Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

‘Why are you staring? I’m not a virgin. Do my readers expect me to be a virgin?’

ANGELA

‘A Turk? Not with a Turk, Virginia.’

VIRGINIA

‘Why not?’

Angela’s mouth had gone thin and cross. Then she laughed.

ANGELA

‘You’re teasing me, of course. I fell for it.’

VIRGINIA

(

coolly

)

‘No, I’m serious. I was never able to write about the body … But that’s not the point. I just — want to do it.’

ANGELA

‘But, Virginia! Everyone knows … It’s just not you. You can’t do it for research.’

VIRGINIA

‘Maybe I’ve become a different person. Maybe I never was that person. Why can’t I, you know, with a Turk?’

ANGELA

‘Of course you can’t, it’s ridiculous. Turkish men! Impossible.’

VIRGINIA

The next-door table were definitely listening. Angela’s mouth opened, then closed again. She looked flushed; confused; her shoulders drooped. It didn’t take long for her to recover.

ANGELA

(

gathering energy and volume

)

‘It’s just so stereotypical! Older woman, western, comes to Turkey for sex! It’s a cliché, Virginia! It’s … orientalist!’

VIRGINIA

She pronounced this triumphantly, as if it clinched it. Her final ‘-ist’ sprayed the air with saliva. ‘Orientalist? Is that bad?’

(She said it as if it meant ‘murderess’. I was not familiar with the usage.)

ANGELA

She was smiling again, superior, maddening, her lips moving with unvoiced words, looking down that fine-cut nose at me. Why did my opinions suddenly seem flimsy? She was arrogant! And ignorant! Yes, Virginia Woolf was ignorant !

Orlando suffered from the same kind of thinking. Romantic Gypsies. Sentimental fantasies. The East with a soft erotic glow. Perhaps I should add that to my paper. Perhaps I had always been too respectful.

‘Of course you can’t know about Edward Said, he was a brilliant thinker, a profound thinker, he revolutionised the way we write about the East. But you must see it’s a stereotype, deciding to go to bed with a Turk?’

VIRGINIA

‘Would you rather I had sex with — whom, exactly? A Belgian? An African?’

ANGELA

‘Good heavens, here’s Ray Kuyperman. Professor Kuyperman! Come and join us!’

VIRGINIA

‘ — No, I will sleep with whomever I want to.’ But I had to break off. A tall thin man had materialised in the square behind us.

‘Ladies!’ he said, manifestly startled, almost as though we had somehow caught him out. ‘Angela Lamb! What a surprise! Of course, you are giving a reading at the conference. And one of the plenaries, I believe. But — what are you doing here?’ Rimless spectacles. Firm jaw-line. He gestured vaguely around the tables. One of our neighbours raised his hand, but Kuyperman ignored them.

ANGELA

‘This is Virginia, a friend of mine. Virginia, this is Ray Kuyperman, from the University of Witwatersrand. Which is in Africa, but actually he’s Belgian. He lives in Brussels most of the year.’

VIRGINIA

‘How convenient!’

DR KUYPERMAN

‘You must be joking. The travelling is dreadful.’

ANGELA

‘Were you caught up in the demonstration? Is that how you came to be here, like us?’

DR KUYPERMAN

‘Pure chance, dear lady.’

VIRGINIA

He had beautiful manners, but under the surface he was agitated. The man with the longest moustache next door was definitely trying to attract his attention, but Kuyperman seemed oblivious. The red-head’s beautiful cream silk scarf had fallen on the ground under their table. Something odd about her neck. Oh, and her hands, in flamboyant rings, heavy silver crusting the knuckles — but the fingers extended too far from the rings, and the nails, when they came, were square and broad. Those elegant legs. Those enormous feet! Of course, she was a man. Feeling shy, I looked away.

ANGELA

‘Are you here alone? Why don’t you join us later on? I have to go back and prepare my talk, but we’ll go out to eat, I expect.’

‘Professor!’ A chorus, rather loud, almost jeering, from the raffish group at the next-door table. ‘Academics,’ he mouthed to us, ‘I must say Hallo.’

We agreed he might call at the hotel at eight.

‘By the way,’ he said to her as he turned away, ‘You are awfully like the other Virginia, as everyone must tell you!’

She looked at him — a long, noticing look — and smiled, but said nothing.

‘Distant relation,’ I said. ‘Through Leslie Stephen’s brother, the judge.’

‘Really?’

VIRGINIA

‘I am related to the judge,’ I confirmed. (Quite true, he was my uncle.)

By now the homosexuals — for now I was sure — and the red-headed transvestite at the table next door were laughing openly in Kuyperman’s direction. As we left, one made a slight, ironic bow. Why had he not introduced us to them? Was homosexuality still taboo? Kuyperman was evidently one, but who cared?

The crush on Istiklal had eased. The police-buses were still there, but the shouting had stopped. The young people holding up their magazines had gone. I hoped they were not inside the buses. A few policemen stood around, hard-eyed.

‘He’s distinguished-looking, don’t you think?’ she asked me.

‘Who?’

‘Ray. Professor Kuyperman. I’m sure he’d love to have dinner with you.’

Evidently she was match-making. Trying to divert my attention from Turks. Marching across the Galata Bridge, she explained his work.

ANGELA

‘He’s a well-known scholar. Loves your books, especially Orlando . I’m amazed they haven’t asked him to do a plenary. His best-known book is Quiddities: Denaturalised Concepts of Sex, Gender and Queer Love in Orlando .’

VIRGINIA

‘Good heavens.’

ANGELA

‘I think he’s single.’

VIRGINIA

‘Quite.’

Back at the hotel, we went to our rooms. I thought with shame of my attempt to confide. She had simply refused to hear what I was saying. So modern women were prejudiced too. I was too chaste, I was too old, I must always be what I was before — so many boundaries around desire. Angela could not help or advise me.

So I’d have to find it for myself.

I would search for the long-lost secret garden I dreamed of when I was just a girl. Before what was hidden was stolen from me.

When Lil told the gang about Gerda’s great swim and how she saved Wolfy from the barbed wire, she said not a word about what happened after.

The three of them were reunited. Gerda and Wolfy were both sopping wet, standing there shivering and dripping in the sunlight, hidden from view by the trees round the lake from the grownup world of robbers and killers. (Lil had told Gerda stories about things so terrible that Gerda only knew them from fairy tales. ‘You’ve got to be careful. I’ll look after you,’ Lil had said.)

It was nearly midday. The sun was hot. Lil kept hugging Gerda’s wet body. Wolfy was whining and licking his leg, but it was Gerda that Lil worried about. ‘You’ll have to get dry,’ she said, protective. ‘This is the Ramblers, this wood, it’s famous.’ ‘What for?’ Lil Roberta didn’t answer her. ‘I know a place that’s beautiful.’ She led Gerda, dripping, through narrow paths to a sort of greenhouse, but without any glass, a Japanese-y shelter that looked from a distance as if it was made of pale blue lace. ‘This is the Ladies Pavement,’ she said, proudly. ‘It’s a secret.’

‘Pavilion,’ said Gerda, reading the plaque.

‘Same thing,’ said Lil.

(But it wasn’t, thought Gerda. Softer, fuller. She’d been to school. She loved ‘pavilion’.)