The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [19]
She continued to sing raucously in the kitchen, running gallons of scalding water into the sink, and making mountains of suds, while Virginia went with Mr Benberg to look at his manuscripts. The house was very small, but one of the ground-floor rooms had been dedicated for use as Mr Benberg’s study. Mrs Benberg was just as earnest about his writing as he was, and equally convinced that he would one day be acknowledged as the greatest writer in the world.
There was a fine desk in the study, an expensive typewriter, and a literary-looking chair with a leather seat and brass studs, which Mrs Benberg had given her husband on his last birthday. The rest of the space was taken up by a gigantic wardrobe, which housed camphor-laden clothes at the top, and the neat stacks of manuscripts in the bottom drawer.
‘Here they are,’ Mr Benberg said, a slight croon coming into his voice, as he opened the drawer and reverently handled the thick piles of typescript, tied with pink tape from the insurance office.
He took one pile out, and cradled it, smiling. ‘All these words,’ he said. ‘All my nights and nights of words, taking meaning, taking shape, growing and flowering to fulfilment. Here it is.’ He held the manuscript a little away from him and beamed at it. ‘It does me good just to look at it.’
‘Have you really got twelve books in there?’
‘I have. Twelve finished novels, which the world has never seen.’
‘Some day,’ Mrs Benberg appeared suddenly in the doorway, with a dish-towel round her waist and her arms covered in suds to the elbow, ‘some day the world will know and acclaim, and then you, Virginia, will be able to say: “I knew him before you did. I saw his works in manuscript,” and people will shake you by the hand. Go on, read a little. Father won’t mind.’
Mr Benberg put the bundle of pages down on the desk, and Virginia sat down and began to read, while the Benbergs stood by, he clasping his hands and watching her closely, she wiping a plate round and round with a sodden cloth.
At first, Virginia’s eye was caught by the beauty of the words in which Mr Benberg had framed his immortal thoughts. The phrases were lyrical, the choice of words romantic.
‘But this is lovely!’ she said, looking up at the end of the first page. ‘It’s beautiful writing. Surely someone would want to publish this.’
Mrs Benberg put her wet arm round her husband’s waist, and they stood there, nodding and smiling and watching Virginia confidently. She had read several pages before she realized that she had no idea what the book was about. Thinking that she had been inattentive, she went back and read some of the paragraphs again, but they still conveyed nothing. She had read some half dozen pages without grasping anything. There was nothing to grasp. The whole thing was meaningless. It was merely a florid collection of lyrical phrases and bell-like words, woven together lovingly, but with no thought for their meaning. There were no characters in the book, and no recognizable scene or incident. It was just, as Mr Benberg had said, words. Words carefully set down for the sheer joy of the individual sound of each one, but with no sense in the juxtaposition of one to the other. It was not difficult to understand why no one would publish Mr Benberg’s books.
She looked up. ‘What did I tell you?’ Mrs Benberg crowed. ‘Isn’t it staggering?’
‘Yes,’ Virginia said. ‘Yes, it certainly is. I – I am quite stunned.’ She was at a loss what to say, but this seemed to satisfy them They were not asking for her opinion. They were merely expecting her to confirm theirs. Mr Benberg straightened the pages, retied the tape, and put the bundle tenderly back among its baffling fellows in the drawer.
They went into