The Angel in the Corner

by Monica Dickens

  ‘People shouldn’t be alone when they feel low. Don’t go home. Come back with me, do please, and have something to eat, and meet my wife. I’ve told her so much about you.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, but I –’ Virginia began. Then she changed her mind. Her own company was dreary at the moment. The company of Mr and Mrs Benberg was not likely to be stimulating, but perhaps it was better than being alone.

  *

  Mrs Benberg had a steak and kidney pudding waiting in its steaming cloth, and there was enough for Virginia, and still some left over for the small brown dog which lay on the ledge under the table.

  ‘Disappointment doesn’t take the edge off your appetite, I’m glad to see,’ Mrs Benberg observed, slicing treacle tart. She served it with flourishes and large gestures. She was a big woman, bigger both in height and breadth than her husband, and everything she did and said was expansive, and a little wild. Her hair was wild, like a frayed rope, and pins scattered out of it when she energetically nodded or shook her head. Her clothes were strange and disordered, as if she had put her hands into drawers with her eyes closed, and put on whatever came out in a dark room.

  Mr Benberg was entirely and happily dependent on her. She undressed him like a baby, stirred his tea, and put salt and pepper on his plate for him. He was a quiet man, surrounded and washed over by his wife’s vitality, like a stone in a torrent. He did not mind. He appeared content to be submerged beneath a personality that was livelier and noisier than his. Anxious at first about Virginia’s visit, his lip twitched more than usual, but as the meal progressed, and Virginia’s smile returned, the spasms came less frequently, and his mouth settled to rest.

  In the little dining-room, stuffed full of furniture, books, old magazines, and curly china ornaments, Mrs Benberg charged the air like a dynamo. Everything except Mr Benberg was abundant, like herself. The food was bounteous, overflowing the dishes and the plates on to which she piled it. Thick slices of bread tumbled off the board, and the crammed fruit dish spilled grapes and nuts on to the tablecloth. The monstrous, overgrown plants, which stood in every corner, were bursting out of their pots with the energy they drew from Mrs Benberg through the watering-can.

  Virginia began to feel better before she was half-way through the rich steak and kidney pudding. Mr Benberg was so cordial, with his long, mild face and his nervous mouth. Mrs Benberg was so welcoming and enthusiastic, and so crazily affectionate, jumping up at unexpected moments to plant a smacking kiss upon Virginia, and tell her that she was a great girl. ‘Top hole, oh, absolutely the tops,’ she cried, loosely slangy. ‘If only Jim were here, eh, Father?’

  Jim, in the uniform of an officer in the Merchant Navy, looked down at them cheerily from an embossed silver frame on the dresser. He looked nothing like his father. The exuberant blood of Mrs Benberg coursed in his veins. His cheeks were bursting with rude health, his eyes twinkled, and his hair sprang up from his head as if all the brilliantine in the world would never tame it. His mother kissed the picture wetly after she had shown it to Virginia, and then kissed Mr Benberg, to show that there was no favouritism.

  ‘Feeling better, aren’t you, love?’ she said, watching Virginia grow more relaxed, watching, it almost seemed, with her bright, erratic eyes, the thoughts in Virginia’s head clearing and sorting themselves out, and casting away the depression.

  ‘You had a bad time today,’ Mrs Benberg said, pouring strong, dark tea from a fat teapot into outsize cups. ‘But it’s nothing to fret over. A lovely young girl like you – why should you worry about such a potty concern? To the devil with them, I say. Who cares for the Northgate Gazette?’ She waved the teapot over her head like a banner, sprinkling brown drops on her hair, and Mr Benberg called out thinly: ‘Hurray!’

  ‘You’re destined for higher things than that,’ Mrs Benberg said, dumping the teapot, and suddenly drawing her thick brows darkly down so that her eyes were glittering slits. ‘Don’t argue with me. I’m prophetic. I see these things, don’t I, Father? I see great things for you, love, money, success, fame –’

  ‘A tall, dark stranger?’ Virginia laughed, realizing that she had not laughed all day.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mrs Benberg, ‘that we don’t know. Sex is the great mystery of life. Even the prophetic eye can’t always fathom it out. However, drink up your tea, and let’s have a look at the shape of the leaves.’

