The Angel in the Corner (35 page)

‘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.’

‘We’re all right.’ The bravery of the words was hollow. Saying them made Virginia realize how far from the truth they were. But she would never tell Spenser that she had asked her mother for help and had been refused.

She pressed the call-button for the lift. ‘I’ll have to hurry,’ Spenser said. ‘I don’t want to say this in front of the elevator boy, and I didn’t dare say it in front of my wife, because I haven’t told her yet, and she likes to be the first to know things. I’m going to help you, Jinny.’

‘No, thank you. We don’t need any help.’

‘That’s my girl. I knew you’d say that,’ Spenser said with satisfaction. ‘You’re just as stubborn as your mother. That’s why I’m not going to talk to you. I’m going to talk to Joe. Send him round here tomorrow. Noon will do. We’ll have lunch,’ he said, in the tone of a man accustomed to having his summonses obeyed. ‘I know he’s not working, so he can’t make that an excuse.’

The doors slid back and Virginia stepped into the lift. She could not promise to send Joe to see Spenser. She did not know whether he would go. But even with this doubt, her mind was looking anxiously over his meagre wardrobe, deciding what he could wear to make the best impression.

The Olive Branch was one of the most attractive public-houses in that part of London which lies between Portman Square and Cavendish Square. Pleasantly situated in a quiet cul-de-sac of neat, inexpensive houses, it was convenient both for the commercial folk of Marylebone High Street, and for the professional medical men who flew their small brass flags of success in the neighbouring streets and squares.

The clientele had once been heterogeneous, but since the war the unassuming little tavern had become increasingly fashionable among the kind of people who liked to refer in a sporty way to Going Round to the Local, and who treated the Olive Branch as a kind of club, so that a labourer who turned in casually for a half pint of bitter might turn quickly out again to seek the more democratic air of the Swan in the High Street.

The Olive Branch was not old, but it was constructed in a cottagey style with cream-washed walls and a tiled roof, that gave it the air of a village inn in the heart of London. A firm of brewers had built it before the war as a public-house, but it somehow managed to give the informal impression of an ordinary house turned into a pub, like one of those country cottages which have a window pushed out at one side of the porch to turn the parlour into a sweet-shop.

The public and saloon bars were on opposite sides of the flagged entrance passage, and both of them looked like parlours turned into bar-rooms. The windows were small, with small panes and wide sills where tankards could be set down among the geraniums. The walls were panelled half-way up and whitewashed above. Oak beams ran across the low ceilings, and the bars themselves were made of darkened oak, with surfaces deliberately full of splits and knot-holes to give the impression of years of use.

Behind the two front-rooms were a kitchen and a store-room, and upstairs were three small but charming rooms for the landlord. Behind the house was a tiny walled courtyard, with
seats made out of beer casks for customers who wished to drink outside in the summer, and an ivy-covered woodshed to supply the mellowed brick fireplaces which added to the cosiness of the two bar-rooms.

It was a snug little berth all right, and Joe congratulated himself that it was his. Well – his and Virginia’s, of course. It was her stepfather who had got them the job of managing it for the brewery, but if Joe had not put on such a good show for the old man, he might not have pulled it off.

‘Very man to man, I was,’ he told Virginia. ‘ “You must realize, my boy,” the old duck kept saying, “that you are a family man now, with all the responsibility that entails.”

‘ “Of course, sir,” I said. I kept calling him sir. He liked that. “All I want to do is to make a good home for my wife and baby.” I cleared my throat. A little emotional, I was, when I talked about the baby. He seemed to like that too. Then I looked him in the eye, and put on my sincere face.’

‘What is your sincere face?’ Virginia asked.

‘Like this.’ He opened his dark eyes very wide and set his mouth in a straight line. Virginia laughed, and they laughed together, and he hugged and kissed her in the saloon bar, paying no attention to Lennie, who was rubbing up the fireplace with red brick polish.

Lennie was their assistant, a thin, red-haired boy with a face like a freckled wedge, small wondering eyes, and a shortened leg from the infantile paralysis which had condemned him to spend most of his childhood in irons. Barman, pot-boy, maid of all work, he had worked in the Olive Branch since he left school. It meant more to him than his own home, and he knew its working inside out, and knew the names and affairs of all the regular customers, and could advise Joe on who should be tactfully denied credit. Everyone knew him, and knew his name, and gave him presents at Christmas, and tried to buy him drinks, although he was a teetotaller; a broadminded one, however, with an expert’s aesthetic appreciation of bottles and shining glasses, which allowed him to be tolerant of those who drank from them.

