Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

‘Plenty of people talk like me back orm. Tell yer what though, I haven’t eard one with a voice like you for decairds.’ She stomped off into the breakfast buffet. I hooted with laughter. I couldn’t help it.

‘Virginia, stop offending people!’ But Angela was laughing, too.

‘Three days,’ I said. ‘I’ve only got three days, but that’s what it took Jesus to rise from the dead. And I have already done that part!’

‘Virginia, you might be surrounded by Christians.’

‘I would like to go back to that tower. Adrian called it Leandros Tower. The Maiden’s Tower, you said. I saw it when I was a girl, that first morning, when my heart was so light.’

(That day I saw nothing but golden bubbles rising row upon row on a dark green hillside. The domes were so airy, they were like glass. I was running from side to side of the deck, and Nessa told me I was over-excited, and one of the sailors kept pulling my arm and pointing — ‘Üsküdar,’ he said. It looked like a barracks with four tall towers, on the eastern shore, dark against the sunrise. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Thank you.’ But he wouldn’t let go, he wanted to teach us. ‘Florence, the lady, the famous English lady,’ he said for the second time. ‘Üsküdar.’ Vanessa put two and two together. ‘Oh he must mean Scutari, Virginia. The hospital where poor Florence Nightingale wore herself out.’ Nearby there was a tower that seemed to float on the water, about three hundred yards from the shore. Was it a lighthouse, was it a boat? Because it seemed to move with the waves, or I did, dizzy with beauty and lack of sleep. ‘That’s charming,’ I said. ‘Does some princeling live there?’ And Adrian, who had done some research, said ‘It used to be the custom post. There’s been a tower there for a thousand years.’ ‘Adrian, don’t exaggerate’ — we never believed what Adrian said. As the youngest, he naturally got bullied. ‘I’m not exaggerating. It’s famous. The Tower of Leander, where Hero lived. Her lover Leander swam the Hellespont to woo her, which even you girls must know about. One night it was too stormy, but she told him to come, and her light blew out, and her lover drowned.’ ‘Wasn’t that the Dardanelles?’ said Vanessa. ‘I’m sure you’ve muddled it up, Adrian.’ ‘It’s not me who’s muddled,’ he said, and reddened, as poor Adrian so often did.)

‘I love the story of Hero and Leander,’ Angela said, as she stirred her coffee. ‘Though why is it always the men who do the swimming?’

‘We all swam in the sea at St Ives,’ Virginia said. ‘Thoby was best, of course he was. Not that it helped him, in the end.’

‘I always wondered,’ Angela said, looking out over the water to the far horizon where the blue islands hung low in the mist, ‘did Hero let the lamp go out on purpose? I mean, I know the night was stormy, and she shouldn’t have begged him to make the crossing — but what if it was worse than that? What if she actually let him drown? What if she thought about all the effort and mess of loving a man, and deliberately didn’t replace the oil? And when the flame flickered out, just went to bed?’

‘That’s a terrible thought,’ I said, and it was, but part of me felt — exhilarated. Women could be wicked, as well as good.

We were helping ourselves to water-melon. It was red and succulent, dripping wet. I thought, ‘I will take another slice.’ Briefly, my eyes met Angela’s.

‘So can we change your, what do you call it, schedule?’ I asked. ‘Let’s say Scutari and Kiz … What was it?’

‘Kiz Kulesi,’ said the Yorkshire woman, who was piling her plate with her third lot of rolls. ‘I’m a teacher, see. I’m good at nairms.’

She was smiling now. I had a second chance. I never wanted to hurt anybody, though I hurt Adrian and hurt Leonard, and sometimes, I know, I laughed when I shouldn’t. ‘Most kind of you. Thank you,’ I said.

Yes, I would meet Angela in Reception.

VIRGINIA

I put my new hat on; inspected the mirror; it looked — jaunty. I took it off. But we were going for a jaunt! I put it on again, and went downstairs. She didn’t arrive. I wasn’t perturbed, my friend Ahmet was there from the day before, standing smartly suited with two friends. They were talking, but he was pleased to see me.

‘Very nice,’ he said, expansively, smiling meaningfully at me. The other two men looked at him sideways.

‘What, precisely?’ He looked baffled. ‘What is nice?’ I encouraged him. The man next to him was muttering in Turkish, and his face was disapproving. ‘ Ayip! Ayip! ’

‘Oh, hat,’ Ahmet said finally. ‘ The hat, I think is the right way.’

‘This hat? I bought it in Istanbul,’ I said. Somehow I didn’t think he meant my hat.

I started to think — could it be? Perhaps he liked me as a woman. Old as I am. Was it possible? Were tendrils of feeling extending towards me, like tiny green vines unfurling in the garden?

His colleagues didn’t seem happy with him. Perhaps it was wrong, as Angela would say, ‘culturally’, for him to talk to me. Or perhaps it was the way he looked at me, for rather too long, that his colleagues disliked. ‘Kiz … what is the name of the famous tower?’

‘Kiz Kulesi,’ he said with a delighted air. ‘Yes, I can arrange trip to this.’ He tapped his forehead, as if advertising his brain.

‘Do we take a taxi?’

‘Very long journey by taxi.’

‘Taxi and boat?’

‘No, I take myself.’

I must have looked puzzled, for he mimed driving. Then he gave me an enormous smile. ‘Maybe tomorrow? Or tomorrow of tomorrow?’

At that moment, Angela stormed into reception.

ANGELA

(

loudly

)

‘He’s RUINED my day.’

VIRGINIA

Had I upset her by talking to Ahmet?

ANGELA

‘He has that effect on me, every time. I’m doing fine without him, then he rings. Come on Virginia, let’s get going.’

VIRGINIA

‘Ah — I see — your husband.’

ANGELA

(

storming towards the tramway on Divan Yolu Caddesi, with Virginia trying to keep up

)

‘You probably don’t see, Virginia. These things are different when you have children. I told you — did I? — he’s in the Arctic Circle, he’s on an expedition, he’s always away — well the funding’s run out, they’ve lost their grant, and he seemed to think that I — why should I?’

VIRGINIA

‘Why should you what?’ But she wasn’t listening. ‘Are you all right?’ But I saw she wasn’t. Her eyes were red. She had been crying.

She tried to speak, but her voice tore. ‘Gerda — Gerda — ’

‘There’s a problem with your daughter?’

ANGELA

‘Gerda will blame me. Children do.’

I’d been perfectly happy in my own sunny room. Then the phone rang, and it wasn’t Virginia — I saw him in my head, as I stared at the phone, his faraway voice worrying like wire, a tiny figure dwarfed by all that ice, muffled in furs, his face a blank, he seemed to have turned into someone else — I knew even then that Gerda would judge me. She loved her father, always, blindly. Daughters are very hard on mothers.

I didn’t care. I was angry too. A gross black spider ran across the floor.

‘No! Not a chance! No, you bastard! You’re always away! Don’t dare to ask me! You’ve already taken money from our joint account! I know you have, so don’t deny it.’ I didn’t say what I could have said — ‘I never wanted you to go.’ I switched off the phone and stamped on the spider, once, twice, and then it was still. That little fucker would run no more.

VIRGINIA

Her epic of complaint continued as we made our way through the Hippodrome, transformed by daylight into a market. The wretchedness of women through the ages filled my ears …