so I tried to judge her less severely.
Today I will have money of my own! One does need money – I’ll try that again. We all need money and a room of our own – I must remember not to use the ‘one’, I have noticed it’s fallen out of fashion, as if no-one wants to be singular now. Everything is ‘we’ – they feel things in herds, the citizens of the twenty-first century.
Regrettably, her guess about the blouse was right! ‘That will be $400, Ma’am.’ ‘
$400
?’ Angela stared, her mouth tightening like the mouth of a purse.
I didn’t actually see her pay, she just gave him a small plastic card on which I suppose her address was written. The man put her card into a tiny machine that must have printed her address for their records. I would learn to do all these things in time – one would have to learn, if one was to stay.
To me, the prices made no sense at all, they were all unimaginably enormous, but she acted as though I had done it on purpose. For some reason I found that amusing, as if I were a young girl laughing at Nurse, so we left Bloomingdale’s with her in bad humour and me snorting quietly behind her.
But for me, the shopping trip was a success. I had a new skirt as well as the blouse, quite hideous but serviceable, in olive-green wool, which had the advantage of covering my knees, & it did go well with the apricot shirt, like leaves and fruit, like a late warm summer –
(if I were with Nessa, it would have been fun – )
This morning, the woman was annoyed again. Apparently I’d ‘spoiled the effect of the new clothes’, by snatching up my old tweed jacket at the last moment as a cover-up. I don’t know why, I suddenly felt naked, as if I might be laughed at in my brand-new get-up. With my tweed jacket, I had an old friend.
She sat as far away as she could on the seat of the yellow taxi. Because I knew she was trying to help me, I turned to her as we stopped at the traffic lights – curious traffic lights they have, bright yellow, suspended from blue sky, thin air – and said ‘You see, this jacket is moral support. Because I’m going to lose my books. They’re all I have left from – the old world. My jacket keeps me company.’
And at once she melted, and smiled at me kindly, and said ‘Of course, I understand. It’s just, that blouse cost $400. I’ve never spent that much on a blouse. I suppose you can’t understand our money. Perhaps you will, when you have some of your own. Before you know it, it will be gone.’
And then she said something more interesting. ‘You don’t have to worry about losing your books. You’ll be able to buy copies in any bookstore. Lots of people read you, as I said, Virginia. At least, those people who still read. We’ll go and buy you new books today.’
America wasn’t as I had once imagined, cars streaming smoothly to their destinations – ‘seventy abreast’, I think I wrote – no, they all cut across each other, and every ten minutes they all ended up in a blank stand-off of honking metal, noise I had never heard or imagined, the driver of the taxi-cab was swearing loudly and I said we should get out and walk, but Angela told me it was perfectly normal, ‘Sit tight, Virginia, it won’t take long. New York is like this every day. I don’t want you to get there looking wind-blown.’
It seemed I had to play the lady.
ANGELA
I didn’t want her to look like a loony. Getting a great writer into the shower is not the easiest thing to do, but I had managed that semi-successfully – her hair looked sweet and fluffy at breakfast, and without the odour, her beauty shone through – then at the last moment, what did she do? She only snatched up her pondweed jacket.
Yet I was growing fond of her.
The trouble was, she took up all my time. I was busy with her from morning to nightfall. I vowed that day I would update Gerda. I hadn’t been reading her emails properly. Not that I needed to worry about her. She had been so happy
Today I will have money of my own! One does need money – I’ll try that again. We all need money and a room of our own – I must remember not to use the ‘one’, I have noticed it’s fallen out of fashion, as if no-one wants to be singular now. Everything is ‘we’ – they feel things in herds, the citizens of the twenty-first century.
Regrettably, her guess about the blouse was right! ‘That will be $400, Ma’am.’ ‘
$400
?’ Angela stared, her mouth tightening like the mouth of a purse.
I didn’t actually see her pay, she just gave him a small plastic card on which I suppose her address was written. The man put her card into a tiny machine that must have printed her address for their records. I would learn to do all these things in time – one would have to learn, if one was to stay.
To me, the prices made no sense at all, they were all unimaginably enormous, but she acted as though I had done it on purpose. For some reason I found that amusing, as if I were a young girl laughing at Nurse, so we left Bloomingdale’s with her in bad humour and me snorting quietly behind her.
But for me, the shopping trip was a success. I had a new skirt as well as the blouse, quite hideous but serviceable, in olive-green wool, which had the advantage of covering my knees, & it did go well with the apricot shirt, like leaves and fruit, like a late warm summer –
(if I were with Nessa, it would have been fun – )
This morning, the woman was annoyed again. Apparently I’d ‘spoiled the effect of the new clothes’, by snatching up my old tweed jacket at the last moment as a cover-up. I don’t know why, I suddenly felt naked, as if I might be laughed at in my brand-new get-up. With my tweed jacket, I had an old friend.
She sat as far away as she could on the seat of the yellow taxi. Because I knew she was trying to help me, I turned to her as we stopped at the traffic lights – curious traffic lights they have, bright yellow, suspended from blue sky, thin air – and said ‘You see, this jacket is moral support. Because I’m going to lose my books. They’re all I have left from – the old world. My jacket keeps me company.’
And at once she melted, and smiled at me kindly, and said ‘Of course, I understand. It’s just, that blouse cost $400. I’ve never spent that much on a blouse. I suppose you can’t understand our money. Perhaps you will, when you have some of your own. Before you know it, it will be gone.’
And then she said something more interesting. ‘You don’t have to worry about losing your books. You’ll be able to buy copies in any bookstore. Lots of people read you, as I said, Virginia. At least, those people who still read. We’ll go and buy you new books today.’
America wasn’t as I had once imagined, cars streaming smoothly to their destinations – ‘seventy abreast’, I think I wrote – no, they all cut across each other, and every ten minutes they all ended up in a blank stand-off of honking metal, noise I had never heard or imagined, the driver of the taxi-cab was swearing loudly and I said we should get out and walk, but Angela told me it was perfectly normal, ‘Sit tight, Virginia, it won’t take long. New York is like this every day. I don’t want you to get there looking wind-blown.’
It seemed I had to play the lady.
ANGELA
I didn’t want her to look like a loony. Getting a great writer into the shower is not the easiest thing to do, but I had managed that semi-successfully – her hair looked sweet and fluffy at breakfast, and without the odour, her beauty shone through – then at the last moment, what did she do? She only snatched up her pondweed jacket.
Yet I was growing fond of her.
The trouble was, she took up all my time. I was busy with her from morning to nightfall. I vowed that day I would update Gerda. I hadn’t been reading her emails properly. Not that I needed to worry about her. She had been so happy
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