The Angel in the Corner

by Monica Dickens

  ‘It’s damned hot in here.’ Joe took off his jacket. He was wearing a faded blue shirt without a tie. He threw the jacket at a chair. It missed the chair and slid on to the floor.

  Virginia picked it up. Because Helen was watching her, she spent a little time hanging the coat over the back of a straight chair, smoothing it out, tweaking up the shoulders. It was an old tweed jacket, rubbed at the edges and with a button missing.

  Virginia had been meaning to replace the button for weeks, but she decided to do it now.

  Helen watched in silence while Virginia took out her sewing basket, sat down with it and began to look for a suitable button; then she burst out impatiently: ‘For heaven’s sake, Jinny! Do you have to start being domestic now? Spenser is waiting for us.’

  ‘First things first,’ Joe said. ‘She has to sew on my button first. You didn’t know what a good little wife your daughter was, did you, Helen?’

  He managed to make the name sound fairly natural, but Virginia knew his voice well enough to guess that he was forcing it out because he had made up his mind to be casual with Helen. If he had been sober, it would have sounded only casual. As it was, it sounded somehow mocking and insolent, especially as he was standing with his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels and looking Helen up and down as if he were undressing her.

  ‘Of course I knew,’ Helen said coldly. ‘I didn’t expect her to be anything else.’

  ‘But you didn’t expect her to waste it on a bum, eh?’ Joe continued to stare at her with a twisted grin.

  ‘Joe, please,’ Virginia said uneasily, bending her head over her sewing.

  ‘Joe, please what? What have I done now?’ He went over to Virginia.

  She broke off the thread and looked up at him, holding the jacket in her lap. ‘Don’t be like this, darling,’ she murmured. ‘You’re making everything worse.’

  ‘Don’t be like what?’ he echoed loudly. ‘Here, I’ll take that.’ He snatched the jacket roughly away from Virginia. ‘I’m going out again, since I seem to be making a mess of myself here.’

  ‘Don’t go,’ Virginia said. ‘Helen has asked us to go and have dinner at the Savoy.’

  She looked challengingly at her mother. Helen could only say: ‘Yes, of course, the invitation includes your husband if he would care to come.’ She said it stiffly. The way in which she said ‘your husband’ made it impossible to imagine her ever addressing him as Joe.

  ‘No, thanks,’ Joe said. ‘Not tonight. Some other time.’

  ‘Please come, Joe,’ Virginia said, ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘Well, go ahead,’ Joe said airily. ‘You go ahead. Don’t worry about me. I’ll find a piece of bread and cheese or something.’ He made it sound as if Virginia were deserting him.

  ‘I’d much rather you came.’ Virginia felt that if he did not come now, and meet Spenser, and have dinner as one of the family, the ice might never be broken. Joe would never abandon his childish defiance. Helen would take it as an accepted thing that she saw Virginia without him. ‘Please come,’ she said again.

  ‘I told you, no. I told you to go ahead.’ Joe sat down in the chair by the window, stuck out his legs, and took up a newspaper.

  ‘If you two are going to spend all evening fighting about it,’ Helen said, ‘nobody will get any dinner. I must say, Jinny, I didn’t expect to be mixed up in a brawl as soon as I saw you.’

  ‘It’s not a brawl.’

  ‘It sounds like one to me. Go and change your clothes,’ she ordered, as if Virginia were a child again, ‘and let’s get started. If your husband doesn’t want to come, that’s quite all right. At least, you can’t say I didn’t ask him.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ Virginia said. ‘I did.’ Joe did not look up from the paper. Virginia shrugged her shoulders and went into the bedroom. She changed her dress hastily, listening for voices from the other room. The only sound was the rustle as Joe turned the pages of the newspaper.

  When she came out, Helen was still standing near the door with an aloof face, and Joe was still sitting in the same position, gazing intently at the newspaper which Virginia knew he had already read.

  Virginia wore a red silk dress that had once been effective, but was now much too tight for her. She had covered the split at the waist with a broad belt, which emphasized her shape.

  Helen looked at her. ‘Aren’t you going to wear a coat?’ she asked.

