Virginia Woolf in Manhattan. Maggie Gee
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.
I suppose she might actually do better than me!
I couldn’t be jealous of my own daughter.
GERDA
These girls at school started calling me fat. I was going through a sturdy phase. They can all shut up, I like my food, and I know I’ll be beautiful in the end. My mum and dad always told me I was, and two boys fought over me at St Mark’s. But then these girls did something really bad, and I had to pull one of them’s hair quite hard, and two of them fell in the swimming pool, after I gave them a tiny shove.
I may be fat, but I’m quite strong. I’d forgotten one of them couldn’t swim.
So then I was in a lot of trouble. But it wasn’t fair to call me a bully. I tried to tell my mum what had happened but I know from her emails she didn’t take it in – ‘Marvellous, Gerda, I’m glad you’re having fun.’
I love my mum but she’s slightly defective. Which is a word she uses for Dad. Or men in general. My mum is Sexist! Although she tells me not to be.
I am recording criticisms, in a notebook I aim to leave in my room in the holidays, so she can read it.
In fact that wouldn’t work at all, because I don’t think Mum’s a sneak. In fact she couldn’t be arsed to sneak.
Meaning, she isn’t that interested.
Only because she has so much ‘Pressure’. She talks a lot about ‘Stress’ and ‘Pressure’.
Being successful is a ‘Pressure’!
She should go back to being poor again.
(I take that back, she needs money for ME.)
So I will have to read my list aloud. Possibly at bed-time, when she’s tired. She gives readings, so will I.
Later I’ll be more famous than her. Har har har on Mum.
I do love her though. I don’t mind admitting it.
I like her when she tickles me, and when I lie down and she pulls my feet, which sounds perverted, but is Normal. I liked her to do that since I was a baby, and when she hasn’t got Pressure, she will.
Mummy. Mum. She’s in my heart. But the words have started to feel weird and echo-ey. As if she’s floated off somewhere, or both of us are floating away.
(Maybe I’ll start to call her ‘Mother’. That word’s like an enemy.)
14
ANGELA
Zoos are always remarkably expensive. I don’t want to sound mean-spirited, but it didn’t seem to have occurred to Virginia that someone was having to pay for it: $40 is not nothing!
I’m not asking for much, just a ‘thank you’.
VIRGINIA
The zoo crouched close to Fifth Avenue. A short walk across a burst of green. The architecture was … suburban. Some of those people were staring at me.
It was frightening to see how much things cost. I pretended not to notice her paying. I had no money, no money at all.
This expensive zoo was small and old. This couldn’t be the future, surely? London Zoo was so much larger. Those iron cages looked Victorian. Again I thought ‘It’s just a dream.’
But the American voices were so loud and real, and the light was sharp in the woman’s wrinkles. Her mouth was tight as she searched for the dollars. There were fat children eating coloured ice creams. One of them looked at me and giggled.
I liked to know what I earned, as a writer. But when we went out together, Leonard paid.
ANGELA
‘Poor polar bear. So huge and yellow. It looks sort of … left behind. I can’t help feeling sorry for it.’
VIRGINIA
The woman was jumping to conclusions.
‘It would devour you. One swipe of its paw. Pif, paf! You would be gone.’
ANGELA
Thank you.
VIRGINIA
A second later, it had slipped into its pond, and an African keeper said ‘Hurry downstairs,’ where we found a wide window under the water, and almost before we had got used to the dark and the bright blue oblong of glass beside us, a massive turbine of white and yellow erupted against the stillness, and two pink paw-pads pressed at the window before the bear forged back up to the surface – immense power, effortless – a swirl of bright bubbles like a cape of minnows. I felt to my marrow the thrill of life. I was there, I saw it. I was alive.
And yet, that wall of glass between us. A line where two universes collide. The bear was totally indifferent to us.
Of course, I wanted to tell Leonard.
ANGELA
She was enjoying herself, I know. Her eyes brightened. She was walking fast.
We loved the underground viewing window for the penguins! I had only ever seen them above ground. Hobbity creatures with a comic waddle. Swimming, they were unbelievably swift – straight as an arrow, aerodynamic. So fast that when they shot up to the surface they took off out of the water like birds!
The first time it happened Virginia hooted, we stood there together and laughed with pleasure – a line of tiny planes taking off, kids shooting off the end of a slide. I thought, Gerda would love the penguins. And as I thought it, my iPhone pinged.
Guilt. Of course it would be Gerda. The email was short and to the point. ‘What are you DOING? I miss you, Fish Face.’
Darling Gerda. I emailed back, ‘Doing my duty. Are you in a lesson?’ I was going to add more, I really was, but when I looked up, Virginia was gone.
I found her outside in the late sunlight, watching a rocky island in a lake where two blond monkeys were pressed together. Delicate ears, bright pink faces. One moment wrestling, the next caressing. Maybe they were lovers, or brother and sister, or both, but they lived in a world of two.
Virginia didn’t acknowledge my presence. She watched the monkeys, far away.
VIRGINIA (still not looking at Angela)
‘I blame myself. I abandoned him. I thought he might work better without me.’
ANGELA (too quickly, wanting to help)
‘Leonard did work. Don’t torment yourself.’
One monkey leaped on the other’s back, mounting it, briefly, then stroked or cuffed the underling’s head. For a while they nuzzled and licked each other. All the time Virginia was watching them. Two strands of grey hair whipped across her face, blowing across her wounded mouth.
I felt protective, but her