I for Isobel

by Amy Witting

  She looks at everyone like that, she’s in a general rage, Isobel thought, taking the first two plates, yet it was extremely difficult to go back for the others. She had meant to help with the washing up, but decided against it.

  Tim said to Betty, who was wearing her good black, ‘Big date tonight, Betty?’

  ‘Yes, doing the town tonight.’

  Isobel saw Diana’s remote smile again. People have dates on Saturday night.

  She did not read the meaning of the smile till later, in the moment before sleep, which it banished. Diana had a date too; she was going alone to that most private of all appointments. Isobel was sure of it; the peace and decision in the smile told her so.

  As good as dead. You told her she was as good as dead.

  What exactly did you say?

  She was familiar with that question and knew there was no answer to it, but she couldn’t help looking for one, over and over.

  You are as good as dead. You are as good as dead. It was all in the stress. She hadn’t meant Diana, particularly. She couldn’t have been so cruel as to say that to Diana.

  Oh, yes, you could, if you weren’t watching yourself. The idiot in the attic is a spiteful little bastard.

  This was a terrible way of passing the time, like being made to work out one of those infinite repeater things in Maths for ever.

  It doesn’t matter how you said it. What matters is how Diana heard it. You could see that, all right.

  You told her she was as good as dead, then you let her go home alone, though she asked you to come. That might be when she made up her mind, thinking, ‘I’ll ask her to come home with me.’ Like tossing a coin. ‘If she says no, I’ll do it.’

  Nobody will ever know it was me.

  Oh, God! Isobel!

  Abject as the thought was, she clung to it, to silence the infinite repeater, to be able to get to sleep.

  Keep away from people, don’t meddle in future. That was the lesson.

  Every day she bought the paper to look for a paragraph headed GIRL FOUND DEAD IN FLAT.

  Sometimes she was sure Diana wasn’t dead, that her obsession was ridiculous. She conjured up Diana’s face, looking for reassurance in it and seeing the deadly little smile again.

  She wanted to go round to Fifty-one for news of Diana. She was one person who would be delighted to see Diana. She did not dare to go to Fifty-one (which existed in any case only on Saturdays), for fear of showing a special interest in the matter. That showed that she cared more about being found out than about Diana’s living or dying.

  They’ll ask you questions, because you were the last person to speak to her. How did she look, what did she say? Did she give any indication that she was about to take her own life?

  I told her she was as good as dead.

  Crime and punishment. She was a twopenny Raskolnikov. She could think thoughts like that only in the moments when she believed Diana was alive. The rest of the time she was numbed by depression.

  She would never speak without thinking again. She would watch every word.

  Meanwhile, she began to see that Mrs Bowers was angry with her particularly. Standing at the stove with the wholesome smell of baked dinner rising round her, she glared at her, looking like a witch that has got hold of the wrong recipe. She couldn’t turn such malevolence on everyone, she wouldn’t have the energy for it.

  Isobel accepted it passively.

  ‘You wanted Madge’s place,’ she said to herself, ‘and now you’ve got it.’ She thought of Madge, leaving so splendidly, but could not imagine having so much strength, herself. It was easy to bear Mrs Bowers’ dislike, now that she was prepared for it, easy to keep her head low and her eyes averted, much easier than going out into a strange world again.

  At the café there was no talk of Diana, only of Mitch’s sonnet sequence, which Trevor was sorry to have missed.

  They would know by now if Diana was dead. Time let you off at last, as she had noticed before.

  ‘It’s not purely decorative,’ Kenneth said. ‘That’s the interesting thing. It’s full of the usual decorative bits, but there’s a context. I’d like to read it again.’

  Janet said, ‘You’ve no idea how delighted Mitch was because Kenneth liked it. The air was full of the beating of angels’ wings.’

  Kenneth grinned. ‘I hope he didn’t notice how surprised I was.’

  ‘I wish I’d been there,’ Trevor said again.

  ‘Well, it’s going into Hermes.’

  Nick wasn’t there, but Nick was never really there. He was the charming exile.

