The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [133]
Virginia looked at Chris. He was reading on the seat by the fire with his short legs stuck out and his polished toe-caps turned up. ‘Felix,’ she said, ‘I lost my baby. I had a baby, and she died.’
Her hands were lying on the top of the bar. Felix reached across and put his hands on hers for a moment. He did not say anything. She was grateful for that. She did not want him to talk. She wanted him to listen. ‘It was pneumonia,’ she went on, finding it easier to talk now that the first words were out and she had managed them without tears. ‘She was very bad. Then she got better. One night, I had to go out. She was sleeping when I left, and when I got back, she was dead. She died of pneumonia. That’s what the doctor said. He said it could happen suddenly like that.’
Felix nodded, and waited to see if she was going to say any more. Then he said: ‘There’s no need to tell me how you feel. When a woman loses her baby, and especially her first – I know what it does to her. There will be other babies though, Virginia. You’re so young.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think Joe wants any more. We haven’t talked about it, but I think that’s how he feels. He won’t talk about Jenny, even. That’s one of the worst things. We – there isn’t much to talk about, if we can’t talk about her, because she’s what we’re both thinking about.’
Felix let this pass. He did not want to hear about Virginia’s husband. ‘You’re not sleeping, you say?’ He slipped easily into a clinical manner. ‘Headaches? Mm-hm. Nausea at times? No appetite? Yes … yes. … That can all come with not sleeping, plus, of course, your state of mind. You haven’t seen a doctor, I suppose? No, I thought not. That’s just like you – try to battle it out on your own. But you’ve seen one now, my dear, whether you like it or not, and he can help you. He can help you to sleep, at any rate. That’s what you need. How useless to think you can fight a tragedy like that without sleep. Women are the devil. They drive themselves stubbornly into breakdowns, and then come running to the doctor for help when it’s much too late.’
‘I didn’t come running to you,’ Virginia said. ‘You came to me. You can save the lectures for your rich hypochondriacs. But I’ll take the sleeping pills.’
‘I think I’ve got something in my car. Wait just a minute.’
Virginia hoped that Joe would not come into the bar before Felix returned. There would have to be introductions. Joe would size Felix up, put two and two together, and realize that this was the doctor Virginia had told him about, the one who had wanted to marry her. Afterwards there would be questions, explanations, possibly a quarrel. There had been more quarrels since Jenny died. Joe was edgy, often morose, ready to take offence at nothing, sullenly defensive at any mention of the baby’s death, as if it could possibly have been his fault.
Could it have been his fault? She must never think that. How could it have been his fault? That was better. It could have happened even if Virginia had not gone out. The doctor had said that. And yet she knew that she would never forgive herself for leaving the baby with Joe.
‘Phenobarbital,’ Felix said, coming back with a package. ‘Take one tablet. If that’s not enough, it’s all right to take two. Don’t take the lot though.’ He grinned, to show her that was a joke, but the grin was an anxious one, betraying what was in his mind.
For a moment, Virginia examined the idea of taking the whole box of pills. It was such an impossible idea that it was possible to allow herself to think of it. You heard of women doing it. Almost every day you could read in the newspaper of unhappy women taking an overdose of sleeping pills, and you always wondered why they did not realize that that was not the solution. If everything else had been taken from you, how illogical it was to destroy the one thing you had left – yourself.
That night she slept badly, as usual. The next day, when the Olive Branch closed after lunch,