The Angel in the Corner (32 page)

Mr Benberg finished his cake with ease. There was no knowing where he put it inside his concave frame. When he passed his plate down for more, Mrs Benberg said: ‘Ladies first. Give me your plate, Virginia. Oh, come, you’ve eaten nothing. Are you ill?’ Illness was the only reason she could envisage for lack of appetite. ‘I’ll stake my whole fortune that you haven’t had your supper. Have you?’

‘Well – no. When I got home from work, I came straight out here to see you.’

‘Why in such a hurry?’ Mrs Benberg drew down her thick, untidy brows and narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘Why?’ she repeated, as Virginia did not answer.

‘I just felt I wanted to see someone. Joe wasn’t home, you see. He’s been away for three days. Five days, actually. He went to a race-meeting on Friday, and he – he was supposed to come back on Sunday.’ She could not keep her voice casual.

She finished quickly, with a little urgent gasp: ‘I’m terribly worried about him.’

‘Of course you are! No need to tell me that. Great heavens, child, don’t you think I could see something was wrong as soon as you came over my doorstep? I love you, Virginia. You probably think I’m as mad as a hatter, but Father and I – it doesn’t take us long to make up our minds about someone, and we’ve loved you ever since he brought you here that night. Remember the snow? You looked so pretty going off through the snow, and you were so young and hopeful. You’re young and hopeful still. I see that. But I see, too, that you’re having quite a fight to keep your hopes. Want to talk about it?’ She gazed into the fire, winding the heavy necklace round her fingers.

As Virginia was silent, wondering what to say, Mr Benberg cleared her throat and said gently: ‘Perhaps Miss – Mrs – perhaps Virginia doesn’t want to tell us anything.’

Mrs Benberg circled an arm backwards at him. ‘Of course she does. Everyone needs to share their troubles, and she’s told us her mother is in America, so who better to share them with than us, who care about her?’ She turned to Virginia, and said briskly: ‘So your boy has disappeared, has he? Well, men have done that before now, but they always come rolling home when they’re hungry. I wouldn’t worry too much about
that.’

‘I think you’re too liberal, my dear.’ Mr Benberg leaned forward, blinking and earnest. ‘A man shouldn’t go off without telling his wife where he is, especially when she –’ His lip twitched down. He looked away shyly.

‘Liberal be damned! What else can you be with men? They’re not in captivity, just because they’re married.’ Mrs Benberg struggled to her feet, shaking her skirt free of crumbs, which the dog picked neatly off the carpet. ‘I tell you what, my darling girl.’ She stood with her back to the fire, and wagged her finger at Virginia. ‘If you nag at him this time when he does come back, next time, he may not come back at all.’

‘I do try not to nag Joe,’ Virginia said. ‘He can’t stand it.’

‘Who can? Who can?’ Mrs Benberg lifted her skirt a little to warm the back of her legs. ‘This girl’s got sense, Father. We don’t need to tell her her business. If it was Jim now,’ she
nodded at the photograph of her cheery son, ‘he hasn’t a ha’p’orth of sense where his love-life is concerned. He’s broken his heart three times already, but he always comes up smiling, with not a lesson learned.’

‘I don’t think I’ve got much sense,’ Virginia said. ‘I meant to do so much for Joe, but I don’t seem to have done anything.’

‘Who says that? You’ve stuck to this rascal, haven’t you? And you don’t have to tell me he’s made it tough for you, because it’s written all over your face. Don’t tell me the details, because I don’t want to hear.’

‘I wasn’t going to,’ Virginia said. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

‘Oh, yes, there is. I know all about this young man without clapping an eye on him. But, heigh ho! we can’t change him, so we must make the best of it. What’s done can’t be undone, no use crying over spilt milk, two wrongs don’t make a right, and all the other old saws that spring to my mind at the drop of a hat. So cheer up, love, and I’ll get the ginger wine. Things will come out all right for you. I told you that before, didn’t I, so why worry? God helps those who help themselves, if you want another old saw, from B. Franklin, who wrote most of ‘em.’

She scrabbled in a cupboard full of old gramophone records and tarnished silver, and brought out a sticky bottle and three glasses that looked as if they had once held jam.

‘But I can’t help worrying,’ Virginia said. ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, but I’ve no one else to tell. People gossip so where I live.’

‘Why tell the people where you live?’ Mrs Benberg demanded. ‘The last people, always.’

‘They are the only people I know,’ Virginia said. ‘I’ve lost touch with everyone else. If you knew where I lived, you would understand.’

