Read Online The Angel in the Corner by Monica Dickens - Free Book Online
Authors: Monica Dickens
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narrowingand broadening past changing stretches of small factories, garages, houses, shops, school railings, and the long, dirty wall of a gasworks. The bus stopped and started, picked people up outside cinemas, let them down to hurry away round the corners of dark side-roads, and pursued its interminable course again unhurriedly, as if the driver were not anxious to get home to his wife.
As the bus moved in and out of the different boroughs, the street lighting changed. Here there were concrete poles, swan-necked and hideous, flooding the road with a shadowless blue light that turned the people on the pavements into ghosts, stark-faced, with dead lips. Then the bus passed into the shadows, as the fluorescent lights gave place to old-fashioned lamps, which cast pools of dim yellow light through the leafless plane trees, and left wide patches of darkness, where the few late walkers trod like poachers, mysterious, up to no good.
Then again the roadway was lit by globes of orange light, hanging in pairs like giant fruit along the middle of the road. Half asleep in her seat, Virginia grew alert to realize that she knew these lights, or some just like them. Memory opened, and she saw again the men on the high red trolleys, hanging up the lights, while she and Tiny, out shopping for vegetables, paused among the staring people on the pavement, and stared upwards with them.
She heard the disapproving things that the people were saying: ‘Hideous, that’s what it is.’
‘Great overblown Belisha beacons, I call them. Why can’t they leave things as they were?’
‘That’s the Council for you. Always something new. And who’s to pay for it? That’s what I’d like to know.’
‘Who always pays? Just wait and see if the rates don’t go up!’
Virginia remembered that there was talk about the lights for quite a while, but presently the lights became part of the High Street, and after a time they were not new any more, but already old-fashioned compared to the glaring illuminations that other councils were erecting in other parts of London.
She looked out along the glowing edge of the pavement, and saw that it was not only the orange lights that were familiar,but the pavement itself. Here was that imposing double pillar-box, with an oval top, and one slot for Country and one for London and Abroad. Here was that same draper’s shop, with the gilt lettering and the cards of hooks and eyes hanging on the door, unchanged amid a row of shops that had been modernized. Here was the post office, with the clock slipped a little to one side, so that twelve o’clock pointed to the magnetic north, and here was that very vegetable shop with the green awning, under which she had stood with Tiny and watched the men on the trolley putting up the lights.
This was the corner where the dogs lifted their legs against the bins of potatoes. This was her own corner, where you turned to plod up the hill for home.
She had never returned to the cold, unfriendly house since she and her mother had left it nine years ago. When she was still seeing her father, once during every school holiday, he did not live there. He had let the house, and Helen used frequently to regret that her disgust with the house had made her so hasty in relinquishing it, since she might now be getting the rent herself.
Virginia stood up and reached for the wire of the bell. When the bus stopped, she walked back to the corner, and then up the hill past the dark houses to the one with the shrubby garden which had once been her playground. It was very cold. She remembered that it had always been colder at the top of the hill than down in the busy High Street. The snow lay in a crust along the garden wall, and made two white skull-caps on the stone balls on either side of the gate.
She had no idea how she would get home. There might not be another bus, and taxis did not cruise at night in this part of London. She began to regret having jumped so hastily off the warm,
As the bus moved in and out of the different boroughs, the street lighting changed. Here there were concrete poles, swan-necked and hideous, flooding the road with a shadowless blue light that turned the people on the pavements into ghosts, stark-faced, with dead lips. Then the bus passed into the shadows, as the fluorescent lights gave place to old-fashioned lamps, which cast pools of dim yellow light through the leafless plane trees, and left wide patches of darkness, where the few late walkers trod like poachers, mysterious, up to no good.
Then again the roadway was lit by globes of orange light, hanging in pairs like giant fruit along the middle of the road. Half asleep in her seat, Virginia grew alert to realize that she knew these lights, or some just like them. Memory opened, and she saw again the men on the high red trolleys, hanging up the lights, while she and Tiny, out shopping for vegetables, paused among the staring people on the pavement, and stared upwards with them.
She heard the disapproving things that the people were saying: ‘Hideous, that’s what it is.’
‘Great overblown Belisha beacons, I call them. Why can’t they leave things as they were?’
‘That’s the Council for you. Always something new. And who’s to pay for it? That’s what I’d like to know.’
‘Who always pays? Just wait and see if the rates don’t go up!’
Virginia remembered that there was talk about the lights for quite a while, but presently the lights became part of the High Street, and after a time they were not new any more, but already old-fashioned compared to the glaring illuminations that other councils were erecting in other parts of London.
She looked out along the glowing edge of the pavement, and saw that it was not only the orange lights that were familiar,but the pavement itself. Here was that imposing double pillar-box, with an oval top, and one slot for Country and one for London and Abroad. Here was that same draper’s shop, with the gilt lettering and the cards of hooks and eyes hanging on the door, unchanged amid a row of shops that had been modernized. Here was the post office, with the clock slipped a little to one side, so that twelve o’clock pointed to the magnetic north, and here was that very vegetable shop with the green awning, under which she had stood with Tiny and watched the men on the trolley putting up the lights.
This was the corner where the dogs lifted their legs against the bins of potatoes. This was her own corner, where you turned to plod up the hill for home.
She had never returned to the cold, unfriendly house since she and her mother had left it nine years ago. When she was still seeing her father, once during every school holiday, he did not live there. He had let the house, and Helen used frequently to regret that her disgust with the house had made her so hasty in relinquishing it, since she might now be getting the rent herself.
Virginia stood up and reached for the wire of the bell. When the bus stopped, she walked back to the corner, and then up the hill past the dark houses to the one with the shrubby garden which had once been her playground. It was very cold. She remembered that it had always been colder at the top of the hill than down in the busy High Street. The snow lay in a crust along the garden wall, and made two white skull-caps on the stone balls on either side of the gate.
She had no idea how she would get home. There might not be another bus, and taxis did not cruise at night in this part of London. She began to regret having jumped so hastily off the warm,
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