Virginia Woolf in Manhattan (30 page)

‘It’s obviously ridiculous.’

‘You see? I knew you would sneer at it. It’s “The Death of the Author”. It’s – well, it’s French.’

‘But I’m the living embodiment of that. I’m a dead author,’ I said, and started laughing again, because, really, it was quite funny.

‘You don’t know everything about your work. It’s the intentional fallacy,’ she said. ‘That is a critical concept, too.’

‘You mean we don’t know what we’re doing?’

She nodded. ‘It’s not what I believe,’ she added. ‘I just ought to warn you.’

‘Our conscious intentions do not count? I see the influence
of Dr Freud.’

Her eyes were defiant, and slightly nervous.

‘Then how can critics know their own intentions? Maybe, unconsciously, they want to kill us. Yes, of course. Then they have the power.’

‘No, Virginia. That’s just – glib. I hope you won’t say that at the conference.’

With that she hared ahead of me, furious, her strong calves powering her on through the crowd, seemingly indifferent to whether I followed.

Odd how they hated a judgement from the past, these modern young people, so sure of themselves!

‘Can we go on a tram?’ I tried to change the subject. She pretended not to hear me. I said it louder, trotting to catch up with her.

‘Not tonight, Virginia.’

‘Why not?’

‘No.’

Her job was mostly saying ‘No’ to me.

Soon she plunged into a net of bright tables in a small street entirely lined with restaurants. Black-and-white waiters bobbed in and out like magpies. A lot of the diners were speaking English. She sank into a chair, and motioned me to join her. ‘Will you be warm enough?’ she asked. ‘Look, there’s an outdoor heater thingy. They’re not ecological, but they work. Edward would be furious! First, I need a bucket of wine.’ Suddenly friendly, she smiled at me. ‘I’ve got my notebook. Let’s make a plan.’

We were two women, making a plan, this freedom to sit and eat and drink wine had become normal, all over the planet; all around us, younger women did the same thing. I liked the new world where this could happen. I wanted this moment of warmth to linger. ‘Thank you. I would like wine, Angela.’

68

Lil and Gerda were drinking warm Coca-Cola. Normally Gerda would have shunned it, or rather her parents would have shunned it for her. When Lil held out the can, Gerda shook her head. Lil was astonished and indignant. ‘Everyone likes it,’ she said. ‘Course you do. Try it.’ To be friendly, Gerda had a sip. To her surprise, it was delicious. They shared a can, shuttling it to and fro. Gerda watched Lil’s lips and teeth against the metal. She had big white teeth and her mouth was very red (
Mum says Coca-Cola eats your teeth
. Gerda took the can and sucked it down. This was another world, with different rules.)

From where they were sitting, on top of the rock, Gerda could see other rock islands through the trees, with little figures enjoying themselves, but as the kingdom of the sun shrank up towards her feet and the evening chill settled, they disappeared. Now it was just the two of them. Gerda knew she depended on Lil.

Lil revealed she was Danish. (My dad is half-Danish,’ said Gerda, excited.) Lil’s English sounded weird, the words were OK but the accent was a mixture of every accent you had ever heard. Quite quickly Gerda got used to it. Lil told her she lived in Central Park ‘when I’m not on the subway, working.’

Gerda thought, ‘She is not a ticket collector.’ She knew without asking what Lil Roberta did. It was very exciting. Now she knew a thief. But her gold bracelet burned a line on her wrist.

‘This rock is ours,’ Lil Robber said, ‘The birds. The shit.’ (A bulky pile was covered with a violently blue tarpaulin.)
‘Everything’s ours. No-one will bother us. You sleep with me. Put that thing’ (indicating, with a wealth of scorn, the pink case Gerda was trying to ignore) ‘under the tarp.’

‘That’s kind of you, thank you,’ Gerda said. It sounded very formal (Lil Robber’s mouth dropped open) and stupidly English, and she didn’t want Lily to think she was a twat, so without thinking, Gerda reached forward and kissed the other girl full on the mouth, and felt Lil pull away, and then kissed her again, and they stood on the rock like two gladiators, halfkissing and half-wrestling, and when they stopped, Lily was laughing.

‘You’re very full on,’ she said. ‘I like that. Come on, I’ll take you on a tour of the park.’

