The Angel in the Corner

by Monica Dickens

  ‘Only by your standard.’ He resented her tone of light rebuke. ‘Why shouldn’t the editor take you on again, if you were getting on as well as you said you were? Listen, you don’t mind do you?’ He wanted to make it impossible for her to mind. ‘You always said you loved working there. If I stopped you doing it, you’d say I was ruining your career. What’s wrong in giving you the chance to go ahead with it?’

  ‘You don’t see, do you?’ Virginia picked up the suitcase that held the tinned food and the whisky and went into the kitchen. Joe followed her. They were close together in the tiny kitchen, which was scarcely more than a large cupboard.

  ‘Why are you being so difficult about this?’ he asked. ‘I thought you would jump at the chance.’

  ‘I’m not being difficult.’ She shook back her hair, and tried to smile. ‘I’d be glad to go back to the magazine. I hated leaving, but I thought I had to, if we were going to Glasgow. It’s just that – don’t you see, Joe? I would have liked to be the one to suggest it.’

  She bent down to open the case. He took her arm and pulled her up again. ‘Well, you weren’t,’ he said roughly. ‘And if you’re trying to take me over, you can stop it right away. You’ll do what I tell you. We’re married now, don’t forget that.’ He felt her arm quivering under his grasp. Was it excitement or fear? Did she like this kind of treatment, or did she hate him for it? He had been too rough, but she had it coming to her. If she was going to start taking offence at everything he said, she had got to be straightened out right away.

  ‘Let go of me,’ she said quietly, and he loosened his grasp.

  ‘I didn’t mean to be like that. I’m sorry, Jin,’ he said with difficulty. He hated apologies. He had never cared what people thought of him, but he cared what Virginia thought. It was a new sensation; painful, and a little humiliating.

  ‘I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean anything.’ She knelt down and began to take tins out of the suitcase and stack them on the floor. ‘Of course I’ll be glad to go back to the magazine. It will give me something to do, while you –’ She sat back on her heels, and asked without looking at him: ‘Are you going to get a job too?’

  ‘I may. I’ll have to look around. I thought I might start on that book I’ve been wanting to write.’ He had not thought of that for some time. Now it seemed like a fine idea. He felt sure that he could bring it off.

  ‘There’s money in it, Jin, I’m certain of that. I’ve got some first-class dope. Never been written before, as far as I know. I’ll be famous. I’ll make you rich. Listen to me! Listen –’ He knelt on the floor beside her, scattering the tins. ‘Don’t turn away like that. What’s the matter with you? You think I’m too dumb to write a book, is that it?’ This time she gasped as he took her arm, and he knew that he had hurt her.

  He pulled her against him, and forced her head back. Her mouth was closed and rigid. He forced it open, and felt her shudder as she relaxed against him.

  ‘Yoo-hoo! Anybody home?’ There was a clatter of heels on the stairway from the house above, and Mrs Mortimer appeared in the doorway before they had time to get to their feet. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Do I intrude? Don’t mind me, Jo-Jo. I know what young love is. I just came down to pay my respects to the bride.’

  She was a shrill, sparse woman like a quail plucked for the oven, with the fixed eye of a bore, and a thin red nose that had rejected the pale powder which clung patchily to the rest of her face. As Virginia and Joe scrambled to their feet among the rolling tins of soup, she came into the kitchen, holding out two hands, ugly with bitten hang nails.

  She embraced Virginia. ‘Welcome to the ancestral home. I hope you’ll like it here. Jo-Jo always grumbled about it, but in my opinion, he’s lucky to get a place as nice as this. He’s not the best of tenants, but I dare say you’ll straighten him out.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mollie,’ Joe said, trying to laugh off his resentment at the intrusion. ‘She’s already got me where she wants me. Why didn’t you bring Paul? Let ‘em all come. We’re having open house.’

  ‘She did bring me,’ Paul said from the passage. ‘No room for me in the kitchen. Sorry to intrude on you like this.’

  ‘Glad to have you.’ Joe took Virginia out to meet their landlord. He was a tall, ungainly man, with a long stiff neck like a giraffe, and some trouble with his feet, which necessitated his wearing carpet slippers all the time he was in the house.

