Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

I was there. I was — chosen to see it. Somehow I had to find the words.

The tears began to roll down her face, bright ropes of water on her dry white skin. She cupped her hands, and her head dropped into them. The clever long skull with its silver hair. She sat, a dead weight. A broken statue. A water-streaked monument on a stained bed, in the wrong room, in the wrong century.

I was there, myself, with Virginia Woolf. Later, much later, I am writing it down.

Neither of us spoke for a long time.

‘I know this is hard. I’m so sorry to tell you … But you see — we’re in the twenty-first century. Leonard would be what, well over a hundred. He had his life. It did continue. After you — ’

And there I fell silent. ‘I mean. It’s seven or eight decades since you — ’

But I couldn’t say to her ‘since you died’. I couldn’t say ‘since you killed yourself’. That phrase is an impossibility. It can never be said between two human beings.

We sat there, two tall, solid women in a room that felt too small for us, a banal, real, insect-sprayed room in Manhattan where no-one cared if they poisoned the guests so long as the bed-bugs didn’t survive, and the radiator hummed, and the traffic roared, and everything was as real as this table.

I knew too much, and she too little. By suicide, she had lost the right to know about the man she loved. She had turned her back, gone on alone.

(A stab of pain. Was it what I had done? The last thing I’d shouted as he strode down the hall: ‘Don’t come back. Don’t bother to phone.’ And then he didn’t. He didn’t phone. He thought I meant it. He was a man. I dragged my thoughts away from Edward.)

I, a mere stranger, knew more than Virginia. That Leonard had managed to write again, loved again, been happy again.

I thought: I can’t tell her he was happy.

(And what if Edward is happy again? What if he has another woman?)

‘I say, Virginia — Mrs Woolf — let’s go out, before it gets cold.’

VIRGINIA (

angrily wiping her face on her sleeve

)

‘It’s all my fault. I left him alone. I thought he would be able to work, without me …’

ANGELA

‘This is too much for you. And me! You like walking, don’t you? I need some air. Perhaps you would come for a walk with me?’

VIRGINIA

‘I must go home. I need to go home.’

ANGELA

Desperation makes you creative. ‘The zoo. There’s a zoo. You would like the zoo. A zoo in the park you caught a glimpse of. Central Park. It’s beautiful.’

VIRGINIA (

pulling herself together

)

‘Of course I have heard of Central Park.’

ANGELA

‘Would that be — agreeable?’

She gave an almost imperceptible nod.

VIRGINIA

‘Better than staying here, I suppose.’

ANGELA

‘That’s settled, then. Rest, then a walk. First I need the bathroom. Oh, perhaps you need the bathroom?’

VIRGINIA (

coldly

)

‘I bathe in the morning.’

ANGELA

‘Lavatory. Closet. Oh, I don’t know. I will leave you to it.’

I couldn’t bear to be inches away when Virginia Woolf was — no, impossible. I took my phone out into the corridor. It was ridiculous, of course.

(For several days that’s what I did, and for my own needs ran down to the lobby and queued behind the departing guests, tripping over their long mule-trains of baggage.)

When I came back, she was emerging from the bathroom. ‘All right?’ I said. ‘You — push down the handle.’

She looked at me, indignant. ‘I’m used to water closets,’ she said. ‘We had one installed at Monk’s House. Yours is rather … elaborate , of course.’ I glimpsed something scarily like contempt, and banned myself from noticing.

‘Virginia, you’ll need a coat.’

Now I was glad I’d brought too many clothes, with a view to impressing American men (small chance of that with her in tow.) I beckoned her over to look in the wardrobe and indicated my second favourite, a smart narrow coat of merino wool, black and slick as a liquorice stick. She shook her head.

No, she was stroking, with her long, sensuous, lingering fingers, my favourite Stella Maris trench coat, beautifully, generously cut from blue mohair. The yoke floated out like a sail at sea. It had sharp reveres and an indigo belt, such a beautiful belt of shiny blue snakeskin, no-one should wear that coat but me …

I never learned to say ‘No’ to her.

Soon we were tensed on the brink of the street. I caught our reflections in the lobby mirror. I was sombre, invisible beside my companion, the ivory oval of her face suspended over her long blue body, fabulously winged like a Morpho butterfly. Everyone turned to stare at her.

(She couldn’t have done without me, though.)

GERDA

So Mum stopped answering my emails. I hated this school. I was furious. Then she sent an email that explained nothing.

I am having to take care of Virginia Woolf. That was the person I was talking to. Am sending this email while she is resting. You can’t imagine how demanding she is. I don’t suppose you’ll have heard of her, but if you had, you’d be impressed. She’s really very famous. It’s wonderful, but it is a pressure. I am her ONLY living friend. Love love love, coochy-coochy-coo, strokes and hugs from your loving mother. PS hope school is fabulous. PPS She’s a genius.

I thought ‘Who IS this Genius?’

Next day I googled Virginia Woolf. Fuck me, 5.9 million results.

Then I found out she was actually dead.

I really started to hate my mother.

ANGELA

Was it a kind of celebrity worship? Virginia was one of the first celebs, with her background and her beauty. Let’s face it, it wasn’t just raw talent. It must have helped her, knowing everybody (which certainly couldn’t be said of me).

Privilege. It can make you hate them.

This isn’t really what I meant to say. Because yes, she was the daughter of Leslie Stephen, the most famous Victorian man of letters, yes, she was friends with EM Forster and Maynard Keynes and Lytton Strachey, yes, she had a small private income and looked like a clever, dreamy angel — but she wrote like an angel, as well. A pinioned angel, not the household kind.

Delicate, witty, brutal. Woolf does it all, at the speed of light. Each time I read her, I admire her more. I try to be critical. But she’s just … good.

And if she was privileged, I accept it. Because she did it for all of us. Showed she was cleverer than the men. Showed what we were capable of. I told Gerda, ‘She’s a genius.’

All the same — she was privileged.

GERDA

I hated the idea of Virginia Woolf. I mean, my mum was a writer herself. Why did she have to be obsessed with this Virginia? Why’s she s’posed to be such a genius? I might be a Genius myself one day.

But mum didn’t care, she just ignored my emails, or sent back three lines about her own life.

I felt so lonely in that phonebox. Geniuses need encouragement.

ANGELA

What hope is there for the rest of us, who don’t have Woolf’s advantages?

GERDA

Then I remembered Hans Andersen. He had to leave home when he was younger than me. His parents were actual peasants . I don’t suppose anyone encouraged him .

He just ran away to Copenhagen, and became a great writer all on his own. His Fairy Tales is my favourite book. No wonder, I was named for one of them, Gerda, the hero of ‘The Snow Queen’, who was brave and went off On Her Own around the world

So that encouraged me in my plan.

ANGELA

I had more advantages than my own mother. Which is partly why I’ve done better than her. Of course I’ve passed them on to Gerda. That child doesn’t know how lucky she is.