Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

ANGELA

‘What you mean is, “Will you suggest it.” New York cabbies don’t like suggestions.’

That sulky face, like an aged adolescent. I forced myself to sound maternal. ‘Let’s just wait for the future to happen.’

In the early evening, the lights were coming on. As the outlines of buildings blurred into darkness, the solid traffic liquefied, the city was stirring, unlocking itself — it would let us go, we would be on the plane. New York was beautiful again.

We passed the suburbs, lower, smaller, neither of us talking, in this thinning dream. When we stopped at the airport, we heard people shouting, and on the roof of the taxi, a cool rain drummed. I sat there for a second, adrenalin draining, then hurried her out into the night.

Just over our heads, a plane was landing, a graceful, steady-winged, jewel-eyed moth. I imagined young faces pressed against the window, excited by the lights of New York, and we couldn’t wait to get away from it.

At check-in I had a lot of talking to do. Virginia, I claimed, was a much-loved relation who had never flown, and must sit by me. She might have tried to support my story, instead of standing at an angle looking sceptical, but, hot and blustery, I managed it.

Then I had to sweat blood at the passport check. Virginia, however, became glowing and excited. She grew in stature: she was suddenly an actress; held out the passport like a hand of cards in a brilliantly exciting game, laughing ‘Good evening ’ in her resonant contralto, while the voice in my head said ‘Oh keep it down , oh don’t draw attention to yourself.’ But in minutes she was through, waving her aces, though the man stared after her, shaking his head, as if she was familiar. He spent much longer frowning over mine.

We ended up seated side by side in the middle section of the plane. I had sacrificed my extra-leg-room seat at the front of the cabin, but was she grateful?

No, she didn’t even notice. I told myself, ‘Don’t expect gratitude.’ She was turning the pages of the in-flight shopping magazine, slow and reverent as a medieval monk.

And then she looked up. Her radiant smile. ‘I’m so excited,’ she said. ‘Thank you. Thank you for everything you have done.’

By the time we took off, the rain had stopped, it was dark outside, but Virginia was buzzing, bolt upright against the seat belt. She left on the reading light above her head, an eye of gold in the darkened cabin.

ANGELA

Once we were up in the air, the lights flicked back on, and I fully took in what I had noticed at the gate –

VIRGINIA

‘Jews. That is not what one expected! This whole plane is alive with Jews.’

ANGELA

I have to teach her not to talk like that. All the same, she is factually correct.

It was a party of Hasidic Jews. Who would have expected that on Turkish Airlines? The full malarkey, black clothes, frizzed sideburns, the young women in nun-grey head-scarves. I asked a disgruntled English-speaking steward and he said there were thirty-two of them! End of the Jewish holiday in New York and all the planes back to Israel were full, so a whole crowd of returning Israelis had decided to fly back via Istanbul.

VIRGINIA

It was — archaic. Medieval! Binding their arms, wielding their Bibles, standing up praying to the east in the aisles — so irksome, surely, for the Mohammedan aircrew (or at least I assumed they were Mohammedans, surely most Turks were Mohammedans?), bob bob bob, mutter mutter — and those thongs cutting off the circulation to their arms. They actually produced thin leather thongs, rolled up their sleeves, and bound their left arms in front of us all! I had wondered for a second if they meant to whip their wives, those devout young Jewesses with their heads tied up in bundles of grey and their unpainted faces — (I have seldom painted, but I’m not a modern woman) — suckling lines of beatific Jewish babies while gazing across in adoration at their long-headed husbands, with those foolish curling brown sheep-ears of hair. When the latter weren’t binding themselves or praying or gazing up, rapturous, at nothing, they read, while the women cared for the children. (And the girl with the baby who sat next to me couldn’t read her prayer-book without moving her lips.)

What would Leonard have said? He’d have detested it. He was rational, he disliked excess.

Angela thought I would be frightened of flying, but actually I felt more alarmed by the Jews.

ANGELA

I see this journey is going to be hell.

VIRGINIA

I am not a snob, I am curious. Although the girl next to me was obviously a peasant — she looked like a farm girl in her grey head scarf, and she breast fed from her great healthy breasts, two secretive mounds that made me blush — she wrote in a notebook once the youngest child slept. I asked her what she was writing; she smiled, and suddenly looked less bovine. Her eyes were very blue: her husband’s, brown.

‘I’m a playwright, Madam. I write plays. For young people in schools, mostly.’ Accent: American, and something else.

I asked her what the plays were about? She said, her lips beaming upwards, eyes ardent, ‘Follow the ways of the ancestors. No, I think I’m translating that wrong. “Follow the ways of your forefathers.” It’s what we all believe,’ she added.

If so, how on earth could we talk to each other? My life was founded on reinvention, I fled the cobwebs of Hyde Park Gate and my father’s terrible groans in the night …

‘Your forefathers,’ I echoed. ‘What if they were wrong?’

‘We have survived for over a hundred generations. They cannot be wrong,’ she said, with an air of reproof, not unfriendly, but — tinged with pity. She was sorry for me because I was not one of them, not one of the self-elected, the saved. Such radiant belief in the hands of children! Remember I lived through the pre-war years.

1938. When we drove through Germany, Leonard and I and Mitz Marmoset. We were uneasy about being English, we wondered if we would be attacked, but the Germans we met made a pet of Mitz, and that fat man who gave us two free beers in Munich assured us we were ‘blood brothers’. Brüderschaft , that terrible, bludgeoning word.

They too were following their forefathers, searching for heroes in the ruined state. When they talked of the future, they had the same glow. Like those radiant Christians on the New York pavements. Wherever it shone, wars would follow.

But maybe I was wrong. She seemed sweet, and simple, and she laughed into the eyes of her babies, and doted on her poor hairy-eared husband.

In any case, it was very late. The lights were going out all over the cabin. Now only the stewards trudged up and down, leaning over one passenger, smiling at another. For a moment they reminded me of my mother.

Caring for others I suppose I shunned, because I had to live with a virtuous woman, because I had seen where her virtue led: poor Mother, who worked till her knuckles were red, sewing, visiting, noting, sorting, till her mouth pulled grim and thin as a thread … all my life I had avoided that path.

Beside me, all round me, the babies were fed by very young women desperate for sleep. I felt a sudden compassion for my neighbour, not so much older than Angelica had been, but her flushed pink cheeks were already worn, her eyes were straining to read the prayer-book in the short gaps when her baby was happy; her drive to write was chained to duty. There must be a way we could talk to each other.

ANGELA

In a way they were very like Arabs. Being covered and so on. The men and women with their demarcated roles. I said so to Virginia and she yawned. She said ‘Of course, they’re all Semites,’ in her most superior way.