Virginia Woolf in Manhattan. Maggie Gee
won’t let ANYONE make me cry.
It’s just that sometimes I miss my own bedroom. My own things. And my friends from home.
But I’ll be OK, because I’m Gerda.
And I want my mum to be able to work – she has a right to, and she’s a writer, and I do love her, and I don’t want to stop her, like my dad did, she says, because he was a Bastard, though he definitely cooked, when he was at home, and shopped and brought her cups of tea. In any case I wish Mum wouldn’t call him a Bastard. If I stop her writing, perhaps she won’t love me, though she claims to love me most in the world.
And like I said, she needs money for me, or I will never get my new iPad, or my new bike, and my phone is CRAP – she promised me a new one, but then she forgot and went away.
One day I’ll be a writer too, and I won’t want anybody to stop ME. So fair enough, I had to go to boarding school, but why did it have to be this horrible hell-hole, Bendham Abbey, which is s’posed to be the best, but is full of bitches?
I meant to say ‘Wankers’. ‘Bitches’ is sexist. I’m against sexism, like Mum.
I’m tired now so I’m going to eat Jelly Beans. I saved my favourites, which are Pomegranate.
To be continued in
My Battle with the Furies,
Part the Second
20
ANGELA
Goldstein & Sons, rare book-dealers. We hurried towards it through a shoal of banks, huge blank corporations, auction-houses. Along the cold black gullies, past cliffs of black glass, the cars came streaming and honking past us. Fast, deadly, not seeing us.
The towers there always strike me as satanic. Darker, more hulking than over on the West Side, and the shadows they cast are cold and solid, as if spring could never creep in here. She was shivering, drawing her shabby tweed jacket closer. I thought, we’ll have to buy her more clothes, and I will take that smelly suit to the cleaners – ‘Do the best you can, someone drowned in it!’ – (Yes, Virginia’s presence was wearing, and yes, sometimes I fell back on cheap jokes.)
I remembered from the Diaries her unease at buying clothes.
VIRGINIA
I wanted to go straight into the shop with her, but she insisted on leaving me round the corner in a cafeteria. As if she didn’t trust me. (Anyone would think they were her books we were selling.) As soon as I got there, I was ravenous. I had only eaten two slices of toast, after not eating for many decades! There was a delicious smell of fried potatoes. She found me a table by the window and made me promise not to wander off. Of course, that was ridiculous. She sometimes reminded me of Leonard – he, too, often sounded like a gaoler.
I admit the last day I went out on my own I did not prove I could be trusted.
ANGELA
‘Virginia, what would you like to eat?’
VIRGINIA
She was earnest and sensible: not playful. Something to do with not having servants – the business of life, the workaday duties, had ground her down.
I tried for lightness, (Laughing) ‘Oh, soup and salmon and ducklings …’
ANGELA
‘You won’t find that on the menu.’
VIRGINIA
I wanted to know if she had really read me.
‘Partridges?’
ANGELA
She could be a show-off. ‘Virginia, you’ve got to order,’ I said.
VIRGINIA
‘Sprouts foliated like rosebuds?’
ANGELA (still not impressed)
‘I see, it’s the food from A Room of One’s Own. You’re quoting yourself. Or testing me? I promise I’ve read it half a dozen times. It’s a great text. But leave that aside.
‘Here you’ll get sandwiches or salad or a burger. Fried beef in a bun. With chips.’
VIRGINIA (enthusiastically)
‘That sounds delicious. Beef and potatoes. Nothing beats a good boeuf en daube … Yes, I’ll have that. Go and sell the books.’
ANGELA
She was definitely used to having servants!
‘Will you be all right, Virginia?’
(I thought, ‘How will she manage? She won’t understand a word people say!’)
WAITER
‘Burger and fries, Ma’am?’
VIRGINIA
‘Well, that’s – just the ticket.’
ANGELA
So that was that. I parked her there. I didn’t know much about rare books, so I expected a learning curve, and I didn’t want her there mucking things up.
(Quietly) ‘Virginia, please remember not to leave. Because you haven’t got money to pay with. So you will be pursued and arrested. I won’t be long.’
But she was lost in thought, staring happily out at people on the pavement. One hand waved vaguely as I walked away.
21
ANGELA
Goldstein’s was staffed with polite, good-looking young men who hovered purposefully in pale suits, gracing the customers with discreet smiles that hinted at shared passions. The shop was so beautiful I felt rather shy. It wasn’t like English secondhand bookshops with piles of dusty books in corners. It was high and airy, with a gallery, a large dark table in the middle of the room for customers to inspect the books, and display cases around the walls. They showed exquisite single copies, dotted in careful asymmetry, like blowing leaves in a Hiroshige print.
And what did I see, on the right-hand wall, winking at me from behind the glass? A copy of To The Lighthouse, with the familiar Vanessa Bell book jacket. The lighthouse tower, the radiating beams, and Virginia’s name in capitals. (How different it felt seeing it now. Of course I had read her name on book jackets hundreds of times, but never before with this intimate jolt of recognition – the woman was waiting for me just around the corner!)
My heart lifted, then my heart sank – of course it was good to see it displayed among the jewels of the collection. But if they had one copy, would they want another?
She was next to Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. And there was Orlando on the other side!
A clean-cut, shiny-haired young man wavered closer.
‘Good afternoon, Ma’am. May I assist you?’
‘I’m interested in Virginia Woolf.’
‘We have a quite good collection, as you see. And over here, there’s a nice copy of A Room of One’s Own.’
I trotted obediently after him. There was yet another first edition, sporting the original dust jacket, slightly browned at the edges but the colours still bright, a clock on an ink-blue background. Perhaps the clock meant the time was right for women to have money and a room of their own.
Now once again, Virginia needed money. And a room of her own in New York, which I was sorting. Mine was much too small for us.
(Too small for me, as well. I had left it too late to book my flights and then BA Business Class was £4,000! I was haemorrhaging money for Gerda’s fees, so I’d suddenly thought ‘Oh, sod BA’ and booked a package through lastminute.com. Unfortunately