Читать книгу Virginia Woolf in Manhattan - Maggie Gee - Страница 31

24

GERDA

I sent Part the First and Part the Second to my mother, but still the woman did not respond, just sent me bulletins about what SHE was doing, and then I began to feel worried, because although Mum could sometimes be forgetful, she didn’t usually forget me for weeks. She claimed it was all because she was looking after this ancient freak (I admit that is what I thought about Virginia, mostly because I hadn’t read her) – but I knew she didn’t love Dad any more, and I thought she was probably having an affair. She had bought a lot of new clothes since the break-up, and started wearing very bright orange lipstick, which of course did not suit her Big Orange Face.

She hasn’t really got an orange face, I said it because I am angry with her. Har har har on Mum.

Things were still not going well at school, either. Nor did I feel quite ready to put my Great Getaway Plan into action.

For a start, since my mother was in America, I didn’t want to give her worry, not THAT much worry, in any case, and although she knew I was brave, and a mensch, (as Dad said when he first saw me ride my bike no-hands), she would certainly worry if I ran away and some idiot teacher from here rang and told her, and they would be shrieking, which is what they do whenever something slightly out of the ordinary happens, like two girls falling in the swimming pool and one of them, Linda, who was a non-swimmer (but I didn’t know that) losing her specs (har har har) and having to be life-saved by the other, who did it badly and nearly strangled her, and all the shouting got a lot of attention – so although I was sitting in the library by then, reading a book about Manhattan (to see if there were dangerous beasts in Central Park, since that was near where my mother was staying, and I thought that might explain her silence, if she had gone walking and got a bit Gored) – my house mistress came and hauled me out and shouted loudly in the corridor.

‘Why did you push those girls in the pool? Gerda I will not tolerate bullying.’

‘Then why did you let those girls bully me?’

‘Don’t answer back!’

‘That’s not an argument.’

I had taught my mother that ‘Don’t Answer Back!’ wasn’t a valid argument – it’s something that grown-ups always say when they can’t come up with anything better – but evidently no-one had told Ms Cannon.

I accept that wasn’t the right time to try, and soon I was waiting to see the Head Teacher.

But I had better go back to the beginning, or actually we had got to the middle, and I will write down my side of things, which none of the teachers has bothered to hear, and then I will email it to my mother. In the end, sheer volume will wear her down. There will be room for nothing else in her inbox.

Gerda and the Furies,

Part the Third

I am falling asleep, I will write it in the morning.