Virginia Woolf in Manhattan (9 page)

Would she always, somehow, make me feel a failure?

I dismissed the thought. I was a best-selling author, with two degrees – she didn’t have one, though they called her ‘the cleverest woman in England’ – and I went to the gym and looked after myself. Whereas she looked as though the only exercise she did was dragging herself through a hedge backwards. I had good hair. Ok, this was shallow, but – I had a daughter. She did not. Leonard had forbidden her to have children in case it drove her mad again – though I knew my daughter had kept me sane.

A pang of love: my darling Gerda.

I remembered I hadn’t emailed her.

‘… Ma’am?’

‘Oh, sorry, I was day-dreaming.’

‘
Room of One’s Own
costs – let me check. Cinnamon boards and the Vanessa Bell jacket – you are aware she is Woolf’s sister? Yes, it’s not cheap, because it
is
quite unique – $12,800.’

‘
Excellent
,’ I said, and he looked at me strangely, but of course I was deducing how much her books might earn us. And ‘quite unique’ was not English, but this wasn’t the time to point it out.

‘You’re interested?’

‘How much is
To the Lighthouse
?’

‘First trade edition with a pristine dust jacket, $28,000. Four hundred and somethingth of eight hundred signed copies. You really couldn’t hope for a better copy.’

‘Could I actually have a look at it?’

His movements brisker, he went to the case and tenderly removed the book, then led me over to the big dark table, seated me with a small flourish, and placed the thing reverently before my chair.

It was a clone of Virginia’s copy, though her jacket was un-yellowed by time, her colours truer, the pages whiter. And on the inside fly-leaf, his tapering finger pointed to her signature.

I had seen photos, but never the real thing. It was smaller, quieter than I imagined.

‘I thought she signed in violet ink?’

‘It is purple – but the years fade it.’

The writing was – what? Business-like. The opposite of bohemian. Slanting, clever, fluent, neat. (Of course, I would have to get her to sign them! Why hadn’t I thought of that before?)

‘Would you like to hold it? It’s quite exciting. Part of literary history.’ I thought, I’ve touched enough literary history today
to last me for a while, young man.

‘So $28,000 is the top price a copy of
To the Lighthouse
would fetch? I mean, it seems to tick all the boxes – signed, first edition, book jacket.’

‘Well – unless someone found a personalised copy. Not that it would, as you say, tick boxes.’

The merest hint of professional disdain.

‘What would a personalised copy be?’

‘I don’t think this is likely to happen – most Woolf first editions are accounted for, and something like this would already have surfaced – but if someone were to turn up with a book she had signed for a friend, rather than a signature done to order – you know she pre-signed for her American publisher? – that would be something very special. Signed copies were more unusual then. Especially if it were something meaningful. Best of all, a message to someone famous – Lytton Strachey, for instance, are you familiar with him? – Vita Sackville-West – or, best of all, Leonard.’

‘I
see
.’ And I was starting to see. How we could actually make ourselves rich. My expectations had been too modest. ‘Great! Well, thank you for showing me that.’

‘You don’t want to look inside?’ He was taken aback – but he couldn’t know that I had to think about the actual author, sitting round the corner, Virginia Woolf in her slightly smelly glory, eating a hamburger with fries. I had to keep her off the streets of New York until she had money, and knew how to behave.

I am a socially anxious person. Because of my background, which was working-class, despite my profession and education, despite my accent, despite my money, my house in Hampstead and daughter at the Abbey, I try to behave, I try to fit in.

Virginia was never going to help that happen.

I would need a contact here at Goldstein’s. ‘I’ll be returning
tomorrow or the next day,’ I called to the young man’s slender, faintly affronted back as he walked off to return the book. He closed the case with a definite ‘click’.

‘Uh … Sir?’ I tried, emollient. ‘I have a friend. She has some books I think would be of interest to you.’

His smile was automatic, with the briefest eye contact. ‘Perhaps she could submit the details by email? I’ll give you my card.’

He gave me his card. (Of course they must have heard it all day long, people coming in or phoning up, making coy, slightly vain allusions to books they were sure would be ‘of interest’ to Goldstein’s, and when they saw them, most of them weren’t.)