‘What is it you want to tell?’ Mrs Benberg asked more gently.

‘Just that I’m afraid Joe is in some sort of trouble.’

‘What sort? Women? Money? Police?’

‘Police,’ Virginia said bleakly. She told them about Jack Corelli and the cadaverous man in the raincoat. She even told them that Joe had once been in prison. But that seemed unfair
to him, and so she said quickly: ‘No, don’t count that. It makes him sound bad, and he isn’t. I love him.’

‘Well, I should hope you do!’ Mrs Benberg tipped back her head to get the last oily drops of the sweet ginger wine. ‘Why else would you marry this villain? But whether you love him has no bearing on whether he’s good or bad. Whoever heard of a woman being in love with any of the saints?’

‘I think,’ Mr Benberg said quietly, rolling the wine round the sides of the jam-jar, ‘I think that he has behaved very badly. Virginia doesn’t owe as much to him as she thinks she does. A man like that doesn’t deserve to keep a good wife.’

Virginia was going to speak, but Mrs Benberg jumped in fiercely. ‘Don’t say such a terrible thing! She’s married to him, isn’t she? She owes him everything, by which I mean herself. And as for leaving him, that’s a lot of subversive bilge I never expected to hear coming out of your head. Suppose you had gone off the rails – do you think it would have made any difference to me? Suppose Virginia’s boy has been in prison, and suppose he has made a big enough ass of himself this time to put him there again – what difference is that going to make to her?’

‘Oh, no, of course. No, no,’ Mr Benberg said, recanting immediately under her fire. ‘No difference at all.’

‘Could one really be as tough as that?’ Virginia said. ‘It woudn’t be very easy, with everyone knowing about it, and Mrs Batey – she’s the woman who lives opposite – trying to cheer me up by telling me how her husband nearly got ten days for brawling with her in Chapel Street. As if you could possibly draw a comparison between Joe and her dingy little man. How would I bear it? Going to see Joe every week. Watching him grow bitter, or surly, or defeated. What do you do with a man when he comes out of prison? How do you help him to start again? There’s a woman across the street whose husband did two years. He’s never had a job since. He doesn’t look at people properly any more. He looks humiliated, as if everything had been taken away from him for ever. How would I bear it?’

‘What else could you do?’ Mrs Benberg asked, clutching the chain necklace with both hands, as if she were holding a
banner. ‘Of course you would bear it. You might conceivably leave a man who was successful and independent of you, but you don’t leave a man who needs you. People shouldn’t get married if they don’t know that elementary principle.’

‘You expect a lot of Virginia,’ Mr Benberg said.

‘Of course I do.’ Mrs Benberg’s voice drowned his murmur. ‘Because I know she has got it to give. That’s why it will all be given back to her, good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over.… Why do I always get Biblical when I’m worked up?’ She shook herself like a large mongrel coming out of a pond. ‘Let’s not get excited. We’re all talking as if this poor man was already languishing in a cell with a cannon-ball chained to his leg. Instead of which, he is probably at home beating his head on the wall because he thinks his wife has walked out on him. Run home, my dearest girl, and tell him what you told us.’

‘What I told you?’ Virginia stood up.

‘That you love him. He’ll be there. I see it. Don’t forget I see these things. I’m never wrong, am I, Father?’

‘Oh, no, my dear. Oh, no, no. The day you are wrong, the stars will fall from their courses.’

Mrs Benberg looked at him sharply to see if he was mocking her, but he had left the room with his wet-weather limp to get Virginia’s coat, and she could not see his face.

*

The stars did not fall. Mrs Benberg was right again. When Virginia got back to the flat, Joe was lying on the bed with his clothes on, fast asleep.

‘Darling?’ Virginia put her hand on his shoulder. He hunched the shoulder up towards his ear, and twitched his cheek fretfully, as if a fly were disturbing his sleep.

‘No, darling,’ Virginia said to his sleeping, innocent face. ‘This is too much. I’m not going to wait until morning to hear what you’ve been up to.’ She turned him on to his back and sat down on the bed beside him. ‘Please wake up,’ she said loudly. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘For God’s sake –’ Joe mumbled himself half out of sleep, opened his eyes and closed them again and rolled over. ‘Leave
me alone. I need sleep.’ He flung an arm across his face, but Virginia pulled it away, and turned him back to face her.

‘Tell me where you’ve been. Then you can sleep,’ she said.

He smiled dreamily up at her, and raised his hand to stroke the inside of her arm. ‘Pretty girl,’ he said. ‘Come to bed now. We’ll talk in the morning.’