  He gave Virginia a cold, shaky hand, and said: ‘Congratulations, my dear. You look as if you were much too good for Joe, but there again, you don’t look as if you would have married him if you thought so. If you see what I mean. I’m a bit fogged today. I hope you’ll be very happy.’ Then he slapped Joe on the shoulder, and said vaguely: ‘Good boy, good boy.’

  They all went into the other room. Mollie exclaimed at the way Virginia had already tidied it. ‘It always looked a shambles, in my opinion,’ she said. Her opinion was the mainspring of her life. She gave it at the slightest opportunity, and believed that everything she said must be true, because she had said it.

  ‘No man has the slightest idea of keeping house,’ she declared, trying a chair with her hand before sitting on it. ‘I always told Joe: You’ve made a pigsty of this place, I always told him. Not,’ she added, catching Joe’s quick glance towards Virginia, ‘that I was ever down here more than a few times, to give messages, or a parcel. I believe in leaving the tenants alone, although the one we had before Joe, this schoolmistress, she used to beg and beg me to come down at night and keep her company. The poor soul was desperate with loneliness.’

  ‘So desperate that you eventually drove her away to find a place where she could get some peace and quiet,’ Paul said, and his long body shook with silent laughter. He folded himself gratefully into a chair, and rubbed his feet.

  ‘How can you say that when you know it’s not true? Don’t mind him,’ Mollie told Virginia. ‘He’s a dreadful man. In my opinion, he’s the most dreadful man I ever met.’

  Joe could see that Virginia was still a little shaken from the crude interruption of her emotions, but she had recovered enough self-possession to be conscious of her position as hostess. In that easy, well-mannered way, which Joe would never openly admit to admiring, she asked: ‘What can I get you, Mrs Mortimer? Some tea or coffee? You’re our first visitor. You must have something.’

  Like all self-centred people, Mollie could hear a question, and then answer it with something else from her own train of thought. ‘I must say,’ she announced, ‘Jo-Jo is the last person I would ever expect to get married. You could have knocked me down with a feather when he told me. I said so to Paul, didn’t I, Paul? Wake up there, old-timer, you can’t go to sleep when you’re paying a visit. The last man on earth, I said. I never was so surprised.’

  ‘Why is it so strange?’ Virginia asked, narrowing her eyes at Mollie. Joe could imagine these two women getting into a fight some day.

  ‘Well, my dear,’ Mollie shrugged her shoulders, as if it were obvious, ‘because he’s not the marrying kind, that’s all.’

  ‘Mollie, you don’t say that kind of thing to a girl who’s just got married,’ Joe said uneasily.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry. I have to say what I think. You must take me as you find me.’

  Virginia certainly knew how to behave herself. Most of the girls Joe had known would have put their claws out and scratched back. He would not have thought any worse of them, but he thought all the more of Virginia for ignoring it, and renewing her offers of hospitality.

  ‘Which shall it be?’ she asked smilingly. ‘Tea or coffee? It won’t take me a minute to make either.’

  ‘I don’t care for anything,’ Mollie said. ‘Thank you – what is your name again? I can’t call you Mrs Colonna. Virginia. Good. I shall call you Virgie.’

  ‘No one ever calls her that,’ Joe said.

  ‘All the more reason then why I should. Virgie and I are going to be very special friends, I know. It will be nice for me to have another woman in the
house again. Paul is the quiet type. He doesn’t always feel like talking.’

  ‘Don’t forget what happened with the schoolmistress, Mollie,’ Paul said, blinking and stretching his eyes to keep himself awake.

  ‘There you go again, being perfectly dreadful. Of course I wouldn’t dream of gate-crashing the love nest. I know when people want to be alone.’ She made the harmless remark sound offensively lewd. ‘I just want Virgie to feel free to come up and chat with me whenever she likes. No man is ever such a good confidante as another woman, in my opinion.’

  ‘Don’t expect Virginia to run up and cry on your shoulder every time we have a row,’ Joe said. ‘She’s not that kind.’

