Isa and May

by Margaret Forster

  ‘I don’t think Elspeth is here,’ I said.

  ‘Not here? Of course she will be here.’ Isa looked at the clock ticking away on her mantelpiece. ‘Three o’clock. Elspeth does not leave until four, sometimes five. She is reliable.’

  ‘She was,’ Dad said.

  ‘Is she dead, then?’ Isa said, very cool, no panic at all in her voice.

  ‘No. But she’s given in her notice, or rather she’s said she won’t be coming again.’

  ‘How thoughtless.’ Isa sighed. ‘I will have to find someone else. There are agencies, are there not?’

  Dad was silent. So was I. What were we dealing with? Amnesia? Or something more sinister? Isa seemed quite unconcerned about Elspeth’s defection, except for the thoughtlessness of it. She clearly had no intention of being distraught, and nor was she going to admit what a huge problem there would now be. Devotion such as Elspeth’s is rare, but Isa didn’t show any signs of appreciating this. ‘I was wondering,’ Dad said nervously, ‘if maybe you could persuade Elspeth to return?’ Isa looked shocked. ‘Why ever would I wish to do that? Dear me, how mortifying that would be.’

  ‘What happened?’ I risked asking, ‘Why has Elspeth left so suddenly?’

  Dad looked alarmed, but it was absurd, I thought, not at least to try to find out if Isa even remembered what had happened. She didn’t seem offended by my question either. Just puzzled. ‘Happened?’ she echoed, disdainfully. ‘I am afraid I do not know of anything “happening” with regard to Elspeth. She was here yesterday, I am sure. She performed her usual duties.’ If the situation hadn’t been so serious I would have laughed at the hauteur with which Isa said this, as though she were talking about a butler.

  ‘She told Dad—’

  ‘Isamay! I do wish you would not use that term. If you will not refer to him as your papa, please call James your father.’

  ‘She told Father that you had treated her with ingratitude and contempt – that’s right, isn’t it, Dad, I mean Father?’

  ‘Ingratitude?’ said Isa, absolutely astonished. ‘Why would I owe a servant gratitude?’

  ‘For good, loyal service?’ I suggested.

  ‘But it is a servant’s job to serve . . .’

  ‘Oh, come on, Grandmama, Elspeth wasn’t a servant in any real sense, and even if she had been you could still be grateful that she did well what she’d agreed to do.’

  All this time, Dad hadn’t said a word. He was tapping his foot impatiently; it was obvious he wasn’t pleased with me. He cleared his throat and stood up and said maybe I would go and make some tea, we all needed it. So I shrugged and obeyed. The drawing room is quite a distance, of course, from the kitchen, so I didn’t hear anything that was said between them while I was boiling the kettle and setting a tray with cups and stuff. I must say, the kitchen was immaculate, though I think that’s due to Mrs Robert’s tender care rather than Elspeth’s – she surely didn’t do anything as lowly as clean kitchens. It’s a purely functional kitchen, nowhere to sit and eat, though there’s one stool in front of the worktops. I perched on it while waiting for the kettle to boil, staring out of the window at a bird table, where there were two chaffinches squabbling over what looked like bacon rinds. Then I filled the teapot and lifted the tray. God, it felt heavy, what with the pot, three cups and saucers, milk jug, sugar bowl, and the tray itself wasn’t light. I bore it back to the drawing-room, grateful that such times have, for most women, gone. It’s mugs in the kitchen, and milk straight from the fridge, and none of this palaver.

  Isa asked where the tea strainer was. I said we didn’t need one. I’d found some tea bags. ‘Tea bags? In my kitchen?’ she said. I nodded. She looked pained. ‘Elspeth’s, or Mrs R’s,’ she said. ‘They must bring them to use themselves.’ I poured the tea, expecting her to say it was undrinkable, but she drank it without complaint. ‘So, Mama,’ Dad said, ‘you say you found Elspeth opening a drawer in your desk and—’

  ‘James, I found Elspeth opening a drawer she had no business or need to open. That is a statement of fact. You cast doubt upon it by the way you phrase it.’

  ‘OK, Mama, you found Elspeth opening a drawer.’

