The Angel in the Corner

by Monica Dickens

  ‘You left a lot of work unfinished, if you remember.’ Miss Small’s handsome face was not stern. It was merely impassive, as if it were too well-organized to betray her thoughts by any change of expression.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t even ask you to let me come back. I’ll understand if you haven’t a place for me.’

  ‘Who said I hadn’t? Don’t put words into my mouth, Virginia. It’s a bad habit. It sometimes makes people change their minds about being nice.’

  Virginia said nothing. Miss Small studied her for a few moments. Then she tightened her mouth into her controlled version of a smile, and said: ‘So you ran away to get married.’

  ‘I got married, yes, but I didn’t run away,’ Virginia said quickly. There was no reason why anyone at the office should know that.

  ‘Yes, you did. I’m not criticizing you. It’s none of my business. That’s what I told your mother when she wanted to waste my time discussing it over the telephone.’

  ‘My mother rang you up?’

  ‘Last Friday morning. She wanted to know if I knew where you were. I told her that I presumed you were on your honeymoon, in which case it was immaterial where you were. The poor woman had some wild idea of rescuing you “before it was too late”. I don’t remember her exact words, but it was all depressingly reminiscent of the kind of women’s magazines that used to be published before things like L.B. were thought of.’

  ‘How could she tell you all that? She hardly knows you.’

  ‘Had to tell someone, I suppose. You know what women are,’ Miss Small said, as if she were discussing another sex. ‘I had to call Grace on the other phone, and ask her to cut in with a long-distance call. Callous, but after all, I am your editor, not your spiritual mentor.’

  ‘You mean you were my editor.’

  ‘No, no.’ Adelaide Small’s face crumpled into kindness, the lines deeply etched. ‘Don’t be so proud. I’ll take you on again. I like your work. You can’t have your old job,’ her face was once more business-like, ‘but I’ll fit you in under the beauty editor. She’s short of assistants. I take it your mother has gone to America, or you wouldn’t be in London.’

  ‘Yes. I called the airport. She must have left soon after she talked to you.’

  ‘Then I have not lived in vain,’ Miss Small said with satisfaction. ‘I told her to go. You were married by that time, so I told her not to make a fool of herself, but to go and get on with her own marriage, and leave yours alone.’

  ‘Oh, poor Helen. She doesn’t like to be talked to like that.’ Virginia thought that her mother must have been very desperate even to have listened to that kind of talk. Normally, if anyone told her that she was wrong, she either walked out of the room, or hung up the telephone.

  ‘I don’t care if she likes it or not. Excuse me, it’s your mother, of course. But if I got involved in the private lives of all my staff, I should be greyer than I am already, which would make me snow white. Well –’ she slapped a note-pad down on the desk, and stood up, needle thin in her dark linen suit. ‘Do you want to work with Jane Stuart, or don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do. I can’t thank you enough for giving me another job.’

  ‘You’ll need it,’ Miss Small said grimly, ‘if your husband is as feckless as your mother says he is.’

  ‘How can she say that? She doesn’t even know him. He’s wonderful, Miss Small, and –’

  ‘They all say that.’

  ‘And,’ pursued Virginia, who was determined to say this, ‘I’m not working because I have to, but because I want to.’

  ‘Mm-hm.’ Adelaide Small accepted this without cynicism or disbelief. ‘Go and explain yourself to Jane. I have another appointment.’

  As Virginia went to the door, Miss Small called after her:

  ‘That’s a nasty bruise on your arm, Virginia. You ought to put some witch-hazel on it.’

  Virginia looked down at the discoloured marks of Joe’s hand which showed on her upper arm below the short sleeve of her dress.

  ‘I knocked it,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t ask you how you did it. I said look after it. If it swells, you won’t be able to type.’

  *

  Virginia wore long sleeves to work until the bruise had faded. If anyone but Miss Small had noticed it, it would be all round the office that her husband was knocking her about. The unmarried girls were jealous of the ones who were married, and lost no opportunity for gossip. If you listened to them, you could hardly believe that there was a married woman on the staff who was not on the verge of divorce.

