Virginia Woolf in Manhattan Read Online Free Page B

dragged a small box out of her pocket. Now she was talking and smiling to herself.)
    I understood. Another telephone. In this strange world, some did not need wires, some slept like dogs on bedside tables. I would make her give it to me, and ring Leonard. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘Sorry, Gerda.’

9
GERDA
    I sneaked to the village before detention and called my mother from a phonebox. It smelled of London: smoke and old wee. London! Where I wanted to be. She didn’t sound at all happy to hear me, and she was talking much too quietly.
    ‘Sorry I haven’t been in touch. There’s someone here. Sorry, Gerda – ’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Someone who is
right beside me
. Someone very famous I’m having to look after. Someone special. I’m
busy
, darling.’
    ‘How about looking after your daughter? Aren’t I special? I hate you, Mummy.’ I banged the phone down, though it missed the cradle and swung there, hopeless, like a baby on a cord. Banging its head against the glass. Just for a moment, I felt powerful, but it was raining outside the box, there was nothing I knew, just the horrible village.
    I was the baby, swinging, hopeless.
ANGELA
    She knows she is not supposed to call me. But that’s children: they choose their moment. They ask a lot. Though one gives it gladly. I had told her never to hang up on me.
    Virginia, too, was like a child. She showed no interest at all in me. Yes, I pitied her pain over Leonard. But I had worries of my own. I had no clue what was happening to Edward.
    However much I tried not to care, I didn’t have a heart of stone. Some of the time they would be using huskies, butsome terrain would be covered on foot. Edward had done special training for months – I should know, I had complained enough when he didn’t do his share of the household chores – but he was also accident-prone, and health and safety were not his forte. He was cavalier about equipment, and frostbite, and when I fretted, called it ‘fussing’.
    What if I just read about his death in the papers? Did he, or his team, know where I was? I’d left my new mobile number with the neighbours, but had Edward actually noticed our neighbours? Men could be impervious. I didn’t want to hear the news from strangers. How could I ever tell Gerda?
    It would break her heart. She loves her father.

10
VIRGINIA
    1941. I am back in the gyre, water corkscrewing towards perdition. I am fifty-nine. I will never be older.
    The thing I wrote before I set out. That day in March. I remember it.
    The skies were clear, blue and bright, a great blue blank bearing down on me, dazzling, blinding, and naked terror, everyone would know, everyone would see me
    everyone would say the book was no good
    The day before, I had seen the doctor. Octavia asked me to take off my clothes   take off my clothes so she could see me what did she know?   too young to be a doctor!
    I told her no, there was nothing wrong.
    Why did Leonard make me visit her?   sharp eyes peering at my nakedness   that terrible look of pity, kindness, yes yes Octavia, yes,
thank you
, thank you, my hands are always cold (
thank you, that hardly proves your brilliance
)
    (I didn’t say it, I was polite)   Leonard had told her to ask me to rest   I saw his careful hand behind   it now they would all gang up on me
    she 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