The Angel in the Corner

by Monica Dickens

  All day Virginia watched her baby fighting its lonely, preoccupied battle for oxygen. Jenny’s lips were blue, and her skin like wax. Her tiny face was pinched and sucked in at the cheeks, and from time to time she wrung Virginia’s heart with a gasping, struggling cry, as if she were pleading for help in her pitiful fight for air.

  Joe called the doctor three times, and when he came at last, the baby had grown suddenly better. She was sleeping. Her breathing was easier, and her face was growing flushed under the damp black hair, matted closely to her perspiring head.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the doctor said again, and Virginia felt that he did not believe her description of how bad the day had been. Once more she watched him skipping down the stairs, always in a hurry to get on to the next patient. Once more she turned back into the room where Jenny lay, and went straight to the crib to reassure herself that the baby was still asleep, because she knew now how quickly the changes could come.

  Joe was standing on the other side of the crib, his hands in his pockets, his face gentle with a tenderness she had never seen there before for Jenny. ‘Poor little devil,’ he said. ‘You don’t realize how you feel about them until they’re sick.’

  Virginia had heard people say that about dogs. It was not much for a father to say, but coming from Joe, it was enough for her.

  When evening came, she had to decide what she was going to do about Lennie. She heard his footstep on the stair, so different from Joe’s springy tread, and she went out on to the little landing to stop him coming up. Jennie was still asleep. She did not want Joe shouting up the stairs after Lennie tonight.

  Lennie stood below her, leaning forward with one hand on the stair-rail and the other on the wall, looking up at her with anxious eyes. ‘How about it, Mrs C.?’ he asked in a raucous whisper.

  ‘She’s still sleeping,’ Virginia said. ‘I don’t know what I ought to do.’

  ‘I shouldn’t ask you to go out, should I? Oh, well, it doesn’t matter.’ He took his hand from the rail, and with his back against the wall, dropped one foot disconsolately down to the stair below. ‘Nancy’s here already,’ he said. ‘She didn’t want to be late. But I’ll tell her to go home.’ He dropped down another stair, sliding his shoulders against the wall. His head was forward and his eyes looked at nothing. Virginia was stricken by the thought that she might be ruining his whole life.

  ‘No – wait,’ she said. ‘I’ll go with Nancy. I promised you, didn’t I? I’m not going back on that.’

  Lennie’s head jerked quickly up towards her. ‘But the baby?’

  ‘She’ll be all right with my husband. She’ll sleep, I think,’ Virginia said, more to convince herself than him.

  ‘I’ll go and tell Nancy to wait.’ Lennie turned and hobbled swiftly down the stairs, looking up when he reached the bottom to flash up at Virginia a vast, adoring grin.

  Virginia went down to tell Joe that she had decided to go out and plead for Lennie. When she had told him about it before, he had not liked it. He would not like it any better now. ‘I thought you were so worried about the baby,’ he would say, and she would never be able to explain to him how much she hated to go, but how clearly she knew that she must go.

  Joe was talking to the girl in slacks with the long, straight, blonde hair. Ella, her name was. Her husband was in the other room. Virginia could hear his penetrating, inane laugh. Ella stood by herself at the bar, turning a glass round and round in her predatory hands and talking quietly to Joe.

  Virginia went behind the bar. ‘What is it?’ Joe asked impatiently.

  Virginia looked at Ella. Ella did not move, so she drew Joe away and talked to him in a low voice. Joe protested, as she knew he would: ‘I thought you were so worried about the baby.’

  ‘I am, but she seems all right now, and this may be Lennie’s last chance.’

  ‘Lennie, Lennie,’ he grumbled. ‘I swear you care more about that simpleton than your own child.’

  Virginia tried to make him understand, while Ella looked at them out of the corner of her long eyes, with a smile flickering at the corner of her unchaste mouth. Joe was argumentative and a little excited, as if he had been drinking. Ella had probably been buying him drinks. Virginia knew that she did, just as she knew that Ella came to the Olive Branch to see Joe; but there was nothing Virginia could do about it, except hope for the best.