  ‘I did. I caught her in the act.’

  ‘Of doing what?’ I said.

  ‘Of opening the drawer, child.’

  ‘What was in this drawer?’

  ‘It does not matter what was in it. The point is, Elspeth had no right to open it, and I told her so.’

  ‘What did you say to her exactly?’ Dad asked.

  ‘I forget.’

  ‘Did you raise your voice?’

  ‘I may have done. One would have been entitled to.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘She said she was looking for an envelope in which to put . . . something, some form, something.’

  ‘What kind of form?’ Dad asked.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Had this form, or whatever, come in the post? Had you looked at it?’

  ‘I may have done.’

  ‘And handed it to Elspeth? Maybe it was important, maybe—’

  ‘James, stop. You are complicating what is simple. Elspeth opened a drawer she should not have opened on the pretext of searching for an envelope. I reprimanded her. She took offence. This is a fuss about nothing.’

  Dad and I both studied Isa. She was not quite as confident as her words implied. It was tempting to press her to recall what this ‘form’ was, but on the other hand it didn’t really matter. I believed absolutely, and I’m sure Dad did too, that Elspeth really had been looking for an envelope, for whatever reason, and that she had inadvertently opened a drawer Isa wanted kept shut. But why? What had she been afraid that Elspeth, with her sharp eyes, might see? The very thing Isa had said did not matter mattered most. But we would never get it out of her. Dad obviously recognised this. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair, and said that the important thing was that Elspeth had left and was refusing to come back unless Isa apologised, and maybe not even then.

  Isa stared at Dad. ‘I cannot believe,’ she said, ‘that a son of mine would suggest I needed to apologise.’

  ‘Well, if you shouted, and—’ Dad muttered.

  ‘I do not shout,’ said Isa, almost hissing with anger. ‘Now, can you please stop harassing me? Let us talk about something else. Isamay, how is your thesis progressing?’

  I wanted to tell her not to change the subject, but humoured her instead. ‘It’s hard to talk about. I’m studying a woman photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron, who used her grandchildren to pose for photographs, and Margaret Mead, the anthropologist . . .’

  ‘I think I’d better go,’ Dad said, ‘I’ve got—’

  ‘James, sit down.’ And Dad sat. He is fifty-five years old. He is an orthopaedic surgeon. But when his mother told him to sit down, he sat, even though he needed to be somewhere else.

  The fact that he sat when bidden pleased Isa. She was mollified. Her expression brightened, and she switched back on the ‘charming’ smile she habitually used, an empty smile, with no true warmth in it, but nevertheless it was a relief to see it after such an uncomfortable interchange. She looked steadily at Dad, and then at me, and her smile grew more genuine. ‘A strong likeness,’ Isa said. ‘Mrs Wright may say you resemble her side of the family, but it is quite untrue. You look like James, and like me. You are your father’s child, undoubtedly.’

  ‘I know that,’ I said, flatly.

  Isa carried on as though she hadn’t heard me. ‘You have your father’s ears, pretty ears for a man, so shapely, and his hair, the same colour, the same texture. There is nothing of your mother or your maternal grandmother in your appearance. You are like your father, except for your eyes, of course, which are mine.’

  ‘Odd, isn’t it?’ I said, daringly.

  ‘I really do have to go, Mama,’ Dad said. ‘I’ve got a clinic and I should be there now . . .’

  ‘Go, my son,’ said Isa, giving a dismissive wave of her hand.

&
nbsp; Dad pecked her hurriedly on the cheek, and as he passed me he squeezed my shoulder. Quite an unnecessarily hard squeeze. A warning?

  ‘Odd, isn’t it?’ I repeated, when he had gone.

  Isa looked vague, but she was alert. She wasn’t going to ask me what was ‘odd’ and give me the chance to tell her. She sensed danger, I was sure, and was going to avoid it. I knew she was going to change the subject – of family resemblances – even though she had brought it up herself, and she duly did. ‘Your father works very hard,’ she said.

  ‘So does my mother,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, your mother,’ she said, as though my mother working hard was somehow a different thing altogether. I was delighted to have the opportunity to take offence.