  Jane Stuart actually was on the verge. She was separated from her husband, a commercial artist working at home, who resented her being out of the house all day on affairs of her own. Jane dreaded the domestic rut, and would not give up her career. According to office legend, there had been a furious battle, in the course of which Mr Stuart had said: ‘You can choose between me and the job.’ Jane had chosen the job.

  She did not appear to regret the choice. She was supremely happy with her beauty page, and her readers’ letters, and her little excursions to salons and shops to find out what was new in the entrancing business of making women feel that they looked better than they did.

  She passed on the news in phrases of ardent sincerity to her readers, who believed, with each new discovery, that they were going to be transformed into raving beauties overnight. When they were not, they did not abandon hope. They took notepaper, and confided to Jane Stuart all the problems of pimples, pallor, broken veins, big noses, small eyes, lank hair, and peeling finger-nails that were burdening their lives.

  Virginia’s job was to read the letters, and make a preliminary decision on which should be answered by mail, and which were of enough interest to other readers to be answered in the magazine itself. After a week with the letters, she began to wonder if there was a woman in the land whose life was not made hideous by some physical defect. Like a doctor who begins to imagine that he suffers from the diseases of his patients, Virginia found herself searching in the mirror to see whether she had whiteheads or blackheads or swollen ear lobes, or a lipstick that turned blue in the evening.

  She worked on the letters in the mornings. In the afternoons, she took down Miss Stuart’s dictated answers. If the beauty editor had given as much care to her marriage as she did to her readers’ complexions, she would not now be working towards a lonely middle age. Her dictation was as conscientious as if she were giving advice on how to invest thousands of pounds, and she would often keep Virginia working late to answer the letters with the religious fidelity she considered was due to the readers for their belief in her.

  ‘They trust me,’ she would say. ‘It’s a great responsibility. If I told them to shave their heads and put bacon fat on their faces at night, I believe they would do it. Come, Virginia, I know it’s long after six, but we must put this poor lady in Tunbridge Wells out of her misery. How would you feel if you were waiting to be told how to close your open pores? You wouldn’t want to wait another day for an answer just because the typist was newly married and wanted to hurry home. I’ll make up your time another day,’ she would say, adjusting her spectacles, whose frames were decorated with gilt whorls, and which she took off and put on a hundred times a day, making as much play with them as a barrister in court.

  She never remembered to make up Virginia’s time, and Virginia, trying to keep her attention on the dermal problems of women in Kent, would bite her pencil and fret about getting home late. She did not worry about what Joe would think. He seldom knew what time it was. He would sometimes be asleep when she got home, or sometimes out, and surprised when he returned to find her there before him.

  She worried for herself. Before she was married, the working day had never seemed too long. Now it was an endless interruption in her life with Joe. All afternoon, she would feel building up in her the excitement of seeing him again. After she had cleared away the office tea tray, it was difficult to think of anything bu
t hurrying back to the room in the basement, where she was no longer a tired typist, but a woman with a man of her own.

  The other girls in the beauty department alternately pitied and envied Virginia because she was married. Sheila would come in with a tale of some wonderful man who had taken her out, and pause in her recital of the evening’s thrills to look sadly at Virginia and say: ‘It must be awful in a way to have all that behind you.’

  Christine, who grumbled at everything connected with the magazine, including its readers, would run her hands through her thin, pale hair and sigh: ‘God, I’m fed up with this life. You’re a lucky devil, Jinny, to be married and know that you could get out of it any time. I can’t think why you stay here when you could be at home running the vacuum cleaner.’

  Virginia did not tell her that she had neither a vacuum cleaner nor more than one room to clean with it. No one knew where she lived. No one knew that her husband was out of work.

