The Angel in the Corner

by Monica Dickens

  Betty’s fiancé was an undersized but brainy boy who was articled to a solicitor. Her candid comparisons between the law and a snack bar made Virginia wish that she did not have to take Betty to the place where Joe worked. But she liked to go there herself in her lunch hour, and it was impossible to shake Betty out of the tacit assumption that since they went to lunch at the same time, they must eat their lunch together.

  ‘Let’s go somewhere else,’ Betty sometimes said. ‘I’m tired of everything they serve at the Excelsior.’

  ‘I’d rather go there,’ Virginia would say. ‘But you needn’t come if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll come with you, Ginger, even if it means the Excelsior. But I wonder Joe doesn’t think it a bit funny that you go there every day.’

  ‘Why should he? He would think it funny if I didn’t go.’

  ‘Oh, well. I just thought.’ Betty wandered up the Edgware Road, maddeningly slow in the cold wind, knocking into people as she veered short-sightedly off her course. ‘I just thought he might not like to feel that you were checking up on him.’

  ‘But I’m not!’

  Or was she? It was natural for her to go to the Excelsior for lunch. She was glad that Joe worked in a place where she could go every day; but she had to admit that she was glad not only because it gave her a chance to see him, but because she could reassure herself that he had not yet walked out of the job, as he had walked impatiently out of so many others.

  He did not seem to mind this job as much as some of the others he had tried. He liked to make sandwiches and cut wedges of pie, and wear the white jacket and the little square white hat which sat so jauntily on the back of his glossy head. He was much more cheerful than he had been at other times when he was working. Most men are at odds with themselves when they are out of work. Joe was usually at odds with himself when he was tied down to the routine of a job.

  The cheerfulness was partly due to a new scheme that he was concocting with Jack Corelli. Jack was speaking for the Communists at the moment, and although his impassioned oratory against the evils of capitalism drew big crowds at Marble Arch, and kept a policeman hovering near, he had never been more capitalistically minded himself. He had his eye on a little restaurant in St John’s Wood that was going cheap. He and Joe were going to buy it, work up a tremendous business among the residents of the neighbouring flats, sell out at a profit, and start a showier place nearby, to which they would lure away the customers from the restaurant they had sold.

  The only thing that was hindering the plan at the moment was that they did not have the money to buy the little restaurant.

  ‘To think of that stepfather of yours with all those dollars,’ Joe said wistfully. ‘You’d think he could spare us a few.’

  ‘He probably would, if I asked him,’ Virginia said.

  ‘Why don’t you then?’ asked Jack, fitting a cigarette into a chromium holder. ‘It’s not very charitable of you, my dear Virginia, to keep all that money to yourself.’

  ‘But I haven’t got any of it! And I don’t want it. I’ll never ask Spenser for help. I’ve told Joe that hundreds of times. You can’t understand that, because you don’t know the whole story, and anyway, you’ve got no principles. So you keep out of this, Jack. It’s none of your business.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’ Jack removed the long cigarette-holder from his mouth with a flourish, and funnelled two jets of smoke down his nose. ‘Very sorry, I’m sure,’ he said in the affected voice with which he thought he was imitating the way Virginia spoke. ‘We’re only trying to help you. Doing our best for the little woman, so she can be in the chips. It seems strange that you wouldn’t want to help our honest effort.’

  ‘Oh, leave her alone,’ Joe said. ‘I know how she feels about it. She’s got scruples. You and I don’t understand that. We’ve never been able to afford them. We’ll get the money all right. I’ve got a hunch something big is going to come up for me soon.’ He winked at Jack. Jack frowned, and just perceptibly shook his narrow, lizard-like head, and Virginia guessed with apprehension that they were up to something.

  One evening when she went to the Excelsior on her way home from work to see if it was one of Joe’s nights to leave early, she found him talking to a cadaverous man in a tightly-belted raincoat. Joe was wiping down the counter in front of the man, and making the casual remarks he might have made to any customer, but there was something about the way the man looked at Joe that made Virginia think that this was not an ordinary exchange of pleasantries.