‘If I leave my mum’s case, won’t it get stolen?’ Gerda asked. ‘There’s no-one watching it.’

‘First, my people
are
watching it,’ said Lil, grandly gesturing towards the trees. ‘Secondly, no-one goes under that tarp.’

‘Why not?’ asked Gerda.

‘Because it pongs.’

‘What’s in that box next to it?’

‘Birds.’

‘Why are they in a crate?’

‘They’re pigeons. Racing pigeons. They fell off a lorry.’

‘You ought to let them go.’

‘Who says so?’ Lily jutted her brown jaw at Gerda, and after a split second of nervousness Gerda said ‘The Great God Gerda,’ and Lily chuckled and said ‘Fuck off.’

It grew dark as they walked round the lake in Central Park. You could see the lights from the buildings on the edge, but the lake itself was huge and black, with strange cracklings and rustlings running like rats through the bushes along the edges. Lily told Gerda she was beautiful. Gerda was pleased someone else had noticed.

‘We could swim in that lake,’ Gerda said to her companion. ‘I’m good at swimming. I’ve won medals.’

‘Not tonight,’ said Lil. There was a long silence. Their feet crunched on beside the dark water; a water-bird broke the surface with a splash. Then Lily asked, sounding oddly shy, ‘If you stay with me, will you teach me to swim?’

‘Can’t you swim?’ Gerda asked, astonished.

‘You can’t do loads of things that I can do,’ Lil flashed back, instantly angry.

‘I will teach you,’ Gerda said, though she thought ‘I won’t be here long enough.’ She was amazed to be here; Lily was a goddess; she was having the adventure of her dreams; yet somehow she already knew she would have to go back to the world outside, where she had Prospects, and Lil did not.

69

‘Such a lot to do, so little time! Two days is all we’ve got for the whole of Istanbul. Where is the waiter?’

Two days left. She was frightening me. I felt that the end of the story was coming, and then perhaps mine would be over – but no, please, I wanted to stay and watch life unfold to the end of time.

All round us, people were laughing and talking, the brilliant light making the women’s hair into swinging bells of bronze and jet, and some of them had children on their laps, and a man passed selling wind-up puppies – I realised something with a shivering force that made the hairs on my arms electric.

No, I had never wanted it.

I myself never wanted to die. The self I knew, the self I owned, that loved the sunlight on the spine of the downs, loved Leonard, loved my Nessa.

Of course I didn’t want to die. It was just the illness, the cloud of darkness, something outside me, tracking me.

‘Where is the waiter?’ she asked, impatient.

‘I’m happy,’ I said, ‘Happy to be here.’ I wanted her to know what I was feeling. Maybe I owed everything to her. Without her, after all, I wouldn’t be here – no, I might still be down in the dark – not that one always loves one’s saviour.

‘I’m glad,’ she said, and she looked less cross. ‘For me, of course, it’s all quite stressful.’

‘The Turks are nice,’ I offered. ‘They’re very friendly at our hotel.’

‘Virginia, this isn’t New York. I know that there you had friends in the lobby, but here it isn’t such a great idea.’

‘Why not?’

‘They will try to sell you something.’

‘They tried to sell me things in New York. They were always suggesting one outing or another, some special deal they could book for me.’ (In fact, we also talked about their families, and the young today, and how to write books. I even talked about her and Gerda. But yes, they did try to sell me things.)

‘They will try to exploit you,’ she said. ‘I know. It’s different here.’

I was looking at the menu. ‘Things are cheaper. So I’ll be cheated less.’

Her mouth was tight again. She waved at the waiter. ‘Bring me a bottle of the house white.’

The waiter was just at the end of being young. He had elaborate hair to hide the start of baldness. ‘Ladies,’ he said, with a practised smile that managed to embrace us both. ‘Lovely ladies. How else can I serve you?’

‘Could you take my coat?’ I asked. ‘That heater above us is rather warm.’ He performed the task caressively, taking his time to slide the collar from my shoulders, freeing each arm gently and slowly. I enjoyed the operation. I enjoyed his touch. ‘Beautiful coat, beautiful lady.’

Angela looked affronted. ‘Could you take mine?’ she said sharply. ‘Hang it where I can see it, please.’ He removed hers, a little roughly.

‘You see,’ Angela hissed as he went away. ‘They will even flirt with old women, it’s disgraceful!’

