‘No, I might be a long time. But thanks for saying you would.’ He looked at her with a hesitant smile, and held out his hand. ‘Virginia, I –’
‘Hush. It’s midnight.’ She took his hand, and they heard above and behind them in the sky the first note of Big Ben, coming to them just a fraction of a second after its radio voice boomed out and filled the car.
‘Happy New Year,’ he said. Then his mouth was on hers, and her ears were full of the chimes and the echoes of the chimes, overlapping each other in widening circles of pulsating sound.
Chapter 6
Virginia caught Helen red-handed. A few weeks after she started to work for Lady Beautiful, Miss Braithwaite, the department head, allowed her to go home earlier than usual, because she had a headache. Virginia went quickly into the flat, and straight to her bedroom. There, standing at the desk by the window was Helen. She was so startled that she turned round with the letter still in her hand.
Virginia shut the door and leaned against it. ‘Reading my letters again, Helen?’ She knew that her mother was capable of looking through her desk when she thought Virginia was out. That was why she had long ago ceased to keep a diary, and always hid or destroyed any letters that mattered.
‘How can you accuse me of that?’ Helen cried, her eyes shifting, seeking how to put the blame on Virginia. ‘What a terrible thing to say to your own mother! I came in here to dust your room, and this letter was lying out on the desk. I just this minute picked it up.’
‘Where’s the duster?’ Virginia asked. ‘Oh, well, never mind. I thought the letter was safe in that little drawer, but I see I shall have to find a new hiding-place.’
She threw her coat on the bed, and sat wearily down beside it, pushing back her hair, which the February wind had tumbled. ‘Since you have obviously read it,’ she said, ‘what do you think of it?’
‘Of course I haven’t read it.’ Helen threw the letter down. ‘I’m not interested in your love-letters.’
‘I don’t get so many love-letters that you could guess this was one without reading it,’ Virginia said patiently.
‘Well, of course, I couldn’t help seeing one or two phrases, and who it came from. That niggling little signature, with the prim little dots underneath, like a prescription.’ Helen grasped at something to deride. ‘And since you ask what I think of it, I think it’s quite absurd.’
‘Oh? Poor Felix. I thought it was a charming letter.’
Helen gave a little snort. ‘It would need to be – trying to get a girl half his age to marry him.’
‘Not quite half his age,’ Virginia said carefully. ‘Eighteen years younger, to be exact.’
‘But that’s much too big a gap! He admits that himself, right there in the letter. Oh, Jinny, it’s unthinkable. Don’t tell me you were even considering it.’
‘I don’t know why not.’ Virginia lay back on the bed, and talked to the ceiling. ‘It’s the best offer I’ve had so far. The only one, for that matter.’
‘But you’re barely twenty-one! And I wish you wouldn’t put your shoes on the bed. That counterpane was expensive. You shouldn’t be thinking of marrying anyone, and certainly not Felix.’ She pronounced his name with some contempt. She had disliked him ever since she realized that it was Virginia he was pursuing and not her.
‘Listen to me, Jinny.’ She stood by the bed with her arms folded, caressing her sleeves. ‘You think I don’t know anything about what is good for you. No daughter credits her mother with any sense. But allow me to tell you – you know nothing. Nothing, do you hear? You’re a child. No doubt you think you’re haying a very worldly love affair with the great obstetrician, but it’s a dream. You don’t know what love is.’
‘Don’t I?’ Virginia said. ‘What about Billy? Wasn’t I in love with him?’
‘Oh – Billy! My dear child, don’t be ridiculous. That was only calf love, and the intoxication of the Austrian Alps. You were both pitifully immature.’
‘How cold it was in the early morning, remember?’ Virginia closed her eyes. ‘And then when the sun came out, you wanted to peel off all your clothes and roll in the snow. But of course, Helen, you hardly ever went out of the hotel.’
Long days on the mountain with Billy in that thick white sweater which darkened his bronzed skin. Days of speed, and hilarious falls, and thick pea soup and hard bread in the huts, and the lights from the windows of the village shining softly on the trodden snow as you stacked your skis outside the Gasthof, and tramped your melting boots inside for the hot spiced wine.