  Alone with Isobel on the way back to Fifty-one, Trevor said, ‘I have a weakness for reading things in manuscript. I know it’s childish, but there it is.’

  ‘I think it’s exciting, too. I suppose, if you write manuscript, it’s print that’s exciting.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  There was a remoteness in his tone today that made her uneasy. Had she done something wrong? How much she wanted not to offend Trevor.

  She asked, ‘Do you write?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Do you wish you did?’ Her jaws were heavy, hard to move as she asked the personal question, but he took it calmly.

  ‘No. What I want to be is a good critic. You know, the kind who can tell good from bad, when it’s new, in a new form…a spotter, in fact. There aren’t many. About Dostoevsky. Are you ever going to say anything about Dostoevsky? Why do I nag you? It’s quite legitimate to read for reading’s sake. And there’s the other end of the scale, where people read books only to write about them. Yes, and people write books for other people to write theses about. Why do I complain when I meet a consumer?’

  Consumer was just the word.

  Her jaws were heavy again. ‘It’s not like reading, Dostoevsky especially. It’s like living in it.’

  Particularly Crime and Punishment.

  ‘Um, perhaps no more Dostoevsky for the moment. We don’t want you turning tragic and Russian.’ He sounded positively like Joseph; she felt an intimate shame, as if he had found out about him.

  ‘I got Middlemarch from the library. I haven’t started it yet.’

  ‘Dear me, you are slipping.’

  She wished he would not laugh at her.

  In his room he turned to face her, looking like a handsome pale horse about to bolt, took a step towards her, said ‘Isobel’, and put his arms round her.

  It was her body that fought, not she. It stiffened and struggled against being pushed out onto a tightrope from which it must fall. Her hands went up and pushed at his chest, pushing him away. He dropped his arms, said with a gasp of pain he managed to shape into a laugh, ‘Sorry. Forget I mentioned it.’ Then he walked quite wildly to his desk, sat down, opened a book and stared at it.

  Nothing to be done. She put The Brothers Karamazov on the bed and ran away.

  It was all gone in a second, the café, the books, the conversation, and she had hurt Trevor, made him gasp with pain.

  Later, she thought wistfully of the vanished prospect of being Trevor’s girlfriend, of belonging…Couldn’t she have pretended? Would it have been enough, if she had done everything he wanted? That would have been no trouble; she would have been quite ready always to do what Trevor wanted. But she would have had to know what he did want. It would be like being a spy in a foreign country, having to pass for a native. She would be found out. The penalty for being found out appeared as Diana, walking and watching, obsessed with suffering. That moment when you found out they hated you and you did not know why—any deprivation was better than that.

  But she had lost Joseph, too. Trevor was Joseph. She had lost them both.

  Next Saturday she walked through the streets and the parks of the surrounding suburbs, feeling lonely, wondering what they were talking about at the café, telling herself it was all for the best, thinking sadly if…if Trevor had gone a bit slower, if she had had some warning, if he had asked her to the pictures on Saturday night (she had to laug
h at the idea of Trevor’s doing that)—no, it wouldn’t have made any difference, she was what she was and nothing could change her, so best to be done with it.

  She passed a house with a sign ROOM VACANT and thought of safety, a bolthole.

  She walked into town, away from the empty streets, but town didn’t offer what she needed, which was a big, cheerful carnival crowd. There were people in twos and threes, looking bored and aimless, offering no comfort.

  She came in late for dinner. Mrs Bowers made a special trip into the dining room with her plate—not that she had kept it in the oven, for it was cooling and congealing—and put it in front of her with a thud. She stared down at it and began to eat, scraping away the cold, sticky gravy and eating the tepid meat, knowing the others were looking away in embarrassment.

  Who cared? If Mrs Bowers knew how miserable she was, she would not be wasting her energy on puny efforts to annoy.

  On Monday morning Mr Walter came into the outer office and said distantly, ‘A phone call for you, Miss Callaghan.’

  Her amazement, which was genuine, was also the best defence. Private phone calls at the office were unheard of. She had to walk past Mr Walter, trying to keep her composure, and pick up the phone on his desk while he watched.

