I for Isobel

by Amy Witting

  Why had he called her Cinderella? True, of course, but how had he known that?

  Because of the clock striking, silly. Stop looking for insults where there aren’t any.

  Her body was hurried along on seven-year-old legs that wanted to break into a run. Glebe Road. One block, round the corner…

  In the dining room, she slid into her place behind a cooling plate of lamb cutlets. They looked up, acknowledging her arrival, without affection.

  It was always like this. She had tried, been polite, passed the salt without being asked, would have liked Betty if that had been allowed. It had not been allowed, and tonight the coolness was more marked than usual, bringing the familiar stab of fear that she had done something to offend, sharper because of the hour of peaceful excitement and self-forgetfulness in Trevor’s room. Self-forgetfulness was always dangerous.

  And thirty-one and thirty-two, she thought snappishly, in time with Madge’s steady chewing, but could not raise her spirits. How much she wished to know where she went wrong.

  While Madge was carrying plates of Sunday roast dinner from the serving hatch to the table, Mrs Bowers appeared at the kitchen door, looking angry. Anger had engraved its history on Mrs Bowers’ face; when the lines it had made there came alive, the effect was frightening.

  ‘One of you hasn’t changed your bed. There’s been sheets and a towel in the hall all morning, a nice thing on a Sunday. I want the beds changed straight after breakfast, please, and the used sheets in the laundry.’

  Isobel cried, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. They’re mine.’ She had got up in a hurry and made her bed before she remembered that it was Sunday. ‘I’ll do it straight away.’

  ‘Oh.’ She sobered, seeing that Isobel was the culprit. ‘Never mind, they can stay till after dinner now.’

  It was all right, then, about last night. She probably hadn’t noticed that Isobel was late.

  In the kitchen, she was talking angrily to Mrs Prendergast. Isobel tensed again, but there was nothing about lateness or unchanged beds. It was only about Arthur.

  ‘Coming to live here, indeed. Easy to see what that gentleman is after. No sooner married, I suppose, than he’ll find work is too much for him and he’ll have his armchair in the lounge for the rest of his life.’

  Deadly embarrassment stilled the diners. Knives and forks struggled heavily against it.

  Madge stood up and and walked to the kitchen door. She said, as deliberately as she had chewed, ‘Do you have something to say to me? If you have, say it.’

  Norman clasped his hands above his head and moved arms and shoulders in a dance of joy, grinning encouragement at Madge’s back. Betty looked up and smiled at him. From the kitchen, silence.

  Mrs Bowers said, in an outraged voice, ‘Well, if you want the whole world to know your business…’

  Quickly, Tim filled his mouth with a crumpled paper serviette while laughter shook his torso.

  Awed by Madge, Isobel thought, ‘If I could ever have done that…’

  Madge said, ‘Arthur offered to come and live here because you said you could not manage without my help. If you don’t want us to live here, that will suit us very well. Now, tell me what you want me to do, please. And remember that we can manage very well without you.’

  Silence. Madge turned and walked out. Isobel looked with religious respect at her unfinished dinner.

  Her head rang then under a hammer blow of enlightenment.

  You didn’t hate Madge for her methodical mastication. You hated her because you took her place.

  She had read somewhere that from the window of a plane, at the right height, on a clear day, one could see Tasmania, the whole recognisable map-shape. Now she was there, right height, right light, with Tasmania spread out below. Seeing took time. She sat, stunned, while Betty went out to the kitchen and the others scraped and stacked plates.

  You left the house thinking of freedom, of being a different person, seeing the world ahead of you, but you didn’t go on, you went back. To fight the old fight and this time to win, to have the verdict set aside, to be the favoured child.

  Betty came back with a tray and served out canned peaches and jelly, decorous, as if at a funeral. She took the used plates, stacked them on the tray and carried them out.

  Mrs Bowers’ favoured child? Isobel, you don’t aim very high. But that didn’t matter, not at all, if you wanted what you wanted badly enough. Like power. Memory served up puny, submissive Mr Gibson, who had lived with his masterful wife across the way in Plummer Street, wearing the stern marble face of justice while he rubbed a puppy’s nose in the pool of its widdle.

