The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [43]
She was not Derek’s, Joe decided, as they came into the room and took off their coats. The short girl wore a tight, flaming red sweater, and had a small, greedy mouth. Derek went for the safe, amenable girls, who dressed inconspicuously, and did not demand too much from him.
The other girl though, Virginia – she did not look like Derek’s type either. She was sitting on the divan with her long legs crossed and her eyes and her big mouth smiling. She sat easily, as if she were at home, not primly and on her guard, as Derek’s other girls would have sat in the den of a strange man, whom Derek had undoubtedly described as dangerous.
Nora, the short girl, was sitting on the floor by the fire, and would take off her shoes any minute now. They drank the first bottle of wine out of the thick, squat tumblers which were the only glasses Joe possessed. Derek, with his fair hair already flopping over his round face, sat on the bed beside Virginia and took her hand. Joe noticed that she immediately asked him for a cigarette, so as to have an excuse to take the hand away.
‘Come and sit by me, Joe.’ Nora pulled another cushion on to the floor, and patted it.
Oh, hell, Joe thought. She’s been told she’s for me, and she can’t even wait until after supper to show that she knows it. Towards the end of the evening, she would make some excuse, if Joe did not do it for her, to get Derek and Virginia out of the place without her. Making love to her would be too easy and too familiar. She was like a hundred other greedy little girls.
‘No,’ he said. ‘The spaghetti’s done. I don’t want to spoil it. It’s the only thing I can cook.’
‘You don’t need to cook anything else when you can make spaghetti like that,’ Derek said eagerly. ‘Wait till you taste it, girls. You never had anything like it.’
He admired Joe enormously. He could never quite understand how he had made friends with him, nor how he had managed to keep the friendship. Joe was the racy element in Derek’s otherwise trim existence, the spice which peppered his unad-venturous life, which was divided between the art department of Lady Beautiful and a cosy family circle in Buckhurst Hill.
Derek had been with the magazine for nearly eight years. Joe never seemed to be in the same job for more than two months at a time. He had been running some kind of fly-by-night club when Derek first met him. Derek had drunk ingenuously and passed out. His friends has deserted him. Joe had picked him up, allowed him to spend the night in his own room, and given him kippers for breakfast. It was not this room. Joe had lived in a variety of places since Derek had known him, and he had been in and out of a variety of jobs. Derek was not even sure what Joe was doing now. Something to do with a small theatre club, he thought, but he was not certain. Joe would not always tell you what he was doing.
‘Not that it’s anything shady,’ Derek had assured Virginia in the office when he had suggested this party. ‘There’s nothing wrong about Joe. He’s the salt of the earth; so do come. He said he felt like cooking spaghetti, and he asked me to bring a couple of girls, so of course I thought of you.’ He squeezed Virginia’s hand behind a filing-case. She was working in the editorial office now. ‘I’ve asked that little girl, Nora, the new blonde in the reception-room. She looks like Joe’s type,’ he added, making it clear where Virginia stood if the party resolved into pairs.
The spaghetti was a great success. They all ate enormously, and the second bottle of wine was finished so quickly that Joe wished that he had bought another at the expense of his lunch tomorrow. He was pleased with himself about the supper, and strangely exhilarated, as if the rough Algerian wine had been champagne.
The exhilaration was not engendered by Nora, who was back by the fire again, trying to look like a kitten. It was the other girl – Virginia. She was candid and young and