I for Isobel

by Amy Witting

  It was well established that Isobel was a liar. When asked, ‘Did you spend your mission money on chocolate, Isobel?’ she would say no, though she had, and Mrs Callaghan would send a contemptuous knowing glance towards her elder daughter Margaret, who had brought home the information, while Margaret would look back with her mouth sagging and her eyes full of misery, then turn on Isobel the same look, a real blackout curtain of sorrow. Isobel did not expect to be believed, but she felt that a lie was the only contribution she could make to the respectability of the occasion. She lived well enough herself with her cowardice, her dishonesty and her greed, but others had to be protected from the shock of them.

  Meanwhile, fireballs existed and were seen even by liars, and Isobel did not begin to worry seriously about truth and falsehood until the day she forgot her composition book and Sister Ignatius said she was not surprised. Looking at Isobel and yet looking beyond her, her face pale and her eyes dull, she said, frowning, ‘You forget a lot of things, Isobel Callaghan. Forget your school money, too, every second week.’ Isobel hadn’t taken account of the number of times she forgot her school money but the accusation did not surprise her, for at home they had a wild beast of poverty which broke loose now and then and filled the air with screaming.

  That afternoon she told her mother what Sister Ignatius had said. Mrs Callaghan stared, then made her say it again; after that, she turned her head away and uttered a dry, forced whimper, like a small child determined to cry—a terrible sound that carried conviction in spite of its obvious affectation. She stopped that almost at once and began to ask questions: ‘Where were you? Who else was there? What was her voice like, was it loud?’

  Until then Isobel had been sincerely pleased with the effect she was making, but she remembered suddenly the usual end of such interrogations and she realised that to tell the truth was not easy. Concentrating on the task of recalling the nun’s voice to her mind, she took great care to describe it exactly.

  ‘It was soft and tired and angry. It wasn’t loud but I think everybody could hear it.’

  Her mother sighed harshly. ‘What’s the use of asking you? Half the time you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  It was a strange thing that Isobel had heard that said so often and had taken no real notice of it before. This time she had made such an earnest effort to reach the truth, and in vain, that she felt sure all at once that the incident had not happened at all. She accepted herself as a hopeless born liar and wanted to cry out against being believed this time. What would happen if her mother and Sister Ignatius compared notes? Her heart began to thump with terror. If only she could prove it had happened, if only she could know whether it had happened or not…

  Once or twice, she had with astonishment observed other people telling lies, besides herself and Eileen O’Brien—Eileen O’Brien could never know, when she looked with blank terrified eyes at the cane and howled the lie that nobody ever believed, how Isobel felt for her, howled with her inwardly—but Isobel was the only one who told lies without knowing it. Eileen O’Brien knew all right, when she shouted in despair.

  Enough about Eileen O’Brien. Isobel might be standing in her place tomorrow. She couldn’t face that thought for more than a sickening second. When she closed her eyes, she could see the nun, as tall as a tower, leaning forward, pale with anger, but that was no help—not to a born liar. ‘A born liar, that Isobel! That child is incapable of telling the truth!’

  She did have a lying sort of voice. Even when she was telling the truth it sank to a guilty whisper or rose to a shriek of denial which everybody took as proof of guilt. But she hadn’t known about the school money, hadn’t thought how often she didn’t bring it, so where had the idea come from? Somebody must have said ‘school money’.

  Suppose truth was a handful of sand that trickled through her fingers, suppose something of the sort had happened, she had had the truth of it for a moment, but hadn’t been able to carry it home? That thought brought a tormenting little hope that she might somehow get it back: could she repeat the exact words? Could she swear the nun had said ‘every second week’ or was it perhaps ‘more than half the time’? And if she knew all the words, could she get them in the right order? She could of course go on like this for ever and reach no certainty; it was useless and fatiguing work, but it passed the time.

  Bed was Isobel’s kingdom; it was always a comfort to arrive there at last, and tonight particularly, she burrowed and snuggled and with a sigh of pleasure slid behind the curtain of the dark into her private world.

