The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [89]
It was just that she wanted someone to talk to. The long terraces of Eaton Square would not have seemed so long if she were walking with someone, discussing her thoughts with someone who would abandon their own thoughts for long enough to listen to hers. There were so many things she could not talk to Joe about, and the chief of them was Joe himself.
It was like that at the beginning of all marriages, Virginia supposed. That was why wives clung to their old girl-friends, or made new ones among the new neighbours, or irritated their husbands by continually wanting to run to their parents. If Helen had been in London, Virginia would not have run to her; but if she only knew where her father was, she would go to him.
She had thought about him many times since that unexpected, tantalizing moment of seeing him outside the old house on the hill. What had happened to him? Where had he gone, with his dear, disfigured wife and the little boy, and the baby? Had he really been in difficulties, as the solicitor had said, and if so, how had he got out of them?
The more Virginia had thought of him after her rebellion against Helen, the more she understood how much she had missed in growing up without her father. She had found him for a moment, for just long enough to realize that she needed him, and then he was almost immediately lost to her; but the need remained. She did not need advice or money from him. He probably would have been able to give neither; but he would have been someone to talk to.
If it was only money she needed, she could write to Spenser, and he would send it at once, probably double what she asked; but Virginia had promised herself never to ask him. She would not give Helen the satisfaction of seeing her disparaging predictions fulfilled.
On the surface, Helen was reconciled with Virginia. After Virginia had written to her three times, Helen had at last replied, and they now exchanged letters fairly regularly, dispassionate letters that were not like those between a mother and daughter. Helen wrote about all the parties, and the travelling, and the clothes and the people and the theatres, but she never mentioned Virginia’s marriage. Virginia wrote about people and events at the office, and things that were happening in London, but she never mentioned Joe.
At Sloane Square, Virginia took a bus to the turning off the King’s Road that led to home. Soon it would not be home any longer. She was out of a job and out of a home, and now – it seemed that everything was happening at once – on the floor of the passage where Mollie had thrown it downstairs, was a telegram from Tiny’s sister, saying that the old nurse was dying, and asking Virginia to come at once.
*
‘Bit late to start out for Epsom,’ Joe said. ‘Go tomorrow. I’m taking you out to dinner tonight, to make up for what I did to you yesterday.’ He touched Virginia’s mouth with his fingers. The lip was still swollen. ‘You should put ice on it,’ he said, as detachedly as if he had not caused the damage himself.
‘It’s all right. And you don’t have to take me out to dinner to make me forget about it.’ The bruised lip made her smile crooked. ‘I’ve forgotten. But I’ll take the dinner anyway. Tomorrow. I must go to Tiny tonight. She must be very ill for her sister to send a wire. They’re both of them frightened of things like telegrams. Tomorrow might be too late.’
‘If she’s as ill as all that, she won’t know you, so what’s the point of going?’
‘I must. She was my nanny. She was wonderful to me. You don’t understand about nannies, because you never had one. But people who’ve had nannies never forget them, not all their lives. When you’re little, it’s like having something – well, not better than a mother, but something more your own than a mother. Mothers have husbands. They have friends. They go out to parties, or to a job, like Helen. Nannies never go anywhere. The old ones, like Tiny, have no interests except you.
You take everything from them, greedily, because you adore them. They’re safe and comfortable and always the same, but you don’t