We missed the ferry, not that it mattered. I teased Virginia a lot – I think she half-enjoyed being treated as a wicked woman of the world. ‘Leonard used to monitor my drinking,’ she said. ‘He didn’t like me to get too excited. It was nice to let go, just once in a while. I felt – careless. I just didn’t care. And because he’s not here, I looked after myself. I had to get myself back home.’
The strange thing was, she was looking younger, despite the headache that creased her forehead. Her cheeks were pinker, her jaw-line firmer.
And then there was her joie de vivre. Her endless curiosity, which made her seem twenty years younger than she was. Wherever we were, her eyes swooped around like birds skimming back from a long migration. On the boat, she bought herself two packets of biros: she seemed ridiculously pleased.
I liked her company.
I liked Virginia.
Even when we had to wait for forty-five minutes, snaking in line through the sun and wind with hordes of heavy-legged tourists in shorts … no, probably they were Americans. Why did Americans always look like tourists?
Perhaps because they wore so few clothes, though this was only a faint spring heat-wave, with wintry breezes still blowing off the sea and a crisping of small white curls on the water. As if they’d thought: Spring! Time for a sun tan. As if they did not understand weather, or seasons, living as they did in airconned homes. Why should I be snippy? They were bent on fun.
That day felt like a holiday. Everyone was there, waiting for the voyage, the world and his wife in sunny mood. Dreadlocked young African Americans gyrating their hips to the rhythm of their iPods. Half a dozen Muslim youths in white tunics, clustered together in a laughing murmur, but every so often looking around them, their black beards jutting defensively forward. Later I saw the grim body-search as they went through security for the ferry. Three elderly, masculine, English women, two of them in nautical caps and blazers, speaking in voices nearly as fluting as Virginia’s, shouting about Fidelio at the Met. And, of course, the children – the children. The children, so much lighter than us, doing handstands and cartwheels, running about. Except the ones who were too fat to run, standing with stout knees pressed against one another, their cheeks churning secret comforts against the gum.
And with me suddenly were two Gerdas, the red-haired child of five or six who used to dance like an elf in the sunlight and the Gerda of today, heavier, steadier. How my girlie would love to be here. She had always loved holidays, travel, adventure. I suppose in that way she resembled her father, though of course he took everything much too far …
My dearest daughter. My darling girl. Late at night, when my chaperone duties were over, I started so many emails to her, falling asleep with them still unfinished, the drafts a layer-cake of good intentions.
Not that I should wholly blame Virginia. Sometimes I had certainly put work first. But that was nothing to feel guilty about. Someone had to think about the bills. Her father had contributed almost nothing during the first few years of Gerda’s life, and now he swanned casually off around the world, but he never seemed to worry, he never felt guilty!
But maybe all of us should have felt guilty, in our tiny, fractured, nuclear families. Yes, Mum and Dad had helped with Gerda, but of course they grew old, and of course they died, and a working mother must sustain a career, so the children never get quite enough care – not even with the most responsible parents. I had tried to be responsible, from the start.
Lucky Virginia. Poor Virginia. Nothing to feel guilty about. But no small hands around her heart.
As we filed on to the boat and climbed the steps to the viewing deck, I said to her ‘My daughter loves boats. Gerda would really enjoy this trip.’
But the wind took my words, and she didn’t know Gerda, and in any case, the boat was leaving the quay and her eyes were already fastened on the view, the dazzling expanse of blue water, the skyscrapers diminishing into the distance, grey and blue and bronze and pink, and there across the bay, the pale grey-green lady, bleached by distance and the sun. She held up her torch: her arm looked white. Still far away, she looked small, hermetic.
Still far away, but growing by the minute.
I had loved the Statue of Liberty since my first trip to New York, ten years ago, when I first got an American publisher. I felt she held that beacon up for me. Her stone tablet became my book. That vision of a welcome to America.
Today, she was waiting for Virginia and me. I fixed my eyes and my hopes on her.
Yet none of it was personal. She was beautiful because she welcomed us all. The ‘huddled masses’, the refugees … even if their children were those fat adolescents sulking with popcorn in the queue for the ferry.
(I knew that Gerda had put on weight, most of it in that first term at school. Was even that going to be my fault?)