  ‘I know where I’m going,’ she sang, in a rowdy, cracked voice, as she stared into Virginia’s half-pint cup. ‘And I know who’s going with me – Not a thing. I must be off form tonight.’ She got up suddenly, scattering hairpins and paper napkins. I know who I love, but the dear knows who I’ll marry.’ She sang gaily to herself as she swept out to the kitchen with a pile of toppling plates.

  She continued to sing raucously in the kitchen, running gallons of scalding water into the sink, and making mountains of suds, while Virginia went with Mr Benberg to look at his manuscripts. The house was very small, but one of the ground-floor rooms had been dedicated for use as Mr Benberg’s study. Mrs Benberg was just as earnest about his writing as he was, and equally convinced that he would one day be acknowledged as the greatest writer in the world.

  There was a fine desk in the study, an expensive typewriter, and a literary-looking chair with a leather seat and brass studs, which Mrs Benberg had given her husband on his last birthday. The rest of the space was taken up by a gigantic wardrobe, which housed camphor-laden clothes at the top, and the neat stacks of manuscripts in the bottom drawer.

  ‘Here they are,’ Mr Benberg said, a slight croon coming into his voice, as he opened the drawer and reverently handled the thick piles of typescript, tied with pink tape from the insurance office.

  He took one pile out, and cradled it, smiling. ‘All these words,’ he said. ‘All my nights and nights of words, taking meaning, taking shape, growing and flowering to fulfilment. Here it is.’ He held the manuscript a little away from him and beamed at it. ‘It does me good just to look at it.’

  ‘Have you really got twelve books in there?’

  ‘I have. Twelve finished novels, which the world has never seen.’

  ‘Some day,’ Mrs Benberg appeared suddenly in the doorway, with a dish-towel round her waist and her arms covered in suds to the elbow, ‘some day the world will know and acclaim, and then you, Virginia, will be able to say: “I knew him before you did. I saw his works in manuscript,” and people will shake you by the hand. Go on, read a little. Father won’t mind.’

  Mr Benberg put the bundle of pages down on the desk, and Virginia sat down and began to read, while the Benbergs stood by, he clasping his hands and watching her closely, she wiping a plate round and round with a sodden cloth.

  At first, Virginia’s eye was caught by the beauty of the words in which Mr Benberg had framed his immortal thoughts. The phrases were lyrical, the choice of words romantic.

  ‘But this is lovely!’ she said, looking up at the end of the first page. ‘It’s beautiful writing. Surely someone would want to publish this.’

  Mrs Benberg put her wet arm round her husband’s waist, and they stood there, nodding and smiling and watching Virginia confidently. She had read several pages before she realized that she had no idea what the book was about. Thinking that she had been inattentive, she went back and read some of the paragraphs again, but they still conveyed nothing. She had read some half dozen pages without grasping anything. There was nothing to grasp. The whole thing was meaningless. It was merely a florid collection of lyrical phrases and bell-like words, woven together lovingly, but with no thought for their meaning. There were no characters in the book, and no recognizable scene or incident. It was just, as Mr Benberg had said, words. Words carefully set down for the sheer joy of the individual sound of each one, but with no sense in the juxtaposition of one to the other. It was not difficult to understand why no one would publish Mr Benberg’s books.

  She looked up. ‘What did I tell you?’ Mrs Benberg crowed. ‘Isn’t it staggering?’ />
  ‘Yes,’ Virginia said. ‘Yes, it certainly is. I – I am quite stunned.’ She was at a loss what to say, but this seemed to satisfy them They were not asking for her opinion. They were merely expecting her to confirm theirs. Mr Benberg straightened the pages, retied the tape, and put the bundle tenderly back among its baffling fellows in the drawer.

  They went into the sitting-room, and drank cherry brandy in tumblers before a blazing fire. Jim stood on the mantelpiece in a tortoiseshell frame, beaming on his parents. How happy they were! Mr Benberg with his kindliness, and the beloved illusion that brought him such joy night after night as he typed his beautiful nonsense, Mrs Benberg with her great moonstruck heart, and her magnificent zest for life.

