It’s a first edition.’
There it was, Vanessa’s lovely design, the grey swirls of the waves below, the few plain strokes to denote the lighthouse, the black dots swarming in different densities to show the light blazing up in a fan. All around it, the lighthouse wall. ‘It’s worth a fortune. What’s the other one?’
VIRGINIA (stays silent, lost in thought)
ANGELA
‘Virginia! Show me the other one! I am excited! It’s incredible!’
VIRGINIA (starting, and staring hard at the book before handing it over)
‘Somehow my books came to find me.’
(Angela opens some pages, amazed.)
VIRGINIA (dreamily)
‘They were waiting for me in this strange world, new as the day when they came from the printers. We have other lives, I think, I hope …
‘Orlando was a joy to write, like a wild gallop across strange country … such a happy autumn till my pen rebelled. But somehow, yes, one finished things …’
ANGELA
‘Orlando! Sorry, this is overwhelming.
Could I take a photograph? Just this once? For the books, not you?’
I was a tourist! I did, right there, with her perched on the bed, Orlando on her lap, To the Lighthouse beside her. Virginia Woolf, with two first editions!
The balance of power had shifted between us, with the fight – the fight! – and now the photograph. But one long white hand went over her face. And I saw her gather herself. Her force.
(I must have somehow pressed the wrong button, because when I looked later, there was nothing there.)
VIRGINIA
‘Kindly never do that again. I cannot, will not, be photographed.’
ANGELA
She was furious. She stood up tall. She blocked the light. She detested me.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I knew that, actually. It’s in the – ’
I stopped. It was in the biographies. She didn’t know the biographies. So thick, so intimate, so many.
‘Sorry,’ I said, again. I stretched out my hand, palm up, placating.
VIRGINIA
‘Let’s talk about more interesting things. Did you say – these – were valuable?’
ANGELA
‘Immensely. Of course, you might not want to sell them.’
We looked at each other, and it was decided.
VIRGINIA (hand half-extending)
‘You said your name was … Angela?
–You want me to call you Angela?’
ANGELA (still slightly wary)
‘As I was trying to explain to you, no-one says “Mrs” in the twenty-first century.’
VIRGINIA
‘I see. Then you may call me Virginia. I had a niece called Angelica.’
ANGELA
‘My full name is Angela Lamb. That’s the name on my book jackets.’
(I say this automatically now, having noticed that often, when I meet a stranger – an un-literary stranger, that is to say – they ask ‘Do you write under your own name?’
Virginia was hardly un-literary.)
VIRGINIA
‘I think I shall call you “Mrs Lamb”.’ (Slight smile.)
ANGELA
‘Please don’t!’
(They turn slightly towards one another.)
VIRGINIA
‘Angela.’
ANGELA
‘Virginia.’
VIRGINIA (with gaiety)
‘Let us go out and make some money!’
(After a second, they shake hands.)
16
GERDA (reading in a loud voice in front of the mirror in her room at school)
‘Crimes By Mum
1) Sending me away to school
(Though I admit I was bored at home. But only because she goes out so much.)
2) Bad cooking. One day I’ll be a BRILLIANT cook
3) Forgetting to buy chocolate logs
4) Going on about cleaning your teeth
5) Going on about Dad, even if it’s his fault. Breaking up with Dad, who is my dad after all, and it would be convenient to have two parents. In the same house. Or at least talking to each other.
Why didn’t they think about that? And me?
6) Not realising I am a Genius
7) Obeying the rule about phones. Amina Sharif’s mother didn’t. Of course she is a Princess.
8) Not getting me a better phone
9) Having boyfriends –YUCK – and disgusting ones
10) I’m sure she does. Yuck Yuck Yuck
11) Going on about HER in general
12) Talking though I told her not to
13) Taking back the one jacket of hers I would EVER borrow, and refusing to lend it again just because it had a teeny bit of sick on the pocket – doesn’t she want me to look nice?
14) NOT READING MY EMAILS PROPERLY’
I think when I read this to her at home, I shall deliver Point 14 in a deafening shout, because she will have stopped listening by then.
–When is my mother coming home again?
17
ANGELA
Our brief rapprochement could not carry us through. I ordered sandwiches from room service, she did not like them and asked for more. I confess I grew irritable – ‘You did choose BLT, Virginia, I warned you it would be disgusting.’
I was exhausted, and doing my best, and her BLT cost $20, and she ate the fries, so we couldn’t send it back. I needed her to sleep so I could catch up with email.
I tentatively offered to lend her some pyjamas but she just shuddered and shook her head. So I went to the bar for half an hour, telling her she might like to take a bath, and came back to find her standing at the dressing table, jacketless, shoeless, quivering with energy, her hair a thin mermaid screed across her shoulders. She was trying to open my computer! Instinctively I moved to stop her.
‘No, Virginia, it’s a machine. It’s complicated. I’ll show you tomorrow.’
She definitely had not taken a bath.
She told me ‘she wanted to see how it worked’, but why was she prising it open with a fruit knife?
Then I retreated into the bathroom, and when I came out she was dead asleep – asleep not dead, I checked from her breathing – stretched out stiff as a religious relic on the twin bed I’d slept in the night before, her handsome head smack in the middle of the pillow under which my sleep socks and radio were hidden. The night was chilly, but I tried not to blame her. It was a relief to put the