‘Look at the queues for the lavatories. I suppose one must go and join them. So international, the modern world. That woman in a sari, those Africans … You said Edward was an explorer. Which countries has your husband explored?’
‘Exploring isn’t like it was in your day. He has an ecological agenda …’
‘But where?’
‘So many places.’
‘Do men and women share the bathrooms?’
‘In which country?’
‘Here on the plane, of course. I thought that was forbidden for Mohammedans? Don’t bother to answer, I will go and find out.’
And with that, she was up, so I got up too quickly and dropped my book, while Virginia hared off down the gangway, disrupting people’s breakfasts, tripping over their feet.
The truth was, I couldn’t instantly remember the countries that Edward had been to. I always had my own books to write, so I couldn’t really focus on what Edward was doing, whereas Gerda, being a child, had a little globe and marked his position with gobs of Bluetack.
Virginia had asked me early on about Edward. She fired off questions like a Catherine wheel. (Not always. She’d never asked about my novels. Or novels in general, by modern writers. There was only ONE writer who interested her. Or was I being slightly unfair?)
I told her how Edward began as a romantic. About me, about travel and nature. I left out the fact that he had been married, I spooled to our wedding in a blur of confetti. I went too fast, my words sounded hollow, and surely her sharp ears noticed it.
When we were first in love, before I got pregnant, he wanted to share everything with me, his love of wilderness, nights in the open. We fled the city and found each other on various unspoiled European beaches. But the sand-flies bit me, the sand blew in my eyes, and I grew tired of it, and he was disappointed. He was thinking about something bigger than we were – the fate of all humans, so he claimed – while I was obsessing about my comfort.
‘You’re a dreamer, Edward. I’m a realist. I want a husband and a decent bed.’
Perhaps it was inevitable that we would break up, but when I found out I was pregnant, I kept our daughter. So although we were apart, we shared Gerda. It took six or seven years for him to get a divorce, start making money, win me over. He’d managed to get grants for his eco-projects; a research professorship, recently ended; and gigs on TV, because he was handsome. More recently The Palace of Ice gained a cult following, and the book which followed was a surprise success. Indeed he sold almost as well as me, though Gerda was enraged by the photographs of her, a blue bundle of clothes with a red round face. ‘You didn’t ASK me, Daddy!’
(In fact he had arranged it all from a distance, he was in the Amazon by then, and he claimed he had asked me to clear the shots with her … if he did, which I doubt, I have no memory of it.) In any case, the book did extremely well, so I don’t know what Gerda was complaining about. It was nobody’s fault but Edward’s that he’d put almost every penny of the money into this maddening new polar trip, because the grant wasn’t big enough. In the end, people make their choices.
Seeing The Palace of Ice had stirred it all up. They pulled at my heart, those two little figures, struggling to put tents up in the gathering dark, laughing over mugs of tea in the firelight. Sometimes he gave Gerda the microphone, and her young, clear voice described stars or wolves – I was her mother, but I still marvelled.
Of course the split had been a wrench for Gerda. She loved her father, but she took my side, her sense of justice made her take my side, and besides, Edward had been away for three months and missed her birthday, except for a phone call. His postcard arrived over three weeks late, by which time both of us were furious. ‘I’m afraid men don’t remember birthdays,’ I told her. Yes, she was becoming a feminist.
Oh, no. Virginia was struggling back along the row and calling out to me in clarion tones, ‘Does the excrement fall on the heads of the people?’
‘Virginia, please sit down.’ I shut my eyes so I didn’t have to see her.
I noticed that her eyes were closed. But I needed to ask her about the Balkans, and all the fighting everywhere else, and find out what she thought about it, for women were surely the pacific sex (though she herself could be aggressive!). I wanted to know if it had made any difference, my pamphlet Three Guineas, which nearly killed me. Half a dozen years of floundering and striving, and none of the men I knew liked it –
(not even Leonard – not even my love – )
I held back from asking for at least a second, just in case she was actually asleep.
‘Angela, have you read Three Guineas?’
It wasn’t my fault that she then spilled her coffee.
‘Sorry, so sorry. Oh no, it’s on your Bible, or Torah or whatever …’
I dabbed at him, helpless, with my paper napkin.
‘Oh let the cabin girl bring a cloth. In any case, he’s quite all right. I just wanted to know, have you read it?’
I allowed her time to stop flapping her napkin, then I continued with my theme.
‘My thoughts about aggression were in Three Guineas. I hope it had … some influence.’
‘Don’t ask me at this moment.’
‘I don’t mind if you haven’t.’
‘Look, it’s your fault I spilled the coffee.’
It was at times like this that one saw she had no breeding. One does not make a fuss about this type of thing. I allowed her time to stop flapping her napkin, then I continued with my theme.
‘I hope Three Guineas had … some influence.’
‘What do you think it would have influenced?’ (In a furious whisper, to herself) ‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’
‘It did make a certain stir, you know. Rhonda Cecil, who was hardly a radical, declared herself profoundly moved and excited.’
‘It cannot be recovered. Wreck-èd.’
‘Let me pay you for a replacement. I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I only have dollars …’
There was a darkish stain on the smooth surface of his Bible, which paled slightly as the page buckled, only because it was penetrating deeper, boiling and bleeding, invisibly, beneath. The man was staring at me, dark with fury, and I, alas, was getting angry with him, and before we knew it, we would have a war on. I’d had anger training to deal with Edward, I was going through the mantra, STOPP – Stop, Think, Observe, get Perspective, Practice your techniques for defusing situations – but with Virginia yattering away on my left, I couldn’t get the space I needed to Practice, I couldn’t take the calm ‘helicopter viewpoint’ –
‘You Americans think everything is money. Everything is not money.’
‘All right, have it your way.’
I folded my dollars back into my wallet.
‘But our community is not rich. You Americans think everyone is rich.’
‘I’m not American, for God’s sake! Look do you want my money or not?’
‘Lady Rhondda thought Three Guineas would have a great effect. Angela, dear, you are shouting, you know.’
‘So give me the money if it makes you feel better.’
(Angela grimly hands over the money. His hand stays outstretched. She gives another note.)
‘It’s one of the books I am most proud of. I had such a struggle with The Pargeters, could it work as a fusion of fact and fiction? – but in the end, I separated the two, and the fiction part became The Years, which takes a family through several generations, and the wars come, and so much time passes …
It was a best-seller in America, you know. And the part that was intellectual argument I turned into a book of its own, Three Guineas.’
‘I know!’
‘ Three Guineas had a genuinely new perspective. War and women’s rights could not be disentangled. Because educated women are too rational for war – ’
‘Could you please shut up for one second, I am trying to sponge coffee off my good coral suit …
‘Oh fuck, I didn’t mean to say shut up, sorry! I will opine on every war on the planet, but now I just need a few moments’ grace.’