The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [127]
Mrs Batey pursed her lips and shook her head. ‘Not strong,’ she whispered out of the side of her mouth, as if Jenny could understand.
‘The doctor said I would have to be careful of her this winter, keeping her warm, and out of draughts, and that sort of thing, but he would have told me if there was anything wrong with her.’
‘Doctors tell what suits them,’ Mrs Batey said with a sniff. ‘Don’t they, little love?’ she inquired of Jenny. ‘She’s a little love, that’s what she is.’ She began to cluck and grimace again. ‘Looks just like my poor little Maurice though. He fell away to nothing at the end.’
Virginia changed the subject, asking Mrs Batey about the people at Weston House. She was worried enough already about Jenny, without having her anxiety fed by Mrs Batey’s tales of horror. Mrs Batey gossiped happily and slanderously on for an hour, until Joe came up from the storeroom, where he had been stocktaking with Lennie. He greeted Mrs Batey civilly enough, and asked her what she thought of Jenny.
‘She’s a little beauty,’ Mrs Batey said, ‘just like her mother. Frail though. My stars, she’s frail. I’ve been telling Virginia, she’s got to watch her now that the raw weather is settling in.’
‘Don’t go filling her up with that stuff,’ Joe said impatiently. ‘She fusses enough as it is. There’s nothing wrong with the baby. She’s as strong as a horse. Got my constitution.’ He never would admit that Jenny was in anything but the rudest of health.
As if to contradict him, Jenny coughed, a dry, painful cough that pushed her body forward in Mrs Batey’s arms.
‘That doesn’t sound too good,’ Mrs Batey said sharply.
‘That’s nothing,’ Joe said. ‘She’s got a cold. Everyone coughs when they have a cold.’
Virginia said nothing. Jenny had been coughing like that for two days. Each time the tiny chest jerked, she felt a constriction in her own chest, and sometimes she even found herself clearing her throat, as if she could relieve the child herself. She fetched the bottle from the pan of hot water and taking the baby from Mrs Batey, sat down and tried to make Jenny take her milk. At the first suck, Jenny began to cough again. Virginia sat her up until the spasm ceased, but when she laid her back and put the bottle to her mouth, the choking cough started again.
‘Sounds croupy,’ Mrs Batey said. ‘I don’t like it. You’d ought to get the doctor to her.’
‘I thought about it,’ Virginia looked at Joe, remembering the morning’s argument, ‘but I don’t like to bother him for nothing.’
‘That’s his funeral,’ Mrs Batey said. ‘What’s a doctor for? Not to sit all day filling out forms for the National Health.’
‘And not to be pestered by hysterical women,’ Joe said. ‘Jenny’s greedy, that’s all. You women love to make a fuss about nothing. If I went for my beer like a baby goes for its bottle, I’d choke too, only no one would fuss about me. Look here, Mrs Batey, I wish you’d stop trying to put the wind up Virginia.’
Mrs Batey tucked some descending hair back under her hat, buttoned up her coat, which gaped in the middle where there was no button, picked up the shopping-bag and said: ‘That child is ill, young man, and if you can’t see it, you’re blinder than I thought you were.’
She snapped her mouth shut at him, rattling her false teeth. She had never liked Joe. In the days when she had darned his socks and ironed his shirts, she had only done it for Virginia, and Virginia had often imagined how much pleasure it must have given her to rip her murderous flat-iron through one of his shirt buttons and split it in two.
‘Must you go? Too bad you can’t stay and see the child die in convulsions,’ Joe said sarcastically.
Mrs Batey ignored him and went to clap Virginia on the shoulder with her work-grained hand. ‘I must be running along,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some shopping to do. I promised the kids I’d try and pick up a rabbit. Bye-bye for now, love. Come back and see us soon. We often talk about you at the flats.’
‘You’ll have plenty to tell them now, won’t you?’ Joe said, opening the door to hasten her out.
Mrs Batey walked to the door, stopped