The Angel in the Corner

by Monica Dickens

  She was reaching to hang her coat on the peg behind the door, when she suddenly took it down again and held it for a moment, thinking. Well, why not? She had not seen the Ben-bergs for more than a year. It was odd that she should suddenly think of them now, but they would not think it strange if she went to see them. They were not the kind of people to forget you, even if you seemed to have forgotten them.

  She put on her coat again, and looked to see if she had money for the long bus ride. She left the note where it was on the table. It would be just like life if Joe were to come back when she was out after she had waited in three anxious evenings for him. Well, let him wait and worry for a change. She had had enough of it.

  *

  ‘But my darling, my darling,’ Mrs Benberg cried, even before Virginia was properly into the house, ‘what in the name of mercy has happened to you? You are a perfect skeleton.’

  ‘Hardly.’ Virginia took off her coat and saw Mrs Benberg’s eyes widen. Since her baby had begun to be apparent, she had grown so used to that quick dropping of eyes from her face to her figure and then hastily up again, that it did not embarrass her any more.

  Mrs Benberg’s chocolate-brown eyes leaped back to Virginia’s face, and they were shining with enthusiasm. ‘So you’re married!’ she cried. She flung her arms round Virginia and hugged her. ‘Oh, splendid, splendid! If only I’d known, I would have come and cheered outside the church. Who is the happy fellow?’

  ‘A man called Joe. Joe Colonna.’

  ‘Why didn’t you bring him with you? You haven’t left him outside, have you? I’ve known women to do that.’ Before Virginia could answer, Mrs Benberg darted to the door, opened it, and slammed it shut again with a crash that shook the flimsy little house.

  ‘Father!’ she called. ‘Come and see who’s here!’

  The noise of his wife’s welcome had already drawn Mr Benberg from his desk. As she called him, he opened the door of his little writing-room at the end of the hall, pressing a finger and thumb into his eyes with the gesture of a tired author.

  ‘Well, well.’ He came forward, rubbing his hands, his mouth jerking with pleasure. ‘This is a delightful surprise. How are you, my dear Miss Martin? How are you indeed?’

  ‘No need to ask her how she is,’ Mrs Benberg said, leading the way into the sitting-room with her loose woollen skirt trailing at the back and a massive ornamental chain clanking at her neck. ‘Just look at her. She’s monstrously frail. And don’t call her Miss Martin. She’s married.’

  Mr Benberg continued to rub his hands and murmur, ‘Well, well’, while Mrs Benberg rushed at the fire, which was burning sulkily, and attacked it with poker and bellows until it roared towards the chimney. ‘Sit down, darling girl,’ she said. ‘Sit down and tell us everything. You’ve left it much too long to come back to us, but come you did, as I knew you would, so now that you’re here, tell us all about it. Leave nothing out.’

  She stood in front of Virginia’s chair with her hands on her ample hips, the metallic necklace swinging out and down over her bulky chest, her hair piled up heedlessly, her strong, impetuous face alight with interest.

  ‘There’s nothing much to tell.’ Virginia smiled to see that Mrs Benberg was just as she remembered her. She had thought sometimes that the impression she had carried away from her first visit must be too excessive; but here was Mrs Benberg just as excessive as she had pictured her, filling the room with that same dynamic exuberance which threatened to burst the walls and lift the little house right off its foundations.

  ‘I’ve been married for almost a year,’ Virginia went on, ‘and I’m going to have a baby.’

  ‘Happy?’ Mrs Benberg shot it at her.

  ‘Yes, very.’

  Mr Benberg, who had slipped into the chair on the other side of the leaping fire, smiled and rubbed his knees and nodded his narrow head.

  ‘Then why do you look like that?’ Mrs Benberg put her head on one side challengingly, and swung the chain necklace back and forth as if it were a censer.

  ‘Like what?’ Virginia met her eye defensively. ‘My face is a bit thinner, but the rest of me is rapidly making up for that.’

  ‘A bit thinner! Childie, childie, you’re all bones. Are you starving in a garret with a struggling painter?’

  ‘Nothing like that.’ Virginia laughed. ‘We have a nice flat, and Joe has quite a good job.’ She had not come here to complain. She had come to enjoy the company of friendly people.

