The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [8]
‘Well,’ Virginia knew how the words were going to sound and be received in this pretentious room, ‘it’s called the Northgate Gazette.’
‘The Northgate Gazette.’ Her mother cocked her head as if she had not heard aright, and sounded out the words as if they were a foreign language. ‘That sounds quite enchanting. Tell us more. Stand still, Jinny, and don’t fidget about the room. Tell us about it. First, what is Northgate?’ She put inverted commas round the name, as if it were a word Virginia had made up.
Virginia glanced at the others. ‘It’s a suburb. One of the outer suburbs.’
Seeing Helen’s critically-raised eyebrows, Judy wanted to say something that would enable her indirectly to oppose Helen. ‘That’s grand for you, Jinny,’ she said, clasping her notebook to her wide chest. ‘It will be a wonderful experience. You’re reporting for them, is that it? What’s their circulation? Some of these local papers have a huge readership.’
‘This isn’t very big, I don’t think,’ Virginia admitted, ‘judging from the size of the staff.’ She had to be honest with Judy, but when she saw the amused look on her mother’s face she began to exaggerate stubbornly, until the Northgate Gazette began to look like a rival to the Manchester Guardian.
Helen was neither deceived nor impressed. ‘A job is a job, I suppose,’ she said. ‘It will keep you in nylons, at least. What are they paying you?’
‘I told you, it’s only part of the training. They don’t pay anything.’
‘I see.’ Helen’s patronizing lilt closed the subject. When they went out to lunch Helen did not ask any more about the Northgate Gazette, and Virginia did not want to talk about it.
*
Later that day, as Virginia turned into the archway at the entrance to the mews, a man turned into it from the opposite direction. He was wearing a black overcoat and a new black hat, which had not yet accommodated itself to his small head. It was the man she had met the other night, the doctor who had stopped working on his car to look at her.
‘Hullo.’ His face had been set, as if he were thinking while he walked, but it dissolved into a smile when he saw her. ‘Going home?’
‘Yes.’
‘So am I.’
They could think of nothing more to say until they reached his doorway. He did not immediately take out his key, and she thought that he was trying to think of something to say to detain her.
‘Do you have a job?’ he asked. ‘I mean, are you on your way home from work?’
Virginia told him briefly about the college and the Northgate Gazette. He had tolerant brown eyes and a slightly crooked mouth, which tipped his whole face a little to one side when he smiled. She thought that he might be quite good-looking without the overbearing hat, which sat too low on his head, with the brim too straight, like the hat of a wooden figure from Noah’s Ark.
‘So you got your first job today,’ the doctor said. ‘Don’t you think this calls for a celebration? Would you – no, darn it, there’s Robert. I was going to ask you if you would come up and have a drink, but the chap I live with is working on a paper. We’ve only got one room, and he can’t bear it if I ask people in.’
‘Come up to our flat then,’ Virginia said. Why not? Helen would not mind. She never minded seeing a personable man.
Panting a little to keep up the pace which was Virginia’s normal rate of going upstairs, the man told her that his name was Felix Allen, and emboldened by talking to her swiftly-climbing back, he added breathlessly that he had hoped he would see her again after the other night.
When they went into the flat, and he took off his coat and hat and sat rather gracefully on the sofa in his well-fitting striped doctor’s suit, she saw that he was indeed quite attractive in an unsensational way. His hair was educated by good barbering, and he looked very clean. His crooked smile gave his face a slightly whimsical air, which made the things he said seem more witty than they were.
Virginia guessed that he was neither whimsical or witty, but really quite earnest. He had a quiet, deep voice, which must work wonders with his female