Virginia Woolf in Manhattan. Maggie Gee
asked me to ‘Try, try for Leonard’
That night I could not sleep at all
The morning, clear everything clear it was very cold
I fetched my fur I needed one last touch of comfort
flowers in the garden were too bright fat yellow daffodils, harsh, triumphant
Yellow varnish this yellow room
cruel that Octavia asked me to try ‘for Leonard’, as if I had no care for him, and she, a stranger, knew everything
I have tried so hard. I can try no longer
The Furies waiting where the path disappears
The hideous old women bare their claws at me, wet-mouthed, whispering as they crawl towards me, brown scaly talons and hanging flesh
I could smell their furious iron-rich breath, the great blades of their scissors wet with light, the hellish light of the blue spring sky, gnawing my fate before I was ready
I loved my life but I had to go, once the Furies smell you you can only flee. I knew that day I could not outrun them, the sky was cloudless, they had me at bay –
I wrote to Leonard & I wrote to Vanessa. Words I had practised many times. With the breath of the Furies hard in my ears & their split yellow nails, like torn bamboo, sharpened ready to gouge my eyes out.
In this hostile, stinking, yellow room the dreadful words return to me, words that can never be unsaid, the deed, once done, that can never be mended
the wound I dealt him, the grief I gave him
darling Leonard how I struck at his heart
knowing I must hurt him, I pulled on my coat, thrust my hand deep into the pocket as I almost ran down through the meadow, it was ready now for the fate it must carry, yes, I had gone too far to go back,
a tiny voice like the voice of a child that wanted to be born
was crying Stop a tiny part of me cried in the night
small, stubborn, a scintilla of light
trying to escape me, trying to get out
but the path led straight to the river bank the Furies behind me every step of the way behind me, ahead of me, snapping at my ankles, tearing at my stockings like vicious brambles, battering my ears with icy hatred, whipping me onwards, flee, flee
this time I knew they would never release me
the river roaring
full of crazed blue light Omega chunks of blue and brown
feel certain I am going mad again
can’t go through another of those terrible times
begin to hear voices can’t concentrate
I am doing what seems the best thing to do
You have given me the greatest possible happiness I don’t think
two people could have been happier
could have been happier
this terrible disease
I can’t fight any longer
ANGELA
After a long silence, her voice came, hoarse. ‘I did it, didn’t I. That terrible thing.’
VIRGINIA
Sitting on the woman’s ugly bed, which was broken-backed under a yellow-gold cover, with nameless shadows, wine or blood – it groaned beneath me like the sea, as if my grief was too heavy for it, & I groaned louder, I groaned like old metal, I groaned like banks of black stones on a beach, moaned in pain like a wounded beast
I remember
the clumsy walk at midday with the voices shrieking and baying behind me, the yelps of the Furies hounding me down through the meadows I had loved for so long, the skin on my back crawling with terror, Virginia, you’re mad again
I remember
thrusting the stone in my pocket
large, heavy, waiting for me, the stone like a toad on the river-
bank
I held it weighed it in my hand
blind, brutal I choose you
forcing the stitches of my pocket apart and as it started to tear, as I heard the silk split, I stopped myself, gently, be gentle with it, yes, I controlled it, the heavy bludgeon
remember
the brute knocking hard at my flank as the Furies reached me and I jerked away, their black hide blotting out the sky, great shrieks of raucous joy as they pawed me, knowing my fear would drag me down and hold me under the green tangled water — but a voice in my head still whispered Leonard, a woman’s voice said how can I leave you?
Leonard, Leonard. Yes, again. Leonard my love. I can’t leave you.
But it was too late for him to save me. Or my dear sister who was so patient, with her stooping head and steady eyes.
Yes, it was true. I left him behind. I loved my husband but I left him behind, & slipped through the door where none can follow.
11
Two o’clock in the afternoon, though several lifetimes have slipped away. Two fragile organisms, blown together. Dandelion clocks on a dirty bedstead. Angela, Virginia.
She was washed downriver like a broken doll. He had to identify her three weeks later. Children thought she was a log in the water. They stoned it, hard, to make it sink. The happy bird-calls of adolescents. Then one boy realised it was a body.
Down in the street, the cold is beginning a slow fight-back against the spring heat-wave. The dark, repressed, pauses, alerted. Soon it will be able to creep back into the gullies. Then it will climb up the buildings again.
Angela looks around her and shivers. ‘Mrs Woolf, are you all right?’
12
VIRGINIA
I suppose he had to identify me.
Did the horror of that start to eat my face? Did the sight erase poor Leonard’s memory of what he once thought beautiful?
Wracked on the bed, I remembered my crime.
ANGELA
She was pale as wax, and sat there trembling.
‘Mrs Woolf? Virginia?’
She shook her head, again and again, like a dog shaking water away.
VIRGINIA
‘I don’t know you. Why are you here? Why won’t you let me use your phone?’
ANGELA
Her breath rasped like an old man’s.
‘It’s the twenty-first century. Some way through. My name – I’ve told you several times – is Angela Lamb. And I’m alive. It feels to me as if we’re both alive. But Leonard – well, he died long ago. You can’t call him. I’m so sorry.’
She stared back at me, blind with anger. Her hand still stretched towards the phone.
I spoke more brutally than I intended. ‘The world you knew is – everything’s gone.’
‘Gone? What are you talking about?’ But her