  ‘And we don’t have rows,’ Virginia added. ‘Joe, why don’t you get Mr and Mrs Mortimer a drink? They must have something, now that they’re here. We’ve only got whisky, I’m afraid, but nobody has drunk our health yet. You can be the first.’

  She sounded wistful, and Joe had a sudden vivid picture of what her wedding would have been like if she had married the kind of man her mother expected. White lace, and yards of that flimsy stuff they hung over the heads of brides to make them look like virgins, and champagne, and people making speeches, and Virginia radiant as a queen. She had looked radiant enough in her plain blue dress in the registry office, but not like a queen, more like an excited child.

  He put his arm round her. ‘You shouldn’t have said that,’ he whispered.

  At the word whisky, Paul’s eyelids had flown up like shutters, and he had leaned forward in his chair. Mollie had stood up and gone to him, holding out her hand to help him to his feet.

  ‘We’ll have to be running along,’ she said. ‘It was so nice meeting you, Virgie. I hope we’ll see a lot more of you.’

  ‘I hope so too. I’m sorry you won’t stay to drink our health, Mrs Mortimer.’

  ‘Mollie to you, I insist. We don’t drink dear. Thank you all the same.’ She departed quickly, hustling Paul’s stumbling feet up the stairs, and leaving the smell of stale lavender water in the air behind her.

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’ Virginia asked. ‘I tried to be as nice as I could, though I don’t think she likes me. Did I say something wrong?’

  ‘You did, but it wasn’t your fault. It was the whisky that sent her scuttling off like a scared rabbit. Paul’s an alcoholic.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘No harm in him. He manages to get the stuff, when he can get away from her, but he’s perfectly respectable about it. You just won’t see him around for two or three days sometimes, but he’ll come out of it looking as innocent as a baby. It all goes to his feet. I can’t think how he does it. The only time I was ever on a real bender, I ended up in hospital. Scared the pants off me. Don’t look so alarmed. I won’t do it again.’

  ‘I hope not. It must be dreadful for Mollie, but I dare say she drives him to it.’

  ‘She’s not so bad, compared to some of the landladies I’ve had. We’ll have to keep in with her in case we ever can’t pay the rent, but I hope she doesn’t come crashing down here every time we – where were we, Jin?’

  ‘In the kitchen. You were kissing me. Like this.’ She put her arms round his neck and kissed him lightly. ‘Not quite like that.’

  ‘Don’t, Joe. I want to hang out that white dress if I’m going to wear it tonight. Put that case on the bed for me, will you?’

  He lifted the case, and opened it for her. Virginia came quickly across the room. ‘Don’t bother. I’ll do it.’ She shut down the lid so swiftly that she grazed the back of his hand.

  ‘What’s the matter? What’s in there that I can’t see?’

  ‘Nothing. What would there be? It’s just that it’s a mess. I packed in a hurry. I don’t want you to think your wife is untidy.’

  She spoke quickly. She was covering something up. Well, let it go. He would find out what she was hiding. Perhaps it was a present for him, or the picture of some old boy-friend she couldn’t bear to leave behind. Old love letters. They would have some fun with those. After he had read them, he would scrounge some wood from Mollie, and they would light a fire, and have a ceremonial burning. The death of Virginia Martin. The birth of Joe Colonna’s wife, rising like Phoenix from the ashes.

  Who said he couldn’t write a book? He would buy a typewriter next week. You could get one with only a small down payment.

  *

  What instinct had prompted Virginia not to tell Joe about Spenser’s wedding gift? When she had found the money at the flat, she did not think of hiding it from him. Then when she had seen Joe swinging the suitcases jauntily down the basement steps, so pleased with himself because he had given the taxi-driver a lordly tip out of the last small change in his pocket, Virginia had known that she would not tell him that he was carrying a bundle of five-pound notes.

  Some instinct had warned her to be cautious, and after their disturbing talk in the kitchen, she was thankful that she had obeyed it. Even if he were going to write a book and make hundreds of pounds from it, as he believed, they would have to be careful, if he was not going to look for a job meanwhile.