  It was natural that Derek should come in from the art department to discuss illustrations with Jane, but Virginia thought that since she had come to this office, he visited it more frequently than necessary. Often when he came in, he would have nothing particular to say to Jane, and would drift over to Virginia’s desk and perch on the edge, fiddling with pencils and erasers, and trying to think of things to say that would make her stop working and talk to him.

  Derek’s attitude towards Virginia had changed slightly since her marriage. Before, he had been admiring, but diffident. Now he was admiring, but vaguely solicitous, as if Virginia’s marriage were a form of ill health. He kept asking her if she was all right. He frequently tried to persuade her to go to lunch with him, offering her a good meal, as if he thought she needed it.

  Although he never dared to say anything against Joe, it was plain that he was nervous about the marriage, and that he saw himself in the role of the trusted friend, ready to leap into the breach at the first sign of trouble.

  Once, late in the evening, when the other girls had gone home, and Jane Stuart was with Miss Small, Derek came and leaned over Virginia’s typewriter, and said very solemnly: ‘I want you to know, Jinny, that I am always there if you need me.’

  ‘Why should I need you?’ Virginia went on typing, struggling for accuracy. Miss Stuart always read through letters before she signed them, and was aghast at mistakes.

  ‘Oh, of course not.’ Derek stood up and came behind her, resting his soft hand lightly on her shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean anything. I just wanted you to feel that you could always tell me anything. Your mother’s gone now. I know how I would feel if I didn’t have my mother to rely on. Everyone needs somebody to talk to.’

  ‘I’ve got Joe to talk to, thank you.’ Virginia typed: ‘With sincere good wishes,’ which was how Jane liked to end her letters, and pulled the paper out of the machine with a snap. ‘I wish you’d stop this Derek, this – hinting that I’ve made a mistake in marrying Joe.’ She swung round to look at him. ‘I know you don’t think much of him, although you’ve hung around him for ages, but I think the world of him. I’m perfectly happy, and I intend to stay that way for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Of course, my dear, of course.’ Derek pushed back his sheep-dog hair. ‘I wouldn’t want anything else for you.’

  ‘Well, then, stop hanging about like a ghoul, waiting to see me come in with swollen eyes. Please leave me alone. Joe wouldn’t like it if I told him.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell him,’ Derek said nervously. ‘I don’t know what you mean. Why should you tell Joe?’

  He looked so scared that Virginia laughed and said: ‘Of course I wouldn’t. There’s nothing to tell.’ She was often tempted to laugh with Joe about Derek behaving like a sheep-dog as well as looking like one, but after she had told him about Felix, and seen his sullenly jealous reaction to the idea of a man in her past, she did not want him to start imagining about men in her present.

  ‘Why don’t you go home?’ she asked, starting another letter. ‘It’s late.’

  ‘I thought I might go part of the way home with you. It’s raining. I’ve got an umbrella.’

  ‘So have I.’

  ‘Oh, well, I just thought – if you’re ready to leave, we could go along together.’

  ‘I’m not finished. Don’t wait for me.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re working too hard,’ he said anxiously. ‘You don’t look as well as you used to. Are you sure you feel all right?’

  ‘Want something, Derek?’ Jane Stuart came into the room and waved her glasses at him.

  ‘I just came to bring you back those beach pictures.’ He looked once more hopefully at Virginia, and seeing her put another page in the typewriter, he left the room.

  Virginia waited until she thought that he had left the building. She did not want to hurt Derek’s feelings, but she did not want his company on the bus. She wanted to sit and relax, so that she would not seem tired to Joe when she got home. He did not like her to be tired. He liked her to be lively and ready for anything he wanted, whether it was a meal, or the cinema, or a tour of his favourite bars, or some childish jokes and fooling, or the passionate love-making in which she never wanted to disappoint him.

  Virginia was glad to see the light in the basement window. When Joe was out, she seldom knew where he was. He rarely told her in the morning what his plans were for the day, and he would not always tell her at night where he had been.

  When she went into the room, he was sitting at the table by the window with his back to her. He greeted her briefly without turning round, and said: ‘Don’t disturb me. I’m working.’

