Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

This time we noticed the silent protesters, standing stock still on the street like statues. No shouting, no slogans, just young people — students? — with serious faces, beautiful with the stern beauty of belief, holding magazines up in the air one-handed, raising their convictions to the sun like a beacon. They were spread out, singly, ten metres apart. Each one looked inexpressibly lonely. Why did that make me feel for them? Each one embodied their own courage. We could not see them as a mob like the policemen. This way, only one at a time could be arrested. They were brave enough to be taken alone … I tried to remember each young frail profile, radiant and still as faces on a flag, though somehow I forgot to take a magazine.

Suddenly the shouting intensified behind us, there were whistles blowing, the sirens were closer. The pressure in the bottleneck increased, but now there was no hope of going forwards. And something fiercer was on the air. I knew, without being told, it was tear gas. Sour, oniony, catching at my throat. My eyes began to sting and water.

VIRGINIA

I have never liked being too close to people — the sweat of the herd about to stampede — & now that choking, chemical smell — I spotted a tiny passageway, I took Angela’s hand — we were in this together, she looked at me surprised, her flesh was dry, hot paper — ‘Quick,’ I said, & we wormed our way free, into a deep cutaway with high blind walls.

ANGELA

Of course I didn’t trust her to get us out of trouble — but I followed her, there was nowhere else to go. It felt dank in that passageway. Furious graffiti. We had no idea where we were going. But ten minutes later we were in a small square — not regular enough to be a square, just an opening-out, sun, the backs of buildings, and a little café. Just what we needed. Here the air smelled sweet again. We frightened a fat pigeon on an outside table, peck-peck-pecking at a sticky red puddle.

VIRGINIA

‘That was clever of me.’

ANGELA

‘Yes, you did well. Do you think that’s blood?’

VIRGINIA

We ducked inside. There was a ‘bar’, but with beautiful pink and lilac lights underneath it. The serving-woman had a head of wild curls and smiled at us, elaborately friendly, almost as if she had always known us, her gaze embracing us, enfolding us. We realised we were still holding hands after our escape, and let go with a small nod of mutual acknowledgement. ‘There is music later,’ she nodded at the bar. ‘Come back later. American?’ Two young women were sat close together, drinking beers, gently chinking glasses.

‘No, British.’ We ordered ‘English tea.’

‘Having fun here?’

She most definitely liked us. We smiled and nodded. ‘Except for the riot. What’s going on?’

‘Oh Istiklal — there’s always some problems. Nothing for you to worry, though. How did you find us?’

‘We were just lucky.’

Her smile was delightful; tender, roguish. It almost felt as if she knew us, and was especially pleased we had come today.

ANGELA

‘I suppose that’s the end of any hope of shopping.’

VIRGINIA

We sat outside with our tea and two large pieces of apricot pie. Every so often, the waitress came out and smiled. At intervals, panting people came hurrying through from the direction of Istiklal; the waitress talked to them, her face briefly serious. At the next-door table, a group of three moustachioed middle-aged men in vests — what people now called ‘T-shirts’ — made flamboyant jokes and swam with their hands. Then they were joined by a tall, elegant woman, a redhead, with a careful coiffure. She had a raucous laugh that didn’t go with her dress or her svelte silhouette, like a resting greyhound. The foursome sat and smoked and shouted. The kindly waitress seemed to know them well.

After a while there were no more dishevelled people hurrying through from our narrow passage. The sound of sirens and whistles faded away. This little courtyard felt like somewhere else, Italy perhaps, a theatrical world of sunlit laughter where police and rioters could not come.

ANGELA

The thing we had shared — fear, then relief — must have loosened Virginia’s tongue, and made her daring.

VIRGINIA

‘May I ask you a question about your husband?’

ANGELA

‘Go ahead.’ I was flattered. Most of her questions were about modernity, which made me feel like Wikipedia.

‘I need some wine,’ she said suddenly. I waved my hand, and the sweet girl came. ‘Two large glasses of Turkish red.’ Was it illegal yet? Evidently not.

‘Cheers!’ said Virginia, holding hers up to the light, and we touched glasses, and she smiled at me. Virginia was almost a modern woman. She drank deeply, and then again. The group next door was louder than ever. The loud-voiced woman had a smoker’s laugh.

Virginia’s question was not what I expected.

VIRGINIA

‘Angela — do you miss your husband? Physically, as it were.’

ANGELA

‘Physically? Do you mean — you don’t mean sexually, surely?’

She was blushing. She did mean sexually!

VIRGINIA

‘Actually, I do, Angela. Yes.’

ANGELA

How could I talk about sex to her ! She wasn’t a girlfriend! She was … Virginia! Famously chaste, traumatised! What was that passage in ‘Professions for Women’? She said women couldn’t write about the body.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Oh … I just wondered.’ Her eyelids dipped, she took another sip, but when she looked up again, her eyes were mischievous. ‘I have been having … feelings. Feelings I haven’t had for some time. Some time before I died, that is. One hadn’t felt — desire — in ages.’

VIRGINIA

Angela looked as though I’d shot her. Stricken, that’s the only word for it, as if I had somehow let her down. Or let myself down. A puritan! I thought. Yes, of course, these modern feminists are puritans.

But after a moment, she started to smile.

ANGELA

‘Virginia? Are you really? — I don’t know what to say. It’s sweet. Put it down to coming alive again. It probably gives you all kinds of feelings. Nothing to be guilty about. It’s not abnormal for — ’

VIRGINIA

She stopped.

I knew quite clearly what she meant to say. ‘Not abnormal for older women.’ She didn’t understand! I no longer felt ‘older’!

‘The point is, Angela, I find myself thinking — about the people I see in the street. And … in the lobby. Turkish people.’

I didn’t say that it was mostly one man, Ahmet, who occupied my mind. His dark-eyed charm, his currant-bun dimples. Whenever he saw me, that warm, flawed smile. Marzipan skin, sensuous lips. Under his smart work-clothes, his muscled plumpness.

All so very different from Leonard. A shiny berry, a wiry twig.

ANGELA

‘There’s nothing wrong with having these thoughts.’ (Though Virginia was old enough to be my mother!) ‘But don’t, you know, be too friendly in the lobby. I told you before, they won’t understand. They’ll think you’re, well — ’ I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say ‘They’ll think you’re up for it.’

And then I did. ‘They’ll think you’re up for it.’

VIRGINIA

My wine had almost gone; the blood was coursing through my veins. ‘I was wondering. I don’t know what you think — After all this time, do you think I could …?’ Perhaps I spoke louder than I meant. Would people hear? I didn’t care. ‘Why do you assume I am not “up for it”? If that is what you modern women say.’

ANGELA

‘Virginia?’

VIRGINIA

(

stares defiantly, says nothing

)

ANGELA

‘ Virginia?? ’

VIRGINIA

‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t. I’m a writer. We’re not supposed to shun experience. So many things I have never done. I can’t be a Turk, or an American. I can never be a member of the working classes. One has to be born to it, don’t you think? But for some reason — since coming back — one has felt … “I might, perhaps, like to try that.” Try it again, as a new person. With a new person. Say, a Turk.