Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

The voices in the Algonquin were a low, polite murmur, and the music played in the same gentle register, so it took a few minutes to separate the two. We sat at a table at the back, in shadow.

As we got used to the dark, cream lilies bloomed like small pale faces from vases in corners. Writers met here, the Algonquin set; we knew about them in England of course. Dorothy Parker was a name on our horizon, a little danger behind my back like a wasp buzzing & fizzing at the window — but she was a journalist, not a real writer! — (I never strove to be a wit) — and the more friends urged me to read her stuff, the more I knew I never would. She was far too young! These clever young women … Hadn’t she been unhappy in love?

‘When did Dorothy Parker die?’ I asked Angela. I wanted to be sure.

‘Oh ages ago. Before I was born.’

‘Did she have children?’

‘I don’t think so.’

A tiny surge of satisfaction. ‘She was very funny, but she wasn’t happy?’

‘How would we know? She was really funny. And good, Virginia. Really good. I am surprised you never read her. She’s the only one whose name has survived. Of all that circle. She eclipsed them all.’

Ah, so Angela admired her. Why should I feel jealous? A thought struck me. ‘Did she — she didn’t — kill herself, did she?’

ANGELA

There was a half-hidden note of longing. She didn’t want to be the only one. It shocked me, but I told her the truth. ‘In the end she died of a heart attack. But you’re not far wrong. She tried four times.’

VIRGINIA

I pitied her then. To have gone through the horror. To try and fail so many times. I envied her, too, because she beat her Furies.

Now I knew she was dead, I wished I had read her. I no longer needed to be — jealous. The ugly thing I felt for Katherine Mansfield, and she’d died too, and I was sad.

And then I wanted to write about my feelings, as I had long ago when Katherine died. To wield the delicate tweezers of words; to pick up the sentiment ready for dissection; to hold myself under the pitiless light. That urge to write, the pleasure-muscles tensing …

Before they could move, the new fear pounced. The novel sense of helplessness. I had started to flinch away from the attempt, in case a series of accidents — yes, I was sure, they were just accidents — my weakened hand, the hopeless pen — should harden into a change of state. In case I could not — simply could not –

Like the young man who happens to fall; has another fall; so many excuses. So many good reasons why it should happen. But he falls again; he falls again. Until the inevitable diagnosis.

I dared not voice it to myself.

Could I survive, mute, diminished?

Each time I tried, the void had yawned. The paper seemed to eat my words. It stared at me: a terminal blankness.

Terror winked. I had to write. Don’t think about it, think about it, think.

(Was it because of my decades of silence? Had my voice dried, constricted?)

ANGELA

‘Dorothy Parker’s like you, Virginia. She’s survived as the others fade. In Britain, no-one still remembers, I don’t know, Marc Connelly or Robert Sherwood. Everyone knows Dorothy Parker.’

VIRGINIA

‘Maybe the others weren’t any good?’ I needed to believe it happened for a reason.

Yet, surely, Duncan and Roger had been good. That feeling of emptiness in the Met, the sense of bodies being washed downstream …

They can paint no more. Have no more chances.

ANGELA

‘Alice Duer Miller was part of the circle, a gifted poet, but she’s disappeared. I’m afraid it’s just what happens, Virginia. History has to simplify things. And someone vivid like Dorothy Parker — or you — well, you throw the rest into shadow.’

VIRGINIA

‘Vivid. Yes, I like that word.’

She thinks me vivid.

Yes, I was good.

There was nothing to be frightened of, then, was there? The small white faces, the Algonquin lilies, bloomed round the room, peering towards us, wanting to be with us. Longing to be vivid, out in the light, talking, writing, shining with luck, the luck we have.

Yes, I had everything, because I’d come back. That was the luck. To be here in the moment …

But if I couldn’t … of course I could. I was a writer. Writers must write.

Something dislodged inside my brain. I looked at Angela, hating her. I must not hate her. I was slipping, falling …

‘I’m hungry,’ I said. ‘I’m thirsty, too. Will they bring us some, what do you call it, nibbles?’ (It was a vulgar word she used.)

ANGELA

‘Bring us some nibbles, waiter, please. And tea, Virginia? Or something stronger?’

VIRGINIA

‘Wine, please. I need a drink.’

ANGELA

‘Perhaps champagne? Or a nice red?’

VIRGINIA

‘I’ll have champagne. A vat. A bucket.’

Angela’s painted eyes flicked wide with shock.

ANGELA

She hadn’t had a drink for over half a century. Is it surprising that it went to her head?

We toasted each other. As I chinked her glass — she recoiled minutely, as from a faux pas — the volume of the music rose to meet us.

VIRGINIA

Jazz standards of the 1930s. Sadness blew across the sands. A cold sea-mist. The room was thinning …

ANGELA

Her pupils widened, and she was lost. I watched a veil come between us. She put down her glass and played with her hands, one clutching the other, wringing and squeezing.

‘Virginia?’ She looked at the floor. ‘Virginia, are you all right?’

She picked up her glass and drank deep before she answered.

VIRGINIA

‘Yes. No. I’m not sure.’

ANGELA

Her champagne flute was two-thirds empty.

VIRGINIA

For a moment I felt cold as death. But as I drank, the bubbles expanded, blood came coursing back through my veins. Briefly, I felt warm towards her, and yes, I had to talk to somebody. ‘You see, I have been trying to write …’

ANGELA

‘Trying to write? Yes, I saw you. That evening in your room at the Wordsmith. Have you been writing every day?’ At last, the longed-for conversation! Might we talk, one writer to another?

Her beautiful mouth twitched at the corner.

VIRGINIA

‘Something’s … amiss. Things keep going wrong.’

ANGELA

‘You mean, with the writing?’

VIRGINIA

Something in her eyes: an avid glint. A dog scenting a whiff of death.

‘I didn’t say that.’ But the drink drove me. ‘It’s not easy to talk about. I’m not, it isn’t, it isn’t getting done.’

ANGELA

‘Virginia, I’m all ears.’

VIRGINIA

I saw ears bursting from her face, fat and shiny and obscene. Budding from her pouter-pigeon chest, rose-pink fungi on her arms, her hands. Yes, all ears. Was she leering at me?

ANGELA

‘If anyone can understand it, it’s me.’

No answer. Virginia leaned back in her chair.

Two twins walked past, with identical frowns, heading over to the table at the back where there were booklets of Algonquin history. Their hair fell straight in long fringed bobs, heavy as rulers, a style they were too old for. Matching suits. Combative heels. I thought, they will never escape one another.

Virginia had finished her champagne. Maybe I should have sat and waited. But how was I to contain myself? Now, at last, we could talk about writing . What I had longed for from the very start, when she appeared, like an answer to my prayer –

I summoned a waiter to play for time. ‘Two more glasses.’

‘No problem, Ma’am.’

I had to grope to find the words. Yes, I was shy, but I was excited. Our drinks were delivered, I raised my glass, she looked away, but I plunged in.

‘I’m not surprised you find writing hard. This world’s so new and strange to you. I myself have been blocked of late. I mean, I published only last year, the reviews were fine, the sales were great, but it’s not like turning on a tap, is it?’ (Virginia twitched slightly. I hoped we’d connected.) ‘There’ve been the problems with, you know, Edward … And you and I have been quite busy.’ (I meant: ‘I’ve been busy looking after you.’) ‘I’m not totally sure what to write about, though something, somewhere, may be coming together … You get to a certain stage in your career — you haven’t read me, Virginia, that’s fine, but I am quite famous, and it is a pressure — didn’t you find? Was it true for you?’