The Angel in the Corner (31 page)

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 social. 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.

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.