  ‘Don’t you admire Mum for working hard, then?’

  Isa looked startled at the idea. ‘Admire her? Well, of course, Jean is admirable. She is my daughter-in-law.’

  ‘That doesn’t make her admirable in itself, does it?’

  ‘I would never criticise my daughter-in-law.’

  ‘But you want to, don’t you? For working hard, for having a demanding career . . .’

  ‘Isamay! That is quite untrue.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You seem determined today to be contrary, you are unlike yourself.’

  ‘You don’t know my self.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. Of course I know you, you are my granddaughter. I was there when you were born, I have—’

  ‘Yes, yes, but you don’t really know me now.’

  ‘What is there to know that is different?’

  That would have been my chance. I could have broken my promise and said it then. I could have told her that I knew she was not my blood grandmother and that knowing this made me feel very different indeed. But I didn’t. She looked so innocent, suddenly so open, so vulnerable, and yet she is far from any of those things. She’s guilty of a massive deception, possibly two deceptions. She is emotionally closed up tight, and she has a carapace of aloofness that protects her from too much contact with others. I simply could not challenge her. I was afraid to, afraid of the possible consequences. So I made some facetious reply, and she accepted it, and put on a good show of being amused, and soon afterwards I left.

  I need to think more clearly about Isa. About Isa herself and about her significance for my work. That’s where I need to think most clearly of all.

  Claudia is pleased with me, or rather she’s pleased with the first draft of my dissertation, which I delivered to her last week. She sent me an e-mail – very short, just saying she had read the draft and thought I had sorted myself out and she could now see where I was going. Good.

  But her approval makes me lazy. Right, I think, I don’t need to worry about work for a bit now, though of course I do. There are only five months left before the whole dissertation needs to be presented. It will be a race between delivering the baby and delivering the dissertation, and if I don’t manage to do the latter before the former I’ll be in real trouble. I ought to be galvanised into action by Claudia’s blessing but I’m not. All I’ve managed to do today is put all my research notes into chronological order – by order of grandmother, that is. I go by the date they first became a grandmother, so Elizabeth Fry comes at the beginning and Margaret Mead at the end. Having done that simple task, I then spent an idle few minutes deciding who I like the sound of best as a grandmother. Maybe Vanessa Bell, though Sarah Bernhardt sounds fun . . .

  I’ll start tomorrow, doing the real work. Or the day after. I have to do something about the legacy business too.

  The red light on the phone was winking when I got home from college, but I didn’t rush to attend to it. Let any message wait until I’d made myself a sandwich. I felt like Isa, refusing to let the phone come first. Like Isa, I thought, and it was true, I am like her, even if she isn’t a blood relative. All kinds of my attitudes and habits can be traced directly to her. It is no good rejecting her or denying her influence, just because she isn’t ‘really’ my grandmother.

  I fed myself, and then went to listen to the messages. There were two. One from Beattie, giving me her new mobile number and asking me to text her, and the other wasn’t for me. It was for Ian. A short message, abrupt and sharp. A distinctive Scottish accent, a woman’s voice but rather hoarse and deep. ‘Ian,’ the woman said, ‘Ian, ring me.’ No ‘please’. It was an order. I played it again and again. It was not the voice of a young woman but definitely an older one. She didn’t leave a number. Whoever this was assumed Ian had her number. So, was it his mother? His grandmother? My curiosity made me restless. I paced up and down, peering out of the front window to look for Ian coming home, which was mad because it was only four o’clock. I convinced myself something dramatic had happened – never, in all our four years together, had Ian been rung up by anyone except friends, male friends, of his own age, and work colleagues. So far as I knew, there had been no calls from his family.

  The caller, who left no name or number, who was Scottish, who expected to be automatically recognised, must be family. I had to struggle not to ring or text Ian at work. He wouldn’t like being disturbed when he was in the middle of something just to be told a woman with a Scottish accent had rung him and wanted her call returned. It could wait a few hours. But I had convinced myself it was his mother. Someone had died or was seriously ill. She needed him. I got more and more anxious imagining this woman sitting there waiting for her son to call her – she’d be pacing up and down, frantic, maybe smoking cigarette after cigarette (her voice sounded like a smoker’s), hours to go and that poor woman waiting . . .