  ‘Well, you don’t look it,’ Mrs Benberg said shortly. ‘I’m going to get some cake. We’ve had our meal. Father has high tea when he’s writing, but he’s never said no to cake yet, and I don’t suppose he’ll start tonight.’

  While she was out making a great clatter in the kitchen, Virginia asked Mr Benberg about his books. He told her that he had completed another novel since her last visit. His weak eyes shone softly as he spoke of it.

  ‘Have you sent it to a publisher?’

  ‘Oh, no. I don’t send them anywhere any more. It isn’t any use. And I don’t see why I should let them discourage me with their rejection slips. One day, the publishers will come to me. Until then, I go on writing so that I shall have as much as possible to give the world when the world is ready to listen.’

  He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, swinging a slipper from the end of one foot. He looked completely satisfied with the situation. ‘Of course, it may not come until after I’m dead,’ he was saying, as Mrs Benberg came into the room with plates and mugs and a huge cake like a castle on a scarred tin tray.

  ‘Who’s talking about death?’ she asked. ‘Your time hasn’t come yet, my friend. Don’t forget I’ve drawn your horoscope. I’ll draw yours if you like,’ she told Virginia, setting the tray down on the floor, since there was no table uncluttered enough to hold it. ‘I’ve made cocoa,’ she went on, kneeling on the floor to cut the cake into vast wedges. ‘There’s nothing like a mug of cocoa when you’re feeding two. There,’ she said, as Virginia leaned forward to take the plate and mug from her. ‘Go on, eat. There’s plenty more when you’ve put that away.’

  Virginia ate as much as she could of the cake, which was rich with fruit, soggy, and undercooked. It was like trying to force your way through a wedge of cold Christmas pudding. Mrs Benberg remained on the floor, sitting with her thick legs stretched straight out like a child, and her skirt in a limp pile, feeding the little brown dog with lumps of cake, and prodding at the fire from time to time with a poker as big as a pitchfork.

  Mr Benberg finished his cake with ease. There was no knowing where he put it inside his concave frame. When he passed his plate down for more, Mrs Benberg said: ‘Ladies first. Give me your plate, Virginia. Oh, come, you’ve eaten nothing. Are you ill?’ Illness was the only reason she could envisage for lack of appetite. ‘I’ll stake my whole fortune that you haven’t had your supper. Have you?’

  ‘Well – no. When I got home from work, I came straight out here to see you.’

  ‘Why in such a hurry?’ Mrs Benberg drew down her thick, untidy brows and narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘Why?’ she repeated, as Virginia did not answer.

  ‘I just felt I wanted to see someone. Joe wasn’t home, you see. He’s been away for three days. Five days, actually. He went to a race-meeting on Friday, and he – he was supposed to come back on Sunday.’ She could not keep her voice casual.

  She finished quickly, with a little urgent gasp: ‘I’m terribly worried about him.’

  ‘Of course you are! No need to tell me that. Great heavens, child, don’t you think I could see something was wrong as soon as you came over my doorstep? I love you, Virginia. You probably think I’m as mad as a hatter, but Father and I – it doesn’t take us long to make up our minds about someone, and we’ve loved you ever since he brought you here that night. Remember the snow? You looked so pretty going off through the snow, and you were so young and hopeful. You’re young and hopeful still. I see that. But I see, too, that you’re having quite a fight to k
eep your hopes. Want to talk about it?’ She gazed into the fire, winding the heavy necklace round her fingers.

  As Virginia was silent, wondering what to say, Mr Benberg cleared her throat and said gently: ‘Perhaps Miss – Mrs – perhaps Virginia doesn’t want to tell us anything.’

  Mrs Benberg circled an arm backwards at him. ‘Of course she does. Everyone needs to share their troubles, and she’s told us her mother is in America, so who better to share them with than us, who care about her?’ She turned to Virginia, and said briskly: ‘So your boy has disappeared, has he? Well, men have done that before now, but they always come rolling home when they’re hungry. I wouldn’t worry too much about that.’

  ‘I think you’re too liberal, my dear.’ Mr Benberg leaned forward, blinking and earnest. ‘A man shouldn’t go off without telling his wife where he is, especially when she –’ His lip twitched down. He looked away shyly.