  Any rag will make a doll for the idiot in the attic.

  Auden had a general in his head. (‘But they’ve severed all the wires, and I don’t know what the general desires.’)

  Isobel had an idiot in the attic.

  She got up to help with the clearing away, abstracted but not depressed, although sobered. It was impossible to be depressed after seeing Madge walk out. That was an uplifting little miracle; it was like seeing a bone walk away from a dog. The others were feeling it, too, glowing quietly and suppressing smiles.

  Back in her room, she sat on her bed and reflected. She was in a different position from Auden; she knew what the idiot desired, all right, and had to watch to see it didn’t get it. This was different from Joseph, too. She knew, when she thought about the dream Joseph, that he was like a father, really, more than a lover. That was a game, if you liked (real indoor sport, couldn’t be more indoor, she thought, with a grin), but she knew it was a game. It didn’t tangle with the real world. Yes, at one point it did, because there was a real Joseph, and at that point it made trouble, making her sick with jealousy of Kenneth.

  I ought to change your name, my dear, she thought, but she could not. There had to be one little cell of flesh to make a dream live.

  Just remember why you’re jealous of Kenneth and try not to hate him.

  The idiot played its games with the real world and—and what was worse—it played them behind Isobel’s back. Not any more, now that she knew. Could she do this, watch a part of herself and control it, fight against it all her life?

  She was not too discouraged, the new knowledge giving her a feeling of strength. At least she knew where she was going wrong—no wonder the others disliked her, watching her suck up to Mrs Bowers, taking what ought to be Madge’s.

  Idiot wants a mother.

  Idiot can’t have one.

  Life is very difficult.

  It was quiet in the house. She heard someone come upstairs, thought she recognised Madge’s step and could have howled with grief and disappointment, thinking Madge had given in and turned the splendid walkout into a feeble gesture. Then she heard Madge’s voice. If Arthur was with her, there was hope. She decided on a scouting trip towards the bathroom.

  The door of Madge’s room was open; Madge and Arthur were packing. Isobel noted with deep admiration that they were not trying to be quiet. She approached (like a commoner sucking up to a duke, hoping some of the quality would rub off on her) and said, ‘Can I do anything to help?’ It wouldn’t matter if she got a knockback, because she would know why.

  Madge looked up from putting shoes into a carton. Her smile was beautiful.

  ‘Thanks. If you’d go with Arthur and take this down to the car, that would be a great help.’

  Arthur too, though tubby and pale-eyed, had an aristocratic air at the moment, being full of triumph and energy. He lifted a suitcase gaily and led the way downstairs.

  Isobel was afraid—no, not Isobel, but the idiot was afraid of meeting Mrs Bowers. On the way back, she got a glimpse of a head dodging out of sight at the kitchen door and started with fear, though she told herself that it was better for Mrs Bowers to know where she stood. The trouble was that the idiot shared her body and had a hold on it.

  She helped with the final load of luggage and said goodbye to Madge at the gate. Madge kissed her, a proxy kiss, she knew, but she didn’t mi
nd that. She felt she was doing something good, being there to receive it.

  In the café there were only Kenneth and Mitch bent over pages of manuscript with Janet watching attentively. No matter how Kenneth had rolled his eyes at the thought of Mitch’s sonnet sequence, he was reading it seriously now, stopping to smile with pleasure and say, ‘A felicity!’ or tap with his fingernail a passage he doubted.

  The atmosphere was peaceful and buoyant, like a celestial quilting party. Janet must be feeling that too, for she smiled, as Isobel sat down quietly, and murmured, ‘Trevor and Nick have gone away for the weekend. Trevor said to remind you, The Brothers Karamazov.’

  She was glad Trevor was not there, for last week’s expansive conversation had brought on a mortal shyness.

  ‘Oh, he said too, he’s astonished at you. A whole week over Crime and Punishment. Are you losing your appetite?’

  What did that mean? Did she read too fast, too slowly? Fortunately, she need not worry about it, since she did not have to answer.

  Janet said, as Kenneth put a page aside, ‘May we?’