‘I didn’t feel immature,’ she said, remembering the entrancement of it, which had faded away like Billy’s sun-tan after they returned to London. ‘Children of divorced parents are supposed to be more mature, you know. It’s the emotional shock.’
‘Don’t throw that up at me.’ Helen frowned. ‘It’s most unfair to suggest that I have ever done anything but what was best for you. And now you threaten me with this – this tragedy.’
‘Oh, really, Helen.’ Virginia swung her legs off the bed, and went to the dressing-table.
‘Yes, tragedy is what it will be if you marry Felix. The man is settled, set in his ways. His life is half over. Yours is only just beginning. He’s successful enough, I grant you. He has got where he wants to, but do you want that? How do you know what you want?’
She talked to Virginia’s back, with histrionic gestures, which Virginia could see in the mirror. ‘Please, Jinny, please; if you have any regard for me, please listen to what I tell you. Can’t you see I’m trying to help you?’
Virginia let her talk. She did not say that she had no intention of marrying Felix, and that she had already told him so, and listened in embarrassment to his humiliated apologies for having asked her. Poor Felix. It would be kinder to him to let Helen think that it was she and not Virginia who had put an end to the mild affair.
He had vowed that he would move away from the mews, and never see Virginia again. That was a pity, because Virginia liked him; but if it made him feel better to be dramatic about it, at least that would give Helen the pleasure of thinking that she had driven him away.
‘Dear heart.’ Helen put her hand on Virginia’s shoulder. ‘Don’t leave me yet. I need you. Don’t leave me for a man who could never make you happy. You and I have been so happy together.’
Did she really believe it? She bent forward and laid her cheek alongside her daughter’s, and they stared together into the mirror, the young sceptical eyes and the scheming anxious ones.
‘You’re all I’ve got, Jinny,’ Helen said, watching her own lips move sadly. ‘You’re all I’ve got.’
*
All I’ve got, indeed! Virginia walked up Endell Street in a fury, slapping her feet on the pavement and swinging her arms.
All I’ve got. I need you. Don’t leave me. I’m only thinking of your happiness. And all the time, she knew – she knew what she was planning to do without a thought for how it would affect Virginia.
Cooing there in the bedroom, putting on that fraudulent maternal act. If she had told about it then, the whole conversation could have been different. But no, she had to do it this way. She had to have her big scene, with Virginia nowhere in the picture, Virginia in the background, trying to smile and pretend that everything was wonderful.
It would be a long time before she could forget the scene in Helen’s office, the scene from which she was now storming away, trying to cover the hurt with anger.
It had been nearly time to leave the office. Miss Braithwaite had come to Virginia’s desk and said: ‘Your mother wants to see you before you go. You can run along now, if you like. Those few letters will keep until the morning.’ Miss Braithwaite was very kind. She fussed over the girls in the correspondence department as benevolently as a sitting hen.
‘But there will be a whole heap of new ones by the morning.’ Virginia slit another envelope, and began to read a letter from a lady in Bristol, challenging her mother’s last editorial on How to Live Graciously
on Three Hundred Pounds a Year.
‘I know, dear, I know. If the letters didn’t come, that would be the time to start worrying. But tomorrow is another day. Don’t let’s try to set the world on fire tonight.’ Miss Braith-waite’s kind red face smiled like the setting sun. ‘Run along to your mother,’ she said, as if she were a nurse and Virginia a child.
Grace was not in the outer office. She was in the throne-room. So were a lot of other people; all the more senior members of the staff, standing about looking a little uncomfortable, and keeping an eye on Helen.
‘What is this – a party?’ Virginia did not go up to her mother. She waited on the outskirts of the ring of people that surrounded the editorial desk.
Helen stood up when she saw her. ‘There you are, Jinny. We’re only waiting for you.’ She seemed excited, but in complete command of herself and the situation. ‘I am going to make a tiny speech,’ she gave a tuneful little laugh, half deprecatory, ‘if you will all bear with me for the briefest of moments.’ She clasped her hands at chest level, and looked round her audience with her head poised.
Virginia saw Spenser Eldredge standing behind her. He was wearing a chunky, grey chalk-stripe suit with a white carnation in the buttonhole. He looked serious, as if he were giving someone away at a wedding. A wedding! Virginia came out of her daze and realized what her mother was saying.
