The Angel in the Corner (9 page)

One evening, when Helen was out at a cocktail party, Felix came up to the flat. Virginia sat down contentedly with Felix, secure in the knowledge that her mother could not join them. She still did not know whether he had taken her mother out on the night when she went to the Benbergs. Helen had not chosen to tell her, and Virginia had not chosen to ask.

Virginia did not know whether Felix had come to see her or her mother. He seemed a little nervous, rubbing his small, clean hands, and glancing round the room, as if he might be wondering where Helen was.

‘I’m afraid I’ve stayed away too long,’ he said in his soothing bedside voice, ‘but I’ve been frightfully busy. Caesarians at the hospital – emergencies mostly – and half the women in London decided to have babies this week.’ He leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment. Virginia saw that he looked tired.

‘I hope you don’t mind my coming,’ he said, ‘but Robert and I get on each other’s nerves at times, even when he’s not working, and I felt the need for a little feminine stimulation.’

‘Haven’t you got a girl friend?’ He seemed less nervous now that he had started on a scotch and soda. Virginia felt that she could ask him that.

‘Not at the moment. I was engaged once – not long ago, as a matter of fact – but it didn’t work out.’

‘Why not?’ Virginia asked with a slight sigh. Here we go again. He wants to talk about his love troubles. Why do they always think the next girl will be interested?

‘It sounds absurd,’ Felix said, ‘but do you know what it was she finally couldn’t bear any longer about me? She didn’t like my being a gynaecologist.’

‘I can understand that in a way. After all, your patients are women. She might have been jealous.’

‘It wasn’t that. She was too conceited to be jealous of anyone else. It was – oh, well, skip it. It was just a neurosis. Women can be very hard to understand.’

‘You should be able to understand them surely, if anyone can.’

‘I can understand
patients
all right.’ He tossed the word aside, as if it signified a lesser breed. ‘I mean, the women you
know.
The ones you fall in love with. They’re quite something else.’

He turned on the sofa and looked at Virginia sitting next to him, nursing her cool glass.

‘You’re very attractive, Virginia,’ he said gravely. ‘Even in that black dress, and sitting still, you manage to give the impression of colour and movement.’

He said this deliberately and with difficulty, as if he were not in the habit of paying compliments to women, and was more at ease talking to them about their internal than their external appearance.

‘Felix,’ Virginia said, ‘I have to ask you this before we go any farther. Did you take my mother out on Monday night?’

‘Monday?’ he said. ‘Let’s see … Monday. Heavens, no. I was catching up on a back-log of hysterectomies until after ten o’clock.’

‘Or any other night?’

‘What an odd idea. Your mother would never come out with me. I imagine she can get a far more exciting escort any time she wants.’

‘That’s not the point. Would you ever ask her?’ Virginia had to plough on now that she had started.

‘I don’t see why you and I shouldn’t take her out sometimes if she wanted to come,’ he said, puzzled by Virginia’s earnestness. ‘Of course I wouldn’t ask her out alone. I mean, not unless it was sort of – well, in a family way. Hell, I’m going to say something rash. Don’t pay any attention. I mean, if she was my mother-in-law.’

He looked so scared when he had said this that Virginia burst out laughing. ‘Who could help paying attention if you suddenly say a thing like that?’

‘It sounded like a leading remark. It wasn’t meant to. My God, I’ve only met you a few times. You must think I’m insane. Forget it. I didn’t mean it.’

‘That makes it much better, of course.’ Virginia looked away.

‘No – I mean, dash it, look here, Virginia –’ Felix was pitiably confused. ‘After all, people don’t say things like that when they hardly know a girl. I mean, not people like me.’ The charming, crooked smiles were all gone from his face. He looked defeated, as if he had abandoned whatever campaign he had in mind before it was even started.

Conversation foundered. Neither of them knew how to get back to friendly talk. Irritated by Felix’s clumsy approach and retreat, Virginia hoped that he would soon go away. Now that she knew that she and not her mother was the object of his nervous pursuit, she was not sure that she wanted him to catch up with her.

‘I’m sorry,’ Felix said, sensing her sudden boredom. ‘I talked like a fool. Forgive me.’

