Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

( Angela grimly hands over the money. His hand stays outstretched. She gives another note .)

VIRGINIA

‘It’s one of the books I am most proud of. I had such a struggle with The Pargeters , could it work as a fusion of fact and fiction? — but in the end, I separated the two, and the fiction part became The Years , which takes a family through several generations, and the wars come, and so much time passes …

It was a best-seller in America, you know. And the part that was intellectual argument I turned into a book of its own, Three Guineas .’

ANGELA

‘I know!’

VIRGINIA

‘ Three Guineas had a genuinely new perspective. War and women’s rights could not be disentangled. Because educated women are too rational for war — ’

ANGELA

(

incandescent

)

‘Could you please shut up for one second, I am trying to sponge coffee off my good coral suit …

‘Oh fuck , I didn’t mean to say shut up, sorry! I will opine on every war on the planet, but now I just need a few moments’ grace.’

VIRGINIA

Yes, Angela was a poor traveller. I refrained from pointing out how much harder it was when we travelled to Turkey by boat and on horseback. I gave her ten minutes or so to cool down before I asked my next question. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

ANGELA

‘Well, we’ve come quite a long way. We’ve flown over Portugal, Spain, the Balkans — there’s actually a little map you can look at — ’

VIRGINIA

‘Not at the moment. One tires of screens. Spain — is it still Fascist?’

ANGELA

Christ, she was so out of date! But yet, of course, I had no right to feel impatient. ‘No, but they outlasted the Nazis. Franco was in power until 1975.’

That was what, three decades after her death. No-one ever thinks like that though, do they? ‘This curse will go on thirty years after I die.’

When would I die? Was it really — real? That lives would be lived beyond my understanding? Gerda — a pang as I thought of her. She would be thirty, forty. How long would I know her? The loneliness of her going on, beyond my comfort, beyond my help.

How did we ever get so far apart? Why did I send my daughter away?

VIRGINIA

‘You know my nephew was lost in Spain.’

He stayed behind, young, a sacrifice, and we grew older, and left him behind. His eternal youth became terrible.

Just a series of sunlit fragments — Julian laughing or explaining, his big hands waving, why we were all wrong — but as time went on, his hands clung, and hurt.

I will never know if Nessa recovered. It seemed to me she never would.

The year he died, even nature seemed poisoned. I barely left my sister’s side. Night after night, summer and winter. The universe was nothing but brute confusion, its rhythms pointless, lifeless, aimless.

Then, the next spring, the garden urns, casually filled with wind-blown plants. Around them, violets, daffodils. My favourites, the sweet-sharp, strong-scented narcissi, stood looking straight ahead at nothing, because I didn’t have the heart to enjoy them, didn’t, as usual, bend to look into their eyes, so even the garden became hard and blind. In that year, Nature gave no comfort. There was no point, if youth had died.

(he was Nessa’s hope he was our future)

In another universe, Gerda has landed. Yes, she feels lucky as they bounce, lightly, roar down the runway, come to a halt. She has made it to America! This is more or less as far as she has let herself think. As she plink-plonks down the metal walkway, other thoughts creep into the waiting void –

— this forest of signs: Arrivals, Transfers, Baggage Claim, Immigration Control — when she’d come with Dad, she clung on to his hand and he made all the hard decisions –

yes, the young self she was with Dad, getting piggy-backs when she was tired, trying out her rollerblades in Central Park — seven years old, Mum and Dad had just got married, life was brilliant, both her parents adored her –

where had she lost that Wonder Child?)

Gerda has a worry — thirteen-year-olds have worries, but she hopes fourteen-year-olds would not — that every day she is growing less brilliant, further from the toddler she’s seen in photographs, pink and rosy, snub-nosed and sturdy, with carrot-red hair that shone in the sun, who, she was told, announced to the world as she was lifted out of the bath, not yet two, ‘I’m a person.’

Is she becoming less of a person? Has the grownup world nibbled her edges?

Certainly not. She steps on to the escalator and keeps on going, overtaking other people off the same plane, trying to look like a person in a hurry. Dad had told her — what had Dad told her? ‘Never take a case on an escalator.’ But it’s OK, she’s only got a backpack.

Their trip to New York had been the best trip ever, but any trip with Dad would be the best trip ever. He had bought her a Swiss Army knife at the airport (this was before everything good got banned.) The hasp was red and shiny with a small Swiss shield. ‘That shield will always keep you safe, Gerda.’ He’d explained to her what each part did — the bottle-opener, the corkscrew, the file. The bit that she wanted to use the most was the gizmo for getting stones out of hooves, which seemed to promise an adventurous life (though she always meant to live with Dad, and Mum could live nearby with a washing machine, and come in to bin the pizza boxes). This pleasant thought carried her with her backpack safely down the moving stairs.

Dad’s knife was sitting in her case right now, being whizzed towards her in Baggage Claim. She was feeling happy to think of it, though oddly, the case was otherwise empty, 1) because in general, Gerda didn’t need things, once she had her book, and socks, and money, but 2) because she’d done magical thinking, which she knew in general was a Bad Idea …

It had all happened at the very last minute this morning, she was leaving home, the cab was waiting — surely Mum would be delighted to pay for her cab? — when she remembered her phone, still charging in the kitchen, so sweating, panting, ran back up the steps to get it — saw the dirty knife and fork in the sink, and thought of her Swiss Army knife — Dad’s knife! — fetched it, stuffed it in her backpack, but stopped mid-stuffing, cos of course, it wasn’t legal!

‘It will always keep you safe, Gerda’

She nearly put it down, then the worry assailed her, if you don’t take the knife, something bad’s going to happen, if you do take the knife, the knife will save you,

and although she knew this was Magical Thinking she grabbed Mum’s Prada suitcase to put it in, which was shell-pink, ditsy and elegant, with bits of glittering gold on it. She knew her mother would be angry about it, but it was the only case she could see, so she’d bumped it down the stairs in a frantic hurry and rushed out of the door to find the cab still waiting and didn’t forget to double lock, well done Gerda, she told herself –

— but something was missing in the sequence, she realised as she stepped off the escalator, something struck her no, no, make it not true a cold sweat prickled from her neck, her back

had she forgotten it no she would never

no, no but yes, yes

had she got distracted, and forgotten her phone???!!!

Was it still plugged in to the kitchen wall???!!!

Gerda stood at the entrance to Baggage Claim patting all her pockets again and again, repeating the sequence, then varying it, her level of hopelessness slowly rising.

SHE COULDN’T RING MUM TO TELL HER SHE WAS COMING.

Mum and Dad were both suddenly far away. She stood very alone, shrinking into herself.