As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t. ‘Not that you’re an old woman, of course. I mean, we both are, if anything.’

Fortunately, at that very second the waiter returned with yellow wine, and the moment passed, she wasn’t offended, but I cast a quick glance at our reflections in the big plate-glass window behind us and just for a moment I thought, it’s true, I don’t look that much younger than her.

I was tired from the journey, that was all. I was beaten down from travelling
with her
.

‘Where are you from?’ The waiter was asking. Or rather, asking Virginia, who was smiling too much as he poured her wine. ‘I think must be Paris,’ he pretended to decide.

‘We’d like to order,’ I interrupted.

She said she hadn’t decided yet. I didn’t care. I seized the menu, ordered for two, fish soup then the special. ‘Please bring the water now, at once.’

I saw her demons were attacking her. ‘I enjoy talking to people, Angela.’

‘Turkish waiters aren’t people, in that sense.’

I was the one who was supposed to be snobbish! I was the one who made generalisations! ‘That’s another generalisation,’ I said.

‘Virginia, don’t be difficult. It’s all right for you, but I’m very tired. I’ve got so many things to do.’

With that, her phone was out of her pocket. She laid it on the table, the veil came down, she was tapping the glass to bring her ghosts to life, she took a great swallow of her wine.

I felt rejected. I drank too. The golden liquid slipped sweetly down. ‘
Pardon
,’ I said. She looked at me. ‘You know, Turkish “sorry”,’ I reminded her. ‘I’m sorry if I offended you. Don’t start internetting, Angela. Let’s make a plan before the soup arrives.’

As soon as Virginia had some wine, her mood became less quarrelsome.

‘Thank you for letting me come with you.’

When she was on form, there was no-one nicer.

At the next table, American students were swopping boasts about their travels. ‘You haven’t seen the Taj Mahal? I was there at 6
AM
. That was kind of cool. It’s the time to see it, as the sun rises. Course, it isn’t open until later.’

‘What’s it like inside?’

‘I couldn’t hang around.’

‘Macchu Pichu, that would be tops for me.’

Virginia was listening with half an ear. ‘They must be very rich,’ she hissed.

I inspected them. They wore jeans, T-shirts, which told me nothing, but their trainers did: bog-standard Nike. ‘They’re not,’ I said. ‘You see, everybody travels. Well, everybody young. That is, the students.’

‘How do they afford it?’

‘Some of them have loans. And travel is cheap. Their expectations are different. They “do” South America, all of them. It’s normal to travel all over the globe.’

Virginia said, ‘In our day, very few people travelled. I think most people, now, are rich.’

‘I’d say the Great Wall of China,’ said the girl. ‘It’s so … long. And kinda wavy.’

‘How long did you have there?’

‘Half a day.’

‘You have to get on top of the itinerary.’

By the time we left the restaurant, our plans were settled, and Angela’s mood had become benign. (Angela, of course, believed in plans. She was still young – I was a century older. Leonard had been the planner, not me. Yet nothing turned out as he thought in the beginning.)

We would go to Pera: just across the bridge from the Old City, it would be there still. (‘Lots will have changed,’ she cautioned me, ‘but they can’t change the sea. It’s beautiful.’) We would visit the Harem, in Topkapi Palace. We would go to Aya Sophia, of course. We would visit Scutari, for Florence Nightingale. And of course, on the third day, my conference.
The
conference, I corrected myself.

‘Great, we have got ourselves organised,’ she said, as we emerged on to the main street. ‘And of course, I will need some time alone to practise.’ ‘Practise?’ ‘My paper for the conference, yes.’ ‘Two days isn’t really enough, is it, for everything we want to do?’

I could hear the sadness in her voice, as if she was coming to the end of an outing, and perhaps she was, perhaps we both
were, for surely this episode couldn’t last, and we wouldn’t have much longer together – which would help me keep my patience with her.

70

What’s hard for a child is, you don’t choose your parents. Specifically, you don’t choose your mother, yet once you are born, you are landed with her, nearly all the time, for years and years, and you have to be good, you have to make her love you, because she’s the one who gives you things.

It’s better when you have two parents because one can make up for the defects of the other, which was what Dad did quite well, when he was there.

Being with Lil was a bit like that. I did like her, yes, but I was lumbered with her. Suddenly she was all I had got. I slept as close to her as I could.