The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [91]
The last one was of herself and Joe, taken at a race-meeting. The wind was blowing Virginia’s hair sideways. She was clutching her coat and laughing. Joe had his arm through hers, with his head up and his white teeth showing in an exuberant smile. Virginia went over to look at the picture. There was a crowd moving in the background, and one woman had seen Joe’s friend with the camera, and had stopped to make a doltish face at it. Virginia and Joe looked very gay against the bovine, preoccupied crowd. It had been a happy day, carefree and loving, one of the days when Virginia and Joe both felt that there was nothing in the world they wanted more than each other.
A movement of the bedclothes made her look round. Tiny was awake, moistening her dry lips with a little munching movement, blinking her misted eyes.
‘You still here?’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have dozed off. Mustn’t waste your time.’
‘I’ve been looking at the pictures,’ Virginia said. ‘How did you like this one?’
‘Nice.’ Tiny nodded her head. ‘I said to Hilda, I always knew you’d marry someone with a bit of life in him.’
‘I’ll have to bring Joe down to see you,’ Virginia said, doubting that she could ever persuade Joe to come.
‘No time now.’ Tiny moved her head gently from side to side on the pillow. ‘That doctor knows. He won’t tell me, but he knows.’
Virginia went to the bed and took Tiny’s hand. The fingers were bent into the palm like a claw. ‘Don’t go yet, Tiny. I thought you were going to stay and look after my children.’
‘No, thank you. I don’t want no more babies. I’ve stayed long enough to see you settled and happy. That’s enough. Are you happy, dearie?’ She turned her moist, loose-lidded eyes without moving her head.
‘Very happy.’ Virginia squeezed the crumpled hand.
‘That old angel still looking out for you?’ Tiny said more sharply, as if she were ready to tell the angel his business if he were negligent.
‘The angel?’ Virginia looked blank. How could he be looking out for her when everything was going wrong?
‘It’s ups and downs,’ Tiny said. ‘I know what life is. Just don’t forget he’s there, that’s all.’
Virginia was a little girl again, in bed in the dark nursery, afraid of nightmares. The comfort of Tiny’s simple belief was calming her, lightening the haunted darkness with the promise that everything would be all right.
‘Where’s your angel, Tiny?’ She smiled to find herself talking as she and Tiny used to when she was a child, and the angels were accepted facts.
‘Over there by the washstand,’ Tiny said comfortably. ‘Waiting for me.’
Chapter 11
‘No thank you,’ said the stout woman with the face of a bulldog. ‘If I can’t take it home to try it on, I don’t want it. I don’t feel like taking my clothes off today.’
‘I’m sorry, madam,’ Virginia said, and Miss Sunderland paused in her sorting of brassières, and listened without looking, her underslung jaw slightly agape. ‘We never send anything out on approval.’
Miss Sunderland nodded, and closed her jaw.
‘Peter Robinson’s do,’ the woman snapped.
‘This isn’t Peter Robinson’s.’
The woman looked at Virginia to see if she were trying to be rude, then pushed out her chin at the rest of the shop, and said: ‘That’s all too evident,’ and went out.
Virginia folded the corset, replaced it in its long, narrow box, and put it back in place on the shelf. Although she had lost the sale, she could not help feeling relieved that the stout woman had not felt like removing her clothes in the small stuffy fitting-room at the far end of the shop. Quite often they wanted you to hook them up, or scoop them into brassières, or help them struggle their soft, fat hips into girdles a size too small. Virginia was beginning to feel a revulsion for all female flesh.
Miss Sunderland, who was in charge of the corset counter, did not seem to mind these things. To her, corsetry was an art, and she was never so spry as when she had successfully