Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

It would break her heart. She loves her father.

VIRGINIA

1941. I am back in the gyre, water corkscrewing towards perdition. I am fifty-nine. I will never be older.

The thing I wrote before I set out. That day in March. I remember it.

The skies were clear, blue and bright, a great blue blank bearing down on me, dazzling, blinding, and naked terror, everyone would know, everyone would see me

everyone would say the book was no good

The day before, I had seen the doctor. Octavia asked me to take off my clothes take off my clothes so she could see me what did she know? too young to be a doctor!

I told her no, there was nothing wrong.

Why did Leonard make me visit her? sharp eyes peering at my nakedness that terrible look of pity, kindness, yes yes Octavia, yes, thank you , thank you, my hands are always cold ( thank you, that hardly proves your brilliance )

(I didn’t say it, I was polite) Leonard had told her to ask me to rest I saw his careful hand behind it now they would all gang up on me

she asked me to ‘Try, try for Leonard’

That night I could not sleep at all

The morning, clear everything clear it was very cold I fetched my fur I needed one last touch of comfort flowers in the garden were too bright fat yellow daffodils, harsh, triumphant

Yellow varnish this yellow room

cruel that Octavia asked me to try ‘for Leonard’, as if I had no care for him, and she, a stranger, knew everything

I have tried so hard. I can try no longer

The Furies waiting where the path disappears

The hideous old women bare their claws at me, wet-mouthed, whispering as they crawl towards me, brown scaly talons and hanging flesh

I could smell their furious iron-rich breath, the great blades of their scissors wet with light, the hellish light of the blue spring sky, gnawing my fate before I was ready

I loved my life but I had to go, once the Furies smell you you can only flee. I knew that day I could not outrun them, the sky was cloudless, they had me at bay –

I wrote to Leonard & I wrote to Vanessa. Words I had practised many times. With the breath of the Furies hard in my ears & their split yellow nails, like torn bamboo, sharpened ready to gouge my eyes out.

In this hostile, stinking, yellow room the dreadful words return to me, words that can never be unsaid, the deed, once done, that can never be mended

the wound I dealt him, the grief I gave him

darling Leonard how I struck at his heart

knowing I must hurt him, I pulled on my coat, thrust my hand deep into the pocket as I almost ran down through the meadow, it was ready now for the fate it must carry, yes, I had gone too far to go back,

a tiny voice like the voice of a child that wanted to be born

was crying Stop a tiny part of me cried in the night

small, stubborn, a scintilla of light

trying to escape me, trying to get out

but the path led straight to the river bank the Furies behind me every step of the way behind me, ahead of me, snapping at my ankles, tearing at my stockings like vicious brambles, battering my ears with icy hatred, whipping me onwards, flee, flee

this time I knew they would never release me

the river roaring

full of crazed blue light Omega chunks of blue and brown

feel certain I am going mad again

can’t go through another of those terrible times

begin to hear voices can’t concentrate

I am doing what seems the best thing to do

You have given me the greatest possible happiness I don’t think

two people could have been happier

could have been happier

this terrible disease

I can’t fight any longer

ANGELA

After a long silence, her voice came, hoarse. ‘I did it, didn’t I. That terrible thing.’

VIRGINIA

Sitting on the woman’s ugly bed, which was broken-backed under a yellow-gold cover, with nameless shadows, wine or blood — it groaned beneath me like the sea, as if my grief was too heavy for it, & I groaned louder, I groaned like old metal, I groaned like banks of black stones on a beach, moaned in pain like a wounded beast

I remember

the clumsy walk at midday with the voices shrieking and baying behind me, the yelps of the Furies hounding me down through the meadows I had loved for so long, the skin on my back crawling with terror, Virginia, you’re mad again

I remember

thrusting the stone in my pocket

large, heavy, waiting for me, the stone like a toad on the river-bank

I held it weighed it in my hand

blind, brutal I choose you

forcing the stitches of my pocket apart and as it started to tear, as I heard the silk split, I stopped myself, gently, be gentle with it, yes, I controlled it, the heavy bludgeon

remember

the brute knocking hard at my flank as the Furies reached me and I jerked away, their black hide blotting out the sky, great shrieks of raucous joy as they pawed me, knowing my fear would drag me down and hold me under the green tangled water — but a voice in my head still whispered Leonard , a woman’s voice said how can I leave you?

Leonard, Leonard. Yes , again. Leonard my love. I can’t leave you .

But it was too late for him to save me. Or my dear sister who was so patient, with her stooping head and steady eyes.

Yes, it was true. I left him behind. I loved my husband but I left him behind, & slipped through the door where none can follow.

Two o’clock in the afternoon, though several lifetimes have slipped away. Two fragile organisms, blown together. Dandelion clocks on a dirty bedstead. Angela, Virginia.

She was washed downriver like a broken doll. He had to identify her three weeks later. Children thought she was a log in the water. They stoned it, hard, to make it sink. The happy bird-calls of adolescents. Then one boy realised it was a body.

Down in the street, the cold is beginning a slow fight-back against the spring heat-wave. The dark, repressed, pauses, alerted. Soon it will be able to creep back into the gullies. Then it will climb up the buildings again.

Angela looks around her and shivers. ‘Mrs Woolf, are you all right?’

VIRGINIA

I suppose he had to identify me.

After that, did the horror start to eat my face? Did the sight erase poor Leonard’s memory of what he once thought beautiful?

Wracked on the bed, I remembered my crime.

ANGELA

She was pale as wax, and sat there trembling.

‘Mrs Woolf? Virginia?’

She shook her head, again and again, like a dog shaking water away.

VIRGINIA

‘I don’t know you. Why are you here? Why won’t you let me use your phone?’

ANGELA

Her breath rasped like an old man’s.

‘It’s the twenty-first century. Some way through. My name — I’ve told you several times — is Angela Lamb. And I’m alive. It feels to me as if we’re both alive. But Leonard — well, he died long ago. You can’t call him. I’m so sorry.’

She stared back at me, blind with anger. Her hand still stretched towards the phone.

I spoke more brutally than I intended. ‘The world you knew is — everything’s gone.’

‘Gone? What are you talking about?’ But her arm drew back, her shoulders bowed.

For a minute she sat there saying nothing, kneading the bed-cover with big white hands. She looked — epic. I will never forget it. I did feel pity, but also … the writer in me was trying to record it. How could I ever describe this moment?