Virginia practically ran round the boat, this morning’s stiffnesses forgotten. I followed the yellow of her coat as she jostled boldly for the best view among the batteries of clicking cameras. As the statue hove huge out of the sea, the battle for the side of the boat grew fiercer, but somehow Virginia was holding her own.
Perhaps she was so eccentric-looking that no-one bothered to object – of course I had got used to her, but her lambent eyes and full tremulous lips, so classic, so Victorian, looked even more astonishing above her brisk yellow twenty-first-century trench-coat. I watched her changing sides of the boat with a great sliding ‘Whoop!’ as it veered around the approach to the jetty of Liberty Island, her hair flying free from its normal bun, laughing happily into the wind as the horn of the boat played a great trombone –
The Statue of Liberty towered above us.
Then a crush of people fought to be first off the gangway, and I watched her anxiously from the back, her slim yellow back marking her tracks, her wild grey halo bobbing up and down, while the boat docked, and I saw, amazed, she was making progress, she was pogo-ing through, she was burrowing headlong towards her goal, now she was almost at the front of the line –
They opened the gates.
Virginia stormed it!
She was off over the grass ahead of all of us.
I was left panting far behind.
Once one’s off the boat, one approaches from behind. I was desperate to get ahead of the mob. She loomed ahead of us, too big to take in, planted on her big cairn of brick. I was panting, half-running, to stay ahead and I could not hurry while looking upwards, so I saw her in snatched glances, like a Wyndham Lewis drawing, her back, her huge foot, her tremendous arm, the strong, groomed hair, so different from mine …
Then I rounded the corner, came out on the green foreshore, and faced her at last. I saw her whole.
Yes, I saw her clear for a second. I wept.
For there was my fond, foolish dream. The model of the just female warrior. Tall, kindly, an amazon. The mother brave enough to hold up the light – Vanessa’s dust jacket for To the Lighthouse. Her strong, bent arms, her intent gaze, the way she stoutly faced the sea, searching out those in need of her, the storm-tossed ships from all over the world –
(not turning inwards as poor Mother did, reading the Bible, mending the sock the servants were too tired to darn, polishing the hearth that was ‘not polished properly’ – ‘Sit down, Julia, you’ll exhaust yourself’ – visiting the sick and caring for little ones, not her own little ones but those of the benighted, chastising herself for what she had not done, rebuking us mutely for our failures of duty, driving herself onwards, always on, her cheeks growing hollower, her face falling in, her eyes flaming brighter as they sank into their sockets, her whole body burning up from within like a narrow white candle stuck fast on a table, flaring up, finally, then fading out. That terrible attrition behind closed doors. Only terror for us, locked outside, whispering children without understanding. She grew weaker, finally, until she died. How did that help us? We were left lonely.)
Here she was, now, my Liberty. No-one could interfere with her. Her body was formed from massive blocks of limestone, her crown an immense defence of green metal. She did not worry. She did not fret. Her strong calves walked. She was marching on the future.
I stood in her shadow, near her huge feet. I was ahead of the crowd, alone with her. Her head was hundreds of feet up in the air, her massive eyeballs scanned the horizon, looking for those who needed care.
I felt I was with Mother, too. That she, and all the suffering, were here. That with Liberty, mothers could be tired children. That they could rest, and she would care. Julia’s head leant upon my shoulder.
The air was cool, but the wind had dropped. I realised how exhausted I was. I had been dragged through time, summoned into this world like a book requisitioned from a distant library … A great ache of weariness wrapped my body. Sleep drifted up and took me down. I was safe to fall, I was coming home
‘Virginia? Virginia?’
I couldn’t see her, but I knew she was there. A huge crowd circled the monument. The twenty-first century having fun: taking photos, playing loud music, wrestling, shrieking, eating their picnics, cross-eyed boys playing video-games, three Japanese girls in pink trying to break-dance, a Chinese teacher with terrible acne shouting and sweating as he marshalled the children, two tall blonde sisters – northern Europeans? – doing double-jointed yoga near the foot of the statue, a circle of well-behaved primary school children cross-legged on the ground around their leader, each with their different-coloured lunchbox, a roundel of plastic flowers on the green – I hurried through them – where was Virginia?
