Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

I won’t be beaten I’ll write again

ANGELA

‘Virginia, you’re not drinking your champagne. You asked for that last glass. Don’t waste it. Virginia? — oh, well done!’

Suddenly she had tipped it down.

‘Something very practical — our trip to the Statue of Liberty.’ (Those ‘s’es came out thick, slurred.) ‘If you want to go, must be tomorrow. My last day.’

She looked at me and repeated it blankly.

VIRGINIA

‘Your last day.’

( my last day I must not think about my last day )

ANGELA

The drink had lessened my inhibitions. I reached out and stroked her hand. ‘Virginia, dear, are you all right? Still on for the Statue of Liberty tomorrow?’

VIRGINIA

‘I like the sound of “tomorrow”.’

A beautiful word, so sweet and light. I used to be afraid of tomorrow.

At the corner of my eye, those three tiny figures.

No, I have left them behind in hell.

ANGELA

‘What time shall we go? Late morning? Virginia? Virginia ?’

She slow-danced a spoon around the table.

VIRGINIA

‘Yes, it will have to be tomorrow.’

I let myself be lifted by the music. I was a stranger in a city … I had a feeling of surrender … the outlook was decidedly blue …

And happiness was suddenly stirring, the music was yearning for its major key and I was on the pavements of London with Leonard, we saw two magpies, the sky was bright blue, I drank the rest of my glass in one, and inside my bloodstream there were dancing bubbles.

ANGELA

‘So are we on for tomorrow? No hats, Virginia, it will be breezy. Please bring that nice yellow coat you bought. If you don’t mind, I’ll wear my blue one. We will both look beautiful!’ I found myself giggling inanely. (I must get home and drink strong coffee.) She might have a hangover, but what the hell? ‘We’ll ask a tourist to photograph us. I do want a record of us together.’ In her weakened state I thought I’d risk asking.

VIRGINIA

‘I am a little afraid of boats.’

Absurd, I have already drowned. Yet here I am, still ‘a little afraid’, as I was always a little afraid when my father took us out in the boat …

ANGELA

‘Must get the bill. Virginia — ’

VIRGINIA

‘I might just sit here a while longer.’

ANGELA

‘How will you get home?’

She didn’t answer, she was deep in thought, but when she spoke, her voice was calm.

VIRGINIA

‘I’ll sit here for a while, with Leonard.’

They were playing ‘Just one of those things’. One of our favourites. He sat there beside me.

I needed Angela to go away.

‘How will I get home? In a taxi, of course. I can command New York taxis.’

ANGELA

Normally I wouldn’t have left her, but I was in no state to take decisions.

‘Virginia — I believe you. See you in the lobby, 10 AM.’

Angela is walking briskly through the sunlight near Battery Park towards the ticket office for Liberty Island, but Virginia is lagging .

VIRGINIA

‘Yes yes I admit it, you’re right, I shouldn’t have had those extra glasses.’

ANGELA

‘My fault. I shouldn’t have left you there.’

VIRGINIA

‘I enjoyed it.’ ( Pause .) ‘I am an adult.’

ANGELA

‘A policeman found you sitting on a fire hydrant. You’re very lucky he brought you back.’ ( She walks even faster .)

VIRGINIA

‘I wasn’t sitting.’

ANGELA

‘What were you doing?’

VIRGINIA

‘I had attempted to leapfrog it. That is why I cannot keep up this pace.’

ANGELA

(

laughs, slows up

)

‘All right, Virginia. I hoped we would get the twelve o’clock boat … but maybe time doesn’t matter.’

VIRGINIA

‘No, time matters, don’t be absurd.’

So hard to understand while you’re in it. Only when you’re near the end …

( Suddenly striding out ) ‘Yes, we must catch this ferry, you’re right. You see, I don’t want to miss anything. In case … they take me back.’

( Pause .)

‘I do so love it, in the light.’

ANGELA

(

puts her arm round her for the first time

)

‘I hope you had a good time last night?’

VIRGINIA

‘They have little books of quotes at the back. I tore out a poem by Dorothy Parker.’

ANGELA

‘You tore the book?’

She looked ashamed.

VIRGINIA

‘All right, I admit it. I tried to copy it, but the stupid biro didn’t work. The one you gave me. It doesn’t work.’

ANGELA

She was suddenly annoyed, her cheeks flushed with blood.

‘Well I’m sorry the biro didn’t work,’ I said. ‘But for goodness sake, Virginia, we’ll buy another.’

Her frown relaxed. ‘I suppose we can. It will be all right, won’t it?’

‘Of course it will.’

Then she showed me the poem and I nearly fell over. It was ‘Resumé!’

‘I love that poem!’

VIRGINIA

(

cheering up again

)

‘Let’s read it aloud!’

ANGELA

And we did, badly, both holding the paper, when we got to the quay, panting and laughing –

‘Razors pain you,

Rivers are damp

Then we decided to write our own version. It was such fun! We made up the lines together, and I wrote it down in my notebook.

Shavers cut you,

Streams are muddy,

Poisons gut you

And jumping’s bloody.

Shooting’s noisy,

Hanging’s a dive,

Gas is queasy –

GIRL, STAY ALIVE!

It’s not every day you get to write a poem with Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Parker.

ANGELA

We missed the ferry, not that it mattered. I teased Virginia a lot — I think she half-enjoyed being treated as a wicked woman of the world. ‘Leonard used to monitor my drinking,’ she said. ‘He didn’t like me to get too excited. It was nice to let go, just once in a while. I felt — careless. I just didn’t care. And because he’s not here, I looked after myself. I had to get myself back home.’

The strange thing was, she was looking younger, despite the headache that creased her forehead. Her cheeks were pinker, her jaw-line firmer.

And then there was her joie de vivre . Her endless curiosity, which made her seem twenty years younger than she was. Wherever we were, her eyes swooped around like birds skimming back from a long migration. On the boat, she bought herself two packets of biros: she seemed ridiculously pleased.

I liked her company.

I liked Virginia.

Even when we had to wait for forty-five minutes, snaking in line through the sun and wind with hordes of heavy-legged tourists in shorts … no, probably they were Americans. Why did Americans always look like tourists?

Perhaps because they wore so few clothes, though this was only a faint spring heat-wave, with wintry breezes still blowing off the sea and a crisping of small white curls on the water. As if they’d thought: Spring! Time for a sun tan. As if they did not understand weather, or seasons, living as they did in airconned homes. Why should I be snippy? They were bent on fun.

That day felt like a holiday. Everyone was there, waiting for the voyage, the world and his wife in sunny mood. Dreadlocked young African Americans gyrating their hips to the rhythm of their iPods. Half a dozen Muslim youths in white tunics, clustered together in a laughing murmur, but every so often looking around them, their black beards jutting defensively forward. Later I saw the grim body-search as they went through security for the ferry. Three elderly, masculine, English women, two of them in nautical caps and blazers, speaking in voices nearly as fluting as Virginia’s, shouting about Fidelio at the Met. And, of course, the children — the children. The children, so much lighter than us, doing handstands and cartwheels, running about. Except the ones who were too fat to run, standing with stout knees pressed against one another, their cheeks churning secret comforts against the gum.