Virginia Woolf in Manhattan (38 page)

By 9
AM
it was starting to get warm. The sleeping children were awake again, stretching and sniffing, hungry, resentful, openly curious about their intruder. Beardy Boy plucked briefly at Gerda’s jacket, on the side of her Lil Robber couldn’t see, and swinging round, Gerda knew he hated her. Trapped in his eyeball, in his red, mean eyes, she saw the Furies watching her.

‘You got to leave,’ Lil Robber said. ‘You owe me swimming lessons, right? You will come back and see me, right?’

Gerda said nothing. She saw Lil knew that they would never meet again. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And you’ll come to me. If I need you, obvers. Blood sisters. And I’ll come to you.’ They looked at each other for a long moment, all the rest locked out, though Gerda half-heard Beard Boy making retching noises. Then he was rifling under the tarpaulin.

‘Would you like your bag back, slag?’ he sneered. ‘Cos you don’t get it, Mummy’s Little Princess. Right?’ he said, suddenly not so certain, looking to Lil for authorisation.

‘Who asked you to speak?’ she growled. ‘Dick.’

For a moment, half a moment, they locked glances. Lil was the boss, but nothing was certain, the contours of the rock were sharp and rough, the dirty children surged about, looking wildly from one to the other, Gerda saw the bearded boy was a killer because he didn’t have anything else to do.

‘I’m giving it you,’ said Gerda suddenly. ‘Yes, you with the beard. Ugly Boy. I was always going to leave it behind.’ There was a ripple of nervous laughter.

He was thrown. ‘You can’t give me nothing. Girly rubbish,’ but he didn’t know what to do next.

‘Look inside,’ Gerda said. He pressed briefly, roughly at the locks. No go.

He came crab-wise down the rock towards her then, muscular, scrawny, his old woman’s beard blowing in the wind, wielding the glittery pink case like a club. Everything was twisted to one side, and his eyes bored into her, little black stones.

Gerda stood her ground, her heart thumping. ‘Give it me, Feebleton, I’ll do it.’ She snatched it from him just before he hit her with it. The locks yielded. She took out Dad’s Swiss Army knife. ‘See, I told you I had something for you.’

‘Yeah, she told you,’ Lil affirmed. The tension in the group of watchers resolved. Most of them crowded round Beard Boy. ‘If you ask me nicely, I’ll tell you what it does.’ But they weren’t listening, they were all trying to touch it.

For a moment, at least, the group was distracted. But everything felt horribly dangerous.

Where was her mother? Did she think about her?

83

Of course, I was obsessing about my paper. After all that I had done for Virginia, I hoped that I could count on her. Ok, I may have been naïve. But I thought – assumed – Virginia had – what? Some sort of taste. Some discretion.

I read it aloud. It seemed pretty strong. As soon as I’d made a few edits to the text, I got it printed, down in reception. Did I really dare show her before the conference? That was the thing I was conflicted about. But my hunger was stronger than my caution. Obviously I longed to know what she thought.

The plan had been to dine together, with Ray Kuyperman joining us. I thought I was providing her with what she needed: safe, uncomplicated masculine attention.

Wrong premise. Wrong person
.

First, she was not in her room when I called. I knocked twice. No answer. I pushed my paper under the door, then tried to get it back, and broke my nail. I was kneeling on the floor on the landing when the Muslim breakfast girl came past with towels. They’re all Muslim, actually, I suppose, but she wore a headscarf, very slim, very proper. She stood watching for a second before she spoke.

‘You look for your … friend?’

‘I am delivering something.’

On the floor, I felt at a disadvantage. This was not a conventional delivery mode.

‘I can help you? You look under the door for your friend, I think?’

‘No, no.’

‘She has gone out. She is, she looking, beautiful!’

I rose to my feet in a dignified manner. She smiled at me. She was very pretty, in a way the headscarf could not conceal. Her skin was pale, her teeth very white, her eyes jet-black. She said, ‘I think you love her.’

‘I like her, yes, of course I do.’ Her English was quaint, perhaps she was a student.

‘So you saw her go out?’

‘Half-hour ago.’

The men down in the lobby set my mind at rest. ‘Yes, first she waited, then she goes to eat.’

‘She waited for me?’ They looked at each other.

