The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [5]
She was a reporter. She was The Press. Any moment now, something might happen, and she would be on the spot to get the story. Any one of these women, pushing their babies so arrogantly into the road under the very wheels of cars, might find herself knocked down, to reappear as a headline on the front page. ‘ACCIDENT ON PEDESTRIAN CROSSING. NORTHGATE WOMAN GRAVELY HURT. By Our Special Correspondent.’ Any one of these shops might yield a smash-and-grab raider, backing out of the door with pistol cocked, then running for his life, with Virginia after him. At any moment, a top window might fling up, and a woman’s head look out with a wild cry of: ‘Fire!’
The citizens of Northgate went calmly about their dull Monday-morning business, unaware that an ace reporter walked in their midst, waiting for them to make news.
Virginia climbed the two flights up to the offices of the Northgate Gazette, undaunted by the narrowness of the wooden stairway and the smell from the lavatory half-way up. This was a place where work came first and appearances second.
At the top of the stairs, a door with a pane of glass, opaque with dirt as well as frosting, said: ‘Inquiries’. Virginia stepped in. There was not far to step. Immediately in front of the door, a linoleum-covered counter ran from wall to wall, leaving a space only a few feet wide in which the inquirer could stand. You had to lean on the counter, or lean back against the wall. Virginia leaned on the counter. Opposite her, leaning on a table, was a fatigued girl with greasy hair and two cardigans thrown over her thin shoulders. On the wall at her side was a small switchboard, with a few wires lying on its edge, not plugged in anywhere.
She looked at Virginia without interest. Then she picked up a pencil and asked: ‘Small ad., dear?’
‘Oh, no,’ Virginia said. ‘I’ve come to work here. I’m from the Latimer College.’
‘Oh, one of those.’ The girl looked resigned. ‘You can go inside, I suppose.’ She jerked her head towards the door at her back, from behind which came the sound of a stumbling typewriter. ‘Lift the flap.’
Virginia looked at the counter. At one end, the solid front was cut away beneath a flap covered with the same mottled linoleum. At that moment the door to the back room opened, and a boorish young man in a muffler and heavy shoes clumped out, lifted the flap, ducked under, pushed past Virginia and went outside. The hole in the counter was apparently the only entrance to the offices of the Northgate Gazette. Bending her long back, Virginia went through it, hesitated at the farther door, glancing at the girl, then went through it and stood in the inner sanctum itself.
Rather, the outer sanctum, for within this room, boxed into a corner with plywood reaching three-quarters of the way to the ceiling, there was a dog-kennel of an office, with a door bearing the word Editor, and some disrespectful newspaper cartoons tacked on to it. The flimsy walls of the kennel were decorated with pencilled telephone numbers and memoranda. Up at the top, in black, indelible letters, someone had written: ‘What a lousy life!’
There was one long, littered table in the room, which was thick with the stale air of cigarette smoke and windows closed to keep the winter at bay. At the far side of the table, a stringy man with a woebegone face typed inexpertly, screwing up his eyes against the cigarette which dangled from his lip. At one end, a round-faced boy in round spectacles corrected galley proofs with impatient flicks of his pencil.
Virginia stood awkwardly, wondering whether two weeks would be enough to make her feel at home in this ungenial room. Where would she sit? There was only one empty chair, which must belong to the young man with big feet. The soft wood of the table was scarred with names and pictures inked and carved into it. She would write her name there, and in years hence, people would come to see the place where her career had started.
The stringy man looked up from his typewriter. ‘How did she get in