Then at the centre, a huddle of people, a cage of figures bending over someone.
For a moment, as I pushed my way through to her, I thought that she – that she was gone. But just as I got there, the cage-bars loosened, the bent figures straightened, I saw Virginia – stretched on the ground – but yes, she was moving. As I called her name, she began to sit up. I could see in her eyes, small-pupiled, stunned, that she felt overrun with people, pressing all round her, blocking out the sky.
‘Could you give her some air?’ I asked them, brusquely. ‘Let her breathe and my friend will be fine.’ There were offers of help, which I rejected. They drifted away, disappointed.
She leant on me as we went back to the boat. Her face was pleated, drained and grey. I said ‘What’s the matter?’ but she couldn’t speak. I sat her beside me on one of the long seats, settled her head against my shoulder.
It was the closest we had been. Through my warm blue coat I could feel the heat, as if her brain were burning her. I did not dare to move, or disturb her, though part of me wanted to stroke her hair, her grey-brown hair, more flyaway than ever since I had prevailed upon her to wash it – I suppose I longed to smooth it, tidy it. Yes, there was still some brown in there. Gold strands gleamed in the afternoon sunlight: had I noticed that before? (And of course I thought of Gerda’s hair: her beloved head with its hanks of bright chestnut. Such beautiful hair, though when she was little, she had been bullied as a ‘ginger’. No-one would dare bully Gerda now!)
The siren sounded to warn us we were sailing. Virginia stirred and sat up straight.
‘It’s me, Virginia. Are you all right?’
‘Yes. Don’t fuss. Of course I am.’
But she sat and shivered, almost silent, as the boat wheeled round to cross the bay and the life of the boat blared on all round her.
‘Shall I get some tea?’
Virginia ignored me. But when I brought her some, she began to recover.
‘Thank you. Thank you for your trouble.’
I think she must have thought I fainted. At the feet of the Statue, the great bronze mother. I know that I was safe with her. It felt like sleep, perfect contentment. Sleep, yes, or something deeper.
But when I woke, I was no longer alone. I was being eaten by the twenty-first century. The smell of these people, fatty, cheap, a mixture of sweat and something synthetic – in my day people didn’t smell like petrol. They swirled around me like a poisoned sea.
Then Angela came and took me away. I don’t remember getting back on the boat, but when she brought me tea, sips of life returned to me.
‘Look, you can still see the statue.’
I turned for one last look at her, my grey-green statue with her fine Greek profile. By now the contours of freedom had blurred. Against the light, she was just a stick, a stick surmounted by a needle. But if I screwed up my eyes at the sun, I could make out the line of the arm in the centre, reaching up, up, holding the beacon skyward. Straight and strong against the blaze of day, tiny and brave on the expanse of sea.
I still felt the thrill: she still moved me.
Yet somewhere, the stone of disappointment.
Freedom had come, to some at least. Freedoms we never thought possible. It was ugly: it was beautiful. I had not understood, in Between the Acts. Freedom for the masses is not aesthetic.
Everyone was free – ‘But what does it mean? How do they use their American freedom?’ I didn’t realise I had spoken aloud.
‘That isn’t the point. Everyone is free. Everyone. That’s really something.’
Yes, everyone was free, from the women milling around me on the boat in their trousers and shorts, their cheap necklaces and unflattering brassieres, shouting at their husbands in loud coarse voices – to the Africans, who were everywhere, chewing toffee and nuts, throwing the wrappers on the ground, laughing with their children, who had sticky faces, no longer in chains but out for the day, talking louder than everyone else; here were the servants, out with the masters: there was no distinction between the two, those women carolling about the opera and the big-thighed, ignorant working class; half of these people were hooked to machines, little white ones that hung from their ears or bright-coloured boxes in their pockets; homosexuals were free, for couples of men were holding hands quite openly, and when we got to the Statue, two men embraced and pressed their lips together and laughed – and how is it possible – part of me flinched, when Bloomsbury was full of buggers like Lytton?
This was freedom: we had longed for it.
I had seen it all: it was done; it was finished.
