The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [9]
Helen had not come home yet. The front door of the flat opened directly into the living-room, and when she entered in a flurry of furs, with a cross, tired face, she halted at the sight of Virginia and the nice-looking man and the cocktail glasses, and changed her expression swiftly to charmed surprise.
‘This is a neighbour of ours,’ Virginia said. ‘Doctor Allen.’
‘A doctor. Well, well.’ Helen sounded as if that were the one kind of man she wanted to see. She let her gloved hand linger in his for a moment. ‘How strange that we haven’t met before.’
‘I’ve only just come to live here,’ he said. ‘I met your daughter the other night. I beg your pardon. Have I made a mistake? Is it your daughter?’ He favoured Helen with his quizzical smile, and leaned a little forward, as if to see better. ‘You look more like sisters.’
Virginia wanted to run to a mirror to assure herself that this was not true. Was he being automatically suave, or did he really want to pay her mother a compliment? She bit at a nail. Damn Helen and the unaccountable way she had of making men say things like that.
Helen took off her hat, patted her smooth cap of hair, in which the grey streak was cunningly arranged to look as if she rather than nature intended it, and announced that she had had a desperate day and was exhausted.
Virginia went to pour her mother a drink, but Felix was there before her. They talked for a while. Helen did most of the talking, occasionally bringing Virginia into the conversation deliberately, as if she were the odd man out at the party.
She told Felix, as Virginia knew she would, that it was always fascinating to meet a doctor, because you felt that he knew so much about you. Virginia had heard her say this before to doctors, and had watched the variously baffled ways with which they dealt with it.
Felix did not attempt to deal with it. He sat looking quiet and friendly. Helen asked him what was his particular line, and when he said it was gynaecology, her eyes took on the glazed, Narcissus look with which women recognize an opportunity to talk about their insides.
Terrified that she was going to tell him about her fallopian tubes, Virginia got up and created a diversion with the cocktail shaker.
‘I’ve had three,’ Felix said. ‘I think I need something to eat How about letting me take you out to dinner?’
He was looking directly at Virginia, who was standing over him with the shaker, but a cadence of chunky bracelets from the chair behind made her involuntarily look over her shoulder, and Felix took this as a reminder that his invitation should include Helen. Or had he meant to ask her anyway? Hearing Helen’s feigned: ‘Oh, you don’t want to take me,’ and his gallant assurance that he did, Virginia felt disgustedly young. She vowed that she would have nothing more to do with men in their middle thirties until Helen was old enough to have given up the struggle.
Felix, who appeared to be fairly sophisticated, took them to a club in Knightsbridge, where the only illumination was from candles on the tables and the intermittent flames of crêpes suzettes. There was a three-piece, dark-skinned orchestra and a handkerchief of dance floor. After the smoked salmon, Felix danced with Virginia. She was disappointed to find that she was a little too tall for him, and wished that she had not been so foolish as to change her working shoes for high heels before they came out. When he danced with Helen after the tournedos rossini, their heads were at the right levels. Helen talked excessively to him all through the dance, but he smiled, and did not seem to mind. Virginia finished her glass of wine, and then drank up her mother’s, since the waiter did not come to pour her any more.
Tackling, with a forced smile, the difficult feat of trying to look as if you are having a good time when you are