Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

I wanted to go through the proper channels. But when I told Virginia, she arched her brows, and her eyes danced, and she said: ‘I think I will talk to my friends in the lobby. And one friend in particular. How much are we prepared to spend?’

(She has picked up the habit of sitting in the lobby and — what I can only call holding court . It seems they can’t get enough of her. Whereas I have had a basinful.)

Two days later she was laughing on the landing. I opened my door to see what was up. She was brandishing a red UK passport. ‘Look at this, it is REMARKABLE! I could leave tomorrow for Samarkand!’

I opened it. It was astoundingly good. Not a crease in the plastic over the photo. Virginia’s face, skilfully tinted. She said ‘They took the photo off the internet.’

‘Yes, Virginia. That’s all very well. But what will happen to the person who owned it? How did your friend get hold of this?’

‘ Obviously it’s stolen, Angela. And then they adjusted some trifling details. One regrets the necessity, but there we are. You weren’t getting anywhere by being straitlaced.’

At least she had identification, of a kind. I went back to writing the list of things we could do together in my last few days.

(I’d asked her to jot down what she wanted to do, but nothing appeared on the piece of paper I put in front of her in the lobby, probably because she never stopped talking.)

‘She’s a riot,’ the oldest porter said to me as I stood waiting while she fetched her bag.

Yes, she could easily cause a riot.

Here is the plan I made for her.

1. Find Bloomsbury painters in New York galleries

2. Buy V.’s books from New York bookstores

3. Another walk in Central Park?

4. A drink in the Algonquin Hotel, where Dorothy Parker and her circle met

5. SEE STATUE OF LIBERTY

The sixth item only exists in my head.

6. Sort out what happens to V. after I go. Who can I find to look after her?

This question has become more urgent since Virginia started going out on her own. She’s been back to Bloomingdale’s and bought more clothes. I hypothesise that they were very expensive. A coat, yellow cashmere, the colour of sunlight. She sits in the lobby in various outfits, coral silk, turquoise shantung, topped this morning by a navy cartwheel straw hat of staggering dimensions.

VIRGINIA

I bought a hat. It’s almost a poem. A cloud-dark disk like a storm at sea. With a dotted veil like small bees blowing. Very satisfactory, yes.

ANGELA

10 AM in the lobby. We were meeting for items 1 and 2 on our list.

And there she was in her extravagant hat, perched like a blue and gold bird-of-paradise landed here from far away. She must have seen me raise my eyebrows. I didn’t mean to, but I never got used to her. At once she looked defensive, suddenly elderly, beak thrusting forward, awkward, anxious.

‘Virginia!’ I hope my tone wasn’t chiding. ‘I thought we were doing museums and bookshops this morning?’

‘I hope so.’

‘You seem to have dressed for a wedding.’

‘The hat is not appropriate?’

‘You look beautiful. Of course you do — ’ (she straightened up, she expanded, blossomed) — but, well, things have changed since the 1930s.’

‘When one went to galleries, one tried to look smart. We tried to look smart,’ she corrected herself. ‘But possibly I’m overdressed?’

And instantly she was deflated, her spine crumpled, the hat looked silly, her long white hands began kneading each other, her eyes crawled nervously across the floor.

Of course I didn’t want to upset her. ‘I would be proud to go out with you’ (I meant it) ‘and all the bookshops would be impressed, but we did think we’d go to Central Park afterwards, and Central Park is very windy, famously windy in fact — ’

‘It ain’t — ’ (laconic interruption from her friend in the lobby, but fortunately she did not hear it) ’your girlfriend just don’t get the hat, Ginny — ’

‘ — so I suggest, we come back after the park and pick up the hat before we go to the Algonquin. There it’ll be just perfect.’

‘Yeah, the Algonquin’s kinda elegant,’ her pal behind the counter added.

So that was decided, and off we went. But the hat came with us. She stood beside me, waiting for the taxi on the narrow pavement. The angle meant I couldn’t see her face, but out in the sun I couldn’t deny it: the indigo hat was a glorious presence, a dark pavlova full of air and light, poised on a long-necked porcelain cake-plate.

‘Virginia, we’re going to have fun.’

GERDA

Mum’s ‘In haste’ email was the final straw. She was having fun, half a world away! She hadn’t a clue what was up with me! She thought I would invite those Monsters to stay!!!!!

(I know they weren’t Monsters really, just girls. But I needed someone to take my side. I needed Mum to understand. In person, I could sometimes make her listen. Her not understanding was an actual Crime, not a Misdemeanour like most of what she did.)

I thought, ‘I’ll have to kill myself if I can’t get away from them. Mum isn’t listening. No-one cares.’ Then I thought, ‘No, I’d rather kill them .’

At school that day we read Sylvia Plath. I don’t think she’s so marvelous. But the teacher said, in a special solemn voice, ‘She is a great poet, who took her own life,’ as if the two things were actually connected.

And afterwards everyone went online and googled images of her. I had to hang back, because since what happened with Linda and Ayesha and the swimming pool, the word had gone round I was a Maniac, and I couldn’t be bothered to tell them I wasn’t. (Maybe I am a Maniac.) There were thousands of photos! ‘She’s really pretty,’ Cindy said, looking at one of her with long blonde hair in a blinding white dress with frills and lace that I would never be seen dead in, which Mum would say is ‘an unfortunate choice of words’, but still, and then they found another one of her in an itsy-bitsy bra-top and skirt and Anna sighed, ‘And she’s so thin,’ and everyone went on about her waist till I wanted to throw up and said ‘She’s cross-eyed,’ although I knew they would say ‘You’re jealous.’

To me she looked old-fashioned and mad. Her face is puffy, like a squinty-eyed goldfish. What sense does it make to kill yourself? If she’d stayed alive, she’d have written more poems. So even if I want to kill myself, I won’t, because I am going to Have a Life.

If you ask me, suicide is Pants.

This is a point where Mum would say, ‘There are things you will not understand until you’re older.’ But actually, I understand now. Maybe later I’ll understand less. I might get worn down by other people’s thoughts, all the ideas that everyone shares, like all of them thinking Sylvia’s great, pouring into my ears like sand till it’s blocked solid and I’m shut out. Then I’ll be old like everyone else.

My grandpa once said ‘Don’t cry, Gerda. You don’t have to believe what people tell you. And you don’t have to be like everyone else.’ And I always remember what he said.

I moved slowly away from the swarm round the screen, like a gang of weak moths, fluttering and struggling, who couldn’t get free from the Poison Light that came off her dress, her face, her waist.

That settled it then. I would go and find Mum. I would not be a victim. I was on my way!

Very early next day, while the Monsters were sleeping, faint Snurds of death-breath spoiling the morning, I slipped out of bed, picked up the small backpack I’d stuffed with things the night before (I was Dick Whittington, on the road to London), crunched down the gravel, hearing every footstep — what if a teacher was walking early? — looked back at the Abbey, which was red as blood, and saw for the first time it was full of eyes, cruel glittery windows in its greedy body, which had swallowed me up with so many others. Would they catch me and bring me back again?