  ‘Liberal be damned! What else can you be with men? They’re not in captivity, just because they’re married.’ Mrs Benberg struggled to her feet, shaking her skirt free of crumbs, which the dog picked neatly off the carpet. ‘I tell you what, my darling girl.’ She stood with her back to the fire, and wagged her finger at Virginia. ‘If you nag at him this time when he does come back, next time, he may not come back at all.’

  ‘I do try not to nag Joe,’ Virginia said. ‘He can’t stand it.’

  ‘Who can? Who can?’ Mrs Benberg lifted her skirt a little to warm the back of her legs. ‘This girl’s got sense, Father. We don’t need to tell her her business. If it was Jim now,’ she nodded at the photograph of her cheery son, ‘he hasn’t a ha’p’orth of sense where his love-life is concerned. He’s broken his heart three times already, but he always comes up smiling, with not a lesson learned.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve got much sense,’ Virginia said. ‘I meant to do so much for Joe, but I don’t seem to have done anything.’

  ‘Who says that? You’ve stuck to this rascal, haven’t you? And you don’t have to tell me he’s made it tough for you, because it’s written all over your face. Don’t tell me the details, because I don’t want to hear.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to,’ Virginia said. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

  ‘Oh, yes, there is. I know all about this young man without clapping an eye on him. But, heigh ho! we can’t change him, so we must make the best of it. What’s done can’t be undone, no use crying over spilt milk, two wrongs don’t make a right, and all the other old saws that spring to my mind at the drop of a hat. So cheer up, love, and I’ll get the ginger wine. Things will come out all right for you. I told you that before, didn’t I, so why worry? God helps those who help themselves, if you want another old saw, from B. Franklin, who wrote most of ‘em.’

  She scrabbled in a cupboard full of old gramophone records and tarnished silver, and brought out a sticky bottle and three glasses that looked as if they had once held jam.

  ‘But I can’t help worrying,’ Virginia said. ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, but I’ve no one else to tell. People gossip so where I live.’

  ‘Why tell the people where you live?’ Mrs Benberg demanded. ‘The last people, always.’

  ‘They are the only people I know,’ Virginia said. ‘I’ve lost touch with everyone else. If you knew where I lived, you would understand.’

  ‘What is it you want to tell?’ Mrs Benberg asked more gently.

  ‘Just that I’m afraid Joe is in some sort of trouble.’

  ‘What sort? Women? Money? Police?’

  ‘Police,’ Virginia said bleakly. She told them about Jack Corelli and the cadaverous man in the raincoat. She even told them that Joe had once been in prison. But that seemed unfair to him, and so she said quickly: ‘No, don’t count that. It makes him sound bad, and he isn’t. I love him.’

  ‘Well, I should hope you do!’ Mrs Benberg tipped back her head to get the last oily drops of the sweet ginger wine. ‘Why else would you marry this villain? But whether you love him has no bearing on whether he’s good or bad. Whoever heard of a woman being in love with any of the saints?’

  ‘I think,’ Mr Benberg said quietly, rolling the wine round the sides of the jam-jar, ‘I think that he has behaved very badly. Virginia doesn’t owe as much to him as she thinks she does. A man like that doesn’t deserve to keep a good wife.’

  Virginia was going to speak, but Mrs Benberg jumped in fiercely. ‘Don’t say such a terrible thing! She’s married to him, isn’t she? She owes him everything, by which I mean herself. And as for leaving him, that’s a lot of subversive bilge I never expected to hear coming out of your head. Suppose you had gone off the rails – do you think it would have made any difference to me? Suppose Virginia’s boy has been in prison, and suppose he has made a big enough ass of himself this time to put him there again – what difference is that going to make to her?’

  ‘Oh, no, of course. No, no,’ Mr Benberg said, recanting immediately under her fire. ‘No difference at all.’

  ‘Could one really be as tough as that?’ Virginia said. ‘It woudn’t be very easy, with everyone knowing about it, and Mrs Batey – she’s the woman who lives opposite – trying to cheer me up by telling me how her husband nearly got ten days for brawling with her in Chapel Street. As if you could possibly draw a comparison between Joe and her dingy little man. How would I bear it? Going to see Joe every week. Watching him grow bitter, or surly, or defeated. What do you do with a man when he comes out of prison? How do you help him to start again? There’s a woman across the street whose husband did two years. He’s never had a job since. He doesn’t look at people properly any more. He looks humiliated, as if everything had been taken away from him for ever. How would I bear it?’

