Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

But the day was dancing before my eyes — men with red-and-white-striped awnings on their carts selling roast yellow sweetcorn with a fringe of brown tassels, men selling chestnuts in pouting black skins through which the flesh of the nut glistened, men doing theatre with ice creams, juggling the ball of ice into the cone, bowing to the queue of squealing girls who were wearing wreaths of artificial rosebuds sold by a man who sat on the kerb — to me the day was a holiday, but Angela, beside me, was voluble and blind. The seagulls wheeled overhead, so white, free-er than us, without human feelings.

‘He thought that I would bail them out. He seems to think I’m a millionaire.’

‘Bail them out?’

‘Pay for them. Let him have the money to finish the journey.’

‘I thought you were a millionaire?’ I interrupted. ‘I thought you were a best-selling author?’

‘That’s not the point, it’s not the point, everyone’s a millionaire these days — ’

‘ Really? ’

‘No, but you know, all one’s friends. In any case, he claims they need money to get the vehicles mended and feed the huskies and whatever research he claims to be doing –

‘What is his research?’

‘Oh, same old, same old, he’s always investigating global warming, the ice-caps are melting, but are they, really? Virginia, do you mind not interrupting — the point is, Edward’s always away. He’s never there for Gerda and me. This time it’s been three months already. He didn’t need to go — ’

‘Why not?’

There was a pause. She looked uncertain, but she was too enraged to stop for long. ‘Because, it doesn’t matter, look it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need work, there is plenty of money. I mean, I’ve got money … In any case. The bastard only phoned to ask me for money. A lot of money. From our joint account, which he had promised he would never use. I had no choice, I had to say “No”. There comes a point when you have to say “No”. Otherwise women get exploited.’ That last phrase seemed to give her confidence, but surely she knew her argument was muddled?

‘You felt you couldn’t afford to help him? — You said it was a joint account?’

‘Why are you looking like that, Virginia? Do you want to make me feel bad? It’s all right for you, this never happened to you, I’m pretty sure Leonard never asked you for money, I don’t suppose you had a joint account, we agreed it would be a cushion for me, in case he died and I needed it.’

She was crying in earnest now. We were waiting for a tram, and people were staring, not unkindly, at the weeping woman. To me it seemed she understood nothing.

‘We both kept accounts,’ I told her, though I did not much care to talk to her about money. ‘I wrote everything down, like a housekeeper, money for ink, stamps, notebooks. The press did make money. We were a success. And after To the Lighthouse , I earned more than him. I think I preferred it, actually. My father tormented Vanessa and Stella, always blaming them for extravagance, even though we ate the same lamb for three days. Women must have their own money. But we had enough, Leonard and I, between us. I never wanted more than that.

‘But it isn’t, as you say, “all right for me.” I’d give anything for Leonard to telephone one morning. And I would give him whatever he asked for.’

ANGELA

Sometimes she reminded me of Gerda. That knack of saying things that cut to the quick. ‘£40,000 he asked me for.’

VIRGINIA

‘I suppose expeditions cost a lot?’

ANGELA

But £40,000! It was nearly as much money as we’d spent last year on the conservatory, after the monkey-puzzle tree fell on the roof. It wasn’t peanuts, whatever he said. I was sure they could manage, somehow, without it. Did they really need that many huskies?

Perhaps I was just trying to make Edward come home. Perhaps I didn’t want to live without him anymore.

( Not a word from him for nearly two months, and then he rings up and asks me for money . That was the story that told itself, again and again, in my cramped, hurt, heart.)

I couldn’t convince her. We both fell silent.

VIRGINIA

I hovered to one side of the queues in the Topkapi gardens. The people queueing looked hot and fretful, but the gardens were green, and it was spring. Angela, who was always in a hurry, tried to marshal me into the line, but I stood on the grass, and looked, and breathed. The tulips blazed yellow and red down the path: I thought of Kew, butterflies, summer; but there were two sentries in sentry-boxes, little men dwarfed by the size of the gardens, and two others at the gate of the palace, and when I looked more closely, both cradled rifles, holding them up like uncomfortable babies, a little too easy, too intimate. For where was the threat? In the sea of grass, there were deep purple pansies, and families sat talking, and children played. Over the wall, blue water, boats, and seagulls hung, indifferent.

‘There are more flags than there were before,’ said Angela, looking in the same direction. ‘Why do they need to point those rifles? Terrorism, I suppose.’

‘It reminds me of New York. The fuss before we were allowed to get on the boat that took us to the Statue of Liberty. Then at the airport the same. Are there really so many terrorists now?’ The scene around me was peaceful, idyllic. ‘In our day things were different … we thought of assassins and anarchists, not terrorists … though Conrad had some in The Secret Agent .’

ANGELA

I didn’t want to explain to her, I had my own troubles to think about. I thought she had just wandered off, but in fact she had found the little coterie of guides who were walking up and down, touting their skills. Yes, she was growing more confident.

VIRGINIA

Choosing him was easy: he had good English. He was not bored, or beaten down. Soon we were all inside the palace. He told me that his name was ‘Max’.

ANGELA

She believed him because she lacked cultural awareness. I asked him, what was his real name?

VIRGINIA

‘You said we had to call people whatever they wanted.’

ANGELA

It turned out, his real name was Muhsin.

VIRGINIA

He was elderly but very handsome. Looked Russian, or Tartar. High cheekbones, golden skin, teeth so white that I suspected them, though many modern people had blinding white teeth. He laughed and said he was ‘Mongolian’.

ANGELA

I think she had a crush on him. Though I admit he was good at his job.

VIRGINIA

Angela was slightly in love with him!

Lime catkins were hanging in the sunlight, bees were just lifting to life from the ground, the crows were watching us from the roof-tops — but no, Max was talking again, showering us with facts like pollen from the lime trees. ‘The “seven hills of Istanbul”, named after the seven hills of Rome … there were Pagans here, before Byzantium, then the Emperor Constantine … a Christian … long after the Romans in the west had fallen … Mehmet … in 1457… the Topkapi Palace you see before you was built only three hundred years ago.’

(‘Only three hundred’! He made me feel young. I have to admit I did find him handsome, though unlike Angela, I wasn’t smirking, or running my hands through my shingled hair. I tried to concentrate, to do him justice, but I was distracted by the sunlit gardens. How old was I really? What did time mean?)

ANGELA

‘Virginia, are you listening?’

VIRGINIA

— He was saying the best part of Topkapi was the Harem, but we’d have to pay another fifty Turkish lira.

‘Of course we must see the Harem,’ I said.

Angela paid up with a bad grace. She had many things to learn about being a lady.