The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [105]
When she went to the shop on Monday morning, she left a note on the table to welcome him home. When she got back that night, the note was still there, untouched.
He could not telephone her at the flat, but he knew that the Dales had a telephone and would give her a message. Or he could have sent a telegram. How could he not let her know what he was doing? Even Joe could not be as casual as that. Unless there had been an accident. Her mind went over all the possibilities, and by the end of the evening she had Joe laid out on a mortuary slab and herself creeping in to identify him, just as Mrs Fagg had crept into the station waiting-room to identify what was left of Mr Fagg.
She was too worried to go across the passage for Mrs Batey’s comfort. Mrs Batey would click her teeth and say that it was all you could expect from a man, which would be no comfort at all. She would tell her that no news was good news, and that if there had been an accident, she would have heard about it all too soon. That would be no comfort either. Virginia knew all that, but if she could not make herself believe it, Mrs Batey was never going to convince her.
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