The Angel in the Corner Read Online Free PDF Page B

spittle, in a greasy-backed waistcoat and gym shoes, and he grew quite racy with her as she came and went on press day. If she asked him a question about the printing of the paper, he would run his tongue over his lips and say: ‘You don’t want to bother your head about things like that, a nice little dish like you.’
    Virginia, wishing to fall in with the way of things, had started off by being quite pert and chummy with him, but, as the day advanced, and his jokes advanced with it to a grosser degree of innuendo, she wished that she had kept her distance from the start.
    When Mr Couliss, frothing a little, informed her that she was a hot number, and that he was game for a bit of fun too, any time she liked to try him, she slammed back through thecounter flap into the office, and told Reggie that she did not want to run any more errands to the printers.
    ‘No doubt,’ he said, ‘you’d like to sit in the old man’s office on your big, fat fanny and run the show. Old Couliss made a pass at you, I suppose.’ Reggie put his hands in his trouser pockets and stuck his stomach out, pursing his thick lips with a worldly air. ‘You women are all the same. Lead a man on as far as you dare, and then turn round and run screaming for help if he takes you up on it.’
    ‘As if I would,’ Virginia said disgustedly. ‘He’s a horrible little man, and he’s got a mind as foul as some of that trash he prints down there.’
    ‘By which I suppose you mean the
Gazette?’
Reggie rocked back on his heels and lowered his head at her like a bull.
    ‘I didn’t, but you can take it that way if you like.’
    ‘You may go home. You may leave,’ Reggie said grandly, his thick, throaty voice spoiling the high-toned effect for which he was trying. ‘Get out of here, and don’t come back next week neither.’
    ‘On the contrary.’ The editor came out of his kennel with a bottle of tablets in his hand, looking for a glass of water. ‘I want Alice in early Monday. I’ve got a top job for you, girl. Interview with Doris Miller. She’s opening in panto at the Empire. Not quite our district, but near enough for us to cover, and beat the
Courier
on their own ground. I’ve a good contact at the theatre, and I’ve got it lined up for you to go and see her. Exclusive. Thought I’d try you out.’
    ‘Now look here.’ Reggie blustered up to him like an unsubtle boxer coming out of the corner of a ring. ‘You can’t do that. You can’t go over our heads and send that girl out on a job like that. She don’t know anything.’
    ‘We’ll find out whether she does.’ The editor poured some souring milk into a cup, and swallowed two tablets, his face grey with the discomfort within.
    *
    Virginia sat in the dusty stalls of the theatre where Doris Miller was in the toils of a last-minute, scrappy dress rehearsal. Shefelt neglected and anxious. She had been allowed into the theatre, although Mr Askey, the editor’s contact, was not there, and no one could say where he had gone or when he would be back. She had been shown into a seat by an elderly man in a fisherman’s sweater and dirty plimsolls, and told to sit still and keep quiet.
    Virginia sat still and quiet for a long time in the fusty gloom of the dilapidated theatre. There was nothing else she could do. The time went by, and Mr Askey did not come, and she fretted about the interview and what the editor would say if she did not return with her story soon. He had given her this chance partly to annoy Reggie Porter, but partly, she believed, because he did think quite well of her, and wanted to see what she could do. She must do well, or she would let him down as well as herself. He was a cranky, disgruntled man, but she admired him, because he was an editor, and she liked him, because he had been nicer to her than he need have been.
    On the stage, lit by all the harsher lights in the electrician’s repertory, a dozen girls with goose-flesh on their thick thighs went dispiritedly