  ‘Will I need one? It’s warm.’

  ‘You will need one.’ Helen shut her mouth tightly and looked away, as if the sight of Virginia in the tight red dress was too much for her.

  Virginia put on the shapeless coat which she detested, and went to kiss Joe. He lifted his sulky face to her, but he did not return her kiss. Virginia could not risk asking him to get a taxi, in case he refused.

  ‘Let’s walk, Helen,’ she said, opening the door of the flat. ‘We can pick up a taxi in Edgware Road. Or we can go by bus, if you like. You’d probably enjoy going on a bus after all this time.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Helen said, ‘but if I never go on another London bus it will be too soon.’

  She did not say good-bye to Joe, and he did not get up. Helen and Virginia went out of the flat. As Virginia was closing the door, she glanced back and saw that Joe was looking after her with a lost unhappiness that she had never seen on his face. Almost she ran back into the flat to say she would not go, but Helen tweaked impatiently at her arm, and she shut the door and followed her mother obediently down the dim passage to the stair-well.

  *

  Virginia waited until after dinner to say what she had to say to Helen. Spenser’s delight in seeing her, his friendly, easygoing conversation, the pleasure of eating a first-class meal politely served, combined to produce in her an unaccustomed well-being which she did not want to spoil.

  After the brandy, which Helen said Virginia should not have, but which Spenser declared was medicinal, Virginia went up to Helen’s suite. She was glad that Spencer stayed downstairs to read the stock-market tape. She would have felt embarrassed and grasping saying what she had to say in front of him. It was embarrassing enough to have to say it to Helen, although the fact that the money was not strictly Helen’s made it somehow easier to ask for it from her than from Spenser.

  The sitting-room of the suite, with its thick carpet and handsome furniture, made Virginia feel like a stranger from another world. There were flowers everywhere, flowers which must have cost more than she earned in a week at Etta Lee’s. The bedroom was larger than the whole of Virginia’s flat in Weston House, and the bathroom made her want to tear off her clothes and lie for hours in scented hot water. At the public baths, where she and Joe went twice a week, there was a time-limit, and a limit to the amount of hot water you could use. Putting on your clothes afterwards and going straight out into the street was not the same as wrapping yourself in a bath-robe and falling on to a bed, sodden and dizzy with steam.

  While Helen was attending to her face, Virginia sat down on one of the soft beds, and said to the back of her mother’s lacquered head: ‘Helen, I want to ask you something.’

  ‘Go ahead.’ Helen’s voice came distortedly through a mouth stretched to receive lipstick.

  Virginia looked at the floor and said with great difficulty: ‘I need your help. Do you think you could lend me some money?’

  Helen kept her waiting while she finished with the lipstick. Virginia sat and stared at her feet, and knew the humiliating anxiety of the beggar.

  Helen put the lipstick back into its case, returned it to a drawer, tidied the top of the dressing-table, and patted her hair before she turned round. Her face was cautious, but before she turned, Virginia had glanced up and caught the flicker of triumph on Helen’s reflection in the mirror.

  ‘I can’t lend you money,’ Helen said, ‘but I will be glad to give you anything you need.’

  ‘I don’t want that. I’ll pay you back. It might take a little time, but I couldn’t take anything from you unless I paid it back.�
��

  ‘Why so proud? What is a mother for, after all?’

  ‘But this is different. I ran away from you to marry someone you didn’t like. That doesn’t give me the right to expect help from you.’

  ‘I’m only surprised that you haven’t asked for it before. Do you think I’m so vindictive? I would have helped you any time, and of course I’ll help you now. On one condition.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Virginia asked although she knew what her mother was going to say.

  ‘That you come back to the States with me. As you know, I had planned for you to have your baby over there, and now that I’ve seen – what I’ve seen, my mind is completely made up. I’m not leaving you here.’

  ‘I’m staying, Helen. My mind is made up too.’ Virginia stood up, and they confronted each other warily, each watching the other’s face for a sign of surrender. ‘I’m not going to make bargains with you. All I want is for you to lend us some money, just enough to tide us over the baby, until I can get about and start earning again. Mrs Batey will look after the baby while I’m working. I’ll get another job. We’ll be perfectly independent again, and eventually we’ll be able to pay you back, and we won’t have to bother you again.’

