The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [11]
‘He’s no one’s boy-friend,’ Virginia said abruptly, going to the door,. ‘I’ll probably never see him again.’
The first person she saw in the mews was Felix, getting out his car. It was a new but sober car, prosperous enough for a successful young specialist, but not as dashing as it could have been if he was going to spend that much money.
It was a raw, grey morning. The cracks between the cobble-stones were puttied with dirty ice, and in the sharp wind, Felix’s face looked small and pinched under the mushroom of a hat. When he offered to drive Virginia to the station, she said that she wanted to walk. He stepped forward to persuade her, but she went quickly away from him, her heels ringing on the frosty cobbles. It was too cold to bother with a man just now, and her mother might look out of the window and see her getting into the car, and think that she was being sly.
Chapter 3
As the week drew to its close, things began to hum a little more busily at the Northgate Gazette, but Reggie Porter, the young boor with the big feet, who liked Virginia no better than she liked him, saw to it that she was not included in the hum. She spent most of her time, at his uncivil bequest, running to and from the printers with pages of copy or galley proofs, and on press day, which she had thought would be the high-spot of the week, she spent all afternoon hurrying through the windy streets with pages of wet newsprint. She wanted to ask many questions, but the other reporters were too busy to answer, and the editor was having his weekly press-day bout of indigestion, and seemed to have forgotten who she was and why she was there.
The printers were housed in a shabby wooden building in a yard off a side-street two blocks away. They had many other matters on hand besides the Northgate Gazette, and to reach Mr Couliss, who was her liaison there, Virginia had to step round and over piles of posters and pamphlets, and little mean-looking magazines devoted to such eclectic subjects as nudism and muscle culture.
Mr Couliss was short and full of spittle, in a greasy-backed waistcoat and gym shoes, and he grew quite racy with her as she came and went on press day. If she asked him a question about the printing of the paper, he would run his tongue over his lips and say: ‘You don’t want to bother your head about things like that, a nice little dish like you.’
Virginia, wishing to fall in with the way of things, had started off by being quite pert and chummy with him, but, as the day advanced, and his jokes advanced with it to a grosser degree of innuendo, she wished that she had kept her distance from the start.
When Mr Couliss, frothing a little, informed her that she was a hot number, and that he was game for a bit of fun too, any time she liked to try him, she slammed back through the counter flap into the office, and told Reggie that she did not want to run any more errands to the printers.
‘No doubt,’ he said, ‘you’d like to sit in the old man’s office on your big, fat fanny and run the show. Old Couliss made a pass at you, I suppose.’ Reggie put his hands in his trouser pockets and stuck his stomach out, pursing his thick lips with a worldly air. ‘You women are all the same. Lead a man on as far as you dare, and then turn round and run screaming for help if he takes you up on it.’
‘As if I would,’ Virginia said disgustedly. ‘He’s a horrible little man, and he’s got a mind as foul as some of that trash he prints down there.’
‘By which I suppose you mean the Gazette?’ Reggie rocked back on his heels and lowered his head at her like a bull.
‘I didn’t, but you can take it that way if you like.’
‘You may go home. You may leave,’ Reggie said grandly, his thick, throaty voice spoiling the high-toned effect for which he was trying. ‘Get out of here, and don’t come back next week neither.’
‘On the contrary.’ The editor came out of his kennel with a bottle of tablets in his hand, looking for a glass of water. ‘I want Alice in early Monday. I’ve got a top job for you, girl. Interview with Doris Miller.