The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [110]
‘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