‘Oh, don’t be so humble.’ Virginia stood up and walked away from him. ‘I’m not surprised that girl broke off the engagement if you went about apologizing for everything you said before you even said it. No, that was mean. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right,’ Felix said, without rancour. ‘That was one of her grievances, as a matter of fact.’ He stood up. ‘I’d better go. I haven’t said what I came to say, though.’ He picked up the black homburg hat and turned the brim round and round in his fingers. ‘I wondered if you would care to come home with me for dinner on New Year’s Eve. My parents are having a small party. Only family.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Virginia said. ‘I promised to take Helen out to dinner that night.’

‘Oh.’ Felix looked at his burnished shoes. ‘In that case, well – oh, well, I’d better be going.’ He opened the door of the flat and lingered for a moment wistfully on the top stair. ‘I’ll see you soon, I hope,’ he said.

‘Oh, yes,’ Virginia said. ‘I hope so,’ and brightened her smile to make her words sound less half-hearted.

*

‘You can go in, Jinny,’ Grace said, putting down the telephone. ‘Your mother has an American gentleman in there, but she said it was all right for you to go in. In fact,’ Grace raised her
neat eyebrows a fraction, ‘she seemed very glad to know you were here.’

Virginia went into the throne-room, where her mother was talking to a middle-aged man with a heavy face and bushy eyebrows. Things did not look quite right. Her mother was not sitting at her desk in the middle of the room, commanding the situation. She was in one of the armchairs, smoking a cigarette and looking as relaxed as she ever could. The man was sitting by her, his big body perched on the edge of the low chair and his big feet splayed outwards.

He pushed himself out of the chair with difficulty as Virginia came in. He had a teutonic head of dark-grey hair, cut like a stiff brush. His thick eyebrows had been cut at the ends until they were almost square. His mouth was too small for the bulk of his face. It was rosy and a little petulant, the lower lip pushed wetly out like a baby’s.

‘Spenser,’ Helen said, without getting up, ‘this is my daughter, Virginia.’

‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ Spenser said, offering a hand like the butt-end of a ham. His voice was quiet and hoarse, more like a strained whisper; and he wheezed a little when he spoke.

‘You have?’ Why should Helen talk about her to a business acquaintance?

‘Sure.’ He studied her. ‘What a fine, tall girl,’ he said, instantly making Virginia feel oversized and gawky. He was not very tall, and the double-breasted, loosely-cut jacket of his suit was too long for the length of trouser. ‘Nice girl,’ he rasped decisively, as if he were not accustomed to having his word challenged. ‘I like that clean, swept-back look, and the strong, coarse hair. We had a model just your type last year. Did very well in sweaters and slacks.’

‘This is Mr Eldredge, Jinny,’ Helen said, with a trace of laughter in her voice. ‘He is a dress manufacturer from the United States. He’s over here looking at material. We met at that show Aubrey had of his tweeds.’

‘Surely,’ Mr Eldredge said, still studying Virginia.

‘He has an estate on Long Island,’ Helen added, ‘overlooking the sea, with two tennis courts and a nine-hole golf-course.’

Virginia was impatient. She had come into the throne-room in a hurry to tell her mother something. She did not want to hear the history of Mr Eldredge. Why the careful explanation from Helen, and why were they both looking at her with half smiles? This must be the new boy-friend. They had certainly not been talking business. Helen always sat at her desk when she talked business, even with her own staff. She would never sit casually in an armchair to put them at their ease.

‘Sit down, Jinny,’ Helen said. ‘I’ll get Grace to bring you some coffee.’ She seemed to have an unusual amount of time to spare.

‘I haven’t got time,’ Virginia said. ‘I’m meeting Mary for lunch. She’s just got engaged, and she wants to tell me about it.’

‘You ladies,’ Spenser said, with a wheeze of heavy humour. ‘You no sooner catch a man than you want to start tearing him to pieces.’

Virginia imagined that his line of humour would be full of stale half-truths about women. He would love to make jokes about women changing their minds, or talking too much, or being dangerous at the wheel of a car. She was puzzled by her instinctive aversion to him. He did not look a bad sort of man; but an indefinable smirk in her mother’s attitude had put her on her guard.

Why did you come then, if you are in such a hurry to go?’ Helen asked.

‘I came to tell you something. I’m afraid you may not like it very much. Perhaps I’d better –’ She took a step back towards the door.

