Virginia Woolf in Manhattan, page 14
I beamed upon him. Yes, exactly, Brad and Angelina, take that! Gerda had been insane with excitement, it seemed more about Angelina than Brad. Only I and a few other people knew that the film, in fact, was not a goer. Scripts one to four had all been crap. But I wasn’t going to spoil his illusions.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be in Turkey,’ I told him. ‘But really – you’ve been most helpful.’
Together we practically sailed down the street, ready for our drink at the Algonquin. We had both survived the waves of destruction!
I said, ‘Virginia, I’ll drink to you.’
(I tried to forget that before my reprieve I had felt a moment of temptation to tell Virginia that the assistant had confused her with an American poet …)
She said, ‘Angela, I’ll drink to you.’
40
GERDA
Would she still be with the mad old woman? (Which is what I still thought Virginia was, because I hadn’t yet gone to my mother’s bookshelves and borrowed her books to read on the plane, in order to find more reasons to hate her.)
They were probably getting pissed together!
I’ve decided NEVER to drink wine. Mum gets Idiotic on wine, and talks a lot about herself. (Except when she’s with Dad; they just quarrel.) (Well, to be fair, they SOMETIMES quarrel, and now of course that’s the bit I remember. Sometimes it made them all lovey-dovey, and sometimes Mum could be quite funny, though I did not encourage her.)
All right, I couldn’t bring my dad home, but at least I had Mum’s address in New York, not that she gets any credit for that, when she said she and Virginia were moving I nagged her to tell me, in case I needed her, obviously, and she emailed back ‘Don’t be silly, Gerda, you are so wonderfully self-reliant! But you’ll like the name, it’s the Wordsmiths Hotel.’
Mum had the conference to go to, too. The diary said she would be back in a week, and obviously I couldn’t wait till then.
Staying in the house-which-was-once-my-home was like being the last bit of coke in a can. Poked back in the fridge, with the bubbles gone.
‘Self-reliant’. It sounds OK. A bit like ‘valiant’, a word I like. Everyone should rely on themselves. Nobody does that more than me (though this is an Assertion, not a Fact, as my History teacher is always saying.) But it’s not enough to have ONLY yourself. My namesake, Gerda, in Hans Andersen, was helped by a lot of different people on her Great Journey Round the World to look for Kay (who despite his girl’s name, was a boy, of course. Cool for a girl to save a boy, but she still needed help from the Sorceress and the woman of Lapland and the woman of Finland and best of all, the Little Robber Maid, who kept a reindeer, and lent him to Gerda, and gave her berries, but stole her fur muff, and had a knife, oh the Little Robber Maid is TOTALLY cool. She is my favourite character.)
I have been self-reliant about going to New York. I booked my own ticket, I packed my bag, I printed off maps from the internet. Such a sensible city, so clear and straight! I went to New York once with my dad, when I was seven years old, and kept a diary, which I realise now is excellent, though when I was eight I thought it was pathetic. And although I don’t really remember it, there had been ages when he wasn’t at home, and I only vaguely knew I had a dad. Mum does remember and it makes her cross, when she feels like having a go at Dad. ‘You were never around when she was little.’ But then they fell in love again or something, and Dad came back from Denmark or wherever and lived with us, and of course I thought it would be for ever …
Still best of all was having Dad to myself, so I loved our trips, with Mum Not Nagging. And America was our first Big Adventure, so sometimes I replay it all in my head.
Dad bought me striped cutoffs and expensive rollerblades, which caused a row after we got back from New York because Mum insisted they were ‘dangerous’. (I love my dad. My dad is – my dad. He is always doing ‘dangerous’ things. And he took me to FAO Schwarz’s toyshop, even though it was ‘not ecological’, as Mum pointed out, which was mean of her. And later she relented and let me go rollerblading, as soon as she saw I was good at it. She even got some herself, and fell over, and Dad said ‘You’re too old for that,’ and she went red in the face, and silent, though later she pretended she thought it was funny.)
I won’t go to FAO Schwarz this time, because I am almost too old for toys. I do remember it, though, being happy. Why must being happy make you sad?
Being with Dad was more exciting than anything, just on our own, har har on Mum, so I got all the treats, and Dad was mine. But we knew we’d go home, and Mum would be waiting, and she would hug us, and tell us off, and make us have baths and proper meals. We knew we would all be together again. And home was home. But that was then.
41
VIRGINIA
Oh, the Algonquin was marvellous. The silky calm after the blaring streets.
Yet, oh, the Algonquin made me sad!
ANGELA
I loved it as soon as we walked inside – it still had that feel of the 1930s. High ceilings, elegant lamps. Red, so red, with satin-striped armchairs and rose-patterned carpets. Cool and quiet.
VIRGINIA
Just a hint of the brothel about it; which, for writers, is appropriate.