  ‘What else could you do?’ Mrs Benberg asked, clutching the chain necklace with both hands, as if she were holding a banner. ‘Of course you would bear it. You might conceivably leave a man who was successful and independent of you, but you don’t leave a man who needs you. People shouldn’t get married if they don’t know that elementary principle.’

  ‘You expect a lot of Virginia,’ Mr Benberg said.

  ‘Of course I do.’ Mrs Benberg’s voice drowned his murmur. ‘Because I know she has got it to give. That’s why it will all be given back to her, good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over.… Why do I always get Biblical when I’m worked up?’ She shook herself like a large mongrel coming out of a pond. ‘Let’s not get excited. We’re all talking as if this poor man was already languishing in a cell with a cannon-ball chained to his leg. Instead of which, he is probably at home beating his head on the wall because he thinks his wife has walked out on him. Run home, my dearest girl, and tell him what you told us.’

  ‘What I told you?’ Virginia stood up.

  ‘That you love him. He’ll be there. I see it. Don’t forget I see these things. I’m never wrong, am I, Father?’

  ‘Oh, no, my dear. Oh, no, no. The day you are wrong, the stars will fall from their courses.’

  Mrs Benberg looked at him sharply to see if he was mocking her, but he had left the room with his wet-weather limp to get Virginia’s coat, and she could not see his face.

  *

  The stars did not fall. Mrs Benberg was right again. When Virginia got back to the flat, Joe was lying on the bed with his clothes on, fast asleep.

  ‘Darling?’ Virginia put her hand on his shoulder. He hunched the shoulder up towards his ear, and twitched his cheek fretfully, as if a fly were disturbing his sleep.

  ‘No, darling,’ Virginia said to his sleeping, innocent face. ‘This is too much. I’m not going to wait until morning to hear what you’ve been up to.’ She turned him on to his back and sat down on the bed beside him. ‘Please wake up,’ she said loudly. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘For God’s sake –’ Joe mumbled himself half out of sleep, opened his eyes and closed them again and rolled over. ‘Leave me alone. I need sleep.’ He flung an arm across his face, but Virginia pulled it
away, and turned him back to face her.

  ‘Tell me where you’ve been. Then you can sleep,’ she said.

  He smiled dreamily up at her, and raised his hand to stroke the inside of her arm. ‘Pretty girl,’ he said. ‘Come to bed now. We’ll talk in the morning.’

  ‘We’ll talk now. You’re not getting away with it like that.’ Don’t nag at him, Mrs Benberg had said, but Mrs Benberg did not know that he would try to take refuge in sleep or caresses. ‘Three days and three nights,’ Virginia said, ‘I’ve waited here for you, with no idea where you were. How about giving me some sort of explanation?’

  Joe looked at her calmly. ‘You weren’t waiting tonight,’ he said. ‘How about giving me an explanation of that?’

  ‘That’s easy. I went to see some friends. How was I to know you would come back tonight? For all I knew you were never coming back.’

  ‘Big loss that would have been.’

  ‘Don’t make silly jokes. This is serious. How do you think I felt, waiting here night after night, thinking of all the worst things that could have happened to you?’

  ‘Why, you’re angry,’ he said wonderingly.

  ‘Of course I’m angry. You always get angry after you’ve been anxious. First you are relieved, like I was when I saw you on the bed. Then you get angry, like I am now. Not about you staying away longer than you said. That’s nothing. I’m angry because you didn’t take the trouble to let me know.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’ Joe turned his head slightly, so that he was not looking at her. ‘I didn’t want to give them the chance of tracing me here, in case they were on to me.’

  ‘They? Who’s they?’ Virginia knew, but she had to hear him say it.

  ‘If you must know, Jin, the Warwickshire constabulary.’

  Virginia sighed. ‘Yes,’ she said flatly. ‘Yes. That’s what I was afraid of.’ She was not angry any more. She was disheartened and suddenly very tired.

  ‘There was nothing I could do. After they got Jack, I didn’t dare come straight home. I came a roundabout way, moving about, you see, until I was sure they weren’t on to me. You understand?’