‘She’s an old lady,’ I smiled at him. ‘She doesn’t use the internet. I think she would like to drop by in person.’

‘As you like,’ he said, with the faintest shrug, and his hair was so tidy, his shirt so white, I did wonder what he would make of Virginia.

We would have to deal with the pondweed odour.

I found her sitting good as gold in her café, investigating a tomato-shaped squeezer of ketchup, a quarter of which she had ejected on her plate, a dense, blood-red, viscous hillock of sauce. ‘Have you seen this?’ she inquired, gaily.

The burger had been a great success! She told me Angelica would have loved it.

Virginia ate six burgers in the next week.

22

So there was Cindy, being all friendly, and so were her mates, Linda and Ayesha, and I actually did, sort of, enjoy it, although obviously Linda and Ayesha were dim. Ayesha had big eyes that stuck out of her head and giggled with her teeth showing like a Rabbit, and Cindy was only friends with them because she was too weird for other people, but I’m weird too, so I didn’t mind that. And even though Linda and Ayesha were boring it was nice for a bit to go round in a gang. Safety in numbers.

Except it wasn’t.

So after we’d been friends for about a week and I had started telling them some of my secrets, not my real secrets like Mum and Dad quarrelling or me having a Genius IQ, which I know makes some people go off me – why? It’s obvious I’m a Genius – but just ordinary ones like Mum being a writer or us getting a whacking great house in Hampstead (before we had a normal one like everyone else, in fact our first one was just a terrace) after Mum won the Iceland Prize. I wasn’t boasting, I was just saying. There’s nothing to boast about in things like that. One day I hope I’ll have things to boast about.

I did say one thing that was a mistake. They were all going on about how ugly they were, how thin fat spotty bandy big-nosed
et cetera. It was a competition, how ugly you could be. They were sort of waiting for me to join in. I expect they thought I would say I was a Ginger, oh tragic tragic poor me poor me, or maybe moan that I was too fat, because it’s true that I’m not skinny. But I didn’t. I told them what I really thought. ‘I like my hair, because it’s me. I have to eat lots, because I’m always hungry. I’m just not bothered how much I weigh.’

‘Why not?’ Cindy asked. She looked really angry, as if I had cheated, and Linda and Ayesha stared hard at me. ‘If I was your size, I’d kill myself!’

And then the others fell about laughing, but then they went, ‘Oh Cindy, that’s rude, I’d never say that, did she hurt your feelings? Of course you’re not fat, not REALLY fat, oh Gerda, you’re fine, really, are you all right?’

So then I said, ‘It’s different for me. I know one day I’ll be tall, like Mum. I think I’m going to be beautiful.’

So then they all went very quiet, except Cindy, who said ‘You can’t say that.’

And although I was already regretting it, I was brave, and said ‘I just did, so what?’

Quite soon after that the three of them began to talk about how they were going to give me a present. It started one Saturday, which is the day some girls have parcels from their parents. A lot of girls, in fact, so it gets a bit competitive. Some mothers don’t have to work, like mine does, – (lazy!) – so they spend their whole time making great big parcels with chocolate bars and
Heat
magazine and Bobbi Brown liquid eye-liner, which we’re not allowed to wear, by the way, but the girls who get them go
Ooooh
and
Aaaah
and
Oh, my mother is such a sweetie, look what she’s sent me this time, everybody!

As it happens I haven’t had a parcel yet. I know it’s because my mum is so busy. And so I am Mature about it. I’ve decided I’m not a Materialist, except I really want that phone.

So apparently Cindy, whose mum hadn’t sent one either, had got it in her head I wasn’t happy because I was stuck on a table of show-offs. (In fact I wasn’t bothered, they can all fuck off with their Stupid Idle Full-time Mothers.)

So later that day she came in with Linda to C13 where I was doing prep and said ‘We’ve decided to do something nice for you, because we like you, but it’s a secret.’ So I said ‘It’s not my birthday yet,’ and she said ‘It doesn’t matter, we just want to do it.’

And then for two weeks the three of them were talking in whispers about this Secret Present, and laughing a lot, and not explaining, because they said then it wouldn’t be a surprise. And they said ‘We’re going to give it you on Saturday morning, because that’s the day it’s nice to have something special.’

