The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [37]
‘I didn’t feel immature,’ she said, remembering the entrancement of it, which had faded away like Billy’s sun-tan after they returned to London. ‘Children of divorced parents are supposed to be more mature, you know. It’s the emotional shock.’
‘Don’t throw that up at me.’ Helen frowned. ‘It’s most unfair to suggest that I have ever done anything but what was best for you. And now you threaten me with this – this tragedy.’
‘Oh, really, Helen.’ Virginia swung her legs off the bed, and went to the dressing-table.
‘Yes, tragedy is what it will be if you marry Felix. The man is settled, set in his ways. His life is half over. Yours is only just beginning. He’s successful enough, I grant you. He has got where he wants to, but do you want that? How do you know what you want?’
She talked to Virginia’s back, with histrionic gestures, which Virginia could see in the mirror. ‘Please, Jinny, please; if you have any regard for me, please listen to what I tell you. Can’t you see I’m trying to help you?’
Virginia let her talk. She did not say that she had no intention of marrying Felix, and that she had already told him so, and listened in embarrassment to his humiliated apologies for having asked her. Poor Felix. It would be kinder to him to let Helen think that it was she and not Virginia who had put an end to the mild affair.
He had vowed that he would move away from the mews, and never see Virginia again. That was a pity, because Virginia liked him; but if it made him feel better to be dramatic about it, at least that would give Helen the pleasure of thinking that she had driven him away.
‘Dear heart.’ Helen put her hand on Virginia’s shoulder. ‘Don’t leave me yet. I need you. Don’t leave me for a man who could never make you happy. You and I have been so happy together.’
Did she really believe it? She bent forward and laid her cheek alongside her daughter’s, and they stared together into the mirror, the young sceptical eyes and the scheming anxious ones.
‘You’re all I’ve got, Jinny,’ Helen said, watching her own lips move sadly. ‘You’re all I’ve got.’
*
All I’ve got, indeed! Virginia walked up Endell Street in a fury, slapping her feet on the pavement and swinging her arms.
All I’ve got. I need you. Don’t leave me. I’m only thinking of your happiness. And all the time, she knew – she knew what she was planning to do without a thought for how it would affect Virginia.
Cooing there in the bedroom, putting on that fraudulent maternal act. If she had told about it then, the whole conversation could have been different. But no, she had to do it this way. She had to have her big scene, with Virginia nowhere in the picture, Virginia in the background, trying to smile and pretend that everything was wonderful.
It would be a long time before she could forget the scene in Helen’s office, the scene from which she was now storming away, trying to cover the hurt with anger.
It had been nearly time to leave the office. Miss Braithwaite had come to Virginia’s desk and said: ‘Your mother wants to see you before you go. You can run along now, if you like. Those few letters will keep until the morning.’ Miss Braithwaite was very kind. She fussed over the girls in the correspondence department as benevolently as a sitting hen.
‘But there will be a whole heap of new ones by the morning.’ Virginia slit another envelope, and began to read a letter from a lady in Bristol, challenging her mother’s last editorial on How to Live Graciously on Three Hundred Pounds a Year.
‘I know, dear, I know. If the letters didn’t come, that would be the time to start worrying. But tomorrow is another day. Don’t let’s try to set the world on fire tonight.’ Miss Braith-waite’s kind red face smiled like the setting sun. ‘Run along to your mother,’ she said, as if she were a nurse and Virginia a child.
Grace was not in the outer office. She was in the throne-room. So were a lot of other people; all the more senior members of the staff, standing about looking a little uncomfortable, and keeping an eye on Helen.
‘What is this – a party?