‘Yes, maybe.’

‘But she went out alone?’

They consulted again. ‘Yes, but nice colleague show her where to go.’

‘Somewhere safe?’

‘Yes, naturally.’

‘Oh, that’s OK then. Thank you for that. This is, you know, her first time in Turkey.’

‘No problem, we look after her!’

One of the younger ones was smiling too much. He had a wart in the middle of his forehead. The others looked at him repressively. Like the headscarf girl, he was trying too hard to please. But I did not mind it. Better than indifference.

Just at that moment, Ray Kuyperman arrived. Linen-suited, more chiselled than ever. ‘Ray! I’m afraid Virginia’s gone out.’

‘Then we will eat
à deux
,’ he said.

I admit I was not entirely displeased. Ray and I had often met at conferences. I liked his intelligence, his gracious manner. Let’s face it, I also liked his good haircut, the elegance of his rangy physique, without the little pot that so many men had.
(But not Edward.
Edward
. The two-beat sadness. So far away. So far, so cold. What had I done? What had I done?)

Don’t think about it. ‘Ray, let’s go.’

And I hardly thought about Virginia again until I came back, slightly tipsy, at midnight.

84

Now I am completely content. Here, now, in this pool of sunlight. The head on the pillow: the gentle breath. Cheek to cheek, skin to skin.

This is where it was, then. Happiness.

And where it is. A second chance.

85

Why did she have to do it
then?
Did she not understand how it mattered to me?

She let me down. She let herself down. She was not the great writer I expected her to be. She was – ungenerous to those who came after.

‘Readers connote responsibility.’

She did not try to help with my paper!

86

Lily Roberta did a generous thing. ‘I’ve got something for you. To help you, you know, on your travels round the world.’ Her face, a rosy, barbarian face, a face, Gerda thought, of fruit and brambles, the eye-whites bright as the wild strawberry flowers that grew all over their London garden, was flushed for a second with generous love. Lil was holding out a subway card. ‘Got it from the idiot whose phone I nicked.’

‘Hey, why you giving her that?’ ‘No-o-oh!’ ‘I want that!’ From the group around Beard Boy, there were mutinous cries. ‘Man, she’s really got the hots for her.’

Once again, it was all in the balance. For a second, Lil Robber paused. Then she said loudly to Gerda, so everyone could hear ‘And what are you going to give to me? What is your favourite thing that you’ve got?’ Gerda saw that Lil had to show her power. ‘For real,’ Lil said, looking deep into her eyes, ‘Because I saved you and I love you, don’t I?’ She said the last bit very quietly.

Without hesitation, Gerda reached into her hand luggage and pulled out her book,
To the Lighthouse
. She handed it over, reverently, but Lily took it with an angry frown, looked at it briefly, then threw it on the ground. ‘That’s no use to anybody.’ She eyeballed Gerda, about to lose her temper. ‘Are you trying to cheat me, then?’

But Gerda stared back into the angry dark eyes. ‘I wouldn’t do that. I know what you did. Take my gold bracelet,’ she said under her breath. ‘It’s gold, isn’t it. From my mum. I didn’t nick it, she gave it me. Snatch it from me. Then they’ll be pleased.’

‘Why should I give a fuck about
them
? No, you got to give it me.’

A ragged mixture of jeers and cheers went up from the parentless, awkward children as Gerda took off her bracelet, kissed it, and handed it to Lily. The morning light burned on the gold.

Lil Robber tried to put it on her wrist, but failed, and held it out towards Gerda, stern-eyed. Gerda fastened it carefully on the lean brown wrist.

‘You know I’ll sell it, but not yet.’ Lily hugged Gerda tenderly, roughly, and took her face between her hands, then turned one hand so the metal of her cheap Goth ring tickled the softness of Gerda’s throat. ‘Now get the fuck out of here to wherever you’re going. The end of the world. I’ll meet you there.’

‘See you at the end of the world,’ said Gerda. ‘You ought to free those pigeons,’ she shouted, over her shoulder, as she ran into the trees, and Lil Robber shouted cheerfully ‘Fuck OFF!’