  When Joe saw her, he came at once to the end of the counter where she sat. ‘You didn’t need to come tonight, Jin,’ he said, not smiling as he usually did when he saw her perching there. ‘You know it isn’t my early night.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me. You were asleep when I left this morning. I came on the chance that we could go to a cinema and have some supper out.’

  ‘Not tonight. I’m not off till eight-thirty. You go home and get some rest. Sweetheart,’ he added, because she looked disappointed. ‘And don’t wait up for me, because I might be a bit late. I’ve got a date after work. Business.’

  ‘Something for Ed? I wish you’d stop that, Joe. You don’t need to be mixed up with him now that you’re working here.’

  ‘I’ll choose who I’m mixed up with,’ he said, leaning forward on the counter as he lowered his voice. ‘It happens to be nothing to do with Ed, but you keep your nose out of it, anyway.’

  The woman who had come to take the empty stool next to Virginia heard this last remark and looked interested, so Joe stood upright and nodded to Virginia, and went to take an order at the other end of the counter.

  Another day, when Virginia and Betty went to the Excelsior at lunch-time, the cadaverous man was there again. He was not talking to Joe, who was busy with the noon-time rush. He was drinking a milk shake and reading a newspaper. He was there again another day, and although he was again reading a newspaper, Virginia still had the impression that he was watching Joe.

  ‘Who is that man?’ she asked that night. ‘That man who’s always at the Excelsior, drinking milk shakes.’

  ‘What man?’ he said. ‘Dozens of people come there nearly every day, and dozens of them have milk shakes.’

  ‘I know, but this man looks as if he knew you. And I’ve seen you talking to him.’

  ‘Since when can’t I talk to customers? I talk to the women too. How do you like that?’ Joe had been edgy these last few days. He seemed to have something on his mind besides the plans for the restaurant. The restaurant, in fact, was seldom discussed. Jack had not come swaggering into the flat for many days, and if he and Joe were on the street at the same time they walked on opposite sides. It seemed as if they were trying to avoid being seen together.

  ‘Joe, you know who I mean. The man in the raincoat. His hair is cut very short, and he has a long jaw. His head looks like a skull.’

  ‘No doubt he has a skull under his head, like most people,’ Joe said. ‘I’ve no idea who you’re talking about.’

  ‘All right. I’m fanciful, I expect. Mrs Batey says you get fanciful when you’re pregnant.’ She dropped the subject of the cadaverous man, but she still worried about him. She saw him again in the Excelsior at lunch-time, and Betty asked in her loud, clear voice: ‘Why do you keep looking at that man over there? Do you know him?’

  Joe told Virginia that he had been given a Saturday off, and was going to a race-meeting in the Midlands. She asked if she could go with him.

  ‘How could you? You couldn’t get off.’

  ‘I might, if I ask Mr Jacobs. He’s very kind. He treats me almost as if I were sacred now.’

  ‘Well, you can’t come. It would be too tiring for you, the journey and everything. I didn’t know you liked going to the races all that much, anyway.’

  ‘I don’t particularly. I just felt I didn’t want to spend the week-end here alone.’

  ‘Alone! My God, no one could be alone in this tower of Babel. You’ll be all right. You k
now everybody here. If you’re scared at night, go across the passage. The gas-fitter will defend your honour.’

  Joe was going to be away two nights. He said that he was going with Ed Morris on Friday evening. Ed would put him up at a hotel, and they would be back on Sunday. On Friday morning, Virginia said suddenly: ‘Please don’t go.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling. I’ve promised Ed. He doesn’t like driving alone. Besides, I have a feeling I’m going to make some money this trip. There’s a couple of horses that can’t miss.’

  When Virginia came home that evening, he had already gone. His coat was not behind the door, and when she went down to look in the basement storeroom she saw that her small suitcase was not there.

  All Sunday she waited in the flat, but he did not come. In the evening she roasted a piece of beef, because she thought he would be hungry when he came back. Joe was always hungry when he came home from anywhere. She kept the food warming for him until after midnight, and then she turned off the oven and went to bed. It was the first time they had ever been apart. It was cold in the bed without Joe, and Virginia got up again to put on a sweater and a pair of his socks.