  I tried to settle down to looking at my George Sand notes again. So awful, that rift with her daughter, and the things she said about her. I wanted to bring out how becoming a grandmother gave her a second chance and how this was a characteristic of grandmotherhood that emerged strongly through the generations. I successfully concentrated to such an extent that when the phone rang I really did jump, pulled sharply back into my own life. I lifted the receiver and said hello in such an absent-minded way that the caller must hardly have heard me. There was silence, which made me attend more closely. I said hello again, and then gave my number and asked who was calling. The receiver at the other end was put down without a word being spoken. I instantly rang 1471 and found that the number was withheld. I hate people who withhold their number.

  Three hours had somehow gone by. I was back at the front window again, watching, all thoughts of doing any more work given up. Though I was still sure the mystery caller had been Ian’s mother, I’d changed my mind about her. I didn’t feel she could, after all, be so distraught. If she was, surely she would have spoken to me, surely she would have blurted out whatever was wrong and why she needed to speak to her son. I wished I had used her name, said Mrs Scott, this is Isamay, can I help? (Though that was presuming the caller was Ian’s mother.) I’d lost the chance, maybe, to talk to her, something I’d wanted to do for a long time, but Ian wouldn’t allow it, he wouldn’t even acknowledge he had a mother alive.

  He came cycling round the corner just after six. He is always so neat and careful in everything he does. He didn’t leap off his bike in a hurry. He stopped at the kerb, took his helmet off, detached his bag and carried the bike slowly up the steps. Suddenly he looked vulnerable to me. I worried for him, not knowing what awaited him. He would not like hearing that a woman I’d thought must be his mother had called, and needed him. Ian did not want to be wanted by her. His absolute insistence on being free of all family ties had always shocked me, but I’d learned at least to pretend to accept it. I waited anxiously, hearing the main door into the house close. The bike has to stay in the main hall because there is nowhere else to put it. He is scrupulous about putting it right up against the wall, in the corner, and has an old blanket on the floor there so the wheels don’t dirty the tiles. He loves that bike, an affection that goes way beyond liking it because it gets him to and from work and keeps him fit.

  I hardly
waited for him to get through the door. ‘A woman left a message. I think it was your mother,’ I said, trying, and failing, to suppress my excitement. ‘She’s left a message telling you to ring her.’ Predictably, Ian ignored my tone of voice, only nodding slightly and raising his eyebrows and then making his unhurried way to the bathroom, where I could then hear the shower running. Patience. I had to have patience. The keener I was to get him to respond to his mother’s message (if it was from his mother), the longer he would take. So I settled myself on the sofa and made a feeble play of reading a book. Even when he finally appeared, showered and dressed, he had to open a bottle of wine and pour himself a glass before he sat down to listen to the message. His expression gave nothing away. He only listened once, and then he sat and thought. ‘Are you pondering? Was it your mother?’ He nodded. ‘Then what are you waiting for? It must be urgent. Someone must be ill or—’

  ‘Always expecting drama, Issy,’ Ian sighed.

  ‘Well, considering your mother has never, ever rung you in the years you’ve been living here, it must be something dramatic.’

  He didn’t reply, only smiled slightly. I couldn’t understand him. ‘Ian,’ I pleaded, ‘come on, you have to call her back.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘But she sounded so agitated, so—’

  ‘She’s always been agitated.’

  ‘But she obviously needs you, and—’

  ‘Oh, you’re right on that one, but it’s no good, I refuse to be needed.’

  ‘You can’t, you’re her son, it isn’t your choice . . .’

  ‘Yes it is. It is my choice, and I made it a long time ago.’

  ‘Then tell me, explain to me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? Are you ashamed? Or is it too awful, too—’

  ‘More fantasies, Issy? Abuse, maybe? Is that what you’re imagining? Scenes of horror? Maybe a—’

  ‘Well, if I am, it’s your fault, it’s only natural I should start to think something terrible must have happened to you as a child to cause this attitude to your mother. Did it?’

  ‘No.’