Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

We were in the great hall. Marmoreal cool that promised heat in the afternoon. Through the pointed window I saw a swallow. Melike summoned the sound engineer. Ah, the microphone, a black beetle on a stick. I told him the contents of my breakfast, as usual, biting back the desire to add ‘but I could scarcely eat a mouthful, because Virginia had not got up.’ The lectern was too big and imposing. They would see my face like a tiny rubber ball, balanced on a tower of shiny wood. Never mind, today I needed protection. My hangover was bouncing lightly in my head.

The audience began to arrive. The staff came and sat at the front, as usual. The students flooded into the rows at the back, got out their mobiles, and started texting. I was introduced to my introducer, and then to the head of department, or dean, who would be introducing my introducer, and then to another even grander book-end, possibly the warden or vice-chancellor. Everybody looked terribly old and solid, except for the students in their distant youthfulness, their hands and fingers flickering like wings and their laughter silvery as the swallow’s.

Gerda — a stab of missing her. Two weeks to her birthday and the end of term.

We stood on the stage like awkward relatives arriving for our own funerals. Virginia tried to make her escape before the obligatory photographs, but Professor Melike insisted she stayed. As the cameras flashed, the whisper spread among the little cluster of nodding grandees: ‘distant relative … lawyer … Stephens.’

My stomach was tightening. I wanted this over. I took a brief overview of the hall. Good attendance. At the back, the young. In the front few rows, some familiar faces. There was Ray Kuyperman, smiling slightly. And no — oh no — that familiar figure, Moira Penny, somewhat paler and more startling than before, her hair in two braids of vivid magenta. Dr Moira Penny, the academic who at one stage was such a fan of my work, but who in some unfathomable way I had hurt and disappointed. The critical study of my work she had planned had long been stalled, and I hoped, aborted. I turned away before she caught my eye. (Didn’t Moira write about Virginia Woolf? Good, then she wasn’t here stalking me .)

The audience settled. Most of the stage party left and assumed positions in the front row, leathery and awkward as seated turtles. I put on my glasses. The vice-chancellor tapped his microphone and made a thunderous rumble of sound. There was miming between him and the sound engineer, and audience laughter as the latter rushed forward and tripped on the steps up to the platform. My glasses felt hot upon my nose. At last, the introductions had begun.

The students started texting again after a brief pause of static hope. There was praise for the organisers, the university, Professor Melike, the introducer. Some of what was said gained a ripple of applause; I heard the phrase, ‘intellectual freedom’. Finally the introducer praised me, in a fancy-footwork Wikipedia shuffle in which all the grammar was pointlessly inverted to add an air of originality (I wrote the entry, I should know):‘… Iceland Prize … best-selling … ground-breaking …’

Yes, it was me. I was gurning horribly. The flying fingers at the back had stopped moving.

I thanked everyone as briefly as I could. My glasses lighted on Virginia’s face. There she was, sitting on her own. She had wandered away from the academics. I was going to deliver my gift to her. I had long loved her. I would defend her. None of the rest of it mattered, finally. I had never been able to say what I wanted; never told her why I loved her work; never quite had the in-depth discussion that I had always longed to have. What would remain of us was love. But the light fell strangely; her face was a blank.

And as these split-second thoughts flew past and I raised my pages to begin, I saw Gerda sitting in the middle of the room, the middle of the row, the centre of my vision. The room around her faded; she was the only one.

Of course it wasn’t her, it was an illusion .

No, Gerda was there. Her sheaf of red hair, her round pale face, her lips half-open, she was mouthing something I could not hear. I could not take in what was happening. She was at school, surely, in Hertfordshire, England, four or five hours’ flight time away. This was a red-haired doppelganger.

No, it was her. That turn of her head. I was going mad. It could not be Gerda.

Yes, my daughter. My love for her .

But the hall was waiting. They were staring at me. A little ripple of unease. I must go on, I must give my paper. For a moment everything blurred with tears. Had I ever given enough to Gerda? I thought: I will make this talk for her, it must be for her, not Virginia. Gerda’s thirteen, on the cusp of adulthood. She will help Virginia go on into the future.

Strip out the theory, talk from the heart. I clutched the lectern, and then I began. The first page will do, I thought, then cut it.

‘This conference is yet another tribute to the power of one woman, Virginia Woolf, whose record of human consciousness lit up the borders between self and world. Who showed us doubt, and ambivalence, and the fluidities of sex and gender. Whose witty, flashing prose, in the diaries, makes other diarists look like plodders. Who was male and female, old and young.

‘Such brilliance comes with a cost, of course. It may throw others into shadow. It may cause envy from the less successful. It may breed hatred as fierce as love.

‘By her own contemporaries Virginia Woolf was seen as modern, as well as a modernist. By those who came afterwards, however, she has sometimes been seen, or rather misrepresented, as reactionary, elitist, snobbish, self-indulgent. It is astonishing, actually, that one woman made so many people so angry.’ ( A flash: how often she has made me angry, since coming to life in the reading-room .) ‘Including those who have barely read her. Perhaps it is her face: aristocratic arrogance complicated by vulnerability. If you prick her, you know she would bleed — ’ ( or fade, dwindle, disappear. That day in New York when she had nearly vanished, after finding all the bookshops were closing down .)

And then I was off on my catalogue of haters. It took me ten minutes to get through the roster.

‘… art for art’s sake … stultifying … ivory tower … not relevant to today’s … if ever … undeserved pre-eminence … Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse … bloodless … anaemic … no breath of real life … daughter of privilege … patronage … precious … narrow … cold … frigid … withholding …

‘I think we can see, when it is gathered together, that this is so much spiteful nonsense — often promulgated by male critics — ’

Remember to smile .

I looked up and smiled. But the audience were looking depressed and sober. Gerda’s face was flat, uncertain. I was not having the effect I wanted. And indeed, as my words came back to my ears, I suddenly realised what I had been doing: replicating hatred, despite myself. ( Why had I gathered so many quotes? Was it my own shadow side? Did part of me feel something like hatred? )

Turn it around. Turn it around! Get out of the shadow! Find the light!

My body. Somehow it knew what to do. My hands were crumpling, tearing the pages, they were falling on the floor, big flakes of white ash. My eyes moved from Gerda to the young at the back. They had not given up. They still looked to me for something. I didn’t know them, or what to give them, but Woolf, surely, was for everyone, if I could find the words to say so.

What could I surmise about the students? Only two — no three — of the girls were covered. There were boys, as well, a minority, but again, three or four had Islamic beards (no, they were just beards, don’t call them Islamic, facial hair is not a religion. Beards were signs with plural meanings.) Fifty, no a hundred, one hundred and fifty young. They were here for me, still interested. They were not inspired, but no-one was texting. If I found the right words, I might make this work.