The last landlord, a genial clown, who was largely responsible for developing the popularity of the Olive Branch, had
taught Lennie everything he knew, except how to drink a quart of beer in one swallow, before he died of a heart attack half-way between the woodshed and the public bar, carrying a load of wood on Lennie’s day off.

Lennie had loved him. He mourned him deeply, never ceasing to blame himself for having taken the day off, or for not having filled the wood-baskets before he took his day off. Since he had to love the person for whom he worked, he attached his affection to Virginia. He would do anything for her, and although he was resentful of Joe, because he could not forget the jolly, fat man who had died, he tolerated him because he was Virginia’s husband, and helped him in every way with the running of the public-house.

Joe was a little sickened by the way the boy tagged after Virginia, with those innocent eyes following her every move. When she went shopping, he limped after her to carry home the groceries. If she picked up anything, he took it from her. If she rested in the daytime, Lennie went dot and carry up the stairs with cups of tea and vivid sugar cakes from the bakery on the corner. He called Joe Mr Colonna, but he called Virginia, more familiarly, Mrs C., and referred to the coming baby as Our Baby.

If Joe found Lennie upstairs, bringing sustenance on a bar-room tray, or asking Virginia if he could run any errands for her, he shooed him down to his own part of the house. He did not consider Lennie a man, but he did not want even the runty, hobbling boy hanging round his wife, and he kept a sharp eye on the men in the bar if they joked too familiarly with Virginia.

He had never known that it was possible to feel so possessive about a woman. With other girls, he had not cared too much whether they cheated him or not. With most of them, it was a relief when another man took them off his hands. It was more fun to look for a new one than to tag along with the same girl after the first excitement had degenerated into habit.

With Virginia, however, it was different. The excitement had never worn off. Even now that she was swollen and clumsy, she still had the power to move him uncontrollably. He would never let her go. No one else must have any part of her, and he
was thankful that her mother and stepfather had gone away again and removed the danger of even the slight influence they might have with her. She belonged to him, to Joe Colonna, who had never before owned anything worth having. His desire to possess her utterly made him love her and hurt her at the same time. She was passionate, obedient, faithful, and yet he knew that there was something at the heart of her which he would never possess and master, and it was that tormenting knowledge which compelled him at times to abuse her.

Now that they were at the Olive Branch, they hardly ever fought. Life had suddenly become so good that there was nothing to fight about, except when Joe thought that she was pampering Lennie, or being too familiar with him. Virginia was happy. Joe knew that. Her kitchen and her three sunny rooms upstairs were a palace to her after the dingy little flat. She was preparing for the baby as if it were the only one that had ever been born. As if it were Jesus Christ himself, Joe sometimes told her, but she did not like him to say that.

That was one of the things he could not understand about her. She did not go to church, and she told him that she had never been taught any religion, and yet she believed in things like the Bible, and all the useless fairy-tales about Christmas and Easter, and once he had caught her by the bed saying her prayers. She had scrambled quickly to her feet, bulky in the thin nightdress. When he had asked her what she was praying for, since she now had everything that any girl could want, she had said that she was repeating something her nurse had taught her.
Angel of God, my Guardian dear
, it went. That angel again. Well, it had brought them together in the first place. He must admit that, although it irritated him that it was still roaming about in the corners of her mind. With bloody great wings, no doubt, and a plate on the back of its head, like the ones on the statues in the big Catholic church round the corner, where Joe had wandered in once at the tail-end of a crowd to see somebody getting married.

At first, Virginia helped Joe and Lennie to serve in the bar. She enjoyed that, and Joe was proud of the way she looked and the way she knew how to talk to the classiest customers on their own level. Nevertheless he watched her. Let her never forget
which side of the bar she was on. She was on Joe’s side. She was in Joe’s world, not theirs.

After a while, when the time for the baby drew near, Virginia did not want to show herself any more. ‘You’re too big to get behind the bar, anyway. You’re as big as a house,’ Joe said. He said it front of Lennie, who cast down his eyes and hurried out of the room. Lennie did not like to hear that kind of talk.

Virginia stayed upstairs and sewed and waited, and packed and unpacked and packed again her bag for the hospital. Joe kept Lennie in the public bar, and ran the saloon bar himself. Not that it made much difference, since the customers wandered from one to the other, but Joe felt that it was only right that the landlord should be in the saloon. Besides, there was that woman, the wife of the man with the hawthorn-hedge moustache, who drove racing cars. She always came into the saloon bar. Ella, her name was. She usually wore pants, and Joe was prepared to stake his life that they were hot ones. Joe looked at her. She looked at him. She did not talk much, but in the old days, he would have taken her up on that look.