The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [14]
The spear-tipped area railings still remained, but the little garden was fenced with wire, since the railings had long ago been taken away for scrap metal, and had not been renewed after the war. The wire gate was padlocked, but many children and dogs had climbed in over the sagging fence and reduced the grass to a dust-patch and the shrubbery to a few straggled bushes, dying slowly under the layers of soot and sulphur from the railway.
Two houses at one corner of the square had been shattered by a bomb, and had never been rebuilt. No one had thought it worthwhile to repair war damage which had only hastened the decay already begun long before the Germans made a target of Paddington Station. The bomb-site showed the foundations of old cellars, like bones exposed in an open grave. There were rusted tanks and cisterns in there, broken shoes, and saucepans and rags, and a blackened little bath lying on its side among the caked earth and weeds. On the high, blank wall of the house which stood next to this desolate plot, there showed quite clearly the marks of fireplaces and the steeply zigzagging staircase.
The house from which the buildings had been torn away was the Ambassador Hotel. The name was painted on the fanlight above the door. There were five bells of different sizes, but none of the cards tacked beside them said Miller. After a while, Virginia rang the bell marked Caretaker. She heard a jangling far away in the house, and presently a woman in slippers and a flowered overall looked out of the basement door, and squinted up at Virginia on the steps.
‘Doug’s out,’ the woman said, ‘if it’s him you want.’
‘I’m looking for Miss Miller. Miss Doris Miller. I thought she lived here.’
‘Are you from the furniture company?’ the woman asked, drawing in her mouth. ‘You’re not? Oh, well then, her bell’s the third one up. The name’s Porritt. That’s her married name, you see.’
Virginia thanked her, and the woman rubbed her hands and observed that it was cold enough to have a white Christmas yet, and went back into the basement.
As Virginia reached for the Porritt bell, the front door opened and a woman with a shopping-bag came out, leaving the door ajar so that Virginia could go inside. Here was a stroke of luck. She had been wondering how she could get in if Doris Miller felt too misanthropic to answer the bell. She calculated that the third bell up must indicate the first floor, climbed the stairs, and came to a halt on a small landing with two doors. The voices of a man and a woman could be heard behind one of them. Doris Miller was evidently at home in domestic bliss with Mr Porritt.
Virginia’s knock was answered by Mr Porritt, in a colourless cardigan and baggy tweed trousers. The room went back to the right at an angle, where the foot of a brass bed, hung with clothing, stuck out. Virginia could not see Miss Miller on the bed, but could hear her impatient voice: ‘Who is it, George? What do they want? I’m resting.’
‘What do you want? She’s resting,’ George repeated obediently. He was a paunchy man, with a square head of grey hair and a resigned blue eye.
‘I’m from the Northgate Gazette,’ Virginia said. ‘I was supposed to interview Miss Miller at the theatre, but I’m afraid I missed her there, so I thought, if she could spare me a few moments –’
‘Go away,’ said the voice from the bed. ‘Get out of here. I’m not seeing anyone from the press.’
‘Go away,’ repeated George, softening the words. ‘She’s not seeing anyone from the press.’
‘But Mr Askey promised. He arranged for me to see you.’ Virginia pitched her voice to reach round the corner of the room.
There was a grunt and a creaking of springs, and a foot could be seen kicking under the tumbled blankets at the foot of the bed. ‘Mr Askey can go to hell, and so can you.’ The voice was less distinct, as if it had gone to ground.
George did not like to repeat