  ‘And while you are farming your baby out on that unspeakable woman, and working your fingers into a condition even worse than they are now’ – Virginia put her hands behind her back – ‘what will your charming husband be doing, if one may ask?’

  ‘He’ll be working, too, of course.’

  ‘Is he working now?’ Again that fleeting look of triumph passed across Helen’s face, as if she thought she had Virginia trapped.

  ‘Well – not at the moment. He’s had some bad luck. That’s why I had to come to you. But he’ll find something soon. We’ll be all right, only we’ll both have to work if we’re going to pay you back.’

  ‘Don’t keep saying that!’ Helen stamped her foot lightly. ‘I’ve never asked you to pay me back. I don’t want that. I want you to accept my help as a gift, but on my terms, Jinny. After all, it’s my money. I think you’re being a little presumptuous in trying to tell me what to do with it.’

  ‘What are your terms then – that Joe and I should trail meekly with you to America and live on your charity?’

  ‘Joe and you! You must be crazy. Nothing would induce me to have that man living in my house. Apart from my dislike of him – which I gather from his attitude is mutual – I would be ashamed to introduce him to people as my son-in-law.’

  ‘Stop that, Helen,’ Virginia said heatedly. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Joe. I won’t let you talk like that. He’s my husband, and I love him.’

  ‘Oh – love him!’ Helen flung up her hands. ‘What will the child say next? How can you love a man who treats you like that? Why, it’s degrading. There’s something almost masochistic about it.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about the way Joe treats me.’

  ‘I can tell. He’s tried to drag you down to his level. He’s tried to break you, and dominate you. I can tell by the way he speaks to you, by the way he looks at you, even. I know his type. I wouldn’t be surprised at anything I heard about him. Has he ever hit you?’

  ‘No.’ Often in the past, Virginia had been rashly honest with Helen, and regretted it. She was more cautious now, and Helen invited lies by her egotistic failure to be tolerant of the truth.

  ‘He will,’ Helen said smugly. ‘I told you, I know the type. If you go on with him, Jinny, you’re headed for disaster. Leave him. Come back to me, and I’ll help you. I’ll give you everything you want – even a house of your own on the estate, if you want it that way. Spenser can get you the best lawyer. There should be no difficulty about a divorce.’

  ‘There’ll be no divorce,’ Virginia said. ‘I’m not leaving Joe, and you can’t make me.’

  ‘All right then, I’m not giving you any money. Why should I support that drunken tramp, who hasn’t the guts to do anything for his wife and family?’

  ‘It isn’t like that at all,’ Virginia lied angrily. ‘Joe is only out of work for the moment. He’ll get something very soon, but you’ve no idea how difficult it is in London now. Good jobs are hard to find. You have to take what you can get, and it isn’t enough while I’m like this. Helen, you must help us.’ She was ashamed of the appeal in her voice. ‘I hate asking you. I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t pretty desperate.’

  ‘Leave him, and then I will help you.’

  ‘I can’t leave him. Don’t you understand that?’

  ‘As far as understanding it goes,’ Helen said lightly, walking over to a table to get a cigarette, ‘you might as well be talking a foreign language.’ She lit the cigarette and sat down, taking an ash-tray on to her knee, as if she were prepared to fight this out in a long session. ‘You say that you are desperate. That is no surprise to me, now that I’ve seen what your marriage has done for you. You’ve made your mistake. Have the grace to admit it, and get out while the getting is good. I’ve shown you the way. For God’s sake, child, have some sense and take it.’

  ‘Walking out on your husband isn’t the way.’ Virginia began to move restlessly about the room, unpleasantly conscious of her shape in the tight red dress. She saw herself in a mirror. I look awful, she thought. Pregnant and sullen. Pregnant women should have beautiful, serene expressions, if they’re going to carry it off.