  Mitch nodded. He was quietly elated by praise from Kenneth.

  Having read some of Mitch’s verse in Hermes, Isobel had slotted it into a pigeonhole and expected no revelation, but the sonnet sequence was much better than she had expected; she remembered what Trevor had said, that Mitch would bring everything he had to harbour, and was pleased that he was right.

  She walked to Fifty-one in a tranquil frame of mind, and found Helen drinking coffee in the living room with a wiry young man, plain, ruddy-faced, bespectacled, brindle-haired. This must be her boyfriend, Dan, with whom she shared the large front bedroom. So Janet had said, and the knowledge made Isobel shy as she looked in on them.

  ‘I’m just going up to Trevor’s room to get a book.’

  They looked up, Helen from the New Yorker and the young man from the Herald crossword and smiled so kindly, she realised she was being childish, and should have gone straight upstairs. That mortified her, but she forgot it, sitting in front of Trevor’s bookshelves looking into one book after another. This was like the best hours of childhood.

  The door opened and Helen came in.

  ‘Isobel. You’re still here. Look, there’s Diana at the door. I saw her coming and I bolted. I can’t stand another minute of it. I had her all Wednesday night, I swear she’s getting worse. Go down, will you, and tell her I’m out? Everyone’s out, Nick’s away?’

  At the front door the knocker sounded firmly, insistently, self-righteously.

  ‘OK.’ Isobel took The Brothers Karamazov and ran downstairs.

  She opened the front door, faced Diana, said, ‘Hullo.’

  What an odd thing to say to that tense, unresponsive face. ‘Did you want to see Helen? I’m afraid she’s out.’

  Diana walked past her into the sitting room. Baffled, Isobel followed.

  Diana looked about her. On the low table in front of the settee there were two coffee cups, a New Yorker, the Herald, folded to the crossword partly filled in, and a pencil lying across it. Isobel didn’t know what sort of Marie Celeste story she could invent to explain that.

  Diana sat down on the settee.

  ‘I know they’re here. They saw me coming and they cleared out. I don’t blame them. I know I’m a curse and a bore.’

  Shocked, Isobel thought, ‘She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t even know my name.’ A naked soul was just as shameful as a naked body.

  Diana picked up the paper and ran her finger lovingly over the crossword. Thinking of plain, sandy Dan, Isobel bit her lip.

  It’s not funny. She’s suffering.

  ‘He was sitting here, doing the crossword.’

  ‘Who?’ Isobel thought there might be some good in reminding Diana she was a stranger.

  ‘Nick.’

  Pronouncing his name, she began to cry and had to pause to swallow her tears and dry her eyes.

  ‘Nick was here. Nick is here. He is in this house and I can’t see him. Anyone else in the world can see him, but I can’t, and I’m the one person it’s life or death to.’

  Embarrassed as she was, Isobel couldn’t help being interested in hearing these worn words take meaning, like old hulks with their sails filled out by the wind.

  She said, ‘Nick’s not here. He’s away for the weekend.’

  How safe she felt, being able to pronounce the name indifferently.

  Diana smiled and closed her eyes. When she opened them she said, ‘I suppose you think I’m shameless. I’m not.’

  I’m a stranger, but she takes it for granted that I know about her; she knows that people talk about her. She’s a corpse all right with the flies buzzing round her, and she hears them buzzing, though she’s dead.

  ‘I feel shame, all right, the way nobody else can know it. Sometimes I think it’s all I ever feel. If you knew the things I’ve done! I’ve followed him to that girl’s house, I’ve stood outside till they came out and I’ve followed them. I followed them to the theatre and I couldn’t get a seat, so I stood outside and waited for them. If they’d got a bus, I’d have followed them but they got a taxi. I rattled them so much they had to get a taxi.’ She said this with a faint sneer. If this was shame, it looked very much like arrogance. ‘I did that and I did it again. Can you imagine that? I’ve got no pride, no self-respect left. I’ve got nothing. I’ve lost my job now, and no wonder.’

  I’m a messenger, Isobel thought with resentment. I’m supposed to tell Nick she’s lost her job.

