The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [81]
‘I didn’t know you were still doing it.’
‘Can’t afford not to, when I get the chance. We’re not millionaires.’
Virginia pulled down her mouth. ‘Don’t I know it? Joe, don’t mind me asking this, but do you – do you ever make any bets yourself?’
‘I take bets. Take them for people who want to put money on with Ed.’
‘You know what I mean. Do you ever put any money on a horse yourself?’
‘I’m not such a mug. Unless of course it’s a dead cert.’ He closed his eyes and turned his face to the wall, as if he were going to sleep.
Virginia went to the cupboard under the stairs and pulled out the suitcase with the broken lock, not caring how much noise she made. They had not touched any of Spenser’s money since Joe bought the typewriter. No need to count it really. She counted it. Six of the five-pound notes were gone. There was only forty-five pounds left.
She went back into the room and stood by the bed. ‘Joe,’ she said, ‘wake up, if you’re asleep. If you’re shamming, open your eyes.’
‘What’s the matter?’ He looked up at her with clear, wide eyes, but she knew that he had heard her go to the cupboard.
‘You know what. How could you do it, Joe? How could you do it, when we need the money so badly?’
‘I was going to double it for you.’ He looked away. ‘I would have done more than that. Got some amazing odds at the last minute. But the wrong horse won. It wasn’t my fault.’
Virginia sat on the bed beside him and put her face in her hands. ‘Not your fault, not your fault.… How can you be such a child?’
He sat up and took her hands from her face. She was not crying. She was too defeated for tears.
‘I couldn’t help it,’ he said, holding her wrists, and pulling her towards him so that her head was against his shoulder. ‘I shouldn’t have taken the money, I know, but I couldn’t help it when I got a chance like that, I was only trying to do the best thing with it.’
‘We can’t go on like this,’ she said. ‘The money’s nearly all gone. Pretty soon we’ll have nothing, except what I get. It’s hateful to be so poor.’
‘You wouldn’t have to be,’ he said hopefully, ‘if only you’d take my advice and write to that stepfather of yours.’
‘Don’t say that. You know I never would. I’ve told you, it’s the last thing I would ever do.’
‘I know, my love, I know.’ He stroked her hair. ‘You’re proud and good and brave, and I’m a swine. I let you down every time. I’m sorry,’ he kept murmuring. ‘I’m sorry.’
Then he put his arms round her and held her tightly. They sat without speaking. They were very close. There was no excitement in the contact of their bodies, only a great tenderness between them, born of her hopeless pity for his folly, and his shame at having failed her.
*
The next day, Joe went out to look for a job. He found work in a factory, drilling identical holes in endless strips of steel. He hated the long journey to Croydon, he hated the work, he hated the food in the canteen, and most of all he hated the foreman, a lugubrious old hand with an instinctive grudge against all newcomers.
‘Don’t mind old Frank,’ the men in the machine-shop told Joe. ‘He never throws you a decent word till you’ve been in the place a couple of weeks. You make a mistake in answering him back though, mate. He doesn’t like that, old Frank doesn’t. Just take it easy. He’ll soon lay off you then.’
Joe, however, continued to answer back every time the foreman criticized his work, or told him he was taking too long at the tea break, or caught him knocking off two minutes early. Other men knocked off early and got away with it. Joe was always the one who got pulled up on the way to the washroom, and sent back to his machine. By the time he got there, the whistle would blow, and the other men who had been quietly edging towards the washroom door would be at their basins before him.
It seemed that Frank was always picking on him. He would appear at Joe’s side with his gloomy moustache hanging over his lip and his faded eyes mournful. ‘Get a move on, Joe. You’re making a bottleneck. Look at all