A yellow-haired female was gaping at me. Not respectable. Primped & painted. Yet her demeanour was kind enough. All around us, more painted women. Everyone smelled of chemicals. There were many Africans and Chinamen.
Was it Wolstenholme’s laudanum? How had I lost myself again?
The world whirled round me, I had no centre, perhaps the voices would begin.
Yet part of me was still, quiet. A child, watching. Was I reborn?
Then, too late, I remembered my manners. We stood in the foyer of the library, the great loud streets roaring past outside, but there was still glass protecting her – I felt from the start I would have to protect her. ‘Mrs Woolf?’ I corrected myself. ‘Mrs Woolf? May I help you?’
‘I think,’ she said – such a beautiful voice, but absurd! If she tried to give a reading today, people would laugh out loud at her fluting vowels, her long ‘I’s like ‘A’s, her ‘a’s like ‘e’s – ‘I may perhaps need help. I seem to have forgotten where I am.’
And I stammered, ‘The New York Public Library.’
‘A library?’ Large eyes, grey-green, puzzled. Blurred or misted with age or doubt. Blinking out from caves of bone. ‘Perhaps there is a telephone?’
‘Use my mobile,’ I said. ‘But we must go outside.’
She stared, then continued as if I had not spoken. ‘Is there a telephone I might use?’
So many things to explain to her. But first I must get her to some kind of shelter. Virginia Woolf on these blaring streets … ‘Come back to my hotel. It’s not far.’
On the other hand: Woolf in my modern room – modern to her – small, slightly seedy, the radiator humming, my shabby 1970s Waddington Hotel?
Her voice became more imperious. ‘I’m so sorry, I don’t know your name, but I really must telephone my husband.’
And then I was overwhelmed with pity. She did not know that he was dead! But I said – that temptation to show my knowledge – ‘Leonard.’ There must have been something in my tone, for she looked back at me, alarmed. ‘Are you an acquaintance of my husband’s?’
‘I’ve heard of him. Everyone has.’
And her long, almost equine face relaxed. Those mournful, haunted eyes sparkled, her full lips lifted in a sweet, shy smile. Yes, a chalice of happiness. ‘Do you think so? Mr Woolf will be amused to know that.’
You love him still, I thought with pain, pain for her and then for me – Edward said he loved me, but he still walked out. Had I ever been loved as Virginia was?
‘You’ll have to come with me,’ I said, almost brusque (people were starting to stare at her). And then, as kindly as I could, ‘Come with me, I’ll look after you.’
And yes, that’s what I tried to do.