  If the best did not happen, she was prepared to fight Ella, just as she had fought Mollie Mortimer, and been thrown out of the Chelsea house for doing it. She would not fight Joe. If he could find it possible to be unfaithful to her, their whole relationship would disintegrate into pieces that could never be put together; but she would fight any woman who tried to make that happen.

  *

  After Virginia had gone out, hurrying round the corner with the square, florid girl who looked much too robust for Lennie, Joe sat upstairs for a while listening to the baby’s quick, shallow breathing. From time to time he glanced into the crib. Jenny was not so flushed any more. She looked washed out, as if she had been through an exhausting ordeal.

  Poor little devil. When she was older, Joe would tell her about this, and how he had watched over her hour after hour. Well – he looked at the clock – actually only half an hour, but it felt like hours. Hours since he had had a drink. No harm in going down to the bar for a little while. He had promised Virginia that he would not leave the room, but Virginia was hysterical about the baby, and much too nervous. He had never known her like this.

  After the argument in the bar, Ella had said, smiling to herself: ‘She’s really got you where she wants you, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ Joe had said, pressing his hands on the bar with a gesture that showed the strength of his arms. ‘It’s quite the other way about.’

  ‘Oh –’ Ella nodded seriously, although you could never tell whether she was serious, or laughing at you. ‘Big he-man stuff. I see.’ She continued to gaze at him reflectively while he poured her a drink, and poured one for himself at her suggestion.

  That drink had been the last of several he had had in the bar that evening. The sensation was wearing off. It was necessary to recapture it by going down to the bar and taking up where he had left off. He looked at the baby again. She seemed to be all right. He put his hand into the crib, and the tiny clammy hand closed weakly round his finger.

  His Jenny. What was it Virginia had said? They sometimes go quicker than they come. Joe picked up the child with the blanket wrapped round her and carried her downstairs. In the saloon bar, he put two cushions on the high-backed settee by the fire, prodded and fed the fire into a blaze, and sat down at the other side of the fireplace with a bottle of whisky to muse and drink and watch over his tiny daughter. Jenny woke once and cried a little, and coughed feebly, as if her chest muscles were too tired to cough properly. Joe took a drop of whisky on his finger and put it in her mouth. She sucked, swallowed, opening her eyes in surprise, then moved her lips in and out like a querulous old woman, and fell asleep again.

  The wooden pendulum clock on the wall behind the bar struck the half hour, and Joe tipped the end of the bottle into his glass, drank it, and stood up. He had not realized how late it was. He must get the baby upstairs before Virginia came back. She would find him dozing in a chair in the baby’s room. When she kissed him, as she always did when she left home or came back, she would know that he had been drinking – but so what? Jenny would be safely asleep in her crib, and if a man could not have a drink in his own home, things were, as Ella had implied, coming to a pretty pass.

  He picked up the baby bundled in the blanket, and hurried to the door. How light and helpless she felt, sleeping like that in his arms. Perhaps there was something to be said for tiny babies after all. Like puppies, they were so hopelessly dependent that they made you feel – what was it he felt for Jenny? Could you love a creature like this who could not love you back? As he started up the stairs, he glanced down at the crumpled face, missed his step, stumbled, clutched a
t the stair-rail, and felt the baby slip from his arms.

  Like a doll, she fell to the bottom step, rolled to the floor and lay in a bundle on the stone flags.

  Cold with panic, Joe picked her up and looked at her. She did not look any different. Her eyes were still closed, and she was not crying. How much could a baby take, for God’s sake?

  Not that much. Not being dropped down a staircase on to a stone floor. When Virginia came home and ran to the crib, the baby was dead.

  Chapter 14

  ‘I Haven’t been here for months,’ the man in the dark grey overcoat was saying as he came into the bar. ‘There used to be an amusing chap who ran it, but he died. Now, I believe – Virginia!’