This was the New York I might have visited with Leonard if we had said ‘yes’ to that vulgarian. The American woman who came to see us and offered to display us like monkeys in a cage. The money was extraordinary, so we listened. ‘You will give some talks and answer questions.’ I did admire her brazenness. The profit motive was all there was to it. She wanted to make money to buy more of the food and drink that had made her skin so shiny and pink, stretched tight over mounds of flesh.
I don’t know why I hated her.
She was a different kind of woman, one who made me feel … insubstantial. Both superior and inferior, for I couldn’t understand any world she lived in. (I was different now. I wanted to know.)
We said ‘No’ to her, so we never saw New York, though every time I had a book published we sent over hundreds of special copies that I’d sat for hours patiently signing. I wouldn’t have bothered, but Leonard insisted. ‘America is an important market.’ He was practical, Leonard, as well as clever. If he were here, he would know what to do, I would not be dependent on her … But Angela tries to be kind to me.
The voices in the Algonquin were a low, polite murmur, and the music played in the same gentle register, so it took a few minutes to separate the two. We sat at a table at the back, in shadow.
As we got used to the dark, cream lilies bloomed like small pale faces from vases in corners. Writers met here, the Algonquin set; we knew about them in England of course. Dorothy Parker was a name on our horizon, a little danger behind my back like a wasp buzzing & fizzing at the window – but she was a journalist, not a real writer! – (I never strove to be a wit) – and the more friends urged me to read her stuff, the more I knew I never would. She was far too young! These clever young women … Hadn’t she been unhappy in love?
‘When did Dorothy Parker die?’ I asked Angela. I wanted to be sure.
‘Oh ages ago. Before I was born.’
‘Did she have children?’
‘I don’t think so.’
A tiny surge of satisfaction. ‘She was very funny, but she wasn’t happy?’
‘How would we know? She was really funny. And good, Virginia. Really good. I am surprised you never read her. She’s the only one whose name has survived. Of all that circle. She eclipsed them all.’
Ah, so Angela admired her. Why should I feel jealous? A thought struck me. ‘Did she – she didn’t – kill herself, did she?’
ANGELA
There was a half-hidden note of longing. She didn’t want to be the only one. It shocked me, but I told her the truth. ‘In the end she died of a heart attack. But you’re not far wrong. She tried four times.’
VIRGINIA
I pitied her then. To have gone through the horror. To try and fail so many times. I envied her, too, because she beat her Furies.
Now I knew she was dead, I wished I had read her. I no longer needed to be – jealous. The ugly thing I felt for Katherine Mansfield, and she’d died too, and I was sad.
And then I wanted to write about my feelings, as I had long ago when Katherine died. To wield the delicate tweezers of words; to pick up the sentiment ready for dissection; to hold myself under the pitiless light. That urge to write, the pleasure-muscles tensing …
Before they could move, the new fear pounced. The novel sense of helplessness. I had started to flinch away from the attempt, in case a series of accidents – yes, I was sure, they were just accidents – my weakened hand, the hopeless pen – should harden into a change of state. In case I could not – simply could not –
Like the young man who happens to fall; has another fall; so many excuses. So many good reasons why it should happen. But he falls again; he falls again. Until the inevitable diagnosis.
I dared not voice it to myself.
Could I survive, mute, diminished?
Each time I tried, the void had yawned. The paper seemed to eat my words. It stared at me: a terminal blankness.
Terror winked. I had to write. Don’t think about it, think about it, think.
(Was it because of my decades of silence? Had my voice dried, constricted?)
ANGELA
‘Dorothy Parker’s like you, Virginia. She’s survived as the others fade. In Britain, no-one still remembers, I don’t know, Marc Connelly or Robert Sherwood. Everyone knows Dorothy Parker.’
VIRGINIA
‘Maybe the others weren’t any good?’ I needed to believe it happened for a reason.
Yet, surely, Duncan and Roger had been good. That feeling of emptiness in the Met, the sense of bodies being washed downstream …
They can paint no more. Have no more chances.
ANGELA
‘Alice Duer Miller was part of the circle, a gifted poet, but she’s disappeared. I’m afraid it’s just what happens, Virginia. History has to simplify things. And someone vivid like Dorothy Parker – or you – well, you throw the rest into shadow.’
VIRGINIA
‘Vivid. Yes, I like that word.’
She thinks me vivid.
Yes, I was good.
There was nothing to be frightened of, then, was there? The small white faces, the Algonquin lilies, bloomed round the room, peering towards us, wanting to be with us. Longing to be vivid, out in the light, talking, writing, shining with luck, the luck we have.
Yes, I had everything, because I’d come back. That was the luck. To be here in the moment …
But if I couldn’t … of course I could. I was a writer. Writers must write.
Something dislodged inside my brain. I looked at Angela, hating her. I must not hate her. I was slipping, falling …
‘I’m hungry,’ I said. ‘I’m thirsty, too. Will they bring us some, what do you call it, nibbles?’ (It was a vulgar word she used.)
ANGELA
‘Bring us some nibbles, waiter, please. And tea, Virginia? Or something stronger?’
VIRGINIA
‘Wine, please. I need a drink.’