After a bit, they stopped following her, the motley grey figures from the camp on the rock, curious about her, hating her, and soon she was back on the neat little path where sheeny-thighed joggers ran with well-kept dogs, going fast and straight in the direction of the Plaza, the world of Eloise, the world of privilege, where, in the end, Gerda has to live.

Yes, I’m an inside girl, mostly, Gerda thinks later as she goes through the doors of Rizzoli’s Bookstore, which she spots by chance as she wanders south.
To the Lighthouse
, rather more dog-eared and dusty than before, is back in her bag, but she wants another book. There is an eleven-hour flight in her future.

‘I want to read
A Room of One’s Own
,’ she says. ‘By Virginia Woolf. It’s very famous.’

The young man at the counter looks soft as a girl, with floppy hair falling over his eyes. Gerda is fresh from her nights in the park, newly hard, and ready to judge him.

‘Oh yes, I know all about her,’ he said. ‘We just ordered a set of her books, as it happens. There seems to be a lot of interest in her.’

‘It doesn’t matter whether people are interested,’ said Gerda. ‘She’s just great. It’s just a Fact.’ (Though she knows her history teacher would call it an Assertion.)

With the book in her bag, she slips down into the subway. She watches two people go through the turnstile before she dares to use her card.

It doesn’t work once; it doesn’t work twice – damn Lil Robber and her useless gift! – but on the third go, Gerda floats through, and is drawn, thanks to her magic pass, into the charmed, unstoppable system that will deliver her around the world, to JFK Airport, where she washes in a basin and drags clean clothes, rather squashed, from her bag – first time she’s changed them since she left home.
Yay, Victory over the Cleanpolice!
– and yet, it’s nice not to be stained and crusted – to Check-in where she no longer has the ridiculous suitcase to check in, through Security (good, no knife, she knows that Dad will buy her a new one), to Gate 32 of Turkish Airlines, to kind flight crew who pamper her, this sweet young girl whose red hair smells of soap, and a seat in which she reads her new Virginia Woolf with growing wonder, then sleeps like a baby; thus finally, bright-eyed and rested, to Atatürk Airport, Istanbul.

PART FOUR

Interzone

87

‘It’s not as if one had done this before. Of course I regret making you late.’

We were stuck in the frightful traffic in a taxi. The ‘Welcome Session’ would soon have started, and I should have been there, networking, not struggling to drag her out of bed. ‘This isn’t the time to talk about it.’

As soon as I said that, I regretted it, much as I enjoyed the high moral ground. Because I was longing to know what happened.

The sun through the window was painfully bright.

‘Is it your paper you are cross about? I am just as cross about it as you.’

‘It’s irrelevant, we will probably be too late for it.’

I couldn’t understand why Angela had pushed the thing underneath my door. Naturally I did not care to read such stuff. I had heard enough. What did she want from me? The woman should be ashamed of herself. I had returned it this morning without comment.

But I was also slightly sheepish. The last faint flutter of the Angel in the House. Then my happiness sent her flying off skywards –

No, I would never regret last night
.

‘Everyone’s late, in Turkey. You said so yourself. So they will wait.’

She had a hazy, lazy look, as if all her contours had been blurred and softened; she was – softer? Larger? More material? The opposite, somehow, of that time in New York when she had shrunk and chilled and faded.

I sneaked another look in my powder compact. The light from above was unforgiving. My frown lines had deepened since all this began. My eyes were red from lack of sleep. I was thinner, surely.

How dare she look young?

‘It was so – inconsiderate, Virginia! And I mean, to be late for your own conference!’

‘Remember you told me not to say that.’

‘Stop – point-scoring. How did Leonard bear it?’

I stared at her. Those hateful phrases that I had heard through the bedroom wall. I thought – at least, I had come to hope, over the time we spent together, that she was an ally, a true supporter. She was looking old and tired this morning. I looked afresh at her dyed hair, her painted eyelids, her rouged cheeks.

The hate that lurks under the surface. Blade concealed in a cake of soap
.

I covered my eyes, no longer laughing. The joy of the night before wavered. Too much black coffee. She had forced me to drink it. My nerves quivered, my skull-bones shook. Leonard protected me from too much coffee.

(Those murderous pages pushed under my door …)

‘Virginia, what are you staring at?’

I knew I must beware of her

I could feel such gladness, such peaks of joy, that was always the case since I was little