The Angel in the Corner (16 page)

‘I didn’t know you were going to kiss me.’

‘What did you think I would do? How odd you are, Jin. You’re worlds apart from me. The only sensible thing about you is that you know it. Don’t think I don’t know why you’ve never taken me home since your mother came back. Here, let’s have a drink. We’ll have one on the house.’

‘No, you won’t.’ Mary came up to the bar, with his quill pen
sticking out behind his ear like a plumage of a bedraggled hen. ‘You’ll pay for it, even if the experience is a novelty.’

‘I can’t. I haven’t any money.’

‘I’ll pay,’ Virginia said quickly, opening her bag. ‘How much is it?’ she asked Joe, embarrassed because Mary was looking on.

‘Six bob,’ Joe said, not in the least embarrassed. He swept the money into his palm and dropped it into the cash drawer. He raised his glass. ‘Your mother,’ he said. ‘Here’s to her. Not that I want to meet the old girl,’ he added, mixing a drink for Mary.

‘Perhaps she doesn’t want to meet you, dear,’ Mary said, entering cheerfully into the discussion. ‘Miss Jinny may be smarter than we know. If I were a girl, which rumour has it that I am, I would think twice before I took a lusty boy like you to meet my mother.’ He put on his debauched face.

‘Don’t try to seduce me, you dirty old man,’ Joe said. ‘I’m not a customer.’

‘I’m sorry. I forgot.’ Mary took his drink and wandered over to the piano, where he began to pick out a tune with one finger.

‘You … do … something to me,’ Virginia sang. ‘That’s the tune you tried to make Nora sing. Remember?’

‘The silly little bitch didn’t know it. I’d been humming it all day, and then you came. Queer that.’ He listened to the piano for a moment, and then said: ‘Oh, hell, don’t let’s get sentimental. I can’t stand that. Look Jin, you’ll have to go. I don’t want you around tonight. I’ve got a couple of men coming in to see me on business.’

‘What kind of business?’

‘Nothing to do with you. There might be a little money in it though. If there is, I’ll take you out one day soon. Dinner, if you like. Anywhere you want to go. That satisfy you? All right, be a good girl and run along. I’m going to be busy.’

*

That was just the way he was nowadays. He could not understand himself. He had never known a girl like Virginia. She was no use to him, or he to her, and yet he could not shake free of her. Every time he tried to push her off, he found himself offering her something nice, so that she would not be disgusted with him.

Well, she was going away soon, and he would be free again. Damn it, but he was going to miss her. She had no right to make him miss her.

After he had haggled with the two men in the back room over a little deal that involved persuading a disqualified doctor to report knife wounds as dog bites, Joe drank quite a lot that evening. Some of the drinks were paid for by club members. Some he took for himself. He did not care whether William and Mary liked it or not. He would not be here much longer. As soon as Virginia had gone, he was going up to Glasgow to see a man about a job at a greyhound track. Why wait until she had gone? The greyhounds lured him, and Glasgow was a tough, exciting place to be. Better than fiddling away his time here playing flunkey to a lot of highbrows and pansies. But he knew that he would not leave until Virginia left him.

He went away from the club before eleven, leaving William to look after the bar. Joe was nowhere near being intoxicated, but he had drunk enough to feel restless. He could not stand the club and Mary’s simpering, smutty songs any longer. He went up to Bloomsbury, and walked into the mews where Virginia lived, with his hands in his pockets, kicking at a stone.

The lights were on in the front room, and the curtains were not drawn. Joe stood in the shallow gutter that ran down the centre of the mews, and looked up, whistling under his breath. Virginia passed across the window in silhouette between him and the light, and he clenched his hands in his pockets, feeling her on the skin of them. Was she alone? The window was closed, and he could hear nothing. He stood there for a few minutes, feeling shut out, feeling like a boy outside a sweetshop window. Then his fingers touched the key that was still in his pocket, and he pulled it out, pushed open the outside door of the building, and went up the stairs.

Outside the flat, he stood in the hall and listened to the voices. When he opened the door, they all stopped talking, and the silence cut across the conversation like a knife.

They were in evening dress. They were all staring at him. For a second, the tableau was motionless, fixed like a stereoscopic picture on Joe’s eyes. The big man in the loose dinner jacket,
cradling a goblet of brandy. The woman in the fancy green dress, her hand flown up to the pearls at her neck, as if Joe had come to steal them. Virginia sitting on the arm of a chair in a flowing black dress with her hair brushed back from her ears, cool and lovely, his girl – untouchable.

