The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [33]
In the drawing-room, Mrs Allen announced that they would play bridge until it was time to drink the punch at midnight. Virigina looked at the clock with a sinking heart. It was only ten-thirty.
‘I’m afraid I don’t play bridge,’ she said.
‘Not play bridge?’ Mrs Allen’s long face was uncomprehending. ‘How extraordinary, Miss Martin.’
‘Please call me Virginia,’ Virginia said for the tenth time. Mrs Allen bowed stiffly and continued to call her Miss Martin.
‘If Virginia is not going to play, I won’t either,’ Felix said. His family looked at him, weighing the implications of this remark. ‘Dad can make up the four. I’m really too tired to play. You don’t mind, do you, Dad?’
Mr Allen debated this, and finally admitted that he supposed not. The tables and chairs were set up. Mrs Allen moved at once to a chair and took up the cards avidly, showing enthusiasm for the first time. Bridge was her passion in life, her only passion. She spent every afternoon at a bridge club, and nearly every evening at a bridge table with such people as shared her passion, if not her friendship.
The other three sat down without eagerness or aversion. Mrs Allen shuffled the cards like lightning in her bony hands, and skimmed them round the table. They began to play as grimly as if they were strangers. They did not talk, and discuss, and bicker mildly, as families do when they play bridge. When it was necessary to speak, they spoke in monosyllables. Mr Allen was very slow at the game, rearranging his fan of cards over and over, deliberating for minutes on end before he made a bid, while the others waited with their eyes on their own cards, not impatiently, but in a vacuum, as if they had suspended thought and action.
Virginia sat on the sofa with Felix, and they looked at copies of the Illustrated London News and the Geographical Magazine. From the flat next door came faintly the sound of music, and people laughing.
‘The Bernsteins are at it again.’ Mrs Allen nodded significantly to her husband.
‘What’s that? At what? Oh, yes – yes. The Bernsteins.’
‘Your bid, Dad,’ Edward droned. He belched resonantly, but did not beg anyone’s pardon. He considered the belch permissible to him as a sufferer. Everyone should find it as welcome as he did.
‘I’m sorry, Virginia,’ Felix said in a low voice. ‘This is rather dull for you. I’m sure you wish you hadn’t come. I’d forgotten how dull it was,’ he admitted, ‘until I brought you here. I’ve got used to it, but you seem to – somehow show it up.’
Virginia did not know what to say. She was torn between wanting him to be loyal to his parents, and wanting him to be human enough to chafe at them.
‘Don’t apologize,’ she said. ‘You’re always trying to find something to apologize about. Remember? We nearly quarrelled about that the other night.’
This little attempt at an intimate joke fell flatly between them, and was lost in the hard-grained cushions of Mrs Allen’s sofa. It was difficult to talk responsively in the leaden atmosphere. The air seemed thick with a deadly torpor that forced itself between them and kept them apart.
‘I wish I could have taken you out instead,’ Felix said, ‘but they would have been so hurt if I hadn’t come. New Year’s Eve is one of their big nights.’
Neither Mr nor Mrs Allen looked sensitive enough to be hurt by anything more subtle than a steam-roller, and if this was a big night, imagination boggled at their ordinary ones; but Virginia said: ‘Of course. I know what it is with families.’ She had always regretted not having a family, but now she thought that perhaps she was lucky.
‘If I thought we could leave without –’ Felix began, but Mrs Allen looked round from the table with a slight frown.
‘What are you two whispering about over there?’
‘Nothing, Mother. We didn’t want to disturb your game.’
‘Well, please don’t whisper like that. It’s so common.’ Mrs Allen made deliberate markings on the score-card, printing the figures as precisely as if it were a bank ledger.
When the telephone rang, Felix got up hopefully.
‘Let Florence go,’ his mother said, without looking up from the