The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [56]
‘I thought you told me that his mother died before the war.’ Helen’s eyes were crafty.
Virginia was flustered, forgetting now exactly how the story went, refusing to doubt that Joe had told her the truth. ‘Oh, well, I may have got it wrong, but anyway, it was something like that. Let’s go to bed. I’m tired of this. Poor Joe, it isn’t fair to pull him to pieces as soon as he’s out of the room.’
‘I agree.’ Spenser got up. ‘Let’s all go to bed.’
Helen remained sitting in her chair. ‘I’m not pulling anyone to pieces,’ she said. ‘I am merely showing a perfectly natural interest in someone who – listen, Jinny.’ She suddenly sounded more sincere. ‘I’ve been away for three months, with no idea what you’ve been doing. A man comes in here, and he has a key to the flat. Don’t deny it. I know he did. I heard the lock turn. What conclusions do you think I have to draw?’
‘I don’t know.’ Virginia shrugged her shoulders, trying to be calm. ‘Think what you like.’
‘I think this.’ Helen spoke with icy clearness. ‘I think you are sleeping with him.’
‘Oh, now look, for heaven’s sake –’ Spenser was red in the face. ‘You can’t talk to your daughter like that.’
‘Perhaps you should, but if you won’t, I must. Tell me the truth, Jinny. Are you?’
Virginia looked her squarely in the face. ‘No,’ she said.
Helen looked at her with equal directness. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said calmly.
*
The following evening, Virginia and Helen went with Spenser to a party at the American embassy. Virginia did not want to go. If she did not go to the club tonight, Joe might think that she was angry about his visit to the flat. She wanted to find out whether he was angry with her for the embarrassment it had caused him, and to show him that nothing was changed between them.
Since last night, she had a new feeling about Joe. She felt a responsibility towards him, the beginnings of a stubborn loyalty, which she was afraid would endure long after she had gone away from him for ever.
When she told Spenser that she did not feel well, he was so disappointed that she had to agree to go to the party. Spenser was very proud of knowing the American ambassador. He wanted his family to appreciate the acquaintance. He also wanted to show off to anyone he knew at the party the family he had acquired in England.
He introduced her to several people, but Virginia could not find much to say to any of them. To please Spenser, she was wearing one of his presents to her, a full-skirted white dress, which left her shoulders bare, and accented her young bosom; but she would much rather have been behind the bar of the club in a skirt and sweater.
This was how it would be in America. Dressing up nearly every night in the costly clothes that Spenser would buy for her, making trivial conversation with easy-mannered people for whom she could raise no enthusiasm. Perhaps she would look interestingly sad when she went to America, and people would guess that she had left her heart in England.
She did not think that she was in love with Joe, and yet, what was love, if it were not this compulsory attachment, which she had not sought and could not unloose?
Helen was enjoying herself, in a dress unbecomingly unusual enough to attract attention. She talked fluently to Spenser’s friends, and wittily enough to make him proud of her. Virginia stayed close to her mother in the crowd, since she did not know anyone else, but Helen hardly spoke to her.
When Spenser wandered off for a while, Helen worked busily on a man from the United Nations, who talked a lot of charming nonsense, and wore a tartan dinner jacket and tie, like a man in a magazine advertisement. Virginia half listened to their conversation, letting her mind wander.
‘I understand,’ said the man in the tartan tuxedo, ‘that you’re planning to go to the States pretty soon. Mr Eldredge has one of the finest estates on Long Island, I hear.’
‘I hear that too,’ Helen said. ‘You must be sure to come and see us when you get back