find if you decide to do one. I don’t really know what to say about her except every sentence she writes is poetry! But she went mad and killed herself. I am shorthanding, of course.

(She made Woolf sound like a total mong. The writer who I love at the moment is Kurt Vonnegut, because he is funny. And great. He’s dead like her, but he didn’t kill himself, in fact he fell over and hit his head and died despite not wanting to. I thought, ‘He’s loads better than that old woman.’)

Virginia has come back to life. She just appeared one day in the library. I was reading her, for the conference, an important, international one as you know, where I have been invited to speak

(That’s the first time she’s mentioned it. My mother may have Alzheimer’s.)

(She has NEVER told me. I would have remembered. I know I have to keep tags on my mother. I have always instructed her to tell me her movements, and now it’s more important than ever, with Dad not here, and Possible Boyfriends. She’s out of practice, she will choose the wrong ones)

(at least I hope she is out of practice)

and Virginia walked in. She isn’t a fraud. She’s the real deal. But now she’s lost in the twenty-first century. She had no money, she was totally helpless, and obviously I had to take care of her.

(Has my mother been spending my inheritance?)

I don’t know what I will do with her when I have to go and speak at the conference

(or to be fair, she may have told me at Christmas, I was mostly in a rage with her at Christmas because she had bought all the wrong presents, so it’s possible I wasn’t listening, and in any case, Mum talking is boring)

and in fact I am one of the plenary speakers. By an irony, the conference is all about her — ‘Virginia Woolf in the 21st Century: Cross-cultural and Transformational Approaches.’ I can hardly take her to her own conference!

(why not? Wouldn’t it be helpful to have the actual writer telling all the academics and people like my mother where they are going wrong? Surely it would be good for them.)

(Still I do feel proud to think of my mother addressing an International Conference, in New York or Harvard or wherever it is, with all the academics listening to her, which never happens to her at home … I do remember about the conference. I do remember that Mum was thrilled.)

So I’ve been working out where I can park her safely. Imagine, she had been dead for decades . There is so much to explain to her. It’s very like having a new baby.

You are my baby and my best-beloved. I do hope you’ve made some nice friends at school. Why don’t you write and tell me all about them?

(I did tell you. They are horrible.)

I can’t send many emails just now, I’ll be busy with Virginia for the next two days and then I am rushing off to the conference — I am dying to ring you, but the school does ask us not to disturb you in your first two terms, I suppose they think you are all weeds and might beg your parents to take you away! But I know you always love your schools.

(stop talking)

The biggest hug in the world from your mother.

(who is useless)

PS. Don’t forget to brush your teeth.

(SHUT UP Bum Face)

To write back properly would have taken me two hours, and I had some important plans to carry out, involving running away from school, so I kept myself to a single question.

Dear Bum Face

Why can’t Virginia Woolf go to her own conference?

Yours sincerely,

Gerda Lamb-Kaye, Genius >:-(Etc

(You may wonder why I wasn’t more surprised about Virginia Woolf coming back to life. It’s because people come back to life all the time.

My grandma talks to me in the night. Grandma Lorna who looked after me, and so did Grandpa, until they died. Sometimes she gets in the bed and cuddles me, which is also something she did for Mum when Mum was little and had asthma, and Grandma would come to her bedroom in pyjamas and tell Mum stories till she went to sleep, and when I was really upset about the Furies, Grannie crept back, quite shyly, after a long while, and got in with me, and held me tight, and slipped away before it was light.)

Dear Gerda,

IN HASTE.

I’m not totally taken with the name Bum Face.

Yes, I could take Virginia to the conference, but the complications! She’s — difficult.

You haven’t told me any names of your friends. I do care, you know. I am a loving mother. Perhaps you would like to ask them to stay? I’ll look in my diary and see when I’m there.

Lots and lots of love

Mum

PS. It’s OK about calling me ‘Bum Face’. I take it as a badge of honour. Did I remind you about cleaning your teeth? Xoxoxox

ANGELA

Serving Virginia. It was endless! I’d spent what seemed like hours on the phone trying to get Virginia a passport. Some proof of identity was bound to be needed once I was no longer on the scene to help her. She might decide to go back to Europe; in the long run she would need a bank account. I’d been dealing with the UK Borders Agency. When I saw the forms, I wanted to laugh. ‘Free for those born before 1928’ — if only we could reveal her real birth-date! ‘ Purpose of your visit to the USA .’ I put ‘Tourist’. She was a tourist — a time tourist. I said (with truth) that her old passport was lost.

But no, the agency could not be appeased. They required documentary evidence that she existed. Stubbornly, blindly, the bureaucrats refused to believe in Virginia’s reality.