  Virginia turned round with a bottle of brandy in her hand, and saw Felix standing with another man on the other side of the bar. Felix looked as if he had been hit in the stomach. It took a moment before he could recover enough to say: ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I work here.’ Virginia was surprised to see Felix, but she did not know whether she was pleased to see him or not. The last few weeks had exhausted all emotion. Tired and inert, half stupefied sometimes from lack of sleep, she was not capable of finding pleasure or displeasure in anything. ‘What can I get you to drink?’ she asked.

  ‘Never mind that for a moment. Tell me – oh, excuse me, Chris. You want a sherry, don’t you?’

  While Virginia poured it, Felix introduced the other man, who was tubby and polished, with clean hands and a good haircut, like Felix. ‘Not Miss Martin,’ Virginia said. ‘Mrs Colonna. My husband and I run this place. Joe is in the other bar tonight. You must meet him, Felix.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Felix said quickly, sounding too eager in his effort not to appear dismayed. ‘Yes, I’d like that very much. I didn’t know you were married. Congratulations, Virginia.’ His mouth twisted into his charming, crooked smile, but his eyes stared at Virginia unhappily. Chris looked at Felix, shrugged his fleshy shoulders, and took his sherry over to the fire, where he picked up a newspaper and turned his back.

  It was early in the evening. There were only two other people in the bar, talking at a table by the window. Virginia and Felix were left facing each other, trying to think what to say. ‘Do you want a gin and french?’ Virginia asked.

  ‘Pretty good memory.’ His crooked smile was more natural this time, and a little rueful. ‘I’m glad there’s one thing you haven’t forgotten about me.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten anything about you.’ Virginia made her words brisk, because with Joe across the passage, she did not like the sentiment in Felix’s voice. ‘It’s good to see you again. I thought I might, because I knew you had a consulting-room somewhere round here.’

  ‘I don’t go to pubs much,’ Felix said, watching her while she mixed his drink. ‘I only came in tonight because Chris wanted to. Lucky chance for me, but perhaps’ – how well she remembered that hopeful, humble look – ‘perhaps you’d rather I didn’t come in again.’

  ‘Heavens, no, why shouldn’t you? What difference does it make? I’m married.’

  ‘You don’t have to rub it in.’

  ‘Do you mind?’ Virginia felt a little irritated. He had no right to mind. Just because he had once wanted to marry her, he could not expect her not to marry anyone else.

  ‘Of course I mind. What do you expect? Do you think that when I went away from the mews and we agreed not to meet that I ever forgot about you for one minute? I’m sorry, Virginia. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.’

  ‘There you go again,’ Virginia said, trying to relieve the situation with a shaky joke, ‘apologizing. Remember how I used to jump on you for apologizing before you’d ever said anything?’

  ‘Yes. You didn’t like that.’ He smiled, and looked more at ease. ‘I’m sorry. I mean, I’m sorry I said I was sorry. You still don’t like it. You haven’t changed at all.’

  ‘Yes, I have. I’m quite different. Let me get you another drink.’ He had finished the first one quickly, drinking it in nervous sips. ‘Here, have this one on the house.’

  ‘It sounds so funny to hear you say that. I can’t get used to you on that side of the bar.’

  ‘I’m used to it. We’ve been here some time. I like to work in the bar. It gives me something to do.’ Something to pass the time. Opening and closing hours to mark the passage of the day. People to talk to automatically, talking without thought, scarcely hearing what they said, or what she said to them, managing somehow to talk normally, and even to make jokes, to keep the misery that pressed always at the back of her brain from crowding forward and engulfing her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Felix asked quietly, looking at her over his glass. ‘Is something the matter?’

  ‘Of course not.’ She was afraid of succumbing to the sympathy in his voice. ‘Why should there be?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘if you don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’ Virginia turned away to serve the man who came over with two glasses from the table by the window.

  When he had gone, Felix said: ‘Even if I weren’t a doctor, I know you well enough to tell that you’re in pretty poor shape. You’re still lovely, Virginia. You’ll always be that to me, but I’m not so blind that I can’t see how bad you look.’

  ‘Thanks. That’s very flattering.’

