The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [18]
‘Disappointment doesn’t take the edge off your appetite, I’m glad to see,’ Mrs Benberg observed, slicing treacle tart. She served it with flourishes and large gestures. She was a big woman, bigger both in height and breadth than her husband, and everything she did and said was expansive, and a little wild. Her hair was wild, like a frayed rope, and pins scattered out of it when she energetically nodded or shook her head. Her clothes were strange and disordered, as if she had put her hands into drawers with her eyes closed, and put on whatever came out in a dark room.
Mr Benberg was entirely and happily dependent on her. She undressed him like a baby, stirred his tea, and put salt and pepper on his plate for him. He was a quiet man, surrounded and washed over by his wife’s vitality, like a stone in a torrent. He did not mind. He appeared content to be submerged beneath a personality that was livelier and noisier than his. Anxious at first about Virginia’s visit, his lip twitched more than usual, but as the meal progressed, and Virginia’s smile returned, the spasms came less frequently, and his mouth settled to rest.
In the little dining-room, stuffed full of furniture, books, old magazines, and curly china ornaments, Mrs Benberg charged the air like a dynamo. Everything except Mr Benberg was abundant, like herself. The food was bounteous, overflowing the dishes and the plates on to which she piled it. Thick slices of bread tumbled off the board, and the crammed fruit dish spilled grapes and nuts on to the tablecloth. The monstrous, overgrown plants, which stood in every corner, were bursting out of their pots with the energy they drew from Mrs Benberg through the watering-can.
Virginia began to feel better before she was half-way through the rich steak and kidney pudding. Mr Benberg was so cordial, with his long, mild face and his nervous mouth. Mrs Benberg was so welcoming and enthusiastic, and so crazily affectionate, jumping up at unexpected moments to plant a smacking kiss upon Virginia, and tell her that she was a great girl. ‘Top hole, oh, absolutely the tops,’ she cried, loosely slangy. ‘If only Jim were here, eh, Father?’
Jim, in the uniform of an officer in the Merchant Navy, looked down at them cheerily from an embossed silver frame on the dresser. He looked nothing like his father. The exuberant blood of Mrs Benberg coursed in his veins. His cheeks were bursting with rude health, his eyes twinkled, and his hair sprang up from his head as if all the brilliantine in the world would never tame it. His mother kissed the picture wetly after she had shown it to Virginia, and then kissed Mr Benberg, to show that there was no favouritism.
‘Feeling better, aren’t you, love?’ she said, watching Virginia grow more relaxed, watching, it almost seemed, with her bright, erratic eyes, the thoughts in Virginia’s head clearing and sorting themselves out, and casting away the depression.
‘You had a bad time today,’ Mrs Benberg said, pouring strong, dark tea from a fat teapot into outsize cups. ‘But it’s nothing to fret over. A lovely young girl like you – why should you worry about such a potty concern? To the devil with them, I say. Who cares for the Northgate Gazette?’ She waved the teapot over her head like a banner, sprinkling brown drops on her hair, and Mr Benberg called out thinly: ‘Hurray!’
‘You’re destined for higher things than that,’ Mrs Benberg said, dumping the teapot, and suddenly drawing her thick brows darkly down so that her eyes were glittering slits. ‘Don’t argue with me. I’m prophetic. I see these things, don’t I, Father? I see great things for you, love, money, success, fame –’
‘A tall, dark stranger?’ Virginia laughed, realizing that she had not laughed all day.
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Benberg, ‘that we don’t know. Sex is the great mystery of life. Even the prophetic eye can’t always fathom it out. However, drink up your tea, and let’s have a look at the shape of the leaves.’
‘I know where I’m