The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [38]
Helen stood up when she saw her. ‘There you are, Jinny. We’re only waiting for you.’ She seemed excited, but in complete command of herself and the situation. ‘I am going to make a tiny speech,’ she gave a tuneful little laugh, half deprecatory, ‘if you will all bear with me for the briefest of moments.’ She clasped her hands at chest level, and looked round her audience with her head poised.
Virginia saw Spenser Eldredge standing behind her. He was wearing a chunky, grey chalk-stripe suit with a white carnation in the buttonhole. He looked serious, as if he were giving someone away at a wedding. A wedding! Virginia came out of her daze and realized what her mother was saying.
‘- I thought it better to tell you all together like this, I know how rumours go about in an office, and I want you all to know the truth – and to congratulate me, if you will. I am going to marry Mr Eldredge. I am very happy about it, and I hope that you will be too.’
Helen’s voice held a theatrical throb. She was enjoying herself enormously. Spenser stood with his head jutting forward, betraying no emotion. What he thought about being exhibited like a prize bull was no more apparent than what the bull thinks.
‘Yes, I shall be leaving you all too soon.’ Dressed in her green Dior for the occasion, with the best jewellery she possessed, Helen floated along with her speech, so word and gesture perfect that it was obvious that she had spent a long time practising before a mirror. ‘I have been here longer than most of you, longer, perhaps, than any of you, with the exception of my dear Judy.’ She flung a hand and a smile in the direction of Judy, who stood four-square in the front row with her feet planted and her arms folded, like a mill-worker at a protest meeting.
‘I just wanted to take this opportunity of thanking all of you who have worked so hard, and I hope so happily with me to make Lady Beautiful what it is. To thank you for giving of your best, for your cooperation and your unfailing loyalty, which has meant so much to me during both good and bad times alike.’
‘Save us, the same old stuff.’ Judy looked round to see how the others were taking it, and noticed Virginia. ‘Sorry, Jinny, I didn’t see you.’ Then she saw Virginia’s face. ‘My God,’ she whispered, ‘didn’t you know? How could she do that? What a way to break it to your daughter!‘
‘It’s all right.’ Virginia managed to smile. ‘I knew about it. I knew this was coming.’
She had not known. She had not thought of Spenser as anything more than a temporary meal-ticket at the Savoy; and her mother had not given her the smallest hint. She thought of her telephoning sweetly to Miss Braithwaite: ‘Would you ask Jinny to come along to my office for a moment?’ Helen had planned it like this to give Virginia no chance for argument until the announcement was made, her resignation handed in, even the wedding date perhaps already fixed.
All I’ve got, indeed! Virginia tramped past the Prince’s Theatre, avoiding cars and walkers by instinct, not properly seeing them. Why, if Helen had this planned, had she made such a fuss about Felix? It would have been more natural for her to have grasped at the opportunity to have Virginia out of the way. It could not be all jealousy. She did not need Felix now that she had Eldredge and his estate on Long Island, which would be of much more value to her.
Vanity? Perhaps. That too. Helen was the one who was getting married. She was the queen of the hour. She would not have the thunder of her wedding stolen by a presumptuous daughter coming up with a wedding of her own.
Virginia was to remain a daughter, not to become a rival married woman. Helen wanted everything – everything for herself. She wanted Eldredge, but she wanted to keep Virginia too, to drag her off to America, no doubt, as if she were a steamer trunk, labelled: The property of Mrs Spenser Eldredge.
It would serve her mother right if she ran straight back to Felix and said: