Virginia Woolf in Manhattan. Maggie Gee

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      21

      ANGELA

      Goldstein’s was staffed with polite, good-looking young men who hovered purposefully in pale suits, gracing the customers with discreet smiles that hinted at shared passions. The shop was so beautiful I felt rather shy. It wasn’t like English secondhand bookshops with piles of dusty books in corners. It was high and airy, with a gallery, a large dark table in the middle of the room for customers to inspect the books, and display cases around the walls. They showed exquisite single copies, dotted in careful asymmetry, like blowing leaves in a Hiroshige print.

      And what did I see, on the right-hand wall, winking at me from behind the glass? A copy of To The Lighthouse, with the familiar Vanessa Bell book jacket. The lighthouse tower, the radiating beams, and Virginia’s name in capitals. (How different it felt seeing it now. Of course I had read her name on book jackets hundreds of times, but never before with this intimate jolt of recognition – the woman was waiting for me just around the corner!)

      My heart lifted, then my heart sank – of course it was good to see it displayed among the jewels of the collection. But if they had one copy, would they want another?

      She was next to Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. And there was Orlando on the other side!

      A clean-cut, shiny-haired young man wavered closer.

      ‘Good afternoon, Ma’am. May I assist you?’

      ‘I’m interested in Virginia Woolf.’

      ‘We have a quite good collection, as you see. And over here, there’s a nice copy of A Room of One’s Own.’

      I trotted obediently after him. There was yet another first edition, sporting the original dust jacket, slightly browned at the edges but the colours still bright, a clock on an ink-blue background. Perhaps the clock meant the time was right for women to have money and a room of their own.

      Now once again, Virginia needed money. And a room of her own in New York, which I was sorting. Mine was much too small for us.

      (Too small for me, as well. I had left it too late to book my flights and then BA Business Class was £4,000! I was haemorrhaging money for Gerda’s fees, so I’d suddenly thought ‘Oh, sod BA’ and booked a package through lastminute.com. Unfortunately the hotel was the Waddington. OK, it got full marks for location, but it hadn’t been renovated in decades, no mini-bar, no desk. I wasn’t too bothered, I would be in the library. But when Virginia came along I suddenly saw it through her eyes – a yellow, chemical, ugly box. Yet she’d stared out of the window as if she was in heaven. Is all life heaven, compared to death?)

      Would her opinions unsettle my life?

      Would she always, somehow, make me feel a failure?

      I dismissed the thought. I was a best-selling author, with two degrees – she didn’t have one, though they called her ‘the cleverest woman in England’ – and I went to the gym and looked after myself. Whereas she looked as though the only exercise she did was dragging herself through a hedge backwards. I had good hair. Ok, this was shallow, but – I had a daughter. She did not. Leonard had forbidden her to have children in case it drove her mad again – though I knew my daughter had kept me sane.

      A pang of love: my darling Gerda.

      I remembered I hadn’t emailed her.

      ‘ … Ma’am?’

      ‘Oh, sorry, I was day-dreaming.’

      ‘Room of One’s Own costs – let me check. Cinnamon boards СКАЧАТЬ