Philippa Gregory

New York

Is there a city in the world with more songs written about it than this one? Everywhere I went on a sun-drenched dazzling weekend in New York, I found I was supplying my own soundtrack in a drowsy hymn to one of the most beautiful and charming cities I know: ‘I’m in a New York state of mind,’ was predominant but late at night in the Bleeker Street bar my husband transfixed our friends by bursting into a triumphant ‘Hum hum hum hum hum Bleeker Street!’

We were not far from Bleeker Street at our hotel, the achingly hip SoHo Grand in the heart of SoHo. Converted from a warehouse to look as much like a warehouse as is possible, while still being a four star hotel, staffed by elegant young people in black, the SoHo Grand is an evening destination so favoured by the beautiful and wealthy that there are velvet guide ropes to manage the queue to enter the building, and a reservation system for the sofas. Truly. You have to book to sit on the sofa.

This was new to me and when my friends and I came back from dinner I made the mistake of sitting down where previous guests were leaving. The dark-suited and beautiful hostess came up to tell me that sadly, we couldn’t sit there. ‘The Time Out reporter has booked it,’ she told me in a hushed whisper. Utterly unmoved, I told her I was from The Mail on Sunday, England. In the game of poker journalism this was a key card. ‘I’ll see your avant gard review and raise you my quality Sunday.’ We got a sofa all of our own.

Our guests included a man whose friendship goes back years. I first met Kirk Moore walking in Kenya, when he had just turned his back on his family’s trucking business and was painting full time. His courageous decision to focus on his vocation has paid off, and he is now a successful artist. We went to Greenwich Village to see his new show – his eighth – and marvel at the way his new life in Maine has breathed sea air over his canvasses. Where he used to paint the New Jersey shore and the beach clubs, he now paints seascapes and exquisitely detailed ships. To our surprise and delight, at one end of the white-walled little gallery, we found a landscape of our own house which he had sketched when he visited us last summer: a little bit of Yorkshire in New York.

We dined late with Kirk, his brother Brian and his partner Jo, in a buzzing French-style brasserie, and walked back to the hotel. The streets were crowded with late-night promenaders, the queue ropes operating outside many of the bars. There was not the least sign of trouble but only the light-voiced buzz of a prosperous crowd having fun.

The next day I was to attend the American Books Fair, a massive event in the hanger-like Javits Centre. This being America, and my book being The Virgin’s Lover, a novel about the first years of Queen Elizabeth Ist’s reign, I was naturally accompanied everywhere by two publicitists in full Tudor costume. It says everything for the coolness of the hotel that even two very pretty Tudor handmaidens did not raise an eyebrow., Kimberley, Lisa, and I swept into my signing at the conference centre where I sat at my allocated desk in a long row of authors, head down and signed for a steady hour for the queue who came on and on like a book-loving conga. Either side of me, other authors did the same for their one hour slot, then more would come, then more. I gave a lunchtime talk, I had an afternoon meeting with booksellers, my soul cried out for tea amid a sea of soda and coffee, I sat on the stairs and wondered how anybody ever sells a book at all in this ocean of titles, and then I attended a most elegant publisher’s dinner held at the auction house of Christie’s the auctioneers with a jewellery collection on display.

And after that my work was done. (This is work?) The next day was the official SoHo Stroll, the first Saturday of the summer sales where artists exhibit and shops provide aperitifs and welcome you to browse. We went uptown to start with Saks for its elegance and air conditioning, but then moved to Lord Taylor for good quality but cheaper prices. New Yorkers always tell you to go to the store, 21st Century; but I hate it. It is packed with people and the goods are heaped in small hills, more like a rummage sale than a shop. Back in SoHo we lunched in the Broome Street Bar, near our hotel, a great place which is almost unchanged from the days when SoHo was the centre of radical cultural activity, the neighbour to Greenwich Village. The bar walls have mounted samples of poetry from those times, of the style of ‘With a Lion’s eyes/ I survey the wreckage/ of my life.’ Fortunately the food is better than the metaphors.

Saturday night we had thought, foolishly, that we would go to a show; but the New Yorkers love to reserve and to queue. There are no tickets available for anything, as far as I can tell, unless you have booked months in advance or are prepared to go and queue all morning. Instead, we made our own entertainment with a saunter through SoHo, around the Village, and back to the hotel. Everywhere there were people having a good time, enjoying the cool of the evening after the brightness of the day, queuing (of course) for tables, stepping outside for a cigarette – all New York bars and restaurants are smoke free and no economic collapse has taken place – chatting, courting, hanging out. The distinctive sounds of New York, the thump of reggae from a passing car, the staccato beeping of the car horns, the wail of the sirens, and the incessant hum of traffic the drift of blues from the bars, filled the streets like heat.

Sunday we had the best of days. We started early with breakfast at the Cupping Room, an oddly named little restaurant across the way from the hotel, pancakes and fruit, followed by brunch with the Harlem Gospel Choir in the huge BB King club on Times Square. This is really an event worth queuing for, and queue we did. The singers were terrific belting out ‘Oh Happy Day’ and ‘I’m going to fly’ with absolute volume and sincerity. The food is mass market southern, they miscall it home cooking – alas, it left long ago – but the music is worth it. Everyone was on their feet, firm atheists shouted alleluia! We were all Baptists, Praise the Lord. It was a great belt of inspirational Bible. Outside, show over, we hopped on a sightseeing bus and finally behaved like full-on tourists. The sun beat down on the open-top bus, we took in the sights of Downtown from Times Square down Fifth Avenue to the waterfront, passing through American history, through garment district to elegant apartments. The guide, a knowledgable Brooklyn-born art historian pointed out the streets where he had been raised. ‘First immigrants here were Irish,’ he said. ‘Then Europeans, then Jews, then Chinese, then Indians, now Asians. It’s always Little Italy or Chinatown. Another generation, and we’re all American anyway.’

It was a relaxed and generous view of a relaxed and generous city. New York, New York, d’you know, it was so good they named it twice?