‘- I thought it better to tell you all together like this, I know how rumours go about in an office, and I want you all to know the truth – and to congratulate me, if you will. I am going to marry Mr Eldredge. I am very happy about it, and I hope that you will be too.’
Helen’s voice held a theatrical throb. She was enjoying herself enormously. Spenser stood with his head jutting forward, betraying no emotion. What he thought about being exhibited like a prize bull was no more apparent than what the bull thinks.
‘Yes, I shall be leaving you all too soon.’ Dressed in her green Dior for the occasion, with the best jewellery she possessed, Helen floated along with her speech, so word and gesture perfect that it was obvious that she had spent a long time practising before a mirror. ‘I have been here longer than most of you, longer, perhaps, than any of you, with the exception of my dear Judy.’ She flung a hand and a smile in the direction of Judy, who stood four-square in the front row with her feet planted and her arms folded, like a mill-worker at a protest meeting.
‘I just wanted to take this opportunity of thanking all of you who have worked so hard, and I hope so happily with me to make Lady Beautiful what it is. To thank you for giving of your best, for your cooperation and your unfailing loyalty, which has meant so much to me during both good and bad times alike.’
‘Save us, the same old stuff.’ Judy looked round to see how the others were taking it, and noticed Virginia. ‘Sorry, Jinny, I didn’t see you.’ Then she saw Virginia’s face. ‘My God,’ she whispered, ‘didn’t you know? How could she do that? What a way to break it to your daughter!‘
‘It’s all right.’ Virginia managed to smile. ‘I knew about it. I knew this was coming.’
She had not known. She had not thought of Spenser as anything more than a temporary meal-ticket at the Savoy; and her mother had not given her the smallest hint. She thought of her telephoning sweetly to Miss Braithwaite: ‘Would you ask Jinny to come along to my office for a moment?’ Helen had planned it like this to give Virginia no chance for argument until the announcement was made, her resignation handed in, even the wedding date perhaps already fixed.
All I’ve got, indeed! Virginia tramped past the Prince’s Theatre, avoiding cars and walkers by instinct, not properly seeing them. Why, if Helen had this planned, had she made such a fuss about Felix? It would have been more natural for her to have grasped at the opportunity to have Virginia out of the way. It could not be all jealousy. She did not need Felix now that she had Eldredge and his estate on Long Island, which would be of much more value to her.
Vanity? Perhaps. That too. Helen was the one who was getting married. She was the queen of the hour. She would not have the thunder of her wedding stolen by a presumptuous daughter coming up with a wedding of her own.
Virginia was to remain a daughter, not to become a rival married woman. Helen wanted everything – everything for herself. She wanted Eldredge, but she wanted to keep Virginia too, to drag her off to America, no doubt, as if she were a steamer trunk, labelled: The property of Mrs Spenser Eldredge.
It would serve her mother right if she ran straight back to Felix and said: ‘Forgive me. I will marry you.’ But perhaps even Felix would have too much pride to be accepted as an afterthought. If he were humbly grateful for the insult, that would be only one more reason why she could not marry him. How disastrous to tie yourself for life to a man you did not want, because of a moment’s pique with your mother.
The moment grew and lasted. As the future became more defined, Virginia liked it less. Her supposition was right. Helen did plan to take her to America. After the wedding, she and Spenser were going on a trip to Europe. They would then take Virginia ‘home’ to the estate on Long Island – how she hated the sound of it already, with its orchid houses, and its fireplace transported stone by stone from a castle in the Black Forest – and Virginia would complete her education by going to college.
‘But I don’t want to go to college,’ she argued, over cocktails in the bar of the Savoy grill. ‘My education was finished long ago. I’m not a schoolgirl. I’ve got a job now. I’m doing well there. Ask anyone, Helen. Ask Miss Braithwaite. Ask Mr Owen. I’m to be given a chance at subbing next month. I won’t be taken away.’