And when they said that, I started to hate them, because I could see they felt sorry for me, and no-one needs to feel sorry for me, because I am really a Strong Person, but another part of me which is soft and weedy enjoyed the attention, and feeling special, because they kept repeating that I was ‘special’, so they had this ‘special’ gift for me. And everybody wants to be special.

And whenever I came into a room where they were, they hid whatever they were doing, and giggled a lot, and were all simpery-smiley,
Ooh Gerda, how are you, lovely to see you, your Special Surprise is nearly ready
.

And I hate to admit it, but I got quite excited. I thought I was popular at last. Not that I wanted to be popular. Heroes don’t need to be popular.

But deep inside me was a kind of Gollum, a slithery Gollum like in
Lord of the Rings
, which wanted everyone to like me, because that had never happened before, because of my weirdness.

So for a bit I was almost Obsessed, and thought about it when I was in bed, because I need to have good things to think about before I can get to sleep in this place. Because I seem to have lost my dreams. My Wonderful Dreams that I’ve had since I was a baby.

(I do believe they’ll come back one day.)

So the weekend arrived when they were going to give me this Special Present they’d made all the fuss about. Saturday breakfast was the same time as usual, i.e. too early – these posh schools have normal lessons on Saturday morning, which is outrageous. (Because lots of girls are so thick that they need them.) I don’t need them. I prefer to read books.

I admit I might not have been looking my best, because I had got up in a hurry, and had not combed my hair, and had sleep in my eyes. I was sitting at a long table facing the window, because I love spring, and the trees were coming out, and the tiny green leaves made me feel happy, because the same tiny leaves would be unfolding at home, and so I hadn’t lost everything. And the same sun shone in a bar on the table, a bar of gold that reached out to me.

And I thought, ‘Tonight my dreams will come back.’ And then I thought, ‘Maybe Dad will come home, and he will save me from this Dump,’ and that thought was happy and sort of heroic, I saw him striding into Maths looking handsome and saying ‘My daughter is coming with me,’ but then I found I was almost crying, which shows I was being Sentimental, which Dad is always very down on, and also, that day I wanted to be happy, and so I stared back at the sun on the trees. Trees would be budding all over England. And Scotland too, but I’ve never been there, because Mum always says ‘Oh,
Scotland
, boring boring, why don’t we go to Egypt?’ The buds were bright, like dots of green glass, and the sun lit them up so they were like a necklace.

And I was glad when my ‘friends’ arrived, because I enjoyed it when they called out ‘Gerda, Gerda how are you, how are you today?’

(I know it wasn’t really that I liked them so much, just that the Gollum inside me felt all smiley-wiley because it thought other people would notice and think, ‘Oh Gerda’s popular.’ And I agree that that’s pathetic, but I am still young, and Will Get Better.)

And so I sat there smiling at them – and partly because of the leaves, and the sunlight, and suddenly feeling it wasn’t so bad, this Hell-hole which my dumb mother had chosen.

Then Cindy produced something from behind her back, with a silly flourish like a waiter. ‘At last it’s finished, it’s from all of us, we really hope that you will like it!’ Her face looked peculiar, sort of partly nervous, but at the same time she was laughing so much that I could hardly hear what she said.

The Special Present was an envelope, quite fat, with ‘Gerda Lamb-Kaye’ in capital letters. I like my full name but at primary school a boy called Darren teased me because it sounded like Manky, or Monkey. Darren was bright but drove everyone mad, and he was also a Total Div. Two nice boys who loved me punched him by the fish-tank and he got a nose-bleed all over his T-shirt. That stopped the bullying! Yay! Besides, the teachers at primary school definitely didn’t allow bullying.

In any case, there was my Special Present.

When I think about it, my cheeks get hot. I actually got up and hugged the Bitch (or Wanker as the case may be.) Though I have nothing to be ashamed of.

And the others all giggled, they were so excited, and I thought it was because they had done something nice. Because some people laugh with happiness. When I am happy, I laugh all the time. But since I came here, I haven’t laughed much.

I am going to send Mum another email
.

What’s the matter with her? Why isn’t she answering? She can’t have much to do, in New York. She must have got rid of that woman by now.