The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [6]
‘Under the flap,’ Virginia said. ‘I’m from the Latimer College. I’m to work here for two weeks.’
‘Oh,’ said the man, going back to his typing, ‘one of those.’
‘You’d better see the old man,’ the boy said, more kindly. He nodded at the door with the cartoons.
‘What shall I – shall I just go in?’ Virginia was accustomed to the office of Lady Beautiful where it would be unforgivable, if not impossible, for any outsider to penetrate the phalanx of immaculate receptionists and secretaries, who guarded the elegant secrets of her mother’s office.
‘Sure,’ said the boy, in passable American. ‘Help yourself.’
Virginia opened the kennel door, which was very light, and opened with disconcerting speed. Inside, at a desk which took up most of the space, was a middle-aged man, with deep indigestion lines running from his bony nose to his mouth, and a long, shining bald head, with a pair of black-rimmed spectacles slung up on it.
‘I’m from the Latimer College.’ Virginia began her piece once more.
‘Oh,’ said the editor, crossing something out, ‘one of those.’
The lovely people did not seem glad to see her. Virginia wondered what could be the favours for which they so grudgingly obliged Mr Deems.
Then the editor looked up at her and smiled. It was a difficult smile, as if the muscles of his face rebelled against it, and Virginia was grateful that he had achieved it for her. Because he was a newspaper editor, and he was to be her employer for two weeks, and he had smiled encouragingly at her, she felt a rush of admiration for him, and pledged herself to please him.
‘Well, I’m sorry, Alice,’ the editor said quite pleasantly. ‘There’s nothing for you today. We go to press on Fridays, so things haven’t begun to warm up round here yet.’
Virginia felt blank with anticlimax. All she could think of to say was: ‘My name’s not Alice. It’s Virginia. Virginia Martin.’
‘No doubt it is,’ said the editor. ‘I call them all Alice. It saves remembering a new name each time. Come back tomorrow. You can make the Bovril, or something.’
‘But I –’
‘I told you.’ He began to be less pleasant. ‘There’s nothing for you today.’
Virginia went into the other room. The feeble lock on the door did not close properly, and the voice from the kennel yelled: ‘Shut that flaming door!’
She looked at the clock, from which a wire was looped into the ceiling light along with another wire from a lamp, in a perilous arrangement of plugs and knotted cords. It was only eleven o’clock. The important day had fallen away to nothing before it even began.
*
The entrance to the offices of Lady Beautiful was designed to impress. Thick carpets, pale polished woodwork, a faint aura of perfume, and an assortment of glossy girls in sweaters combined to give the impression that life was in truth the easy and glamorous thing that the stories and articles in the magazine would have its readers believe. The reception-room was like the cover of Lady Beautiful, a lovely and shining thing designed to attract the eye and dispose the mind in favour of what lay beyond.
Virginia nodded to those of the girls she knew – they were always changing in the reception-room – and walked through the wide satiny door to what lay beyond. The carpeted corridor continued to breathe elegance and success, but Virginia knew that if she were to open any of the doors on either side, it would be like passing from a grand restaurant through the swing-door into the kitchen. As the doors opened and shut to the comings and goings of men and women, most of whom smiled at Virginia, she could see the desks and typewriters and filing-cabinets and drawing-boards, and ceiling-high piles of back issues of the magazine. She longed for the day when she would be behind one of those doors, sitting at one of those desks, using one of those constantly-ringing telephones.
It was not that Virginia had a consuming passion to work on a women’s magazine. She had set her sights on it because there was a chance for her in this place, and she might as well succeed here as anywhere else. Her lively ambition