  Virginia was happy too, sitting there untroubled and warm, with the two of them so generously glad to have her. Strangely, although Mr Benberg was only an ineffectual dreamer, and Mrs Benberg seemed at times as mad as a hatter, they had managed to give her the help she had looked for in vain from her mother. Mrs Benberg’s enthusiasm was catching. Her optimism restored Virginia’s belief in herself and enabled her to see the day’s setback as a mere stumble on a staircase that she was bound to ascend.

  Mrs Benberg raised her glass. The cherry brandy was touched with points of fire from the flames in the roaring grate. ‘A toast!’ she cried. ‘To your health, Virginia, and jolly good luck to you!’ She threw back her untidy head, tossed down the brandy, gasped in satisfaction, then settled back in her chair and suddenly picked up a length of orange wool from the table beside her and began to knit furiously.

  ‘Things will go well with you, love,’ she said, her eyes swivelling to follow the points of the long, thick needles. ‘Things will come to you. I feel that. I’m prophetic, did I tell you? Father knows. I see more than I should sometimes, don’t I, old friend?’ She chuckled over her knitting, wagging her head.

  ‘I’ve always felt that I might be lucky,’ Virginia said, leaning forward to stroke the harsh fur of the little brown dog, who lay with distended stomach on the hearthrug. It was almost on her lips to tell them what Tiny used to say about the guardian angel. Involuntarily, she glanced into the corner where a flourishing begonia tumbled its myriad little pink bells in a waterfall of blossom. She felt so safe in this room that it was possible to imagine that her angel stood there with calmly folded wings and a serene face, approving of her choice of friends.

  Mrs Benberg flung down her knitting, and several stitches slid off the end of the fat needle. ‘Luck!’ she said scornfully. ‘There is no such thing as luck. Luck is a reward, not a chance gift. It’s only for those who fight for it. The people who say they’re unlucky don’t know that. They think they have been badly done by, when really they’ve done badly by themselves. But I tell you,’ she dropped her voice to a Biblical chant, ‘To him that hath shall be given. You know what that means, I suppose?’ She leaned forward with her skirt straining over her spread knees, and stared at Virginia with glowing eyes.

  ‘Yes, I think so. It always sounded unfair to me.’

  ‘Not unfair! Not, not! Why, it’s the very plum-stone and essence of fairness. It doesn’t mean that the rich people are going to get more money, and the poor are going to lose their pennies. Ridiculous notion. What it means is this. It means: to him that hath the courage to stand up to life shall be given chances, but to him that hath not the courage shall be taken away even those chances which he hath.’

  She got up and walked about the room, making the furniture tremble. She was excited by what she had said. She grunted to herself, and made jerky upward movements of her hands. Then she stopped in her tracks, the light went out of her face, and she grew calm. ‘Time to let the dog out, Father,’ she said mildly. ‘It’s after ten.’

  Virginia said that she must go home, and Mr Benberg and the dog took her into the frosted garden and let her out of the little creaking gate. He stood by the gate and waved, and Mrs Benberg waved strenuously from the front door, and called gaily after Virginia until she was out of earshot.

  Virginia rode home on a bus through streets that were at first unfamiliar to her. The Benbergs lived far out in the northwest of London, at the end of one of those long roads, once a coaching way out of the city, and now winding and narrowing and broadening past changing stretches of small factories, garages, houses, shops, school railings, and the long, dirty wall of a gasworks. The bus stopped and started, picked people up outside cinemas, let them down to hurry away round the corners of dark side-roads, and pursued its interminable course again unhurriedly, as if the driver were not anxious to get home to his wife.

  As the bus moved in and out of the different boroughs, the street lighting changed. Here there were concrete poles, swan-necked and hideous, flooding the road with a shadowless blue light that turned the people on the pavements into ghosts, stark-faced, with dead lips. Then the bus passed into the shadows, as the fluorescent lights gave place to old-fashioned lamps, which cast pools of dim yellow light through the leafless plane trees, and left wide patches of darkness, where the few late walkers trod like poachers, mysterious, up to no good.

