The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [146]
He was sitting on the right side of the plane, so that when he turned to her with a brief smile, he saw the scar at once. He did not look away awkwardly, as most people did. He remained looking at her for a moment with pity in his eyes, and then he gave her a wider smile.
When the plane began to taxi out into the night, Virginia leaned forward, pulling the scarf across her cheek. ‘Do you mind if I look out? It’s my first flight.’
‘Sit by the window,’ he said at once. ‘Change places quickly. You’re not supposed to stand up.’ He unfastened his safety-belt and helped her with hers, and then she was clutching the arms of the seat and watching the runway lights glide by, faster, faster, until suddenly they were below her and dropping away and she was part of the earth no longer.
‘Like it?’ he asked, as she settled back into her seat with a sigh. ‘One never quite gets over the thrill of being safe on the ground one moment, and safe in the air the next.’
Virginia took off the scarf and shook out her hair. He could not see the right side of her face now, and so she could talk to him without being conscious of the scar and of his eyes either dwelling on it, or deliberately looking away. But, of course, he knew how to look at a woman with a blemished face. She had forgotten that.
For a while, she did not say anything. She had twelve hours in which to say the words. There was no hurry. He was looking through papers in his brief-case. Virginia opened a novel and tried to read, but her eyes kept sliding round to the long, lined face with the bony temples from which the thin hair had long ago receded. The stewardess brought coffee and sandwiches, and when the little trays were taken away, he took out a tarnished silver case and offered Virginia a cigarette. On the little finger of his right hand, he wore a signet ring with the seal carved into a red stone. Virginia did not need the evidence of the ring, but it was the memory of the red stone shining under the light above the piano that finally touched her into speech.
‘Excuse me,’ she said in a small voice. ‘This is going to sound very odd, but I think you are my father.’
*
They talked most of the night. When the lights in the plane were turned off, and the other passengers settled themselves with grunts and rustlings to uneasy slumber, Virginia and her father switched on the little reading lights and talked their way into each other’s lives again while the plane beat its way across the sea with a thick roar that was no longer a noise but an unheeded part of the atmosphere.
Virginia’s father told her that his wife had died two years ago, soon after her baby was born. ‘Something went wrong,’ he said. ‘She never really recovered from the birth. She was ill all the time, and then one morning, she just went, quite quietly. She was a very quiet woman. Peaceful to be with. I wish you had known her.’
‘I did.’ Virginia told him about her visit to the house.
‘Typical of her not to tell me. She was always thinking about not upsetting me, and the irony of that was that with her, I never felt like getting upset. Since you met her, perhaps you can understand how much she did for me. You never liked me very much when we lived together, did you? I don’t blame you. I was a rotten father, and a rotten husband, and a pretty rotten person altogether to have about the house, I should imagine. Vivien – that was my wife’s name – she didn’t think so. She didn’t despise me like – well, she really loved me, I think. That makes a lot of difference to a man. If a woman believes that a man is something, he can become it. Vivien thought I was worthwhile, even