Virginia Woolf in Manhattan. Maggie Gee
I found a seat. It felt cold to the hand, the wooden slats uncomfortable. She sank down with a muffled groan.
‘Virginia, are you all right?’
But she didn’t answer. She gathered herself, as if she was bringing herself back from the darkness, pulling her shoulders back like a soldier. With the faintest sigh, she was on her feet. And in a second, she’d set off again.
‘Virginia, you’re going the wrong way.’
Back on Fifth Avenue, the headlights had come on and the shop windows glowed like stained glass. Every so often she stopped and gazed. Those features, indescribably familiar, suddenly grown intimate. In lit close-up, astonished, pleased. How could it be – it couldn’t be – that face shone out from my own blue coat, those white hands gestured from its wide blue sleeves? Above my collar, the mauve veins of her temples. I thought my eyes would eat her up.
(They hypnotise us, those images. Woolf, Auden, Nabokov. Monumental, moonlit, deaf. Now she had come to live amongst us.)
VIRGINIA
‘So much electricity.’ We had paused in a wash of lemon light from a window where giant pastel easter eggs circled the air. ‘It’s dazzling. My eyes are tired. This city must be very expensive …’
ANGELA
After all, she did write A Room of One’s Own. She knew you couldn’t live without money.
VIRGINIA
‘Every so often, I’m tired to death.’
ANGELA
‘Virginia, we’re nearly home.’
15
ANGELA
Back in the room, I ordered tea; luke-warm water and teabags arrived. The lack of competence invigorated her.
VIRGINIA
‘Tea was always appalling abroad. France, Germany. So nothing’s changed.’
ANGELA
I felt defensive about my century.
‘Actually, this isn’t typical. It’s just a rather poor hotel.’
VIRGINIA
‘Is it poor? Really? Then why did you choose it?’
ANGELA
Virginia was sitting on the bed. Her long elegant frame made it look short and narrow.
I contemplated the difficulties of explaining the perils of internet deals. First I must explain the internet. No, put it off until tomorrow. ‘Because it’s cheap,’ I said
She had draped my coat over the single armchair. I sank down beside her on the same twin bed, leaving a respectful gap between us.
VIRGINIA
‘Oh. Are you poor?’
ANGELA
I was furious! ‘Certainly not.’
Her interest was anthropological: I was just a human from another era. No, I wasn’t real for her.
But I was real. Money is a touchy subject. If she was going for frankness, so would I. ‘You ought to be massively rich by now. Royalties, and rights, and so forth.’
VIRGINIA
‘If so, they certainly haven’t told me. Possibly I was hard to contact.’
ANGELA
I tried not to think she was mocking me. Something to do with the class difference maybe. The elongated vowels of her ‘really’. The accent of someone who had never had to work.
All very well for her to time-travel and end up here with no means of support.
VIRGINIA
I was chortling with pleasure at the nerve of this woman. I loved the fact that she could talk about money. So many women are incapable of doing so. Brazen, yes, but invigorating. All the same – did she think they’d been sending me cheques?
ANGELA
I blushed with shame. She was definitely laughing. I wanted her to think me intelligent. For one second I almost felt – hatred.
‘So you don’t have any money at all, Virginia?’ (Why should I pussyfoot around with the ‘Mrs’?) ‘That’s rather – inconvenient.’ I snickered, mirthlessly. Two could play at that game.
I poured myself another cup of tea, without looking to see if she needed a refill.
VIRGINIA
She had gone too far. She was a vulgar woman. But I could wipe the smile off her face. ‘I didn’t take any money with me – on my last day.’
ANGELA
I did feel bad.
‘Sorry, Virginia.’
VIRGINIA (severely)
‘Mrs Woolf!’
ANGELA (taken by surprise)
‘Sorry.’
No, it was absurd, I would not – kow-tow. ‘But you know, we are in the twenty-first century.’
VIRGINIA (not understanding)
‘Surely good manners are still important.’
ANGELA
‘Yes. My name is Angela. Just in case you want to use it.’
(Pause.)
‘Wait a minute … what’s that in your pocket?’ (Disappointed) ‘Oh I suppose it’s just a stone.’
VIRGINIA
‘There is nothing of interest to you in my pockets.’
ANGELA
I saw from her face she was lying to me!
Hauteur punctured by childish guilt, a smidgin of fear mixed with laughter – she looked like Gerda aged one and a half, hiding her banana under the sofa. Which must explain what happened next. Looking back on it I can hardly believe it, but this is what happened. We had a fight!
‘There is.’ I reached for the bulges in her jacket, she tried to turn her back on me – we had a brief tussle. I was tussling with Woolf, I was stronger, of course – she had been dead for a while! – yet something had changed since she first arrived, when I had touched her hand and there was nothing there. Her body no longer felt liquid, boneless. She was panting a little. No, she was laughing.
There was a hard object in each pocket, straining the frayed tweed of her suit.
VIRGINIA
‘They’re books, that’s all. I like to keep them with me.’
(Oddly, the struggle made me giggle. I had not been touched for such a long time. I played with my brothers, long long ago. When I was a child, and things were easy, before Mother died and the house went dark.)
‘I mean, they are mine. I did write them. I even published them. I have a right.’
(Why was I justifying myself to her? She was becoming a parent figure. Poor Dr Freud would have something to say, in his flickering, subtle, shrunken way –
– How very late I came to love him. Like fathers, only after they die … I loved my father, but the noise, the groaning, the hurricane that shook the doors. Then, when he’d gone, I could think, in the silence, I could feel for him, I could dare to love him. After Freud died, I began to read him.)
ANGELA
‘My God. To the Lighthouse. What a glorious copy.’
I could hardly believe what I saw on the bed. As