  Then again the roadway was lit by globes of orange light, hanging in pairs like giant fruit along the middle of the road. Half asleep in her seat, Virginia grew alert to realize that she knew these lights, or some just like them. Memory opened, and she saw again the men on the high red trolleys, hanging up the lights, while she and Tiny, out shopping for vegetables, paused among the staring people on the pavement, and stared upwards with them.

  She heard the disapproving things that the people were saying: ‘Hideous, that’s what it is.’

  ‘Great overblown Belisha beacons, I call them. Why can’t they leave things as they were?’

  ‘That’s the Council for you. Always something new. And who’s to pay for it? That’s what I’d like to know.’

  ‘Who always pays? Just wait and see if the rates don’t go up!’

  Virginia remembered that there was talk about the lights for quite a while, but presently the lights became part of the High Street, and after a time they were not new any more, but already old-fashioned compared to the glaring illuminations that other councils were erecting in other parts of London.

  She looked out along the glowing edge of the pavement, and saw that it was not only the orange lights that were familiar, but the pavement itself. Here was that imposing double pillar-box, with an oval top, and one slot for Country and one for London and Abroad. Here was that same draper’s shop, with the gilt lettering and the cards of hooks and eyes hanging on the door, unchanged amid a row of shops that had been modernized. Here was the post office, with the clock slipped a little to one side, so that twelve o’clock pointed to the magnetic north, and here was that very vegetable shop with the green awning, under which she had stood with Tiny and watched the men on the trolley putting up the lights.

  This was the corner where the dogs lifted their legs against the bins of potatoes. This was her own corner, where you turned to plod up the hill for home.

  She had never returned to the cold, unfriendly house since she and her mother had left it nine years ago. When she was still seeing her father, once during every school holiday, he did not live there. He had let the house, and Helen used frequently to regret that her disgust with the house had made her so hasty in relinquishing it, since she might now be getting the rent herself.

  Virginia stood up and reached for the wire of the bell. When the bus stopped, she walked back to the corner, and then up the hill past the dark houses to the one with the shrubby garden which had once been her playground. It was very cold. She remembered that it had always been colder at the top of the hill than down in the busy High Street. The snow lay in a crust along the garden wall, and made two white skull-caps on the stone balls on either side of the gate.

  She had no idea how she would get home. There might not be another bus, and taxis did not cruise at night in this part of London. She began to regret having jumped so hastily off the warm, lighted bus. Sh
e had seen the house now, and that was all there was to it. Standing by the gate, with her hand on its cold iron scrolls, she felt no emotion except the remembrance of how she had always been glad to go out of the house, and never very pleased to come back to it.

  The house looked just the same; too big, too square, too unimaginative in its arrangement of windows and chimneys. She turned away and began to walk down the hill, slippery with freezing snow. As she reached the first corner by the house where the old lady with the cats had lived, a taxi climbed past her with its engine knocking, and stopped just beyond.

  She turned, thinking that she might be able to ride back in it, and saw that it had stopped outside her old home. A man and a woman got out, she with a fur coat and a scarf over her head, the man lean and leggy, unfolding himself with difficulty from the taxi.

  The woman hurried up the steps to the front door. The man paid the taxi, lifting the skirt of his overcoat, and squinting for change under the lamp light. As Virginia went forward to hail the driver, she saw that the man was her father.

  Chapter 4

  ‘But I tell you, Helen, I saw him. Why won’t you believe it?’

  ‘The whole thing is too impossible. You must have been crazy trailing up there in all that snow and cold. No wonder you started imagining things.’

  ‘I didn’t imagine anything. I saw him.’ Helen’s refusal to believe that Virginia had seen her father made her wish that she had said nothing about it. For a time she had not meant to, but then she had rashly come out with it in the unsuitable setting of the fitting-room at Helen’s dressmaker’s, where Helen was busy buying her a new suit for Christmas.

  While Virginia stood in her slip, waiting for the fitter, she had been overtaken by an impulsive mixture of tactlessness and honesty, and had told Helen suddenly: ‘I saw my father last night.’

  Helen argued, sitting upright on a brocade stool in the corner, her feet neatly crossed, and her slender rolled umbrella between her knees.