  The two of them could only just live on her earnings from the magazine. They must save the hundred pounds for emergencies, and Virginia did not think that Joe knew how to save.

  She did not blame him for that. It was a part of his nature which he could not help, because it came from never having enough money. Poverty made one type of person over-cautious. The other type, Joe’s type, were made reckless by poverty. If money came to them, they wanted the immediate enjoyment of spending it without fear of what they would do when it was gone. They had been poor once; they could be poor again.

  Virginia did not mind that Joe was like that. She had known it before she married him. She did not mind any more that he had given up his job at the club and was disinclined to look for another. Minding about it would not change him, so she had decided not to let herself mind, any more than she would let herself mind that he took it for granted that she would be glad to work for both of them.

  She was glad to get back to the magazine office. She knew that as soon as she stepped into the splendid antechamber of Lady Beautiful, and was greeted with the full-lipped, toothy smiles of the girls who decorated it.

  One of the girls was Nora, in a new poodle haircut and a cotton dress with a boned, pushed-up bodice. ‘Is it true you got married, Jinny?’ she asked at once.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Didn’t you think it would be all round the office? What’s he like? We’re all dying of curiosity. Why didn’t you tell us about it?’

  ‘I didn’t know myself until just before it happened.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought you were such a fast worker,’ Nora said admiringly. ‘Or else he was. What’s his name?’

  ‘Joe Colonna.’ Nora would have to know sooner or later.

  ‘Do I know him?’ Nora’s eyes were startled, but she affected not to recognize the name.

  ‘You ought to. You spent the evening at his flat. Oh – with me and Derek, of course.’ Virginia smiled. ‘But perhaps you and he never got as far as exchanging names.’

  ‘No.’ Nora patted her hair and spoke distantly. ‘No, I don’t recall that we did.’ She watched Virginia slyly, wondering how much Virginia knew, and how much she minded about what she knew.

  Virginia would have liked to say: ‘I know you spent the night there, but I’m prepared to forget it, if you are.’ However, even without the avid interest of the other two girls in the office, she could not say it to Nora. Nora’s immorality was conventional. She would think it the worst of taste. She would be more shocked at Virginia for saying it, than Virginia was shocked at Nora for having stayed with Joe.

  ‘Well,’ Nora said grudgingly, ‘congratulations, old kid. I hope you know what you’re doing. What are you doing here, for a start? I thought you’d chucked the job.’

  ‘Just another office rumour,’ Virginia said. ‘Of course I haven’t. People can get married and g
o on working, can’t they?’

  ‘Oh, surely, surely,’ Nora said. ‘Most of them have to these days, if they want to eat.’

  Virginia said coldly: ‘I’m not starving, thank you. I just like working here.’

  She pushed open the wide polished door, and walked down the passage past the office doors with their glimpses of activity, past the door through which, with any luck, she would soon be going in and out again, belonging as much as anyone.

  She felt at home here. She had trained and worked for this. If only one of them was going to have a job, it was sensible that it should be her. She had a better chance than Joe. He did not seem to be trained for anything in particular. He had never stayed long enough in any one job to learn it properly. He could do many things sketchily, but none well. Perhaps writing would be his craft, and this book the stepping stone to achievement. She would do all she could to encourage and help him.

  Miss Adelaide Small, the editor who had replaced Virginia’s mother, was a dry, business-like woman who wasted no words, and no sympathy on anyone who made a mistake. She told people what she thought of them concisely, whether what she thought was good or bad. The staff much preferred this to Helen’s elaborate speeches, which had wasted their time, and had come in the end to the same thing as Miss Small’s brisk pronouncements. Either you were right, or you were wrong.

  ‘So you want your job back?’ she shot at Virginia, as soon as Grace had closed the door by her usual scrupulous method of hanging on to the handle on the other side, so that not even the click of the lock should disturb the editorial muse. ‘Well, you can’t have it. Frances is in your place on editorial. I’ve been waiting for a chance to move her up.’

  ‘Oh.’ Virginia stood before the great desk, feeling like a schoolgirl at the mercy of a headmistress. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Small. I know I shouldn’t have gone off like that without even coming to explain.’