‘Go ahead, dear heart,’ her mother said, tapping out ash with a jingle of bracelets. ‘We’re all friends here. Excuse me, Spenser.’ She flicked a smile at him. ‘Just a little family matter.’

‘It isn’t,’ Virginia said. ‘It’s business. I’ve just come from Mr Owen’s office.’

‘Archie didn’t tell me he was seeing you.’ Helen’s voice hardened.

‘Why should he? Does he always consult you before he hires anyone? I know he doesn’t, because I remember you being so wild when he took on that McCarren girl.’

‘You mean to calmly tell me he’s given you a job?’ Helen was
unnerved enough to split an infinitive. She did not stand up, but she sat up so alertly in her chair that she was as poised as if she were on her feet.

‘I start next week. In the correspondence department. Channelling the mail, you know, and sorting out the readers’ letters.’

‘Yes, yes, I know. You don’t have to tell me what my own correspondence department does.’

Helen was angry. Virginia had expected that. She had already made it clear that she did not want Virginia in the same office. One of her excuses was that the rest of the staff might feel obliged to favour her. Knowing how most of the staff felt about her mother, Virginia thought that they would be more likely to do the reverse.

Helen tapped her fingers on the side of the chair. ‘I don’t like you going behind my back like that,’ she began. Then she remembered Spenser, who was standing solidly on the carpet, taking it all in, appraising, with little pushing movements of his moist lower lip.

‘But of course,’ Helen added swiftly, and her body relaxed a little as she decided what line to take, ‘since it is all settled, I naturally could not be more delighted. I think it’s a pity though that you didn’t come to me about it. I could have put you into a much better job. One of the girls who helps on the beauty page is leaving. I’ve filled her place now, but if I had only known you wanted to work here, if you had only told me –’ She looked at Spenser with spread hands and raised shoulders, as if to enlist his sympathy for a mother whose daughter never told her anything.

‘Mom is always the last person to hear anything.’ Spenser readily answered the call to make one of his favourite jokes.

Virginia did not argue. What was the use? She had got her job, that was all that mattered, and she knew that she had got it by her own initiative, for Mr Owen had no love for her mother, and had helped Virginia in spite of the fact that she was her daughter, not because of it.

If Helen wanted to lie her way out of the situation to save her face with Eldredge, that was all right. Virginia would not spoil any little fling she might be having with him.

The fling, it appeared, was to include a champagne party at the Savoy on the following night, which was New Year’s Eve.

‘Such fun,’ Helen said, although Virginia had often heard her say that she detested mass merriment in restaurants. ‘You’re fixed up with a party, of course, Jinny?’

‘Not exactly,’ Virginia had refused Felix’s invitation because she had promised to take Helen out to dinner. ‘But something will turn up, I expect.’

‘Why don’t you come with us?’ Spenser asked. Whatever he thought about it, he was too polite, and perhaps kind as well, not to feel compelled to say this. Virginia liked him better, and wondered how she could as politely refuse.

Helen went to her desk, and began to look through papers in a random way. ‘That’s very kind of you, Spenser,’ she said, bending to look in a drawer, ‘but perhaps Jinny would rather be out with her own young friends than with us old fogies.’

‘Oh? Well, that might be so.’ Spenser took this literally.

‘She has dozens of friends. There’s sure to be something going on, isn’t there, Jinny?’

Returning home after her lunch with Mary, Virginia met Felix hurrying out of his doorway, as if a baby threatened to be born at any minute.

‘Happy New Year!’ he called to her.

‘It isn’t New Year’s Eve yet.’

‘It will be. I hope you and your mother enjoy yourselves.’

‘Helen can’t come out with me after all. Something else came up.’

‘Then you’ll come with me? Please do, Virginia. It won’t be very exciting, but if you’d care to, my parents would be delighted. My mother will love you.’

They always said that hopefully. It was embarrassing then if the mother did not take to you. It looked as though it were your fault.

*

Felix’s mother and father lived staidly, in a fair degree of unimaginative comfort in a large flat in St John’s Wood. To say that they lived would be extravagant. They existed, rather, in a prison of stagnant respectability more daunting than
anything Virginia had imagined. She had guessed that they would not be exhilarating. People’s parents were often boring, or conventional, or foolish; but these two had no such recognizable qualities that could be played up to, or forgiven. They were unapproachable, unreal, so cocooned in their own dullness that they were impervious to the advances of a livelier spirit.