‘We’ll talk now. You’re not getting away with it like that.’ Don’t nag at him, Mrs Benberg had said, but Mrs Benberg did not know that he would try to take refuge in sleep or caresses. ‘Three days and three nights,’ Virginia said, ‘I’ve waited here for you, with no idea where you were. How about giving me some sort of explanation?’

Joe looked at her calmly. ‘You weren’t waiting tonight,’ he said. ‘How about giving me an explanation of that?’

‘That’s easy. I went to see some friends. How was I to know you would come back tonight? For all I knew you were never coming back.’

‘Big loss that would have been.’

‘Don’t make silly jokes. This is serious. How do you think I felt, waiting here night after night, thinking of all the worst things that could have happened to you?’

‘Why, you’re angry,’ he said wonderingly.

‘Of course I’m angry. You always get angry after you’ve been anxious. First you are relieved, like I was when I saw you on the bed. Then you get angry, like I am now. Not about you staying away longer than you said. That’s nothing. I’m angry because you didn’t take the trouble to let me know.’

‘I couldn’t.’ Joe turned his head slightly, so that he was not looking at her. ‘I didn’t want to give them the chance of tracing me here, in case they were on to me.’

‘They? Who’s they?’ Virginia knew, but she had to hear him say it.

‘If you must know, Jin, the Warwickshire constabulary.’

Virginia sighed. ‘Yes,’ she said flatly. ‘Yes. That’s what I was afraid of.’ She was not angry any more. She was disheartened and suddenly very tired.

‘There was nothing I could do. After they got Jack, I didn’t dare come straight home. I came a roundabout way, moving
about, you see, until I was sure they weren’t on to me. You understand?’

‘All but one small detail. What had Jack done?’

‘Nothing really. It was what he tried to do. But this damn fool girl at the cinema got panicky and gave him the all-clear too soon. The cashier only had to let out one peep and the whole place was swarming with people.’

‘Joe –’ She gripped his arm and searched his eyes, leaning forward so that her hair fell over her face. ‘Are you mixed up in this?’

‘Oh, lord, no, sweetheart.’ He spoke too easily. His smile was too casual. ‘I just happened to meet Jack at the races. I had no idea he was going, of course, but I was afraid we might have been seen together. That’s why I had to watch myself. There, I’ve told you all about it, and there’s nothing more to worry about. Now let’s get some sleep. I haven’t had much these last few nights.’

Virginia’s mind was seething with questions, but she knew that it was useless to ask them. He was not going to tell her the truth. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing more to worry about.’ He closed his eyes and dug his cheek into the pillow as she got up from the bed. She watched him as she undressed. In a few minutes, he was either asleep, or pretending it. Did he really think that she was satisfied with his unconvincing story? Did he think her such a fool, or was it that he did not trust her with the truth?

It was useless to try to get the truth from him. Almost immediately, the whole neighbourhood knew that Jack Corelli was awaiting trial for an attempted hold-up. Joe joined casually in the gossip and speculation when it came his way, but he would never discuss with Virginia his ill-fated trip to the races.

He was restless and a little nervous for a few days, but he soon regained his spirits. He did not seem to be worrying any more about his own part – whatever his part had been – in the foolish, bungled crime. Virginia did all the worrying. She went to the window constantly, staring across the road at Mrs Baggott in her window, trying to determine whether the mysterious old lady was watching their flat. Had she seen Joe and Jack go off together? Did she know that Joe had been away all
those days? Virginia had lived long enough in Weston House to be half credulous of the fable that Mrs Baggott knew everything, saw everything, and was an informer in the pay of both Satan and the police.

Every day Virginia expected to see a police car stop outside Mrs Fagg’s house. Every day she expected to hear the authoritative knock on her own front door. Virginia had never been afraid of the police before, and the sensation was not pleasant. She realized for the first time how broad was the gap between the law-abiding and the lawless.

Gradually, as the weeks went by, and spring crept unheralded by any growing green into the awakening street, her anxiety began to fade. Mrs Fagg hung all her flattened rugs out on the railings and beat at them with a bamboo stick. Gloria Dale came out in a new turquoise suit. Like a moulting animal, Miss Few shed the mangy hearthrug which was her winter fur coat. Windows that had been closed for months were opened with difficulty. The women across the street began to stand on their doorsteps again, and bronchial children were let out without the layers of clothing which had covered everything but their bony knees. The year was turning towards summer, and still the police car had not come for Joe, and Virginia began to relax and to forget her fears and to drift back towards the ranks of those to whom policemen are allies.