The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [73]
‘They trust me,’ she would say. ‘It’s a great responsibility. If I told them to shave their heads and put bacon fat on their faces at night, I believe they would do it. Come, Virginia, I know it’s long after six, but we must put this poor lady in Tunbridge Wells out of her misery. How would you feel if you were waiting to be told how to close your open pores? You wouldn’t want to wait another day for an answer just because the typist was newly married and wanted to hurry home. I’ll make up your time another day,’ she would say, adjusting her spectacles, whose frames were decorated with gilt whorls, and which she took off and put on a hundred times a day, making as much play with them as a barrister in court.
She never remembered to make up Virginia’s time, and Virginia, trying to keep her attention on the dermal problems of women in Kent, would bite her pencil and fret about getting home late. She did not worry about what Joe would think. He seldom knew what time it was. He would sometimes be asleep when she got home, or sometimes out, and surprised when he returned to find her there before him.
She worried for herself. Before she was married, the working day had never seemed too long. Now it was an endless interruption in her life with Joe. All afternoon, she would feel building up in her the excitement of seeing him again. After she had cleared away the office tea tray, it was difficult to think of anything but hurrying back to the room in the basement, where she was no longer a tired typist, but a woman with a man of her own.
The other girls in the beauty department alternately pitied and envied Virginia because she was married. Sheila would come in with a tale of some wonderful man who had taken her out, and pause in her recital of the evening’s thrills to look sadly at Virginia and say: ‘It must be awful in a way to have all that behind you.’
Christine, who grumbled at everything connected with the magazine, including its readers, would run her hands through her thin, pale hair and sigh: ‘God, I’m fed up with this life. You’re a lucky devil, Jinny, to be married and know that you could get out of it any time. I can’t think why you stay here when you could be at home running the vacuum cleaner.’
Virginia did not tell her that she had neither a vacuum cleaner nor more than one room to clean with it. No one knew where she lived. No one knew that her husband was out of work.
It was natural that Derek should come in from the art department to discuss illustrations with Jane, but Virginia thought that since she had come to this office, he visited it more frequently than necessary. Often when he came in, he would have nothing particular to say to Jane, and would drift over to Virginia’s desk and perch on the edge, fiddling with pencils and erasers, and trying to think of things to say that would make her stop working and talk to him.
Derek’s attitude towards Virginia had changed slightly since her marriage. Before, he had been admiring, but diffident. Now he was admiring, but vaguely solicitous, as if Virginia’s marriage were a form of ill health. He kept asking her if she was all right. He frequently tried to persuade her to go to lunch with him, offering her a good meal, as if he thought she needed it.
Although he never dared to say anything against Joe, it was plain that he was nervous about the marriage, and that he saw himself in the role of the trusted friend, ready to leap into the breach at the first sign of trouble.
Once, late in the evening, when the other girls had gone home, and Jane Stuart was with Miss Small, Derek came and leaned over Virginia’s typewriter, and said very solemnly: ‘I want you to know, Jinny, that I am always there if you need me.’
‘Why should I need you?’ Virginia went on typing, struggling for accuracy. Miss Stuart always