Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

‘Hey, why you giving her that?’ ‘No-o-oh!’ ‘I want that!’ From the group around Beard Boy, there were mutinous cries. ‘Man, she’s really got the hots for her.’

Once again, it was all in the balance. For a second, Lil Robber paused. Then she said loudly to Gerda, so everyone could hear ‘And what are you going to give to me? What is your favourite thing that you’ve got?’ Gerda saw that Lil had to show her power. ‘For real,’ Lil said, looking deep into her eyes, ‘Because I saved you and I love you, don’t I?’ She said the last bit very quietly.

Without hesitation, Gerda reached into her hand luggage and pulled out her book, To the Lighthouse . She handed it over, reverently, but Lily took it with an angry frown, looked at it briefly, then threw it on the ground. ‘That’s no use to anybody.’ She eyeballed Gerda, about to lose her temper. ‘Are you trying to cheat me, then?’

But Gerda stared back into the angry dark eyes. ‘I wouldn’t do that. I know what you did. Take my gold bracelet,’ she said under her breath. ‘It’s gold, isn’t it. From my mum. I didn’t nick it, she gave it me. Snatch it from me. Then they’ll be pleased.’

‘Why should I give a fuck about them ? No, you got to give it me.’

A ragged mixture of jeers and cheers went up from the parentless, awkward children as Gerda took off her bracelet, kissed it, and handed it to Lily. The morning light burned on the gold.

Lil Robber tried to put it on her wrist, but failed, and held it out towards Gerda, stern-eyed. Gerda fastened it carefully on the lean brown wrist.

‘You know I’ll sell it, but not yet.’ Lily hugged Gerda tenderly, roughly, and took her face between her hands, then turned one hand so the metal of her cheap Goth ring tickled the softness of Gerda’s throat. ‘Now get the fuck out of here to wherever you’re going. The end of the world. I’ll meet you there.’

‘See you at the end of the world,’ said Gerda. ‘You ought to free those pigeons,’ she shouted, over her shoulder, as she ran into the trees, and Lil Robber shouted cheerfully ‘Fuck OFF!’

After a bit, they stopped following her, the motley grey figures from the camp on the rock, curious about her, hating her, and soon she was back on the neat little path where sheeny-thighed joggers ran with well-kept dogs, going fast and straight in the direction of the Plaza, the world of Eloise, the world of privilege, where, in the end, Gerda has to live.

Yes, I’m an inside girl, mostly, Gerda thinks later as she goes through the doors of Rizzoli’s Bookstore, which she spots by chance as she wanders south. To the Lighthouse , rather more dog-eared and dusty than before, is back in her bag, but she wants another book. There is an eleven-hour flight in her future.

‘I want to read A Room of One’s Own ,’ she says. ‘By Virginia Woolf. It’s very famous.’

The young man at the counter looks soft as a girl, with floppy hair falling over his eyes. Gerda is fresh from her nights in the park, newly hard, and ready to judge him.

‘Oh yes, I know all about her,’ he said. ‘We just ordered a set of her books, as it happens. There seems to be a lot of interest in her.’

‘It doesn’t matter whether people are interested,’ said Gerda. ‘She’s just great. It’s just a Fact.’ (Though she knows her history teacher would call it an Assertion.)

With the book in her bag, she slips down into the subway. She watches two people go through the turnstile before she dares to use her card.

It doesn’t work once; it doesn’t work twice — damn Lil Robber and her useless gift! — but on the third go, Gerda floats through, and is drawn, thanks to her magic pass, into the charmed, unstoppable system that will deliver her around the world, to JFK Airport, where she washes in a basin and drags clean clothes, rather squashed, from her bag — first time she’s changed them since she left home. Yay, Victory over the Cleanpolice! — and yet, it’s nice not to be stained and crusted — to Check-in where she no longer has the ridiculous suitcase to check in, through Security (good, no knife, she knows that Dad will buy her a new one), to Gate 32 of Turkish Airlines, to kind flight crew who pamper her, this sweet young girl whose red hair smells of soap, and a seat in which she reads her new Virginia Woolf with growing wonder, then sleeps like a baby; thus finally, bright-eyed and rested, to Atatürk Airport, Istanbul.

VIRGINIA

‘It’s not as if one had done this before. Of course I regret making you late.’

ANGELA

We were stuck in the frightful traffic in a taxi. The ‘Welcome Session’ would soon have started, and I should have been there, networking, not struggling to drag her out of bed. ‘This isn’t the time to talk about it.’

As soon as I said that, I regretted it, much as I enjoyed the high moral ground. Because I was longing to know what happened.

The sun through the window was painfully bright.

VIRGINIA

(

with asperity

)

‘Is it your paper you are cross about? I am just as cross about it as you.’

ANGELA

‘It’s irrelevant, we will probably be too late for it.’

VIRGINIA

I couldn’t understand why Angela had pushed the thing underneath my door. Naturally I did not care to read such stuff. I had heard enough. What did she want from me? The woman should be ashamed of herself. I had returned it this morning without comment.

But I was also slightly sheepish. The last faint flutter of the Angel in the House. Then my happiness sent her flying off skywards –

No, I would never regret last night .

‘Everyone’s late, in Turkey. You said so yourself. So they will wait.’

ANGELA

She had a hazy, lazy look, as if all her contours had been blurred and softened; she was — softer? Larger? More material? The opposite, somehow, of that time in New York when she had shrunk and chilled and faded.

I sneaked another look in my powder compact. The light from above was unforgiving. My frown lines had deepened since all this began. My eyes were red from lack of sleep. I was thinner, surely.

How dare she look young?

‘It was so — inconsiderate, Virginia! And I mean, to be late for your own conference!’

VIRGINIA

‘Remember you told me not to say that.’

ANGELA

(

raising her voice

)

‘Stop — point-scoring. How did Leonard bear it?’

VIRGINIA

I stared at her. Those hateful phrases that I had heard through the bedroom wall. I thought — at least, I had come to hope, over the time we spent together, that she was an ally, a true supporter. She was looking old and tired this morning. I looked afresh at her dyed hair, her painted eyelids, her rouged cheeks.

The hate that lurks under the surface. Blade concealed in a cake of soap .

I covered my eyes, no longer laughing. The joy of the night before wavered. Too much black coffee. She had forced me to drink it. My nerves quivered, my skull-bones shook. Leonard protected me from too much coffee.

(Those murderous pages pushed under my door …)

ANGELA

‘Virginia, what are you staring at?’

VIRGINIA

I knew I must beware of her

I could feel such gladness, such peaks of joy, that was always the case since I was little

but never any safety

no guiding rope

Leonard, my rock, no longer there

I was slipping my bearings in time and space

Nessa forbade me to get excited

Handy dandy, who was my lover?

Lear was mad, but I dared not go there

Yes, they were back at the turn of the road,