  ‘Isobel, this is Helen. You know, from Fifty-one.’

  ‘Who gave you this number?’

  ‘Oh, does it matter? We worked it out—your boss’s name. Isobel, Nick is dead.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. How can he be dead?’ How odd her own voice sounded, thin and exasperated.

  ‘It’s true. It was an accident, on his bike. A car hit him. It happened yesterday, he was badly injured. He died, just now, in the hospital. They rang to tell me, his mother’s there. Look, I want you to do something for me, I want you to go and break it to Diana. It’s a terrible thing to ask you, but I can’t think of anyone else. Trevor’s just about at the end of his tether, I can’t ask him, and Kenneth and Janet…they aren’t sympathetic, Janet’s got some crazy idea that Diana is to blame, I don’t know what they might say to her. I know it’s a lot to ask…’

  ‘I can’t go now, I don’t get off work till five o’clock.’

  A hand touched her arm. She looked up. Mr Walter, looking gentle, was nodding.

  ‘It’s all right.’

  She echoed into the phone, ‘It’s all right. I can go now.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good. It’s his mother, you see. She’s at the hospital, she’ll be coming here to get his things—I can’t have Diana round here making scenes. It’s all bad enough.’

  ‘What’s the address?’

  ‘Lucky, we found that, in the telephone book. Nick must have written it in. It’s Kirribilli.’

  ‘Wait on.’

  A notebook and a gold propelling pencil appeared by her hand.

  ‘Flat 7, 34 Mount Street, Kirribilli.’

  She wrote it down, astonished at the unwillingness of her hand.

  ‘Right. I’ll go there straight away.’

  ‘Thanks. That’s a weight off my mind.’

  Mr Walter, on his way out, brought the visitor’s chair across to her.

  ‘Sit down. I’ll get Olive to bring you a cup of tea.’ He said respectfully, ‘Is it a relative?’

  She shook her head, sinking into the chair under the weight of her sadness. She wished she could be the one to comfort Trevor. You built a wall around yourself and too late you found yourself walled in.

  Olive came in carrying a cup of tea with two biscuits and a folded paper strip of Aspros in the saucer.

  ‘I have to go. I have to break the news to someone.’

  Olive said, ‘What a terrible job.’ (And what a terrible person to give it to.) ‘You’re as white as a sheet. You’d better have this first. Take your Aspros. Oh, you’ll want a glass of water.’

  Mr Walter had thought of that. He came in carrying a glass of water.

  He asked, ‘Do you know how to get there?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I’ll find it for you.’ He took his street directory from the bookshelf, found the street and began to draw a map. Who could have imagined such kindness in Mr Walter? ‘You can get out at Milson’s Point on the right-hand side…’

  She tried to listen. It did not matter; she would find the street.

  Olive said, ‘It is a relative?’

  She shook her head.

  Olive put her arms round her. ‘Oh, poor Isobel.’

  False pretences, but she put her head against Olive’s body and felt the weight of sadness subside a little.

  ‘I have to go.’

  She began to take account now of what she had to do, and to dread it, remembering what she had done last time she talked to Diana.

  Mr Walter handed her the map. ‘Don’t forget this and don’t worry about getting back. We can do without you for the day.’

  She mustn’t start crying; she wouldn’t even be crying about Nick, but because of the sympathy.

  She nodded and went. In the outer office the girls watched silently as she covered her typewriter and picked up her bag. She nodded to them too. They didn’t want her to speak. How awesome she had become.

  Diana, I have bad news, Diana, I’ve come to tell you…Don’t say it suddenly. You have to say it somehow. There isn’t any way of making it better, remember that, just see to it you don’t make it worse. How? Break it gently—here, have a gentle blow over the head.

  Her own shock was wearing off and the memory of Nick returning. She could not grieve for him—that would be an intrusion, since she had not really known him—but she grieved enough for beauty gone.

  It would be good to be Kenneth and be able to write a poem.

  Oh, bugger Kenneth.