  When she went to the shop on Monday morning, she left a note on the table to welcome him home. When she got back that night, the note was still there, untouched.

  He could not telephone her at the flat, but he knew that the Dales had a telephone and would give her a message. Or he could have sent a telegram. How could he not let her know what he was doing? Even Joe could not be as casual as that. Unless there had been an accident. Her mind went over all the possibilities, and by the end of the evening she had Joe laid out on a mortuary slab and herself creeping in to identify him, just as Mrs Fagg had crept into the station waiting-room to identify what was left of Mr Fagg.

  She was too worried to go across the passage for Mrs Batey’s comfort. Mrs Batey would click her teeth and say that it was all you could expect from a man, which would be no comfort at all. She would tell her that no news was good news, and that if there had been an accident, she would have heard about it all too soon. That would be no comfort either. Virginia knew all that, but if she could not make herself believe it, Mrs Batey was never going to convince her.

  On Tuesday night, she decided to call the police. She would have to go out to a telephone box. If she rang the police from the Dales’ flat, the news would run through Weston House like a stab of lightning that Joe Colonna was in trouble of some kind.

  In trouble? The spectres of Jack Corelli and the man with a head like a skull danced at the back of her brain as they had ever since she began to worry about Joe. She went down one flight of stairs and along the passage to the flat where Jack lived with a woman who was not his wife. The woman opened the door with a scowl, her dry, bleached hair hanging in her puffy eyes. She had been asleep. Jack was out of town, she said. What did Virginia want with him? She shut the door in Virginia’s face before she could answer.

  There could be many reasons why Jack was out of town. There could be many quite innocent reasons why Joe had not come back. But Virginia decided not to call the police.

  ‘What’s the matter with our Ginger today?’ Miss Sunderland asked on Wednesday morning. ‘You are in the dumps, and no mistake. What’s the matter, dear? Don’t you feel well?’

  ‘I’m fine. Just a bit tired, that’s all.’

  ‘Tired is the word all right. You’re only half alive this morning. Shake a leg now, Ginger, there’s a good sort. There’s all that pile of uplifts to be priced, and you know it’s my half day. I’m going to meet my sister at Barker’s, and she won’t half give me stick if I’m delayed.’

  Miss Sunderland sang under her breath for most of the morning. She always sang when it was her half day, although she never went anywhere more exciting than to Kensington High Street with her sister. Worried and irritable, alternately sick with anxiety about Joe, and furious with him for doing this to her, Virginia could not stand the sound of I saw a peaceful old valley, crooned over and over in Miss Sunderland’s cracked monotone. Miss Sunderland was always several years behind with her songs. Her favourites now were the songs that had been popular during the war, and when she had worn the peaceful old valley to death, she began to hum Roll out the barrel while she stamped price-tags and clipped them on, and even while she accompanied customers to and from the fitting-room, which was inadvertently insulting.

  ‘Must you keep on singing that?’ Virginia said finally, and immediately was sorry, for Miss Sunderland’s face fell like a stone.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, her eyes daunted, her large hands hanging helplessly. ‘I had no idea I was getting on your nerves.’ ‘No, you’re not. I –’ Virginia began hastily.

  ‘Oh, yes I am.’ Miss Sunderland’s face was screwed into contrition. ‘No, no, don’t tell me you haven’t got any nerves. I know you must have, in your condition. Don’t think I don’t know, just because I’m a silly old maid.’ She had an embarrassing way of belittling herself that made you feel that you had said the insulting things, and not she. ‘Why, my sister, when she was that way, she couldn’t bear to hear a door creak. Her husband had to go round with an oil can at all hours of the night, and for some reason, she couldn’t stand the sight of the milkman. “He gets on my nerves,” she’d say. Very awkward, it was. They had to train him to go the front door, so that she couldn’t see him through the window when she was in the kitchen. Nerves! I ought to know what nerves are. And here am I, silly old fool that I am’ – she beat her head with the palm of her hand – ‘upsetting you and making you jumpy, just when everything should be peace and glory for you.’

