Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

Perhaps I had spoken aloud — ‘I’ll take you back to Leonard, to Lewes’ — for one of the librarians was staring at me fixedly.

Or not at me. No, behind me.

I heard, or half-heard, a croaking sound. Half-human. Distressed. Straining. And I turned in my chair. And saw.

VIRGINIA

Did I hear ‘Leonard’? Did I say ‘Leonard’? Can I now even remember how it was?

Suddenly from nothing

was I something again?

My own voice waking me from too far away –

hearing my own voice rather deep and tremulous, I thought & almost — old –

(for inside I was still young, a girl, when I died)

I followed it up

from the depths of cold watery sleep

into the warmth of a small dim room I did not know

a woman breathing as she read, lips half-moving, very serious,

a sigh a small smile

She was reading me with such strong desire and I wondered

‘Who is she?’

she has blonde hair but she is not young

I am on the threshold I’m too tired I don’t know

a fish jerking it’s me that she’s reading yes, it’s my soul it’s me –

And she reeled me in, hauled me up. A strain like a tooth being pulled.

ANGELA

This woman. This strange woman. That was all I thought. Tall and dusty in bedraggled green and grey clothes. A suit. The librarian said, ‘Excuse me. May I help you?’ Then closed in on her like a gaoler.

VIRGINIA

Stirring and gathering myself too late to go back –

an ache coming together

puckering a long fall of satin curtain

a wavering

a pulling together not wanting

to be seen

exposed

her eyes, their eyes

but oh –

the waking of the light

in the dark so long lost in my own crushed rib-cage

weighted with mud and slime though dying was no

worse than the terror nothing

is worse than the terror

Here, I am suddenly here.

Warm wood. Women. Electric lights. A strange room.

Two books in my hands. Yes, they’re mine. Hold them close to my body, hide them. Mine.

And, as if new-born, no fear. Was it over?

ANGELA

Almost before I knew what was happening, she was gone. In a pincer movement, two librarians hustled her out of the door. ‘If you don’t have a need for access to original material …’ one was saying, and the strange woman gaped like a fish, while the other librarian intoned, ‘The librarians in the open reading rooms will be happy to help you.’

The door swung shut. There followed a hubbub of librarian excitement, which is quiet, but the first words I could make out were ‘Who was THAT?’

And as soon as I heard it as a question, I knew the answer, and made for the door.

Out on the landing, a gaggle of Japanese tourists with cameras, a big-nosed man in a red woollen hat — but not her. So I ran down the stairs, and there, on the last flight but one, by a seat where a black boy in shades was sleeping, there she stood, yes it was her. A tall angular shape from the back, not going forward, hovering, leaning, like a tall-masted sailing ship. Her white fingers trailing on the balustrade, then touching two books, which she clutched to her ribs, shyly, as if in wonderment.

My breath caught. I slowed down, and came to her step by step.

Step

by

step.

I was afraid. I kept walking, I drew abreast.

I was any fan, any groupie, suddenly. I could see her face. Her great globes of eyes, darting down, away: hunted.

Perhaps I should have left her. But how could I have let her stumble out on to the streets of Manhattan on her own?

I had to say: ‘ Virginia? ’

VIRGINIA

She said my name, that first time, as if I belonged to her. They shan’t have me! She said ‘Virginia?’ and I was off like a hare. There were red ropes, I went the wrong way, a man in uniform stopped me & asked to look at ‘those books’, I had two of my own & he looked at me hard and said ‘Ma’am, are these from the library?’ — but I said ‘No’ & rushed on, with her after me. And then –

ANGELA

Half of me was laughing, half of me was shivering, nothing like this had ever happened, not to me. But I couldn’t let her go.

It was brilliant; it was impossible; it was so thrilling I could hardly breathe. It was Virginia Woolf in Manhattan. And I reached out my hand.

VIRGINIA

She touched me. It felt — electric. You see, I wanted –

ANGELA

It was like dipping my hand in water.

VIRGINIA

I wanted to come back.

ANGELA

I loved my life: I was in the thick of it. Things I had earned by writing my books. Yes, I’ve earned them, and I enjoy them. Films, travel, clothes, chocolate. I loved my daughter — I love my daughter. (It seems a long time since I emailed her.)

I love good food, and taking out money, nice thick chunks of it out of the wall. And no, I don’t have to feel defensive. My parents were poor, and my mother couldn’t cook. I like the sunny side of the street, because when I was a child, days were darker. When I was a child I was often afraid. And of course, more recently, problems with Edward. Eco-heroes are hard to live with.

It was more a question of living without. Edward was on an expedition to the Arctic, financed by a cat’s cradle of grants. I hadn’t wanted him to go. There were a series of explosive rows before he went. I told him, if he was leaving me, he needn’t bother coming back.

I hadn’t expected to be alone. But who wants to be with the wrong person? I knew my life was about to get better.

And so I paused before pushing onward. A dark smudge on the event horizon. Something brief as a fin surfacing.

(Because reading Virginia Woolf isn’t simple. I love her, but parts of her make me shiver. And sometimes — yes — she creeps into my head, a pale bony version of the woman she was, and she’s pointing to places I’ve never been, tunnelling away from air and sunshine. Although of course she can be very funny.)

In that instant the universe split, and I was sucked into this particular story.

There she was, white, in front of me.

‘Virginia?’ I sighed, a second time.

VIRGINIA

A yellow-haired female was gaping at me. Not respectable. Primped & painted. Yet her demeanour was kind enough. All around us, more painted women. Everyone smelled of chemicals. There were many Africans and Chinamen.

Was it Wolstenholme’s laudanum? How had I lost myself again?

The world whirled round me, I had no centre, perhaps the voices would begin.

Yet part of me was still, quiet. A child, watching. Was I reborn?

ANGELA

Then, too late, I remembered my manners. We stood in the foyer of the library, the great loud streets roaring past outside, but there was still glass protecting her — I felt from the start I would have to protect her. ‘Mrs Woolf?’ I corrected myself. ‘Mrs Woolf? May I help you?’

‘I think,’ she said — such a beautiful voice, but absurd! If she tried to give a reading today, people would laugh out loud at her fluting vowels, her long ‘I’s like ‘A’s, her ‘a’s like ‘e’s — ‘I may perhaps need help. I seem to have forgotten where I am.’

And I stammered, ‘The New York Public Library.’

‘A library?’ Large eyes, grey-green, puzzled. Blurred or misted with age or doubt. Blinking out from caves of bone. ‘Perhaps there is a telephone?’

‘Use my mobile,’ I said. ‘But we must go outside.’

She stared, then continued as if I had not spoken. ‘Is there a telephone I might use?’

So many things to explain to her . But first I must get her to some kind of shelter. Virginia Woolf on these blaring streets … ‘Come back to my hotel. It’s not far.’