when Virginia Woolf was – no, impossible. I took my phone out into the corridor. It was ridiculous, of course.
(For several days that’s what I did, and for my own needs ran down to the lobby and queued behind the departing guests, tripping over their long mule-trains of baggage.)
When I came back, she was emerging from the bathroom. ‘All right?’ I said. ‘You – push down the handle.’
She looked at me, indignant. ‘I’m used to water closets,’ she said. ‘We had one installed at Monk’s House. Yours is rather … elaborate, of course.’ I glimpsed something scarily like contempt, and banned myself from noticing.
‘Virginia, you’ll need a coat.’
Now I was glad I’d brought too many clothes, with a view to impressing American men (small chance of that with her in tow.) I beckoned her over to look in the wardrobe and indicated my second favourite, a smart narrow coat of merino wool, black and slick as a liquorice stick. She shook her head.
No, she was stroking, with her long, sensuous, lingering fingers, my favourite Stella Maris trench coat, beautifully, generously cut from blue mohair. The yoke floated out like a sail at sea. It had sharp reveres and an indigo belt, such a beautiful belt of shiny blue snakeskin, no-one should wear that coat but me …
I never learned to say ‘No’ to her.
Soon we were tensed on the brink of the street. I caught our reflections in the lobby mirror. I was sombre, invisible beside my companion, the ivory oval of her face suspended over her long blue body, fabulously winged like a Morpho butterfly. Everyone turned to stare at her.
(She couldn’t have done without me, though.)
13
GERDA
So Mum stopped answering my emails. I hated this school. I was furious. Then she sent an email that explained nothing.
I am having to take care of Virginia Woolf. That was the person I was talking to. Am sending this email while she is resting. You can’t imagine how demanding she is. I don’t suppose you’ll have heard of her, but if you had, you’d be impressed. She’s really very famous. It’s wonderful, but it is a pressure. I am her ONLY living friend. Love love love, coochy-coochy-coo, strokes and hugs from your loving mother. PS hope school is fabulous. PPS She’s a genius.
I thought ‘Who IS this Genius?’
Next day I googled Virginia Woolf. Fuck me, 5.9 million results.
Then I found out she was actually dead.
I really started to hate my mother.
ANGELA
Was it a kind of celebrity worship? Virginia was one of the first celebs, with her background and her beauty. Let’s face it, it wasn’t just raw talent. It must have helped her, knowing everybody (which certainly couldn’t be said of me).
Privilege. It can make you hate them.
This isn’t really what I meant to say. Because yes, she was the daughter of Leslie Stephen, the most famous Victorian man of letters, yes, she was friends with EM Forster and Maynard Keynes and Lytton Strachey, yes, she had a small private income and looked like a clever, dreamy angel – but she wrote like an angel, as well. A pinioned angel, not the household kind.
Delicate, witty, brutal. Woolf does it all, at the speed of light. Each time I read her, I admire her more. I try to be critical. But she’s just … good.
And if she was privileged, I accept it. Because she did it for all of us. Showed she was cleverer than the men. Showed what we were capable of. I told Gerda, ‘She’s a genius.’
All the same – she was privileged.
GERDA
I hated the idea of Virginia Woolf. I mean, my mum was a writer herself. Why did she have to be obsessed with this Virginia? Why’s she s’posed to be such a genius? I might be a Genius myself one day.
But mum didn’t care, she just ignored my emails, or sent back three lines about her own life.
I felt so lonely in that phonebox. Geniuses need encouragement.
ANGELA
What hope is there for the rest of us, who don’t have Woolf’s advantages?
GERDA
Then I remembered Hans Andersen. He had to leave home when he was younger than me. His parents were actual peasants. I don’t suppose anyone encouraged him.
He just ran away to Copenhagen, and became a great writer all on his own. His Fairy Tales is my favourite book. No wonder, I was named for one of them, Gerda, the hero of ‘The Snow Queen’, who was brave and went off On Her Own around the world
So that encouraged me in my plan.
ANGELA
I had more advantages than my own mother. Which is partly why I’ve done better than her. Of course I’ve passed them on to Gerda. That child doesn’t know how lucky she is.
I suppose she might actually do better than me!
I couldn’t be jealous of my own daughter.
GERDA
These girls at school started calling me fat. I was going through a sturdy phase. They can all shut up, I like my food, and I know I’ll be beautiful in the end. My mum and dad always told me I was, and two boys fought over me at St Mark’s. But then these girls did something really bad, and I had to pull one of them’s hair quite hard, and two of them fell in the swimming pool, after I gave them a tiny shove.
I may be fat, but I’m quite strong. I’d forgotten one of them couldn’t swim.
So then I was in a lot of trouble. But it wasn’t fair to call me a bully. I tried to tell my mum what had happened but I know from her emails she didn’t take it in – ‘Marvellous, Gerda, I’m glad you’re having fun.’
I love my mum but she’s slightly defective. Which is a word she uses for Dad. Or men in general. My mum is Sexist! Although she tells me not to be.
I am recording criticisms, in a notebook I aim to leave in my room in the holidays, so she can read it.
In fact that wouldn’t work at all, because I don’t think Mum’s a sneak. In fact she couldn’t be arsed to sneak.
Meaning, she isn’t that interested.
Only because she has so much ‘Pressure’. She talks a lot about ‘Stress’ and ‘Pressure’.
Being successful is a ‘Pressure’!
She should go back to being poor again.
(I take that back, she needs money for ME.)
So I will have to read my list aloud. Possibly at bed-time, when she’s