‘I like that in you, Jinny.’ Spenser leaned forward, the small table dwarfed to the size of a tray by his bulk. ‘I like that determined ambition. That’s going to get you a long way. But not here, my dear. Over in the States, where I can give you every advantage you – excuse me, Helen – never had. If it’s a job you want, though, of course, there’s no need for it, I can get you in anywhere you want. But you must go to college. Everyone does. Bryn Mawr, I think, for you. I always planned that for my daughter, only, of course, I didn’t have any children. My first wife’ – he looked down at his martini – ‘she didn’t care too much for the idea. But now that I have a daughter,’ he smiled benevolently at Virginia, and laid his heavy hand on hers, ‘I shall see all my hopes fulfilled.’
Spenser was becoming as possessive as Helen. It seemed that he wanted to marry Virginia as well as her mother. She went along as part of the bargain. His kindness towards her and his affection, which was growing alarmingly sentimental, made it more difficult for Virginia to oppose him.
He had eaten all the cheese straws and cashew-nuts while he was talking. He clicked his fingers at the waiter. ‘Bring some more of these. They never give you enough. And,’ he circled his fingers over the glasses, ‘another round, as long as you’re coming.’
‘Jinny doesn’t usually have more than one cocktail,’ Helen said, with the sweet smile she used for Spenser.
‘Oh, Helen, I do. What are you talking about? You’ve let me drink what I like for ages. What is this?’ Virginia tried not to sound irritable against the warm family atmosphere the other two seemed bent on creating. ‘Are you trying to turn me into a juvenile so as to make me do something I don’t want?’
‘But Jinny, of course you want to go to America. You’re just being stubborn. Stubborn and ungrateful.’ Helen, too, had some difficulty in keeping her voice pleasant. ‘It’s a wonderful opportunity for you. Here is Spenser offering you a chance any girl would jump at. I can’t think why you’re being so funny about it.’
‘Girls are funny,’ Spenser said, diving deep into his second martini, the glass almost invisible in his meaty hand. ‘A girl is a woman, don’t forget, Helen. That means she’s illogical, unpredictable. You can’t drive her into anything. You have to lead her, on a silk ribbon.’ He wheezed his laugh, and pushed his pink lips in and out with pleasure at his little quip.
‘But you are trying to drive
me,’ Virginia said. ‘I think you’re very kind, honestly, and I like you, and I’m glad you’re going to marry Helen, but please take her without me. I’m not ready to go to America yet. I’ve got too much to do here. I like my job, and I mean to do well at it. Not just staying on the magazine. I want to go on and on. But I want to do it here, where I know what the people are like, and how they think, and what they want to read. Not in another country, where I would feel out of place for a long time, and where anything I’ve learned so far and begun to believe in wouldn’t be much use.’
‘You’re talking froth,’ Helen said. ‘America is not a cannibal country. The people are just like us. Look at Spenser.’
‘My ancestors were British,’ he said eagerly. ‘I told you that, didn’t I? They came from Leicester. See Helen, I even know how to pronounce it. I made a trip there last time I was over, and looked at all their records. There are some Aldritches listed in the parish archives. Aldritch – Eldredge, you get it? Let’s go in and order dinner, what do you say? Virginia will feel better about this whole thing once she’s eaten. I know I always do.’
‘I will never feel better about going away,’ Virginia said. ‘I love London. I’ve lived here all my life, and I need it. I need the – oh, the smells, and the Underground, and the greyness that makes it important when the sun shines … and the terrible futility of the people who have money or a title, and the terrible acceptance of the people who have nothing. I couldn’t live anywhere else.’
‘The young are so lyrical.’ Helen made it a crime to be young. ‘Be practical, child. Where would you live? You know I’m giving up the flat when we get back from Europe. You can’t expect Spenser to make you an allowance just because of this absurd whim. I wouldn’t let him.’
‘I wouldn’t take it. I don’t need anything. I’m earning, and I can find myself a place to live.’
‘Not much of a place, on what you are getting,’ Helen said. ‘Don’t forget I know what the magazine pays you. No, Jinny.’ She rose, and picked up her furs and bag. ‘This nonsense has gone on long enough. You are not yet twenty-one. You are my daughter, and you’re coming with us. If you want to be ungrateful and cruel about it, that’s your affair. No doubt you don’t mind how much you hurt me and Spenser.’ She nodded graciously to the waiter, and led the way to the grill-room.
The Angel in the Corner Page 9