Читать книгу Virginia Woolf in Manhattan - Maggie Gee - Страница 25

18

And so we did, an incongruous couple flashing past the Easter windows; Virginia, though stooped, inches taller than me. To my surprise, after a shaky start, she began to lope two paces ahead, a steady, strong, athletic walker despite her grey hair and unnerving pallor.

I had to half-run to keep up with her, though every so often she would stop dead and stare at something I would never have noticed – I no longer saw the advertisements like acid flowers bursting from the pavements, I didn’t notice the fetish shoes, six inches high with inch-thick platforms; I took the display of wealth for granted. I actually had to pull her away when she shrieked with laughter at two women, obviously well-to-do, walking arm-in-arm against the sunlight, perfectly outlined from loin to ankle, the shapes of their hips, their crotches, their thighs, in skin-tight black leggings and ankle-boots, and above the waist, boxy expensive jackets, ropes of pearls, vast sunglasses and artfully streaked hair falling below their shoulders.

‘They go out without skirts,’ she hooted, happily. ‘What fun to see New York prostitutes! Leonard would laugh.’

‘Virginia, they’re not prostitutes. It’s just the fashion of the day. I agree it’s strange, but they don’t feel naked. Everyone pretends not to notice.’

‘But I could see everything,’ she insisted. ‘Of course they can only be prostitutes.’

‘You’re going to see lots of women like that.’

‘And no-one laughs? No-one says anything?’

‘Not in New York, Virginia.’

She was pounding along like a racehorse once more, but I saw from her furrowed brows that she was thinking. And then she stopped and smiled at me, her head tipped bird-like to one side. ‘It’s Hans Andersen’s story, the one I love.’

And I said, as we started to walk again, past a mirrored building that showed us, large, shivered into two rivers of fragments, as a bird flicked over our reflected heads and blinding sunlight made us blink at each other and think for a second we could be friends: ‘Yes, it’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.’