  She was aghast at the spiteful rage that Kenneth could rouse in her—and at this moment of all moments. Kenneth would write a poem, a beautiful elegy; that would be something left of Nick, and she should be ashamed of herself.

  She got out at Milson’s Point. Mr Walter’s map took her downwards towards the water but stopped half-way in a small street crowded with apartment houses. Number Thirty-four was narrow, dingy white, shabby beside its new-painted tricked-out neighbours. It was dark in the lobby but lighter at the top of the first flight of stairs, where she found Number Seven. She knocked feebly, her stomach sinking away from her, then knocked more firmly.

  Inside, a voice called out words of complaint she could not distinguish. There was a pause, then the door was half-opened and Diana looked through the gap.

  ‘Diana, may I come in?’

  Diana opened the door wide. She was wearing a quite dirty nightgown, her hair was tangled and her feet were bare. She stared with puzzled eyes at Isobel.

  ‘Helen asked me to come.’

  The bed was unmade, the covers thrown back as if Diana had just got out of it. On the floor beside it were an unwashed cup, a plate and a greasy knife, an ashtray full of cigarette butts, a paperback open face down, three pairs of shoes lying in disorder—Isobel looked for somewhere to sit, but both the chairs were heaped with clothes.

  She’s not going to be able to bear it.

  Diana, still staring, sat down on the bed.

  Isobel hid her face in her hands. What a stagy thing to do, yet she hadn’t meant to do it, was surprised that such gestures existed outside books.

  It forced Diana to speak, at last.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Diana, I’ve got very bad news. Nick is dead.’

  She hasn’t really heard, sitting there dull-eyed, trying to make out what I said.

  ‘It was an accident, on his bike. I don’t know much about it; he was badly hurt and he died this morning in hospital. Helen asked me to come and tell you.’

  Absent-mindedly, Diana pulled open the drawer of the bedside table, got out a hairbrush and began to brush her hair.

  Shock. People do very funny things when they’re shocked. But the feeling that was coming over Diana did not seem like shock. It was profound
; she was thinking hard and breathing deeply. She dropped the hairbrush and steadied herself with one hand on the pillow.

  This must be what they called being in travail. It was a private process; Isobel should go away and let her get on with it, but she did not know how to do that.

  The feeling was appearing now: relief. Isobel was the prison governor who had brought her news of her reprieve.

  She said, ‘Can I get you something? Make you a cup of tea?’

  What falsehood. I am thinking of what she ought to be feeling.

  Diana too thought Isobel had made a social error.

  ‘No, thank you. I’m quite all right.’

  She looked with surprise at the hairbrush and put it back in the drawer.

  All right is no word for it. She’s glad he’s dead. She feels the way I felt when my mother died. He wasn’t a human being to her, he was a thorn in her side, a stone in her shoe.

  What price love, then?

  She ought to pretend. She ought to have the decency to pretend, after all she’s said and done.

  ‘Nick’s mother is at the hospital. She’s coming to the house to collect his things. Helen said, if you’d mind not coming here just for the moment, you know…it’s going to be very difficult, with Nick’s mother there.’

  Diana said, in a sharp irritable tone, ‘Why would I want to go there?’

  Now she was looking round the room, looking as if she had just woken up and was wondering at the mess.

  She got up. ‘Thank you for coming to tell me.’ Quite the social tone. ‘Tell Helen I’m very sorry, won’t you? It’s very tragic. There isn’t much one can say, is there?’

  Isobel was looking for an exit line, but she did not need one, for Diana was ushering her towards the door.

  She was more depressed now than grieved. Walking back to the station, she remembered Auden:

  ‘I’ve come a very long way to prove

  No land, no water and no love.’

  How could she know? Grief might visit Diana later. After all, what did it matter to her whether or not Diana grieved for Nick? It did matter very much, though she did not know why.

  Now she had to go to Fifty-one. She did not want to; she was fighting off the shameful thought that grief was a terrible bore. Perhaps it wasn’t such a shameful thought—grief might be like that, being slammed into a lockup with one thought you couldn’t get away from. She wouldn’t be able to get away from it even if she did stay away from Fifty-one.