  She said, ‘That’s terrible. What are you going to do?’

  Diana shook her head, smiling a faint complacent smile of despair.

  ‘I used to think he’d come back to me when he saw how much I was suffering. Of course that never happens, but it was something I had to think. Something I had to hold on to. Now I know that he won’t, but it doesn’t make any difference.’

  The idea of losing a job was so alarming to Isobel that she could not leave the subject. ‘But what are you going to do? You have to have a job. You have to eat!’

  Diana considered that idea carefully, then shrugged.

  ‘I’ve got some money saved.’

  ‘And when that’s gone?’

  She sounded quite belligerent. Interesting. Here was someone feeble enough to bring out the bully in Isobel.

  ‘What do I care? I don’t care about anything. I’m finished. I’m as good as dead.’

  Isobel reflected. ‘You know, I think that’s right. I mean, if you take life as change and development—and I think it must be, life must be always changing…if you had a life without change, it might be as good as death, I suppose…well, when you can’t change, I suppose you are as good as dead.’

  She was so interested in this idea that she forgot Diana and spoke with detachment, then was startled at the fury in Diana’s eyes. True to form, she made a note: masochists prefer to devise their own sufferings. True to form also, she retreated before anger.

  ‘I’m not talking about you, particularly.’ (But I ought to be; that’s where the offence is.) ‘I just meant anyone who can’t adapt…Look, Nick’s not here, truly. He’s away for the weekend. Let’s go. We can’t go on just sitting here, can we?’

  She could not leave Diana, who was looking cynically now at the coffee cups.

  ‘It wasn’t Nick doing the crossword. It was Helen and Dan. All right, they did get up and run when they saw you coming. What do you expect? They can’t do anything for you.’

  She was shocked by Diana’s sick, stunned look and her heavy nod.

  I’ve gone too far. I’m no good at this sort of thing. Why did I even get into it?

  Diana picked up her bag and made for the door. Isobel followed. They walked abreast, but not together, up Glebe Road to the bus stop, Isobel full of misery and remorse and longing for the moment when she could take refuge with the brothers Karamazov.

  At the bus stop Diana turned to her.

  ‘Come home with me, will you? Come and have a meal.
I think you could help me.’

  Oh, no, you’d eat me alive. On and on. Once you got hold of me, I’d never get away.

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t. Not this evening.’

  There had been a different look on Diana’s face, a waking look. Isobel realised that as it faded.

  ‘No, of course not. People have dates on Saturday night.’

  She smiled that peaceful, distant smile.

  They waited in silence then till the bus came and she got on it without saying goodbye.

  And now for the brothers Karamazov.

  She wished Trevor would not say those puzzling things. It was so interesting to listen to him and wonderful to be able to borrow his books; why did he make these odd little remarks that made her feel awkward with him?

  Back in her room, she opened the book with great anticipation, but she could not concentrate on reading at first. Diana’s face with its waking look kept appearing on the page.

  You shouldn’t have talked to her at all if you didn’t care enough to go all the way.

  She might have meant it. You might have been able to help her. The turning point. Isobel the turning point. That is ego. You’re kidding yourself. She lit up because she thought she had a new victim.

  Victim. That’s a funny word. The poor girl is suffering terribly, she’s the victim. Selfish and heartless Isobel.

  I did feel for her. Once or twice I felt for her very much.

  You didn’t act on your feelings, so that doesn’t count.

  The story took over at last. She read till the dinner bell sounded angrily. Since Madge had left, the boarders all seemed to be conscious of Mrs Bowers’ anger glowing like a portable stove in the kitchen. It drew them closer. Betty helped with the serving, showing a domestic streak which made her seem more of a likeable duck than a daunting swan; the boys were quieter and more companionable. Isobel, who was avoiding Mrs Bowers because of the idiot in the attic, was trying again to be acceptable to the others. She said, ‘I’ll get the plates, Betty. You might spoil your dress.’

  Mrs Bowers, dishing up at the stove, gave her a mean look that made her quail. She didn’t want Mrs Bowers to like her, yet she quailed. Her body was a dog that answered to the orders of others.