Free The Angel in the Corner by Monica Dickens Page A

to hearing her mother criticize her father, and tell of mean things he had done in the past, but Harold never said anything. He did not praise Helen, but he never blamed her. He did not talk about her.
    *
    In the days that followed Virginia’s revelation in the fitting-room, Helen talked intermittently about the woman Virginia had seen getting out of the taxi in the snow. She was piqued by the idea that Harold should have the effrontery to be married when she was not, and she was also greatly intrigued by the mysterious woman.
    ‘What was she like?’ she kept asking. ‘You must have seen more of her. There’s a street-lamp by the gate. Was she pretty?’
    ‘Honestly, Helen, I told you. I only saw her back. She had on a fur coat, that’s all I know.’
    ‘What kind of fur?’ Helen pounced, hoping to hear that it was rabbit. ‘How can you be so unobservant? You’re simply being sly. Was she plain? Did she look older than I do?’
    She was so vexed with curiosity that finally Virginia took pity on her, and restored her peace of mind by telling her that she had seen enough of the woman after all to know that she was dowdy, and much older than her mother.
    This mollified Helen considerably, and she dropped the subject, except to ask once: ‘Did she have red hair? He always hated red hair, and it would serve him right to marry a woman who had it.’
    Virginia’s curiosity was not so easily quenched. She could not forget the couple. When she was a child, she had been willing to put her father out of her life. Now that she was grown up, and had seen him again, she could not forget that he was her father. She must know what had happened to him.
    She had finished her daytime course at the college, which had ended with a sad little homily from Mr Deems on the subject of the
Northgate Gazette.
She was waiting now for her interviewwith the managing editor of
Lady Beautiful.
Having nothing else to do, she took a bus one morning after her mother had left for the office, and walked up the hill to the once familiar house, which had now become a house of mystery.
    She did not want to see her father. She had made a promise to Helen, and did not think of breaking it. Virginia wanted to see his wife, and she had devised a plan for getting into the house without revealing who she was.
    The hollow sound of her knock on the door, echoing in the high-ceilinged hall, was disturbingly familiar. As Virginia waited for an answer, she found herself hoping intensely that the woman would be nice. The motive which had brought her here was a desire to see the loose ends of her father’s story satisfactorily tied up. If she was never to see him again, she wanted to think of him as happy and settled, so that she could without compunction carry on her life without him.
    A woman opened the door. The first sight of her was so startling that Virginia almost took a step backwards, but recovered her balance in time. One side of the woman’s face was covered from upper lip to hairline with a dark red birthmark, mottled like a bruise. The discoloured skin was shiny and slightly raised. The eye on that side was like a Negro’s eye, the white more noticeable against the dark background.
    The hideous birthmark gave the woman the air of a victim. It did not look as if it had grown with her, but rather as if it had been slapped on from the outside, like a smack in the face.
    Virginia’s first thought was: How Helen would love to hear about this! She would never tell her. Pity and embarrassment had knocked her prepared opening words from her lips, and she felt herself staring, but she knew that it would be even ruder to look away.
    Some women look suspicious when they open the door to a stranger. Some, if they are busy, look cross. Others look completely blank, as if they expected nothing from anyone any more. This woman, however, on seeing Virginia on her doorstep, broke into a welcoming smile that at once lessened the affliction of her face. The birthmark