The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [71]
She pushed open the wide polished door, and walked down the passage past the office doors with their glimpses of activity, past the door through which, with any luck, she would soon be going in and out again, belonging as much as anyone.
She felt at home here. She had trained and worked for this. If only one of them was going to have a job, it was sensible that it should be her. She had a better chance than Joe. He did not seem to be trained for anything in particular. He had never stayed long enough in any one job to learn it properly. He could do many things sketchily, but none well. Perhaps writing would be his craft, and this book the stepping stone to achievement. She would do all she could to encourage and help him.
Miss Adelaide Small, the editor who had replaced Virginia’s mother, was a dry, business-like woman who wasted no words, and no sympathy on anyone who made a mistake. She told people what she thought of them concisely, whether what she thought was good or bad. The staff much preferred this to Helen’s elaborate speeches, which had wasted their time, and had come in the end to the same thing as Miss Small’s brisk pronouncements. Either you were right, or you were wrong.
‘So you want your job back?’ she shot at Virginia, as soon as Grace had closed the door by her usual scrupulous method of hanging on to the handle on the other side, so that not even the click of the lock should disturb the editorial muse. ‘Well, you can’t have it. Frances is in your place on editorial. I’ve been waiting for a chance to move her up.’
‘Oh.’ Virginia stood before the great desk, feeling like a schoolgirl at the mercy of a headmistress. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Small. I know I shouldn’t have gone off like that without even coming to explain.’
‘You left a lot of work unfinished, if you remember.’ Miss Small’s handsome face was not stern. It was merely impassive, as if it were too well-organized to betray her thoughts by any change of expression.
‘I know. I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t even ask you to let me come back. I’ll understand if you haven’t a place for me.’
‘Who said I hadn’t? Don’t put words into my mouth, Virginia. It’s a bad habit. It sometimes makes people change their minds about being nice.’
Virginia said nothing. Miss Small studied her for a few moments. Then she tightened her mouth into her controlled version of a smile, and said: ‘So you ran away to get married.’
‘I got married, yes, but I didn’t run away,’ Virginia said quickly. There was no reason why anyone at the office should know that.
‘Yes, you did. I’m not criticizing you. It’s none of my business. That’s what I told your mother when she wanted to waste my time discussing it over the telephone.’
‘My mother rang you up?’
‘Last Friday morning. She wanted to know if I knew where you were. I told her that I presumed you were on your honeymoon, in which case it was immaterial where you were. The poor woman had some wild idea of rescuing you “before it was too late”. I don’t remember her exact words, but it was all depressingly reminiscent of the kind of women’s magazines that used to be published before things like L.B. were thought of.’
‘How could she tell you all that? She hardly knows you.’
‘Had to tell someone, I suppose. You know what women are,’ Miss Small said, as if she were discussing another sex. ‘I had to call Grace on the other phone, and ask her to cut in with a long-distance call. Callous, but after all, I am your editor, not your spiritual mentor.’
‘You mean you were my editor.’
‘No, no.’ Adelaide Small’s face crumpled into kindness, the lines deeply etched. ‘Don’t be so proud. I’ll take you on again. I like your work. You can’t have your old job,’ her face was once more business-like, ‘but I’ll fit you in under the beauty editor. She’s short of assistants. I take it your mother has gone to America, or you wouldn’t be in London.’
‘Yes. I called the airport. She must have left soon after she talked to you.’
‘Then I have not lived in vain,’ Miss Small said with satisfaction. ‘I told her to go. You