The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [112]
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.
She had something else to worry about now. When Joe came back from Warwickshire, his job at the Excelsior was gone. He was now back at his usual game of ‘looking around’. There was no knowing what he would do. He might get a job tomorrow. He might stay out of work for weeks, and Virginia’s doctor had told her that if she did not want to lose her baby, she must give up working at Etta Lee’s.
She still had fifteen pounds of Spenser’s money. That was all. There was nothing left now but to ask Helen for help.
Chapter 12
As if to confirm Virginia’s decision to relax the struggle for independence, there came a letter from Helen to say that she and Spenser were flying to England for a short visit.
I wish we could stay long enough, Helen wrote, for me to be there when the baby is born, but Spenser is too busy to be away from the office for very long. In any case, I hope to persuade you to fly back with us and have your baby in America. The hospitals and doctors are so much better here.
It was plain that Helen was almost completely Americanized. English people tend to react in one of two ways when they first visit the United States. They either embrace it wholesale because it is different from England, or they reject it out of hand because it is not like England. Helen had embraced the country with both arms, and there was never a letter from her which did not draw some invidious comparison between the old world and the new.
‘She’s softening me up, you see,’ Virginia said, showing Joe the latest letter, ‘so that I will be amenable by the time she gets here.’
‘Will you be? Would