The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [34]
‘Isn’t she in bed?’
‘She doesn’t go to bed until we do.’
‘It’s probably for me.’
‘If it is, she will tell you.’
Florence stood in the doorway and looked at them all before she said: ‘It’s for you, Mr Felix.’
Felix came back into the drawing-room, trying to look regretful. ‘I’m sorry, Mother – Dad. That was the hospital. That ovarian cyst woman doesn’t look too good. They think we may have to do a laparotomy.’
Virginia panicked. Was he going to leave her here?
‘You’d better come too, Virginia,’ he said. ‘I’ll drop you at a taxi rank.’
‘Miss Martin can stay here,’ Mrs Allen said. ‘Edward and Beryl can take her home.’
‘No,’ said Felix, and Virginia could have hugged him for standing up to his mother. ‘It’s out of their way. Get your coat, Virginia. I’ve got to hurry.’
Mrs Allen scarcely looked up from her game to shake Virginia’s hand stiffly and offer Felix her cheek. ‘I’m sorry that you had to spoil the party,’ she told him, as if she suspected him of inventing the woman with the ovarian cyst.
‘Did you invent her?’ Virginia asked, when they were outside the door of the flat.
‘God, no, though I’m sure she wishes I had, the way she feels. Here, what on earth –?’
Like a bird released from a cage, Virginia had started to run and swoop down the long corridor, jumping up to touch the lights in the low ceiling, running back and making him run too, dragging him with flapping overcoat towards the lift. It was so good to be free! All the stale boredom of the last three hours was bursting within her to be let out, swept away, in great gusts of physical energy.
‘Oh, Felix,’ she said, clutching his arm, as they went out into the raw, clouded night of Finchley Road. ‘Smell that air! I wish you weren’t in a hurry, and we could walk. Oh, doesn’t the air smell good!’
‘Smells like fog to me,’ he said a little dourly, as he started the car.
‘Don’t be offended. I didn’t mean it like that. You know I had a lovely time, but oh, it’s New Year’s Eve, and – look, Felix! Look at those people!‘
As they passed the Underground station, a group of revellers burst from the depth in paper hats, waving rattles, punching each other, shouting and singing their way across the road in a straggling line, ignoring cars. The sight was so invigorating after her three hours in the tomb that Virginia leaned out of the window to laugh and shout at the tipsy people. They shouted back, and one of the men broke away and tried to run after the car. He fell flat on his face and lay in the middle of the road, kicking his legs and trying to raise his paper crown.
‘London on New Year’s Eve.’ Virginia drew in her head. ‘I wouldn’t be anywhere else. Oh, I love London. There’s nowhere in the world so solid and so crazy at the same time. Look, Felix – look at that taxi! The man’s trying to climb on the roof. Look – they’re having a party in that house. What a huge room – and thousands of people. It looks such fun from outside, but probably if you were in there, it wouldn’t be much fun at all.’
It was exciting to drive through London on New Year’s Eve. As they came to Oxford Street and crossed into Regent Street, the excitement increased. There were more people in the streets, all at once a crowd of them, all going the same way in a jostling mob, shouting and cheering as if it were the end of the war all over again.
The traffic became thicker and slowed to a crawl. Men and girls in open cars stood up and screamed at strangers. People threw things, threw laughter at each other, as they were borne along on the tide of hypnotized gaiety towards the magnet which gathers to itself the fervour of London’s gala days – Piccadilly Circus, with the policemen part of the comedy, and the bonfires already burning at the corner of the Haymarket.
Felix had driven into the congestion before he realized that he could not get out of it. Traffic was almost at a standstill. The mass of cars stopped for five minutes, moved for five seconds, then stopped again. Horns blared, but chiefly to make noise. No one was going anywhere. They were out to ride on the roofs of taxis,