  Robert came running, gasping, opened the door of the caravan and stumbled in. Gerald was there, hearing Angelo rehearse his part in the new play. They looked up, startled.

  Angelo said, ‘What’s the matter?’ but Robert couldn’t speak. The stammer had come back. Gerald got up. (Gerald, husband of Antonia, who was Angelo’s elder sister. Gerald, not the world’s greatest actor, but handsome, a good singer, brave, an excellent swordsman.) He put his arms round Robert, said, ‘Come on, old fellow. It’s all right. You’re safe here. Come on, tell us about it.’ One of his hands were coaxing, too, stroking Robert’s hair. ‘Come on, now.’

  Gerald could always manage the stammer; at last Robert’s voice came clear.

  ‘Two of my father’s men, two of the bodyguard. In the inn. I w…w…went to ask…’

  ‘Take it steady, now.’

  ‘I asked if I could put up our poster on the wall outside. I saw them, in the mirror behind the bar. They weren’t in uniform, but I knew them. I know them all.’

  ‘Did you run?’

  ‘Oh no. You’ve taught me better than that. I even put up the poster.’

  Gerald’s arms tightened about him for a moment.

  ‘Do you think they saw you?’

  ‘I don’t know. When I got to the corner I ran, and there wasn’t anybody behind me.’

  ‘Well, we mustn’t panic. Perhaps they aren’t looking for you. They might have business of their own here.’

  Angelo said, ‘He’d better not go on tonight, just the same. I’ll play the pageboy and he can stay in the van.’

  ‘They’d be bound to search the vans if they were looking for him. I think he’d be better off on the stage.’

  ‘But they’d recognise him!’

  ‘No, they wouldn’t. There’s the make-up, and besides, who’s going to imagine that our brilliant juvenile is the poor idiot prince? They’ve tricked themselves, making out that he’s an idiot.’ He pulled Robert’s ear softly, because of the word ‘idiot’. ‘That’s when you were in disguise, isn’t it, old fellow? When you were living with them.’

  It wasn’t going to be so easy. Robert said unhappily, ‘I would stammer. I know I would, if I thought…’

  ‘Oh, hell.’ Gerald was dismayed. ‘You never have. Not on the stage.’

  ‘But if I thought they were there, watching me…I couldn’t be sure.’

  ‘Well, we’d better not risk it. What’s to be done, then?’

  Isobel didn’t know. The story stopped running; she was lying in her narrow bed in the dark, confronted by a sobering thought: Robert and Angelo were lies. It was all lies: the travelling theatre, Gerald and Antonia, the Maestro and Uncle Max, the terrible castle, all lies.

  She wasn’t going to give it up, either. She was sure of that at once. There was no living without the moments.

  After her triumph in Uncle Max’s new play, Antonia in front of the mirror takes off her heavy shining necklace—the knock at the caravan door—the famous producer: ‘My dear girl, till this night I thought the great Leonora was dead.’—‘I am her daughter, sir.’—‘Of course, I remember now that she had a daughter. You have inherited her talent and her beauty. And the play, the brilliant play!’ He sinks into a chair, shaking his head in amazement. ‘To think that I came here for a joke! To laugh at the little travelling theatre! You must come to my theatre in the city!’

  …the moment worn almost threadbare: Gerald drawing his sword agains
t the kidnappers—the clatter and hiss of the weapons, the shouting, the wild hearty noise growing fainter as Robert runs for escape to the caravan and locks the door behind him.

  …the moment for going to sleep to: the campfire at night, Antonia in slacks and sweater singing old folk songs to Uncle Max’s guitar, Gerald putting out his arm to bring Robert close to him, Robert snuggling up with his head on Gerald’s shoulder. (There must be moments when Antonia snuggles up to Gerald, but those are too tedious to contemplate.)

  They were lies but not ordinary lies about mission money and chocolate and so on; there was something about them that was like the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus.