In a moment Virginia had risen and come quickly to him with her hands out, and the frozen tableau was broken up into sound and movement. Virginia stood between him and the other two, smiling at him. Her mother and the man in the dinner jacket were saying something that he could not hear.

‘Jin, I haven’t even got a tie on.’ He tried to laugh, aware of her scent, and the softness of the carpet under his feet, and the comfortable feminine decoration of the room. ‘I didn’t know you’d be all dressed up.’

‘We’ve been out to dinner. It doesn’t matter.’ She took his hand. ‘Come in. Don’t stand there.’ She had recovered herself rapidly. ‘Helen,’ she said, leading him forward as if he were a dog, ‘this is Joe Colonna. My mother, Joe, and this is my stepfather, Mr Eldredge.’

‘How do you do, Mr Colonna?’ Virginia’s mother said, pronouncing the words meticulously. ‘Forgive me if I appear boorishly inquisitive, but may I ask how you got in?’

‘The door wasn’t shut properly,’ Virginia said quickly. ‘I came in last, I remember. You know you have to push it hard to catch the lock.’

‘Do you?’ Helen turned her face to Virginia, but continued to look at Joe out of the sides of her eyes.

Having looked Joe over carefully, Mr Eldredge pushed himself out of his chair and held out his hand. ‘Glad to know you, Mr Colonna,’ he said huskily. ‘Nice of you to come and see us. We’ve heard something about you from Jinny here. Not too much. You know what girls are with their parents, but it’s good to have the chance to know you. What can I get you to drink?’

Joe hesitated. What would be the right thing to ask for?

‘He’d like a Scotch I expect,’ Virginia said, knowing that Joe had been drinking whisky.

‘Surely.’ Mr Eldredge ambled to the cabinet by the wall. Virginia smiled at him gratefully, glanced at her mother, who
was swinging a foot, and told Joe to sit on the sofa. She sat beside him, not touching him, trying not to look at him. He did not look at her. He took the glass from Mr Eldredge, accepted an American cigarette, and sat back, hoping he looked at ease.

God, but he wished he had not come! This would be the end of him with Jin, and, now that he had seen her with her family, he did not know that he cared. Damn them, why did they have to be all dressed up like this? They might have done it on purpose to make him feel a lout.

His jacket and slacks needed pressing. He had been meaning to have it done for days. His shirt, open at the neck, was not even clean. If it had not been for Virginia, he would not care how he looked, but Jin, she – God, she was a lady, and he could wring her neck for it. These were the kind of people he hated, the people who had things. All the years of his childhood and manhood of having nothing, being no good, caught in his throat and choked him into silence.

He sat there like a dummy. He could see himself. He knew that he was scowling, while Virginia’s mother chatted in that high, surprised voice, making conversation, asking him silly questions, like a duchess entertaining a gamekeeper.

Virginia put her hand on his knee. Her hand was warm and tender. He knew that she was crying inside for him. What right had she to be sorry for him? He did not want that from her. He wanted nothing from her.

Her stepfather was genial enough, but even his good humoured talk fed Joe’s resentment. The old boy could afford to be genial. He was on the winning side. He was taking Virginia away to a life of college boys and smooth characters with fast cars. Joe was nowhere in the picture. Joe was an unfortunate mishap, who had blown in like a fly, but would soon be swatted away. Mr Eldredge offered him another drink. Joe refused and stood up, saying that he must go.

‘But you’ve only just come!’ Virginia’s mother smiled, as if to say: Look at him. Isn’t he ridiculous? ‘Do stay a little longer. I want to hear some more about that fantastic club. Jinny never tells us anything.’

‘No, I have to go. I have a date with a man in Charing Cross
Road, just round the corner. That’s why I thought I might as well drop in here.’

Joe felt more pleased with himself. That was a good excuse for having come, and it got him out without loss of face. ‘Good night, everybody. Thanks for the drink.’ Did one shake hands with these bastards? Apparently not. No one moved a hand. He got himself to the door. He had not said much, but at least he had not been rude. Virginia should be proud of him after all.

With her mother’s eye on her, he thought that she would say good night to him coolly at the door; but when he opened it, she came out with him and shut the door behind her.

