The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [53]
He went away from the club before eleven, leaving William to look after the bar. Joe was nowhere near being intoxicated, but he had drunk enough to feel restless. He could not stand the club and Mary’s simpering, smutty songs any longer. He went up to Bloomsbury, and walked into the mews where Virginia lived, with his hands in his pockets, kicking at a stone.
The lights were on in the front room, and the curtains were not drawn. Joe stood in the shallow gutter that ran down the centre of the mews, and looked up, whistling under his breath. Virginia passed across the window in silhouette between him and the light, and he clenched his hands in his pockets, feeling her on the skin of them. Was she alone? The window was closed, and he could hear nothing. He stood there for a few minutes, feeling shut out, feeling like a boy outside a sweetshop window. Then his fingers touched the key that was still in his pocket, and he pulled it out, pushed open the outside door of the building, and went up the stairs.
Outside the flat, he stood in the hall and listened to the voices. When he opened the door, they all stopped talking, and the silence cut across the conversation like a knife.
They were in evening dress. They were all staring at him. For a second, the tableau was motionless, fixed like a stereoscopic picture on Joe’s eyes. The big man in the loose dinner jacket, cradling a goblet of brandy. The woman in the fancy green dress, her hand flown up to the pearls at her neck, as if Joe had come to steal them. Virginia sitting on the arm of a chair in a flowing black dress with her hair brushed back from her ears, cool and lovely, his girl – untouchable.
In a moment Virginia had risen and come quickly to him with her hands out, and the frozen tableau was broken up into sound and movement. Virginia stood between him and the other two, smiling at him. Her mother and the man in the dinner jacket were saying something that he could not hear.
‘Jin, I haven’t even got a tie on.’ He tried to laugh, aware of her scent, and the softness of the carpet under his feet, and the comfortable feminine decoration of the room. ‘I didn’t know you’d be all dressed up.’
‘We’ve been out to dinner. It doesn’t matter.’ She took his hand. ‘Come in. Don’t stand there.’ She had recovered herself rapidly. ‘Helen,’ she said, leading him forward as if he were a dog, ‘this is Joe Colonna. My mother, Joe, and this is my stepfather, Mr Eldredge.’
‘How do you do, Mr Colonna?’ Virginia’s mother said, pronouncing the words meticulously. ‘Forgive me if I appear boorishly inquisitive, but may I ask how you got in?’
‘The door wasn’t shut properly,’ Virginia said quickly. ‘I came in last, I remember. You know you have to push it hard to catch the lock.’
‘Do you?’ Helen turned her face to Virginia, but continued to look at Joe out of the sides of her eyes.
Having looked Joe over carefully, Mr Eldredge pushed himself out of his chair and held out his hand. ‘Glad to know you, Mr Colonna,’ he said huskily. ‘Nice of you to come and see us. We’ve heard something about you from Jinny here. Not too much. You know what girls are with their parents, but it’s good to have the chance to know you. What can I get you to drink?’
Joe hesitated. What would be the right thing to ask for?
‘He’d like a Scotch I expect,’ Virginia said, knowing that Joe had been drinking whisky.
‘Surely.’ Mr Eldredge ambled to the cabinet by the wall. Virginia smiled at him gratefully, glanced at her mother, who was swinging a foot, and told Joe to sit on the sofa. She sat beside him, not touching him, trying not to look at him. He did not look at her. He took the glass from Mr Eldredge, accepted an American cigarette, and sat back, hoping he looked at ease.
God, but he wished he had not come! This would be the end of him with Jin, and, now that he had seen her with her family, he did not know that he cared. Damn them, why did they have to be all dressed up like this? They might have done it on purpose to make him feel a lout.
His jacket