  She continued to look sullen. ‘Do you think my father did the right thing by walking out on you?’ she demanded, stopping in front of Helen. ‘I don’t believe you minded too much. I believe it was harder in the end on him than it was on you. I know that you and he weren’t happy together, but leaving you didn’t make him any happier. I know. I saw him after he was alone. You didn’t. I didn’t realize how things were for him then, but I do now.’

  ‘Don’t let’s drag poor Harold into it,’ Helen said with a sigh. ‘He has nothing to do with it, though no doubt if he knew what was going on, he would feel the same as I do.’

  ‘He wouldn’t. No one who has made the mistake of breaking up their marriage would ever advise anyone else to do it.’

  ‘But there is really no comparison, you see.’ As Virginia’s voice grew more vehement, Helen’s became more airy. ‘Harold left a perfectly good wife. You are leaving a perfectly worthless husband.’

  ‘Can’t you understand that I’m not leaving him? It’s no use sitting there trying to talk me into it as calmly as if we were discussing whether to send back a hat that didn’t suit me. No one could talk me into it, but you would be the last person. You’re prejudiced and snobbish, and you don’t care two straws for people’s happiness, as long as they do what you want them to do.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Helen said. ‘Thank you for such a delightful description of your mother.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.’ Virginia picked up her coat from the bed. ‘I think I’ll go before I say anything else. Forget about the money. We’ll manage. Other people do.’

  ‘I know,’ Helen said. ‘I saw plenty of them in the street where you live.’ She stood up. Virginia looked at her, and suddenly they both smiled. The battle was over. Neither had won, but they smiled as if they had reached some unspoken agreement not to fight any more.

  Helen helped Virginia with her coat. ‘Wait, honey,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a hat that will look just darling on you. I want you to have it.’ She searched among tissue paper and reached up to place on Virginia’s head a little red hat with a turned-up brim that immediately transformed Virginia and the sloppy coat and the tight dress into an object of charm and assurance. As Virginia looked at herself in the mirror, her smile widened. All was not lost. She could still look attractive in the right clothes, and she made up her mind in that moment that one day, if she died in the attempt, she would have them again.

  ‘Thanks, Helen.’ She kissed her mother. ‘You’ve done more than you know by giving me that hat. You’ve made me want to get myself out of the slums.’

  ‘Then you’ll
come?’ Helen clasped her hands. ‘You’ll come home with me and start a fresh life?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Virginia shook her head, still smiling. ‘I’ll come for a visit, perhaps, when Joe and I can pay our own fares. But I’ll never come without him. You’ll never understand that, Helen. I don’t believe you understand what marriage is at all.’

  ‘Ha!’ Helen gave a short, but affable laugh. ‘At twenty-two, you tell me that. My heavens, the young are arrogant.’

  ‘Sure they are.’ Spenser came through from the sitting-room, his heavy feet making dents in the thick carpet. ‘The older you get, the less you know, and the less sure you are of what you know. That’s a cute hat, Jinny. Say –’ He looked closer. ‘Isn’t it that John Fredericks hat I gave you, Helen?’

  ‘You don’t mind,’ Helen said, a statement rather than a question. ‘I never looked very well in it, and look what it does for Jinny.’

  ‘I’m glad for her to have it. She’s beautiful, anyway, but in that hat she’s a knock-out. What have you two been doing? Talking about hats all the time, I’ll bet. I know what you women are when you get in a bedroom. You either discuss your husbands or your hats.’ His husky laugh and the coughing spell which followed it covered the fact that no one else laughed.

  Helen and Virginia looked at each other for a moment.

  Opposed as they were, they were still mother and daughter, and they could still agree by a silent glance to keep something to themselves.

  ‘Well, we’ve not been talking about husbands,’ Helen said, ‘so I guess it must have been hats.’

  Spenser went with Virginia down the corridor to the lift. ‘Get that young man of yours to come along tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We won’t eat him.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Virginia said quickly. ‘He couldn’t come tonight. He –’

  ‘Your old stepfather knows more than you think.’ Spenser squeezed her arm. ‘I’ve been making some inquiries on the side. I have my spies, you know. That’s one thing money can do for you. So don’t think I don’t know the way things are with you.’