ANGELA
‘Perhaps champagne? Or a nice red?’
VIRGINIA
‘I’ll have champagne. A vat. A bucket.’
Angela’s painted eyes flicked wide with shock.
ANGELA
She hadn’t had a drink for over half a century. Is it surprising that it went to her head?
We toasted each other. As I chinked her glass – she recoiled minutely, as from a faux pas – the volume of the music rose to meet us.
VIRGINIA
Jazz standards of the 1930s. Sadness blew across the sands. A cold sea-mist. The room was thinning …
ANGELA
Her pupils widened, and she was lost. I watched a veil come between us. She put down her glass and played with her hands, one clutching the other, wringing and squeezing.
‘Virginia?’ She looked at the floor. ‘Virginia, are you all right?’
She picked up her glass and drank deep before she answered.
VIRGINIA
‘Yes. No. I’m not sure.’
ANGELA
Her champagne flute was two-thirds empty.
VIRGINIA
For a moment I felt cold as death. But as I drank, the bubbles expanded, blood came coursing back through my veins. Briefly, I felt warm towards her, and yes, I had to talk to somebody. ‘You see, I have been trying to write …’
ANGELA
‘Trying to write? Yes, I saw you. That evening in your room at the Wordsmith. Have you been writing every day?’ At last, the longed-for conversation! Might we talk, one writer to another?
Her beautiful mouth twitched at the corner.
VIRGINIA
‘Something’s … amiss. Things keep going wrong.’
ANGELA
‘You mean, with the writing?’
VIRGINIA
Something in her eyes: an avid glint. A dog scenting a whiff of death.
‘I didn’t say that.’ But the drink drove me. ‘It’s not easy to talk about. I’m not, it isn’t, it isn’t getting done.’
ANGELA
‘Virginia, I’m all ears.’
VIRGINIA
I saw ears bursting from her face, fat and shiny and obscene. Budding from her pouter-pigeon chest, rose-pink fungi on her arms, her hands. Yes, all ears. Was she leering at me?
ANGELA
‘If anyone can understand it, it’s me.’
No answer. Virginia leaned back in her chair.
Two twins walked past, with identical frowns, heading over to the table at the back where there were booklets of Algonquin history. Their hair fell straight in long fringed bobs, heavy as rulers, a style they were too old for. Matching suits. Combative heels. I thought, they will never escape one another.
Virginia had finished her champagne. Maybe I should have sat and waited. But how was I to contain myself? Now, at last, we could talk about writing. What I had longed for from the very start, when she appeared, like an answer to my prayer –
I summoned a waiter to play for time. ‘Two more glasses.’
‘No problem, Ma’am.’
I had to grope to find the words. Yes, I was shy, but I was excited. Our drinks were delivered, I raised my glass, she looked away, but I plunged in.
‘I’m not surprised you find writing hard. This world’s so new and strange to you. I myself have been blocked of late. I mean, I published only last year, the reviews were fine, the sales were great, but it’s not like turning on a tap, is it?’ (Virginia twitched slightly. I hoped we’d connected.) ‘There’ve been the problems with, you know, Edward … And you and I have been quite busy.’ (I meant: ‘I’ve been busy looking after you.’) ‘I’m not totally sure what to write about, though something, somewhere, may be coming together … You get to a certain stage in your career – you haven’t read me, Virginia, that’s fine, but I am quite famous, and it is a pressure – didn’t you find? Was it true for you?’
Her eyes were fixed, cold and still. A distant pool I could not see into. ‘It’s even harder for you, of course, because in a way, this would be your comeback novel!’
Her fingers clenched on the stem of the glass, her great lids dropped. What was she thinking?
I wondered, is this going well?
But I took a gulp and pressed on regardless. ‘That’s partly why I came to New York. And why I wanted to write about you. I thought, get back to first principles. Why, you know, is your writing so – great? What is the point of – what we do?’
I found myself blushing. Had I been clumsy?
VIRGINIA
I wanted to spit. Did she think we were the same? Did this woman presume to share my feelings? She thought she saw into my soul. She thought we would share ‘confidences’. She thought I was ‘blocked’, like any novice! Soon she would be giving me ‘advice’. I held my lids shut for a long, long time, and hid inside my world of darkness.
ANGELA
Was it possible she had gone to sleep?
VIRGINIA
Very slowly the anger drained away. Foolish of me to confide in her. Foolish to let the world peer in. Yield a chink, and they forced one open, left one wet and crushed on the sand.
I did not believe she was a cruel woman.
Nor, indeed, completely stupid. I had never read a word she had written. Now I vowed I never would.
‘The pens,’ I snapped. ‘Those stupid pens.’ I had decided not to complain, but the words leaped out of their own accord. ‘That old man sold us defective pens.’
‘Pens?’ she said, puzzled. ‘Oh, the pens from Moshe … The one I used was quite OK. Here, borrow my biro. It’s a pen, Virginia. Just so you have something. Just for now.’
I took the thing. It looked cheap and synthetic. I held it firmly away from me.