  ‘Don’t take it that way. I said you were lovely, though I probably shouldn’t, with your husband in the next room.’ He glanced behind him, as if he expected to see an irate husband come storming in with his sleeves rolled up. ‘But lovely or not, you’re ill, my dear.’

  ‘No. I’m not sleeping very well just now, that’s all.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Don’t cross-examine me. I’m not in your consulting-room.’ But suddenly, it seemed as if she were, and as if Felix were more a doctor than a rejected suitor. He was looking at her with his head lowered and his eyes raised and steady, one eyebrow slightly lifted as he said again: ‘Why aren’t you sleeping?’ and waited for her answer.

  Virginia looked at Chris. He was reading on the seat by the fire with his short legs stuck out and his polished toe-caps turned up. ‘Felix,’ she said, ‘I lost my baby. I had a baby, and she died.’

  Her hands were lying on the top of the bar. Felix reached across and put his hands on hers for a moment. He did not say anything. She was grateful for that. She did not want him to talk. She wanted him to listen. ‘It was pneumonia,’ she went on, finding it easier to talk now that the first words were out and she had managed them without tears. ‘She was very bad. Then she got better. One night, I had to go out. She was sleeping when I left, and when I got back, she was dead. She died of pneumonia. That’s what the doctor said. He said it could happen suddenly like that.’

  Felix nodded, and waited to see if she was going to say any more. Then he said: ‘There’s no need to tell me how you feel. When a woman loses her baby, and especially her first – I know what it does to her. There will be other babies though, Virginia. You’re so young.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think Joe wants any more. We haven’t talked about it, but I think that’s how he feels. He won’t talk about Jenny, even. That’s one of the worst things. We – there isn’t much to talk about, if we can’t talk about her, because she’s what we’re both thinking about.’

  Felix let this pass. He did not want to hear about Virginia’s husband. ‘You’re not sleeping, you say?’ He slipped easily into a clinical manner. ‘Headaches? Mm-hm. Nausea at times? No appetite? Yes … yes. … That can all come with not sleeping, plus, of course, your state of mind. You haven’t seen a doctor, I suppose? No, I thought not. That’s just like you – try to battle it out on your own. But you’ve seen one now, my dear, whether you like it or not, and he can help you. He can help you to sleep, at any rate. That’s what you need. How useless to think you can fight a tragedy like that without sleep. Women are the devil. They drive themselves stubbornly into breakdowns, and then
come running to the doctor for help when it’s much too late.’

  ‘I didn’t come running to you,’ Virginia said. ‘You came to me. You can save the lectures for your rich hypochondriacs. But I’ll take the sleeping pills.’

  ‘I think I’ve got something in my car. Wait just a minute.’

  Virginia hoped that Joe would not come into the bar before Felix returned. There would have to be introductions. Joe would size Felix up, put two and two together, and realize that this was the doctor Virginia had told him about, the one who had wanted to marry her. Afterwards there would be questions, explanations, possibly a quarrel. There had been more quarrels since Jenny died. Joe was edgy, often morose, ready to take offence at nothing, sullenly defensive at any mention of the baby’s death, as if it could possibly have been his fault.

  Could it have been his fault? She must never think that. How could it have been his fault? That was better. It could have happened even if Virginia had not gone out. The doctor had said that. And yet she knew that she would never forgive herself for leaving the baby with Joe.

  ‘Phenobarbital,’ Felix said, coming back with a package. ‘Take one tablet. If that’s not enough, it’s all right to take two. Don’t take the lot though.’ He grinned, to show her that was a joke, but the grin was an anxious one, betraying what was in his mind.

  For a moment, Virginia examined the idea of taking the whole box of pills. It was such an impossible idea that it was possible to allow herself to think of it. You heard of women doing it. Almost every day you could read in the newspaper of unhappy women taking an overdose of sleeping pills, and you always wondered why they did not realize that that was not the solution. If everything else had been taken from you, how illogical it was to destroy the one thing you had left – yourself.

  That night she slept badly, as usual. The next day, when the Olive Branch closed after lunch, Joe went out and Virginia decided to take the phenobarbital and sleep all afternoon.