  ‘I get on Ginger’s nerves,’ she told Mr Jacobs ingenuously, as he came up to the counter. ‘Isn’t that terrible? Wouldn’t you think I’d know better at my age?’

  Mr Jacobs murmured something soothing. He had his eyes beyond the door where he could see a woman vacillating at the shop-window. Virginia kept repeating that it was all right, and even found herself begging Miss Sunderland to start singing again, but Miss Sunderland was quite distraught. She handed over the next customer to Virginia, and stood back against the shelves, sucking her finger and looking humble. When it was time for her to go, she plodded out of the shop with her long neck bent, and none of the adventurous bounce with which she usually set out for Kensington High Street.

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’ Stella poked her thick chin towards the door, after Miss Sunderland had closed it gently and stood looking nervously up and down the pavement before she struck out for the bus-stop, as if she were afraid of being followed.

  ‘She’s all right.’ Virginia went past Stella to the window to re-corset a pink torso with one of the black mesh girdles that had just come in.

  ‘You don’t look so hot yourself,’ Stella said. ‘Feeling queer today? My mother always says it’s a living hell the whole nine months.’

  Virginia’s baby was an inexhaustible subject of conversation for the whole staff of Etta Lee’s. Everyone had something to contribute. Rose, who was married to a traveller, had the advantage of two similar experiences of her own to recount. Mr Jacobs had four children at home, and had delivered the last one himself, and everyone else had a relation or friend on whose pregnancy they could draw for comment. Virginia often wished that she had kept the baby a secret. She had intended to, but Miss Sunderland was too figure-conscious not to notice the first fractional thickening of Virginia’s slender waist.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said shortly to Stella, and stepped into the window with the black girdle. As she fitted it on to the slippery torso, so much narrower than any woman would be who bought the girdle, Virginia looked out at the street, where people hurried through the rain on their own affairs. One or two of them glanced at Virginia, their eye caught by movement in the window. A man in a soft green hat stopped and looked into the window for a few moments, and Virginia was not sure whether he was looking at her or at the lingerie. He lifted his hat and walked away. The gesture was comically s
ocial. Virginia thought after he had gone that she should have smiled and nodded. How funny they would have looked, exchanging civilities through the plate-glass window, with the headless dummy in its brassière and girdle for chaperone. It would be like the prisoner and his girl in Joe’s book, talking through the thick glass screen while the warder pretended not to listen.

  Why did she have to think of prison now?

  ‘What’s on your mind?’ Mr Jacobs asked kindly as she stepped down from the window into the shop. ‘You look as if you were full of troubled thoughts.’

  ‘It’s the weather, I expect.’ Virginia manufactured a smile. ‘This rain is depressing.’

  ‘Well, you must keep a gay heart,’ he said. ‘That’s what I always tell my wife. A gay heart makes a gay baby.’

  What a good thing that was not true, Virginia thought. If her child were born with this present load of worry indelibly on its mind, it would not have much chance. Perhaps it was only because of the child that she was worrying. She was fanciful, just as Mrs Batey said she would be. There was no real cause for worry. When she got home tonight, Joe would be there with a reasonable excuse. He and Ed Morris had gone to another race-meeting. Ed’s car had broken down. They had met friends and stayed with them. Joe had telephoned the Dales, and they had forgotten to give the message. Joe had sent a telegram and it had not been delivered.

  She hurried home, and felt her heart beating more quickly as she went up the stairs. She could hardly bring herself to open the door of the flat. As she did, she hastily made her face bright for his greeting. Her mouth was even open to speak to him.

  Her mouth remained open as she stood in the room and looked at her note, still lying flat in the middle of the table with the sugar-bowl to keep it down.

  Listlessly, Virginia took off her coat. The thought of another evening of waiting and wondering alone in the flat was unbearable. She could not go to any of her neighbours for company, because they would ask her where Joe was. Ever ready for scandal, they would see through any explanation she might give.