my dear? Just for a moment she’s here beside me, sunlight on her cap of pale hair, blue eyes wide and far away, she could never sit still, she’s tugging my hand.
Child, did it go well for you?
The pain again: that her life should end. That girl in white, dancing in the garden. Running to me in my chair for a hug. Her arms round my neck like a wreath of pale flowers. We threw sugar lumps down for the big-rumped horses from my balcony in Gordon Square …
No, every fibre of my soul refuses.
‘Why did I come back? Couldn’t they leave me be? I want … I want … I want to go home – ’
ANGELA
‘Let’s just see the sea lions. Then, I promise, I’ll get you home.’
I only meant ‘to our hotel’. But as I said it I remembered my promise, my foolish promise in the Berg Collection. The thing I had whispered under my breath, and the next moment, she was there. ‘Virginia, I’ll take you home …’
Was that the hook that had hauled her up? Had I just wanted to feast on her?
‘Please come, honestly, you’ll like the seals.’
She didn’t say ‘Yes’, but her shoulders sagged and the wild look vanished from her eyes. She walked beside me to the sea lions’ island, a barren rock in the middle of water. Close up it was entirely artificial, a man-made hill of fake golden-brown sandstone, built with a spiral track to the top.
Did they keep two different species of sea lion together? We saw one massive yellow-gold gleaming creature, a bit like a legless elephant. It sat on the shore, unable to move. Then there were two slick dark ones – no three slick dark ones – streaking like submarines through the water, slim and playful, black princes of speed. The light dripped off them as they climbed from the water, muscular flippers scything the sand.
We watched, Virginia and I, as the sun began to leave the hill. We watched the seals climb after it. Soon the black princes had outpaced the band of shadow that seeped up to eat the sunlight, lolloping up like three black rubber brackets, squeezing, unsqueezing, unstoppable. Now they were performing yoga twists to a clapping human audience, necks swinging round like oiled silk, heads pointing back to the dark behind them. I was excited. I joined in the clapping! Then I looked at Virginia, my own neck turning a little stiffly – I’d been neglecting my personal training – and saw her face was strained and grey. I stretched my hand out without thinking, I’m almost sure I didn’t actually touch her –
VIRGINIA
‘Get away from me! You’ve – kidnapped me.’
ANGELA
American heads stopped watching the seals and turned to stare. She had really shouted. Some of the faces looked accusing. Instantly I too got angry. ‘It’s not my fault. You just – appeared. You just showed up in the Berg Collection. It’s actually a restricted library. You didn’t even have a ticket.’
Absurd of me, of course, to reproach her for intruding in a library that’s mostly famous for having her books. Hers and Nabokov’s.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean …’
Then something quite surprising happened, as if she realised I was all she had.
‘I too am sorry. I should not have shouted.’
There was a pause. We both breathed deeply. The sea lion acrobats were still performing, tireless, youthful, competitive.
VIRGINIA
‘The library – yes, I remember that. But there’s something before. Long years of – something. Everything’s dark. I can’t focus.
‘And suddenly, you’re always here. I do not mean to be ungrateful. But I never knew you, did I, before?’
ANGELA
Now Virginia’s voice was low, and her lips (so beautiful, that sculpted curve, and she, unlike me, was not wearing lipstick) were almost back to their normal colour. The look she turned on me was beseeching. Yet she was saying she didn’t trust me.
‘I’m just a reader. I was in the library. Your manuscripts are there, for people to study. I was reading you, or trying to – ’ (when I said I was reading her, Virginia looked up) – ‘that library doesn’t make it easy. I wanted to read you so very badly – ’
VIRGINIA
‘People still read me? You still read me?’
ANGELA
‘And then you just materialised. And the librarians threw you out.’
It sounded brutal. She looked offended. I changed the subject, hastily. Perhaps it was time to talk about me. An enormous man in an anorak had planted himself in front of me, blocking my view with his wide grey back, his fat pink neck, carroty curls.
‘I’m not just a reader, in fact. I’m a writer.’
Was Virginia listening?
The man walked backwards to take a photo, planting his elbow in my stomach. ‘Excuse me, ma’am.’ His face was unlined, genial.
VIRGINIA
‘People still read me in the twenty-first century?’
ANGELA
‘I was just saying, I write too. Of course, you won’t have heard of me …
‘Never mind. I read you, yes. You ought to know that everyone reads you.’
VIRGINIA (not listening, turning away)
‘My last book was a failure, a disaster.’ Leonard denied it but I saw it in his eyes. I knew that my worst fears were true –
ANGELA
‘Between the Acts. Of course I’ve read it. Generally considered a masterpiece.’
And her eyes brightened. Such beautiful eyes. The afternoon sun intensified the colour: grey and green, green and gold –
VIRGINIA
‘Between the Acts? A masterpiece? How strange. So – it was published.’
(I loved that book when it was just an essence, a wisp of pale silk, frost on the downs, their long spines reddened by the sunset. A pageant … something as light as its name, Poyntz Hall. I wanted to stipple it like Seurat, make it short & musical, & the world could be distilled in the gaps, aerations between the bright points of the brush-strokes.
But then it grew long & dragged at my heart & I knew the execution couldn’t match the first image. And then the clawing fear began. And darkness ate in around the edges. Then they started to lie to me, telling me it was good enough to publish – I knew it wasn’t. And so did Leonard. Although he denied it, his face declared it
the strain puckering his dear deep lines
How