Yes, I thought, and now I am tired. Tired to death of what I have seen, and what has been lost, in this dazzling new century, with the masses forever pressing forward till those like me will be trampled underfoot – we have been trampled, for they are all gone, Desmond and Lytton, G. E. Moore, Maynard, Leonard and all the others, those wry, clever faces, those cultured brains with their subtle cargo of Latin and Greek, their skilful phrases, their philosophy, their discriminations, their subtleties in art and life – all of it discarded and out of date, their names forgotten, the velleities lost that they argued over till the morning hours; the bookshops are gone, the books are gone, the crowd round the Statue hardly used language – and who will I write for, if I write about this?
Maybe the past can never write the present.
Long strands of grey hair blew into my mouth, perhaps I should get it shingled, like hers, my spine ached, my feet had swelled … I felt I might die of extreme fatigue. The moment swelled and receded all round me. I’d come too late. I could see nothing.
Yes, I had had my vision. But that was decades, a life, ago. I had my vision in my own century.
Angela understood this world. I did not envy her for belonging.
But oh, she must not leave me here. Angela was my only hope. ‘Angela, please, I want to come with you.’
‘Of course, we’re going back to the hotel.’
‘No, you must take me with you tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘To Turkey.’
‘I can’t, Virginia. You’re joking, of course.’
‘No, I promise, I am not joking.’
‘Virginia, you know it’s all arranged. All sorted with your friends in the lobby. You’ll be perfectly safe at the Wordsmiths Hotel. They will look after you beautifully.’ (I could hear I was doing my annoying voice, the voice that you use to bear children down with extra-determined cheerfulness.) ‘You have a special deal for the next four weeks. And I must go home and spend time with Gerda. It’s her birthday, you know, at the end of term. Then after her holidays are over, I will try to come back for you. By then you’ll have decided where you want to be. I’ll take you there. That is a promise.’
I felt – panic. I had to escape her.
And yet, I did not feel easy in my mind. Virginia was always so up and down! (Which was fair enough, being a manic-depressive, but her behaviour was so hard to predict.) However understanding last night’s policeman had been, she had jarred herself on that fire hydrant.
‘I’ve been to Turkey before, you know …’
‘Remind me, where did you go?’ I asked. I was playing for time, my mind spinning.
Could I conceivably take her with me?
Could Virginia fly on a plane?
So far as I remembered, she never had.
And what on earth would she make of the conference? I thought of the email from Gerda. ‘Why can’t Virginia Woolf go to her own conference?’ As usual, Gerda had a point.
‘We sailed to Constantinople. Of course, the Turks re-named it Istanbul. It was terribly hot. My brother had gone home … we knew nothing. We had been to Greece, really. That was the aim. Very early in the morning, we approached by sea …’
And I was young, so very young. It was the morning of my life. Nothing was fixed. It was marvellous. Later we looked down on the sea from Pera. From east to west, everything was on fire, rose and blue, above, below. I watched it side by side with Nessa. This was our world, stretching out for ever. No-one could grow old, or die. Those were the last days of being invulnerable, perfectly young, perfectly hopeful. I will always love Constantinople.
‘… and every window and roof was shining.’
Of course. The first volume of the Diaries. Her beloved elder brother died. And yes, years later, just across the sea in Bursa, Vanessa had a miscarriage.
‘You might not want to go back, Virginia.’
‘I miss Europe,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘I like Manhattan, but everything’s new. I would be nearer to … my country.’
That ‘my country’ harrowed me. Of course, without me, she would be lonely. Istanbul would be nearer home. Old Europe, old Asia, not new New York.
‘You would have to fly. On a jet plane. They go higher and faster than your planes did.’
‘Can one still see the ground?’ she asked me.
‘Sometimes, yes. Through gaps in the cloud. It’s like looking down on a map of the world.’
She clapped her hands together, perfectly happy.
‘I would love to fly, of course I would. And Angela – I have a passport!’
Thus, in a single conversation, it was settled. From those few moments, the whole mad chapter. Her friends in Reception helped with Turkish Airlines; there were still a few seats on the morning flight.
‘You know we probably can’t sit together?’
‘I am an adult,’ Virginia said.
We bought a cheap suitcase in downtown Manhattan, a padlock and a packet of address tags, hurried back to our rooms and packed.
‘To Hotel Golden Horn, Istanbul.’ She laughed with joy when I wrote our address.