for a few moments, checking that Goldstein was what we wanted. ‘Goldstein & Sons, Rare Book Dealers. Madison Avenue. Shall we walk?’
18
And so we did, an incongruous couple flashing past the Easter windows; Virginia, though stooped, inches taller than me. To my surprise, after a shaky start, she began to lope two paces ahead, a steady, strong, athletic walker despite her grey hair and unnerving pallor.
I had to half-run to keep up with her, though every so often she would stop dead and stare at something I would never have noticed – I no longer saw the advertisements like acid flowers bursting from the pavements, I didn’t notice the fetish shoes, six inches high with inch-thick platforms; I took the display of wealth for granted. I actually had to pull her away when she shrieked with laughter at two women, obviously well-to-do, walking arm-in-arm against the sunlight, perfectly outlined from loin to ankle, the shapes of their hips, their crotches, their thighs, in skin-tight black leggings and ankle-boots, and above the waist, boxy expensive jackets, ropes of pearls, vast sunglasses and artfully streaked hair falling below their shoulders.
‘They go out without skirts,’ she hooted, happily. ‘What fun to see New York prostitutes! Leonard would laugh.’
‘Virginia, they’re not prostitutes. It’s just the fashion of the day. I agree it’s strange, but they don’t feel naked. Everyone pretends not to notice.’
‘But I could see everything,’ she insisted. ‘Of course they can only be prostitutes.’
‘You’re going to see lots of women like that.’
‘And no-one laughs? No-one says anything?’
‘Not in New York, Virginia.’
She was pounding along like a racehorse once more, but I saw from her furrowed brows that she was thinking. And then she stopped and smiled at me, her head tipped bird-like to one side. ‘It’s Hans Andersen’s story, the one I love.’
And I said, as we started to walk again, past a mirrored building that showed us, large, shivered into two rivers of fragments, as a bird flicked over our reflected heads and blinding sunlight made us blink at each other and think for a second we could be friends: ‘Yes, it’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.’
19
GERDA
I do have a lot to tell my mother. Failing that I shall write it down.
My Battle with the Furies,
Part the First
(I have decided to write it like an epic. I have chosen an epic typeface. Just seeing those letters cheers me up. I do need cheering. I am On My Own.)
I know it isn’t good to get into fights. But I also know that you have to be brave. It’s like in that enormous great book, Cat’s Eye, which I liked a lot until it got too long, where the girls start doing mind games on each other.
No-one was ever going to bully ME. My mum taught me that, which I’m grateful for, because my mum was bullied at school.
So I knew I had to stand up for myself. Anyway, why should they call me fat? Ayesha was ugly, but I didn’t complain, and Linda had big pink ears like a monkey, but I had never mentioned it, and Cindy had skinny legs like sticks and I’d seen her breakfast: like, ONE cornflake.
I mentioned it all after they started on ME. But then they got madder, and things got worse.
Cindy, the skinny one I called Anna, which I also told everyone was short for Anna Rexia – (I know that sounds bad, but I never did it till after her friends started calling me ‘Greedier’, which was her ‘witty’ pun on ‘Gerda’) – was not as stupid as the others. I admit she was good at English. In fact she was second best to me, which is one of the reasons why she hated me, and besides, she was jealous because I could eat food, lovely chips and jelly that she just glowered at.
In any case, Cindy is a feeble name. It’s a Princess name, and she’d like to be a Princess, whereas I am trying to be a Hero.
Probably to date I have fallen short.
So this Cindy – ‘Miss Anna Rexia’ – thought she would play a good joke on me. All of a sudden she started being friendly. She came and talked to me in the library (we were the only two who read books in the library, which everyone else probably thought was sad.)
And I was dim, and thought she meant it. And I was too soft, and was nice back, because really, I wanted to be friends with them. In fact, I don’t like quarrelling.
So for a bit, I went around with them, but only because I didn’t have many friends, so I missed my old school, and missed London, and if you want to know, I missed my mother, though I knew why she had to send me away, I understand she has to do her work –
I’m crying now, which is pathetic. I won’t let ANYONE make me cry.
It’s just that sometimes I miss my own bedroom. My own things. And my friends from home.
But I’ll be OK, because I’m Gerda.
And I want my mum to be able to work – she has a right to, and she’s a writer, and I do love her, and I don’t want to stop her, like my dad did, she says, because he was a Bastard, though he definitely cooked, when he was at home, and shopped and brought her cups of tea. In any case I wish Mum wouldn’t call him a Bastard. If I stop her writing, perhaps she won’t love me, though she claims to love me most in the world.
And like I said, she needs money for me, or I will never get my new iPad, or my new bike, and my phone is CRAP – she promised me a new one, but then she forgot and went away.
One day I’ll be a writer too, and I won’t want anybody to stop ME. So fair enough, I had to go to boarding school, but why did it have to be this horrible hell-hole, Bendham Abbey, which is s’posed to be the best, but is full of bitches?
I meant to say ‘Wankers’. ‘Bitches’ is sexist. I’m against sexism, like Mum.
I’m tired now so I’m going to eat Jelly Beans. I saved my favourites, which are Pomegranate.
To be continued in
My Battle with the Furies,
Part the Second
20
ANGELA
Goldstein & Sons, rare book-dealers. We hurried towards it through a shoal of banks, huge blank corporations, auction-houses. Along the cold black gullies, past cliffs of black glass, the cars came streaming and honking past us. Fast, deadly, not seeing us.
The towers there always strike me as satanic. Darker, more hulking than over on the West Side, and the shadows they cast are cold and solid, as if spring could never creep in here. She was shivering, drawing her shabby tweed jacket closer. I thought, we’ll have to buy her more clothes, and I will take that smelly suit to the cleaners – ‘Do the best you can, someone drowned in it!’ – (Yes, Virginia’s presence was wearing, and yes, sometimes I fell