  There was a new typewriter on the table, two thick packets of typing paper, an assortment of shiny note-books, and half a bottle of whisky. Virginia kissed the back of Joe’s neck, where the black hair grew out of the smooth brown skin. He quickly put his hands over the paper in the machine, and said: ‘Run away for a bit, there’s a good girl. Go and cook something. I’m starving. I’m an author.’

  In the kitchen, Virginia found a steak bleeding through its wrapping paper, a camembert cheese, a pound of the best bacon, and several other items of food of the kind she could not afford to buy nowadays. She looked in the cupboard under the sink, and saw two bottles of whisky that had not been there in the morning.

  She went into the other room, and waited until he paused in his erratic typing to light a cigarette and pour himself a drink.

  ‘Want one?’ he asked, holding up the bottle.

  ‘Not just now. Tell me something, darling. Where did you get the typewriter?’ She tried to sound casual.

  ‘I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I just asked where you got it.’

  ‘From a man I know. I bought it wholesale. Twelve per cent reduction. Real bargain.’ He began to type again, stabbing at the keys with one finger of each hand.

  ‘You’ll think I’m inquisitive, but what did you use for money?’

  ‘All right.’ He pushed back his chair and turned to face her. ‘Now I’ll ask you one. Why didn’t you tell me you had a hundred pounds hidden away?’

  Virginia had hidden the money in a small handbag, which she had put inside a larger bag and locked in a suitcase. She had the key. Joe must have picked the lock.

  When she asked him, he said: ‘Why not? I don’t like to have locked bags lying around my place unless I know what’s in them. Where did you get the money?’

  ‘It was Spenser’s wedding present to me.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ He pushed out his lower-lip and slumped in his chair, scowling at her.

  ‘Why should I?’ She decided not to be intimidated. ‘It’s my money.’

  ‘Your money!’ He laughed. ‘Don’t kid yourself, Jin. You never heard of “With all my worldly goods I thee endow”?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to spend it on myself. I wanted to save it for something important. I didn’t want us to fritter it away on things we don’t really need.’

&nb
sp; ‘Don’t you think I need this typewriter? How do you expect me to write a book without one? My God, you should be glad I’ve started on it. I thought that was what you wanted. I got down to it as soon as I got this thing home.’ He patted the typewriter. ‘You’ve no idea what a grind it is. I’ve suffered agonies all day. I thought you’d be so pleased with me, but all you do is accuse me of robbing you.’ He pulled a face of childish self pity. ‘I’ve a damn good mind to chuck the whole thing up and sell this gadget back to the bloke I bought it from.’

  Virginia kissed his hair. ‘Don’t do that,’ she said. ‘I’m terribly glad you found the money if it has got you started on your book. What’s it about? Can I see?’

  ‘Not a chance.’ He pulled out the paper and slapped it face down on the small pile beside the typewriter. ‘And don’t ever go prying when I’m not here, or I’ll wring your neck. Now go and cook that steak.’

  ‘All right.’ She went to the door. ‘Where have you put the rest of the money?’

  ‘I left it in the case. It’s as safe there as anywhere. I don’t think old Mollie is a thief, whatever else she is.’

  Virginia went to the cupboard under the stairs, where they had stacked the suitcases. ‘What are you doing?’ Joe called, as she pulled out the case with the broken lock. ‘Counting your hoard? I’ll save you the trouble. I spent twenty-five pounds. Not bad, considering what I got for it.’

  Virginia came back to the doorway. ‘Joe, promise me this – please. Don’t take any more. We must save it. We can manage all right on my salary, if we’re careful, but we can’t save on it. We must keep that money, in case anything goes wrong.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘I’m not a child. Why don’t you hide your precious money again, if you don’t trust me? Only find a better place next time.’

  That made it impossible for her to hide the money. She knew that he would look in the suitcase to see if she had taken it away. She could only pray that he did not become so thrilled with himself as an author that he felt obliged to buy a dictaphone.