They stood at the top of the stairs, looking at each other. ‘Oh, God, Jin,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right.’

‘You’d better go back in,’ he said. ‘They’ll give you hell.’

‘No they won’t.’ She laughed and put her arms round his neck. He kissed her as if it was the last time. He knew that it was. Virginia went back into the flat with her head up, not caring that her hair was tumbled and her lipstick smeared.

*

‘It could hardly be worse,’ Helen said ‘Get me a drink, Spenser. I am the most disillusioned woman in town.’

‘Why disillusioned?’ Virginia asked. She saw that she would have to fight this out now, if Helen were determined to attack her right away.

‘I am disillusioned because I thought that I had brought you up to certain standards. You have met the right people, been to the right places. I have tried to see that you made the right friends. Thank you, Spenser. That looks very strong. I think I need it.

‘The right young men,’ she continued, ‘have all been there for you to choose from. You have known, Jinny, what a gentleman is, if you’ll pardon an expression that I believe you do not like. That is why I cannot, why I simply cannot understand this – this lapse, this folly, this –’ She lifted a hand and let it fall limply on to her knee. ‘I am at a loss for words.’

‘What word are you looking for, Helen?’ Virginia asked
politely. ‘If you’re trying to say that Joe is common, you can think of another word, because he’s not.’

‘I refuse to discuss this with you while you stand there looking like a wanton. Go and fix your hair and lipstick. Then I will talk to you.’

‘Oh, look, dear,’ Spenser said. ‘It’s getting late, and I’m tired. You’re tired too, or you wouldn’t feel so badly. Couldn’t we talk about this in the morning, if we must talk about it at all?’

‘I want to talk about it now,’ Helen said. ‘I want to have this out now. I will talk about it.’ She sounded like a spoilt child, whining to have its own way.

‘In that case,’ Spenser said, coughing through his fiftieth cigarette of the day, ‘I think I’ll go to bed. This is no place for me.’

‘Please stay,’ Virginia said, combing her hair at the mirror on the wall. ‘I need someone on my side.’

‘But I don’t know that I am on your side, honey. Should I be?’

‘I should hope not.’

‘I hope so.’

Helen and Virginia spoke at the same time. Spenser looked helplessly from one to the other, caught between them.

‘Must we fight about this?’ Virginia turned from the mirror and sat down opposite her mother. ‘I can’t see what all the fuss is about.’

‘She can’t see what the fuss is about,’ Helen mimicked. ‘Ever since we came back from Europe, and for heaven knows how long before that, you’ve been spending most of your spare time with one man. A man you had not the decency – or perhaps I should say the courage – to bring home. Finally, he barges in of his own accord. We see him. Then we know why you wouldn’t bring him home.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’ Virginia asked, tensing with anger. ‘What’s wrong with Joe? You did your best to make him feel uncomfortable while he was here, and to put him at a disadvantage. How could you expect him to make scintillating conversation?’

‘I don’t,’ Helen said. ‘I’m sure he couldn’t. You ask me what
is wrong with him. Very well, I’ll tell you. You gave me the word yourself just now, don’t forget, so don’t jump down my throat if I say that he is common.’

‘What do you mean, dear?’ Spenser looked baffled. He could not understand this talk about being common, or not being common. ‘I didn’t see that the man was vulgar in any way.’

‘It’s not a question of that. You don’t understand. Americans, if you’ll forgive me, Spenser, don’t understand the difference between being a gentleman, and just not being one.’

‘Oh, don’t they?’ he said, not taking offence. ‘That’s interesting. I didn’t know that.’

‘Well, forget it right away,’ Virginia said. ‘Don’t listen to her. She’s being ridiculous and snobbish, and she’s trying to make you that way too, and you’re much nicer as you are. Oh – why are we talking like this? I hate this.’ She got up and stood with her hands at her sides, holding the skirt of the black dress. ‘What does it matter, anyway? Even if there was something wrong about Joe, what would it matter? I’m not married to him, am I?’ She surprised herself with the word. She had not thought of it.

‘But as it happens, there’s nothing wrong with him. He may not have such a wonderful education, but that wasn’t his fault. His mother died when he was fifteen, and his father – he was Italian – went back to Italy. Joe wouldn’t go, so he was left here to fend for himself. He left school to get a job, and then he left that job at the beginning of the war, and lied about his age to get into the army.’