  False idols. Now she was in real trouble; what had been an interesting mysterious phrase in the catechism had come close, and worse, was somehow inside the inner room, having crept in in disguise. Now she came to think of it, she never did talk to the Virgin Mary any more. Robert and Angelo had taken her place, which proved it: they were false idols all right. That was mortal sin and her worst yet—a real hellfire affair, if she didn’t give it up.

  But they were so lovely, her people, so kind and happy and dear.

  Of course they were lovely—that was what made them idols.

  She had always thought with friendly exasperation of the sinners who doomed themselves to eternal hellfire—what was the matter with them, couldn’t they do a simple sum?—but now she had a new idea about sin and discovered that the sum was not so simple.

  Well, she would have to pin her hopes on a deathbed repentance, which wasn’t so simple either. First of all, she had to know exactly what the sin was, to find the right name for it, and that wasn’t always easy, then add it to the list she was memorising—there was a moral check in this, because if the list got too long she would be bound to forget something and then she’d be done for; one mortal sin was enough to bring on eternal hellfire. There was a gamble in it too, because she didn’t know what dying would be like; it might put everything out of your head. Still, she saw the deathbed repentance as her particular way to salvation, a kind of term test; term tests were about the only thing she could rely on herself to shine at.

  With all this thinking going on, it was no use trying to get back to Robert and Angelo tonight. Glaring into the dark, she indulged instead in hatred of her mother, thinking of the hideous times when she asked, ‘Do you love me?’ The sound of the question was almost as irritating as the need to answer, coming in a set pattern like the same word clicked out on a typewriter, over and over again.

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘How much? Threepenn’orth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sixpenn’orth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘One whole shillingsworth? Say, “Mummy, I love you one whole shillingsworth”.’

  ‘Mummy, I love you one whole shillingsworth.’

  And if I’m such a born liar, thought Isobel, why does she believe me?

  That spurt of malice brought relief, a dribble of tears and then sleep.

  She wasn’t sent to school the next day or the next, and after that she was sent to a convent in the next suburb. To reach it she had to climb through a fence and cross the railway tracks, a slight thing compared with the dangers that Gerald faced every day, but she hated it and slunk across, constantly bewaring of trains. However, the new school turned out to be a safe place, positively restful, and after a while she began to find it satisfactory that all the dangers of the day should be concentrated in one situation and overcome at once. After school she had time to walk the long way round, so every morning she used to scramble up the bank on the other side of the tracks with a feeling of relief that courage would not be required again that day.

  One Sunday after Mass the parish priest came up to Mrs Callaghan smiling and took her aside for a private talk. She walked home silent and blushing with satisfied pride, and next day she sent Isobel back to the local convent. She was not reluctant to go; by this time, she could rely on the scanty cover that time provides and she was curious to see Sister Ignatius again. Nothing had changed; she still spent her nights with Robert and Angelo, Gerald and the rest, she still accepted herself as a born liar, but she wanted to be a knowing sinner, to know the difference between truth and lies, and she hoped to find some clue in the nun’s face, but Sister Ignatius didn’t seem to notice her at all, so that hope came to nothing.

  One day, she set out with her mother and her sister, all three dressed in their best, to visit Aunt Vera and the well-to-do cousins. On the way to the bus, Margaret said, ‘I wonder whatever became of my gold chain bracelet?’ She said this rather carelessly, in a tone of grown-up politeness; obviously the question had been on her mind for some time and she had not known how to ask it.

  ‘Why, don’t you remember?’ Her mother spoke in a calm, far-away tone. ‘Isobel put it on and went out for a walk and lost it. Wasn’t it a shame?’

  Isobel was about to shriek in her lying voice, ‘I didn’t, I didn’t,’ but she stopped herself in time. It was important not to break the silence.

  She remembered something: Auntie Ann was saying to her mother, ‘What’s become of your diamond, May?’ and her mother with a modest, worldly look was answering, ‘Ssh! My solicitor,’ following the words with a strange, shamefaced smile. Whoever this solicitor was, Isobel thought, he had the bracelet, too.

