Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

Perhaps she was lying on the bed naked ! I could not bear to see my hero naked.

When we’d shared a room, I never saw her naked (though was she my hero anymore?).

I shuffled away, backwards, defeated. I had missed something, I knew, I was sure.

‘Thank you,’ I said to the maid as I went, trying to reassert my authority. Why had she taken her headscarf off?

ANGELA

As I tossed and turned through the night before the conference, telling myself I must go to sleep or I would be too tired to give a good paper, a salting of details fell like snow, bright disconnected particles against the darkness.

1. The pale girl with the sooty lashes had lost her scarf, and had no shoes on. Of that I was sure. I was at ground level, I could not be mistaken.

2. Virginia was a lesbian. (As her husband summarised it, after her death.) When she talked about her ‘feelings’ for men, in the café, it was a smokescreen.

But

3. the shoe I had glimpsed on the carpet by the bed, sturdy, black and shiny, was a man’s.

Or a lesbian shoe? Did it belong to the maid?

But

4. the maid was small, and the shoe was large. What was going on? What was Virginia up to?

Then at four, I jerked awake with

5. a mind-boggling explanation. She had gone to bed with a woman and a man. But why was I shocked? I had read Orlando .

6. An innocuous explanation. The maid was a maid looking after a guest. She was a small person with very big feet. She had taken her shoes off out of respect. It was a universal Turkish habit. Devout young Muslims were not lesbians. Virginia was married for over three decades. Muslim women did take their veils off when they were alone with women.

And slowly the innocuous story gained ground. I berated myself. I was a horrible person. Censorious to boot. Why did it bother me?

7. Well, because I was losing my own husband. He was disappearing in a dream of ice. He was shouting, waving, but I could not hear him. And Gerda, too, her small mouth opening. The two of them on the same sleigh. I should have known they would gang up together.

8. Nightmare firmed up into half-awake conviction. As the night thinned in my lonely room, the light was fading from the poles, and I found my fingers were clutching the duvet, they were both together in the gathering darkness, they were huddled together, unimaginably cold, two tiny people on a blue-white field, they had called for help and I had not answered, and now they had turned their backs on me. I tried to hold on, but they slipped over the edge while I fretted in a half-life between sleep and waking.

Daylight had formed a blank shape on the mirror before I finally rolled over and slept. One hour later, the alarm exploded.

I woke up to one clear realisation. Of course I must let Edward have the money. It was partly his, in any case. I had gone mad. It was not too late. In the Arctic it would be the middle of the night, but I left him a long text with a short beginning: ‘Sorry, Edward. Take the lot. The whole £40,000. We can afford it.’

I felt a bit better once I had done that (though hopefully, he wouldn’t spend all of it …?) Then turned my mind to the day ahead.

At 8.30 AM, as agreed with Virginia, I was up on the roof-terrace, frowning at the light, waiting for her. She did not come, but she still might. On balance, she was innocent.

Our taxi was ordered for 9.10 AM. I ate my eggs in agitation, pushing the tomato around the plate. I was due to talk at 11 AM, but the opening ceremony was at 9.30 AM. I started to feel convinced of her guilt. The toast dried my throat. My chair scraped the floor. I looked at my watch every other minute. Virginia was now a hardened harlot.

Modern women should be professional!

(Preferably not at sex, of course.)

As a woman and a feminist, she’d let me down.

By the time I regained our landing, I was raging. Only ten minutes till the taxi arrived. (And I’d given away all our money! I was poor!) Then I noticed something. Her key was in the door.

Could she have checked out?

Was she all right?

Was she fucking coming, as promised, to the conference?

In one furious move, I had turned the key, I was in through the door –

She lay there sleeping.

VIRGINIA

That happiness: they want blood for it. I never had it before, so I never realised. She knew I was happy, so she wanted me to pay. It reminded me of something, the look in her eye when she finally extricated me from the bedclothes. Who did she remind me of?

— Yes, long ago, the narrowing faces of our Bloomsbury relations when they spotted us coming, twenty feet away, with Vanessa in her new uncorseted dress that showed her body; we were laughing together, her hair was loose, and her lips were red, and she had been kissing all afternoon. They nodded to me, the most minimal nod, we were arm in arm but they refused to see her. And ever afterwards, they cut us dead. With her happy body she earned their hatred.

Now suddenly I am bare as she was. Now the hard glances will come for me. I have to be humble. (But I am proud!)

Ahmet. How did we choose each other? What miracle made what happened, happen? Happen, happen, happiness.

I will keep those hours till the end of my life — this second life, my happy life.

GERDA

Atatürk Airport was like New York except some of the signs were not in English.

I remembered Istanbul was enormous.

I remembered Mum telling me that. ‘It goes on forever. You’d love it there. The whole world is in Istanbul, Gerda. One day, I’ll take you.’

Yes, but she didn’t. And I hadn’t got a visa. I got to ‘Immigration’ and was sent straight back. A kind Dutch teacher saw what happened and showed me where to buy my visa.

‘Tourist?’ asked the officer, serious-faced, getting ready to put a stamp on my passport. I had the £10 in my hand, no problem, but a little devil made me say something else. ‘No, I’ve come for the conference.’

‘Conference? What conference?’ He frowned crossly. His stamp hovered in mid-air. ‘You are tourist, yes?’

‘The International Conference.’ Surely he would know. Then I could ask him where I had to go. But he’d lost interest, his stamp came down, he took my money and the queue moved forward.

As soon as I got into an internet café, I googled ‘Istanbul’ and ‘international conference’. Fuck, there were thirty-one million hits .

‘The whole world is in Istanbul, Gerda.’

How, in a whole new world, would I find her?

VIRGINIA

In the street outside Tash Konak, Ahmet had put his arm briefly around my shoulders, light as a leaf brushing my arm, the merest declaration that he would protect me, that I was with him –

And yes, I was. I was with a man. He walked like a dancer or a weightlifter, as if every step was slightly sprung, and his pleasure in my company was like a cloak of finest cashmere keeping me warm.

‘What shall I call you?’ he demanded, as we walked up towards the Hippodrome, passing a restaurant with globes of coloured light like a bunch of illuminated glass balloons. Everything was weightless as a children’s party, for this one evening I would be someone else, a new person with different rules, and the breeze on my face felt deliciously cool.

‘Ginia?’ I said. ‘It was my childhood nickname.’

‘Pretty,’ he said, ‘very pretty name. Pretty like you, Mrs Room 15. From now on, I call you only Ginny.’

‘No, Ginia,’ I repeated.

He nodded, and then, with careful lips, said ‘Ginny. This time I got it right!’

What did it matter? I was laughing. ‘Ginny.’