The Angel in the Corner Read Online Free PDF

of the journey with his head turned to the window, watching the streets.
    They stood on the cobbles outside the entrance to the flat. The ping of the taxi meter and the small rattle of its engine sounded very loud in the deserted mews.
    ‘I hope I’ll see you again before too long,’ Felix said.
    Virginia opened her mouth to answer, but Helen said quickly: ‘Of course. Please do feel free to come up to the flat whenever your industrious friend turns you out. Thank you so much for a very charming evening. It was extraordinarily kind of you. The club is delightful, and you were the best of hosts.’
    When her mother had finished being debonair, Virginia tried to express her thanks, but Helen had used up all the phrases.
    ‘It’s for me to thank you,’ Felix said. ‘You were good to come out with me. I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed myself so much.’
    He lifted the unbecoming hat to the two of them standing in the doorway. Which one was he looking at – Virginia or Helen?
    *
    ‘A nice evening, didn’t you think?’ Helen said the next morning, when Virginia brought the tray to her bed.
    ‘Yes, it was all right.’
    ‘A charming man, I thought, and clever too. Did you know he was on the staff at Westminster? They don’t give those posts to just anybody, though one might be forgiven for thinking that they did, judging by the treatment one gets in some hospitals.’ She slit an envelope with her little brass paper-cutter. ‘Of course, he’s much too old for you.’ She said it in a detached, superior way, as if it were indisputable.
    Virginia put her hands in her coat pockets and stuck her head forward. ‘Maybe. But he’s much too young for you,’ she said.
    Helen looked up. The hair-net and lack of make-up gave her a peeled look. ‘But, dear heart,’ she said, refusing to take offence, ‘don’t be absurd. As if I would dream … He’s your boy-friend, I thought.’
    ‘He’s no one’s boy-friend,’ Virginia said abruptly, going to the door,. ‘I’ll probably never see him again.’
    The first person she saw in the mews was Felix, getting out his car. It was a new but sober car, prosperous enough for a successful young specialist, but not as dashing as it could have been if he was going to spend that much money.
    It was a raw, grey morning. The cracks between the cobble-stones were puttied with dirty ice, and in the sharp wind, Felix’sface looked small and pinched under the mushroom of a hat. When he offered to drive Virginia to the station, she said that she wanted to walk. He stepped forward to persuade her, but she went quickly away from him, her heels ringing on the frosty cobbles. It was too cold to bother with a man just now, and her mother might look out of the window and see her getting into the car, and think that she was being sly.

Chapter 3
    As the week drew to its close, things began to hum a little more busily at the
Northgate Gazette,
but Reggie Porter, the young boor with the big feet, who liked Virginia no better than she liked him, saw to it that she was not included in the hum. She spent most of her time, at his uncivil bequest, running to and from the printers with pages of copy or galley proofs, and on press day, which she had thought would be the high-spot of the week, she spent all afternoon hurrying through the windy streets with pages of wet newsprint. She wanted to ask many questions, but the other reporters were too busy to answer, and the editor was having his weekly press-day bout of indigestion, and seemed to have forgotten who she was and why she was there.
    The printers were housed in a shabby wooden building in a yard off a side-street two blocks away. They had many other matters on hand besides the
Northgate Gazette,
and to reach Mr Couliss, who was her liaison there, Virginia had to step round and over piles of posters and pamphlets, and little mean-looking magazines devoted to such eclectic subjects as nudism and muscle culture.
    Mr Couliss was short and full of