Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

(I suddenly remembered arriving hopeful — how sad and pathetic that I’d hoped to be happy. Oh woeful, woeful, I had dreamed of having friends! I AM A DIV! I AM A DOUBLE, TREBLE DIV!! I started running till I got to the corner but I had to stop because the bag was heavy.)

And with my face scrunched up against remembering I hurried on down the torturous drive, under Spiteful yew trees and monkey puzzles, but as I crept out on to the public road, the bus arrived, we zoomed on to the village, and my heart lifted, back among Normal People, cheery women taking their kids to school, and I used my last cash to get a ticket to London, and before midday, I was home again.

ANGELA

Sometimes New York felt — alien. The streets so hard and straight and bright. The traffic on Fifth Avenue was stalled again.

VIRGINIA

The store-fronts stared at us, flashing in the sun, blank-faced, clean, a line of giants, and insect people streamed into the dark, then out again clutching tiny parcels; it seemed both communal and purposeful, as if they were under orders from afar.

(When I was shopping, had I looked like that? But no, I chose things, I improvised. Shopping, for me, meant freedom — did it?)

ANGELA

Virginia had removed her hat. ‘I love it even when it’s on my lap!’

And then she began to talk about the money.

‘What would £500 a year in the 1930s be today in dollars?’

‘I don’t have a calculator in my head,’ I said.

‘What is a calculator?’ she asked.

‘It does our maths for us,’ I told her. ‘No-one today can do arithmetic.’

‘Is there one in your laptop book?’

She’s learning, but she’s not there yet. ‘I have a calculator in my phone.’

But when she got too much information, she simply ignored it. Her mind was on its own thermal.

VIRGINIA

‘About the money. If I stay here a year — if I am allowed to stay here a year — I’ll be able to live by writing, I suppose. But it will take time to write a novel.’

ANGELA

I was taken aback. Of course she was a writer, what else would she do? But I hadn’t considered what would happen next. Because Virginia Woolf had done her writing — Virginia Woolf the historical figure. There it was in the university libraries, the rows of volumes, the critical editions. It must be over; she had entered the canon. How could it all begin again? Would she be Virginia Woolf Mark 2? Of course, she couldn’t change her name, because her name was everything. This would be, what, her Late Period? ‘Posthumous Period’ was too weird. Would she write a novel about New York? Publishers would fight over it.

I felt suddenly, sharply territorial. Writing about our world was, well, my job. Though of course her observations were — of interest.

VIRGINIA

‘I will need a safety net.’

ANGELA

New York, outside the window, looked very expensive. I got out my phone and googled the money.

First ‘inflation rate since 1930’. There were two different ways of calculating: one retail prices; the other, earnings.

The first result was surprising enough. Using retail prices, £500 a year would now be £25,000 a year. Above the average UK national wage. In New York, $40,000, which sounded like more. So to bring Virginia’s dictum up to date, the ‘Shakespeare’s sister’ of today would now need $40,000! Suddenly it sounded a lot less modest, Virginia’s prescription for what a writer needed.

Then I tried the same things using the ‘earnings’ index, which I thought would come out less. But here the results were truly spectacular. A wage of £500 in 1930 would be £76,000 today — which translated as $123,000!

Suddenly I worried about why she had asked me. Of course she was thinking of the money in the strong room; $123,000 was more than we had!

The relevant measure clearly had to be prices.

I told her ‘Virginia, you won’t believe this, £500 a year in today’s money is $40,000.’

Her beautiful, full lower lip dropped. ‘It’s not possible. Is it? Such a lot of money.’

‘It is a lot of money,’ I said, relieved.

‘I was hoping — that is to say I hoped — I wondered if I could draw a year’s income from the money that we made selling the books. But I can’t take $40,000. Because it was you who came up with the plan.’

And then I felt ashamed, of course. Because Virginia asked for so little.

(Yet I couldn’t forget the $400 shirt, and that hat had to have been awesomely expensive.)

VIRGINIA

‘Oh I do so love my navy-blue hat.’

(Its spotted veil, light as a breath; sea-mist dotted with tiny swallows.)

ANGELA

No, I couldn’t begrudge her it. Though I half-remembered something from the Diaries . Leonard had called her ‘extravagant’. Was she unworldly but extravagant?

‘Virginia, if you liked — I could look after the rest of the money for you. We can’t leave it here indefinitely. I can just open a new account. I don’t want any of it, honestly. It’s your money. It’s a pleasure to help.’

So that was decided, and I felt better, though I knew I might regret the decision later.

(There was a discrepancy in one of my accounts, the so-called joint account with Edward, my debit card account, which I myself had never used abroad since a lot of trouble with a fraud in Paris. I’d looked online a day ago and it seemed to be several hundred short. I suspected Edward might be drawing funds, though he’d told me, when we opened it, after he made all the money from The Palace of Ice , that he wanted it to be ‘my little hoard’ — yes, he did sometimes put money in, but all the same, it was meant for me.)

But no, I didn’t take Virginia’s money. I hope I did my best for her. I tried to be a daughter, not a jealous sister.

Even though, at close range, she was exhausting, it was like being eaten alive by an emu, the long neck always turning on you.

‘Is all of history in your computer? The history of money, and peoples, and wars, and clothes, and food? It’s impossible.’

Of course, it seemed impossible to those who came before the internet.

‘It’s a kind of net … that trawls for fish … every kind of fish, and shell, and coral, and millions and millions of grains of sand, and old rubbish, and plastic bags … it misses things, but it’s not selective.’

‘But every book must be selective.’

‘That’s the trouble. On the internet, it’s the reader who has to be selective.’

‘How can you choose if you don’t know what’s there?’

‘You enter a search — something like a fishing-hook — and a huge rush of material comes up. Then it’s over to you to pick what you want.’

‘ Caveat emptor ?’ she said, nodding, her big grey eyes alight with interest. ‘ Caveat lector , I mean?’

‘Virginia, I don’t know Latin.’

‘But you went to the university? Well, it means, ‘Reader beware’. I never went to the university, but all of us knew Latin. My sorrow was that my Greek is second-rate, whereas my brothers all learned Greek from the nursery. Girls didn’t go to school — ’

‘I actually went to a rather good school.’

‘Then I don’t understand why you don’t know Latin. And you write books — you’re an author? Auctor auctoris . You must know some Latin.’

‘It’s a different world,’ I said, despairing.

It was a phrase I grew tired of repeating. She knew so much — had read so many books, though some of the authors meant nothing to me — read literature in Greek and Latin — yet knew so little, because time had moved on, shouldering past her, greedy, brutal, chewing up names, forgetting faces, spewing out new things to bury their tracks.