The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [44]
This made Joe think: I’ll bet she looks good in a swim-suit. But the summer was a long way off. She would be gone from him long before that, back to her own clean and probably prosperous world, where people like Joe did not exist.
They played the gramophone and danced on a few square feet of worn carpet. When Joe danced with Nora, still without her shoes to make herself seem very small and cuddly, it was just as he had expected it would be. Her body pressing against his felt almost as familiar as if he were married to it.
When he danced with Virginia, it was different. She danced gracefully, much better than he did. Joe did not like anyone to do anything better than he could, so he stopped dancing with her quite soon; but the feel of her remained with him after they were apart. She had not nestled against him, and she had not held herself back. She had just felt so beautifully alive in his arms that he had a sudden impulse to tense his fingers and hurt her.
He went into the kitchen for the whisky, weakening in his resolve not to bring it out tonight. He needed it, if Nora was going to get what she was looking for.
They drank half the bottle of whisky. Derek was getting a little tight. His hair hung in his eyes like a sheep-dog. He put his arm round Virginia’s waist, and she was kind enough, and pleasantly uncaring enough, to let it stay there.
‘Let’s do hypnotism,’ Derek said. ‘Try it on the girls, Joe. You didn’t know he was a hypnotist, did you? He is.’ Derek nodded solemnly. ‘Best you ever saw. Remember that girl at Alexander’s, Joe? Boy, you put her right out. I never saw anything like it.’
Nora squealed with delight. ‘Oh, do let’s!’ She wriggled on the cushion.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Joe murmured, lying on the floor with his head in Nora’s lap. ‘Not tonight. I couldn’t.’
Hypnotizing the half-drunk girl at Alexander’s had been a joke. Joe had only pretended to know something about hypnotism, and the fact that the girl had gone off in an intoxicated swoon was nothing to do with him.
‘But you must!’ Nora pushed his shoulders upright. ‘Do me first. Hypnotize me. I’ll bet you could.’
‘All right.’ Joe stood up. It might be amusing, and at least it would focus Virginia’s attention on him. ‘I’ll do Jinny,’ he said. ‘She’s a better subject.’
‘No, she’s not. Do me. Please, please, darling Joey, do me.’ Nora jumped to her feet and hopped up and down. ‘You can do her after, if you like. I want to be first.’ She pouted at him.
Joe said: ‘O.K.,’ and pushed her in the chest, so that she sat back in the chair facing the fire.
‘I must have a key.’
‘A key?’ Nora wriggled in the chair. ‘What for? What are you going to do?’ She giggled. ‘Good-bye, all, in case I never come out of the trance.’
Joe took Derek’s front-door key from him. It was a Yale key, with a hole at the top. Standing in front of Nora, he held the key before his face, and ordered her to shut one eye, and look through the hole of the key into the pupil of his eye.
Virginia laughed. ‘It looks like a lorgnette.’
‘Be quiet,’ Joe said. ‘It’s not supposed to be funny. I can’t do it if anyone makes a noise.’
Part of the act was the building up of a sinister, staring silence, during which he gazed unblinkingly at Nora, who sat with one eye screwed up, gripping the arms of the chair.
‘Look at me,’ Joe ordered, in a deep, intoning voice. ‘Look at my eye. You can’t look anywhere but into my eye. You are going to sleep … to sleep … to sleep …’
Nora squealed, and kicked her feet up. ‘Are you there, Jinny?’ she asked, still looking at Joe. ‘Don’t go away, anyone. I’m afraid I’m going to be seduced.’
‘That shouldn’t frighten you,’ Joe said in his normal voice. Then intoning again: ‘Be quiet now. Be quiet. You are going to sleep … to