The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [36]
Chapter 6
Virginia caught Helen red-handed. A few weeks after she started to work for Lady Beautiful, Miss Braithwaite, the department head, allowed her to go home earlier than usual, because she had a headache. Virginia went quickly into the flat, and straight to her bedroom. There, standing at the desk by the window was Helen. She was so startled that she turned round with the letter still in her hand.
Virginia shut the door and leaned against it. ‘Reading my letters again, Helen?’ She knew that her mother was capable of looking through her desk when she thought Virginia was out. That was why she had long ago ceased to keep a diary, and always hid or destroyed any letters that mattered.
‘How can you accuse me of that?’ Helen cried, her eyes shifting, seeking how to put the blame on Virginia. ‘What a terrible thing to say to your own mother! I came in here to dust your room, and this letter was lying out on the desk. I just this minute picked it up.’
‘Where’s the duster?’ Virginia asked. ‘Oh, well, never mind. I thought the letter was safe in that little drawer, but I see I shall have to find a new hiding-place.’
She threw her coat on the bed, and sat wearily down beside it, pushing back her hair, which the February wind had tumbled. ‘Since you have obviously read it,’ she said, ‘what do you think of it?’
‘Of course I haven’t read it.’ Helen threw the letter down. ‘I’m not interested in your love-letters.’
‘I don’t get so many love-letters that you could guess this was one without reading it,’ Virginia said patiently.
‘Well, of course, I couldn’t help seeing one or two phrases, and who it came from. That niggling little signature, with the prim little dots underneath, like a prescription.’ Helen grasped at something to deride. ‘And since you ask what I think of it, I think it’s quite absurd.’
‘Oh? Poor Felix. I thought it was a charming letter.’
Helen gave a little snort. ‘It would need to be – trying to get a girl half his age to marry him.’
‘Not quite half his age,’ Virginia said carefully. ‘Eighteen years younger, to be exact.’
‘But that’s much too big a gap! He admits that himself, right there in the letter. Oh, Jinny, it’s unthinkable. Don’t tell me you were even considering it.’
‘I don’t know why not.’ Virginia lay back on the bed, and talked to the ceiling. ‘It’s the best offer I’ve had so far. The only one, for that matter.’
‘But you’re barely twenty-one! And I wish you wouldn’t put your shoes on the bed. That counterpane was expensive. You shouldn’t be thinking of marrying anyone, and certainly not Felix.’ She pronounced his name with some contempt. She had disliked him ever since she realized that it was Virginia he was pursuing and not her.
‘Listen to me, Jinny.’ She stood by the bed with her arms folded, caressing her sleeves. ‘You think I don’t know anything about what is good for you. No daughter credits her mother with any sense. But allow me to tell you – you know nothing. Nothing, do you hear? You’re a child. No doubt you think you’re haying a very worldly love affair with the great obstetrician, but it’s a dream. You don’t know what love is.’
‘Don’t I?’ Virginia said. ‘What about Billy? Wasn’t I in love with him?’
‘Oh – Billy! My dear child, don’t be ridiculous. That was only calf love, and the intoxication of the Austrian Alps. You were both pitifully immature.’
‘How cold it was in the early morning, remember?’ Virginia closed her eyes. ‘And then when the sun came out, you wanted to peel off all your clothes and roll in the snow. But of course, Helen, you hardly ever went out of the hotel.’
Long days on the mountain with Billy in that thick white sweater which darkened his bronzed skin. Days of speed, and hilarious falls, and thick pea soup and hard bread in the huts, and the lights from the windows of the village shining softly on the trodden snow as you stacked your skis outside the Gasthof, and tramped your melting boots inside