  She pictured herself walking along this street with her arm dangling and the bracelet, much too big for her, slipping over her wrist and falling without noise. She saw this and she didn’t believe it for a moment.

  It was the silence. All the shouting, wailing, screaming of threat and blame that would follow the incident took place in the underwater world of the dream, where the swords hissed and clattered and the shouts rang out without disturbing the outer silence. This was even like a real dream, where extraordinary things happen and nobody shows any fear or anger. Margaret walked on in silence, frowning at the ground.

  Isobel did not speak. It was a moment for breathing quietly, in relief. Sister Ignatius would never haunt her again. She knew she had seen a fireball, too. She could never be mistaken about that.

  3 • THE GRACE OF GOD AND THE HAND-ME-DOWN

  The grace of God descended on Isobel during late Mass, one hot summer Sunday, and from the beginning she had a guilty feeling that it had come to her by mistake. Perhaps it was her neighbour who was in a perfect trance of prayer, and the gift was meant for her.

  Isobel herself was conscious of the heat, of dust swimming in a ray of sunlight, of a patch of rosy light from a stained-glass window that was as ugly as a bag of jujubes but cast charming coloured shadows, of the open doorway drowned in the foliage of a peppercorn tree, but she had hardly been conscious of the service at all, until the sermon began.

  That day it was given by a visiting priest, a young man with a gentle, easy voice and a matter-of-fact manner. ‘Consider, my dear brethren,’ he said sadly but without indignation, ‘the sinful human soul. It is not beautiful. There are thick cobwebs looped in dirty corners, and scuttling insects which, only half-heartedly, we try to drive out.’ This talk of scuttling insects struck home to Isobel, so she began to listen carefully. ‘The one little window is so thick with grime we hardly see the sky. But if the light of the Holy Spirit should penetrate all at once into this cracked, cobwebbed cell, dear brethren, what a glorious change!’

  These words had an effect on her more magical than moral. Her soul was bathed in a calm, delightful sunlight which remained through the rest of the Mass and when Mass was over she was sorry, for now she had to take her new treasure out into the uncertain world. She walked home behind her mother and Margaret, considering how to preserve it.

  It wouldn’t be easy. She could give up fighting with Margaret�
��she couldn’t imagine now why she ever had. And stop being lazy, too. And answering back. That would be the hardest thing, but she could do it. Only. They were a kind of club, the virtuous, and they didn’t like being asked to move up one.

  The parish priest had come up to Mrs Callaghan after Mass one Sunday and said, ‘You must be pleased with Isobel’s exam results, Mrs Callaghan. A good, well-behaved girl besides, so the sisters tell me. And Margaret, too. You should be proud of your daughters.’

  Mrs Callaghan had walked home almost silent, crippled by this injustice. At last she had drawn a deep breath and muttered, ‘Oh, I could tell him a thing or two. Street angel, home devil. Street angel, home devil, that’s Miss Isobel.’

  But surely, thought Isobel now, you’re allowed to be good, if you want to be? And looking at it another way, the harder it was, the better. You would know then that you deserved the light.

  As soon as she got home, she took off her Sunday dress, hung it up, put on an old one and went into the kitchen to peel the vegetables and set the table for dinner. Margaret came in as she was putting the potatoes into a basin of cold water.

  ‘It just so happens that it’s your turn to wash up. You’re not going to get out of it that way, coming in here and taking the easy job.’

  First test. Isobel was careful.

  ‘I forgot.’ True. ‘But I’ll wash up, don’t worry.’ Offensive enough to be inoffensive.

  ‘So you say.’

  Mrs Callaghan had come in behind them.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s her turn to wash up and now she’s done the vegetables and set the table. I was just coming to do it.’

  ‘I’ll wash up. I just forgot.’

  Her mother looked at her with a considering frown and said nothing.

  During the meal she said, airily, ‘It’s too hot for you to go round to Auntie Ann’s this afternoon, Margaret. Isobel will have to go.’