The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [70]
Who said he couldn’t write a book? He would buy a typewriter next week. You could get one with only a small down payment.
*
What instinct had prompted Virginia not to tell Joe about Spenser’s wedding gift? When she had found the money at the flat, she did not think of hiding it from him. Then when she had seen Joe swinging the suitcases jauntily down the basement steps, so pleased with himself because he had given the taxi-driver a lordly tip out of the last small change in his pocket, Virginia had known that she would not tell him that he was carrying a bundle of five-pound notes.
Some instinct had warned her to be cautious, and after their disturbing talk in the kitchen, she was thankful that she had obeyed it. Even if he were going to write a book and make hundreds of pounds from it, as he believed, they would have to be careful, if he was not going to look for a job meanwhile.
The two of them could only just live on her earnings from the magazine. They must save the hundred pounds for emergencies, and Virginia did not think that Joe knew how to save.
She did not blame him for that. It was a part of his nature which he could not help, because it came from never having enough money. Poverty made one type of person over-cautious. The other type, Joe’s type, were made reckless by poverty. If money came to them, they wanted the immediate enjoyment of spending it without fear of what they would do when it was gone. They had been poor once; they could be poor again.
Virginia did not mind that Joe was like that. She had known it before she married him. She did not mind any more that he had given up his job at the club and was disinclined to look for another. Minding about it would not change him, so she had decided not to let herself mind, any more than she would let herself mind that he took it for granted that she would be glad to work for both of them.
She was glad to get back to the magazine office. She knew that as soon as she stepped into the splendid antechamber of Lady Beautiful, and was greeted with the full-lipped, toothy smiles of the girls who decorated it.
One of the girls was Nora, in a new poodle haircut and a cotton dress with a boned, pushed-up bodice. ‘Is it true you got married, Jinny?’ she asked at once.
‘How do you know?’
‘Didn’t you think it would be all round the office? What’s he like? We’re all dying of curiosity. Why didn’t you tell us about it?’
‘I didn’t know myself until just before it happened.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought you were such a fast worker,’ Nora said admiringly. ‘Or else he was. What’s his name?’
‘Joe Colonna.’ Nora would have to know sooner or later.
‘Do I know him?’ Nora’s eyes were startled, but she affected not to recognize the name.
‘You ought to. You spent the evening at his flat. Oh – with me and Derek, of course.’ Virginia smiled. ‘But perhaps you and he never got as far as exchanging names.’
‘No.’ Nora patted her hair and spoke distantly. ‘No, I don’t recall that we did.’ She watched Virginia slyly, wondering how much Virginia knew, and how much she minded about what she knew.
Virginia would have liked to say: ‘I know you spent the night there, but I’m prepared to forget it, if you are.’ However, even without the avid interest of the other two girls in the office, she could not say it to Nora. Nora’s immorality was conventional. She would think it the worst of taste. She would be more shocked at Virginia for saying it, than Virginia was shocked at Nora for having stayed with Joe.
‘Well,’ Nora said grudgingly, ‘congratulations, old kid. I hope you know what you’re doing. What are you doing here, for a start? I thought you’d chucked the job.’
‘Just another office rumour,’ Virginia said. ‘Of course I haven’t. People can get married and go on working, can’t they?’
‘Oh, surely, surely,’ Nora said. ‘Most of them have to these days, if they want to eat.’
Virginia said coldly: ‘I’m not starving,