Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop

by Amy Witting

  Mr Richard’s personal fiction was essential to his self-respect. She had worked that out the day Olive had said, ‘Mr Richard, Isobel would get on much faster if you didn’t interrupt her.’

  And Mr Richard’s reaction had been not indignation but fear.

  Seeing the dread in his eyes before he turned and walked away, she had resolved on tolerance. ‘Let him have his little dream of importance. I can afford it, now that I know the fear behind it.’

  According to her theory of shared personal fiction, she had been having a love affair with Mr Richard. Scrub that definition.

  Tolerance had failed, after all.

  Well, she had had a headache. The German words had been drifting and eluding her, trying her temper already. Truly, she had seen red, the flash of lightning which had seemed to split her skull had been bright scarlet. So she had stripped poor big, flabby Mr Richard to his small, cowering soul. Not pretty.

  No use expecting a reference, either. She had slammed that door behind her, all right.

  It had been a matter of timing. Fenwick’s letter had seemed like a directive. If the letter hadn’t come that very day, found her jobless, without prospects, frightened, too, by that flash of red lightning…

  A place to hide. A signpost to the future and a place to hide. It was timing not only to the day but to the hour. She had stopped crying, had washed her face, combed her hair and discovered that she was hungry. She had decided then to defy fate and brace herself for the ordeal of breaking the news to Aunt Noelene with cinnamon toast and real coffee at Repin’s. She had found Fenwick’s letter in her box on the way out, had noted with a lift of the spirits that it was a thin one, promising acceptance, and had put it in her bag unread. It would be an extra treat with the cinnamon toast. So it was in the cheerful and reassuring atmosphere of the crowded café that she had read it at last.

  Dear Miss Callaghan,

  Thank you for sending us ‘Meet me there’. It is a most impressive story and I’ll be happy to publish it in our April issue.

  I do want to tell you how much I like your work. It is just the sort of thing I am anxious to find for Seminal.

  I think you have the gift of universal acceptance. In your first story, ‘Perhaps they were dancing’, the Lesbian embrace the girl surprises is shown with sympathy and respect, while the comments of the schoolgirls in the discussion which follows are extremely funny, yet touched with the same sympathetic acceptance. That last comment, ‘Well, if they were dancing, Miss Weatherby was the man,’ I thought a stunner.

  From that to a suicide pact is a long step and a bold one, but you bring it off very well. Apparently it is established fact that intending suicides experience an improvement in mood once the decision is made. Observers often remark that the victim ‘had seemed so much better lately’—I don’t know if you had known this, or were simply going on writer’s intuition. You seem to have that in abundance.

  I am looking forward to seeing more of your work.

  Sincerely,

  Tom Fenwick

  Why not? she had thought, reading and rereading the letter. She had savings, all of fifty-six pounds in the bank, a typewriter and—it had seemed at that moment—an infinite capacity for fiction and, perhaps, talent. Fenwick thought so.

  The attic too had seemed part of a grand plan. The tall, shabby rooming house would, she had told herself, be full of stories. But in that house there seemed to be one story only, and the people she passed on the stairs lived it in the privacy of misery, the last stand of human dignity. The odd old lady alone, mumbling, shuffling along the street in slippers with her few provisions in her string bag, the single mother with the two whining children, tired, harassed and sullen—they had closed upon their fate, their looks said, ‘Keep away.’

  And Mr Lynch.

  She averted her thoughts from Mr Lynch and fixed them on the uncooperative George.

  So you know nothing about love. You write about plenty of things you know nothing about. What do you know about people in a suicide pact? Fenwick had said it was writer’s intuition.

  It didn’t work with love.

  Right. If intuition won’t work, and you don’t have experience to guide you, and this is one you can’t get from observation, use your intelligence, use what you do know.

  She typed.

  ‘“Anna,” said George. “I love you.”’

  No. Apart from being absolute corn, and out of context, it doesn’t leave George a retreat. Being George, he’ll be tentative, testing the water.

  ‘“Anna, do you know you have beautiful eyes?”’

  So Anna, being Anna, will answer, ‘All the better to see you with.’

  It has to be more than a compliment, a suggestion of good faith and serious intentions.

  A way of retreat for George, a promise of commitment for Anna.

  Oh, the hell with the pair of you. George can be a crusty old bachelor, Anna can wither on the stem.

  She pulled the sheet out of the typewriter, crumpled it and tossed it into the basket at her feet.

  It was worse than lack of experience, or lack of imagination. This was the dead country, the airless space where she could not breathe nor move nor speak.

  It was not a matter to brood on.

  That settled it. She would go out this evening after all. She would go to the McIvors’.

  She hadn’t meant to go to the McIvors’, having a suspicion that she had worn out her welcome. Liza had said, last Friday evening, without warmth, ‘You’re getting to be quite a regular.’

  What had she meant by that? Had she meant ‘quite a pest’ or ‘quite a freeloader’?

  Duncan’s letter had been warm enough. Her first fan letter ever, it was another she knew by heart:

  Dear Miss Callaghan,

  I am writing to tell you how impressed I am by your story ‘Meet me there’. It was a brave subject to tackle and I think you brought it off wonderfully well.

  My wife Liza and I both enjoyed ‘Perhaps they were dancing’ and we are looking forward to reading your next story.

  We should very much like to make your acquaintance. Friday nights we have a few friends in, mostly people with an interest in writing, or at least in reading.

  You will find some admirers among them, too.

  We both hope you will drop in, any Friday evening from 7.30 on.

  Sincerely,

  Duncan McIvor

  Any Friday evening didn’t mean every Friday evening.

  There was another reason for avoiding the McIvors. The trouble with success was that it roused expectations. Questions like, ‘What are you working on now?’ That was not a question one welcomed when one was spending hours staring at a blank sheet of paper in a typewriter.

  She couldn’t stay alone with it all evening. It would have to be the McIvors’.

  If she went to the McIvors’, she must take a contribution. That might be what Liza had been hinting, that she was freeloading. Other people brought flagons of wine, and sometimes bottles. A bottle might be insufficient. One problem about being poor was that one couldn’t afford to look poor.

  She went across to the bed and rolled back the mattress to reach the copies of the Sydney Morning Herald which served as insulation against the cold. She groped under the top copy and brought out a large envelope. She replaced the mattress, straightened the bedclothes and emptied the envelope onto the quilt.

  Two pounds four and fivepence.

  She had a week’s work in prospect from Secretary Girls Friday, which found short-term employment for office workers (five pounds joining fee and ten per cent of the first fourteen days’ pay).

  At the agency she had got over the lack of a reference very neatly. Looking sideways and downwards, she had said, ‘I left without notice. I had some trouble with one of the partners. A personal matter.’

  Mrs Martin’s cosy, plump face had tightened. She had clicked her tongue in sympathy and said indignantly, ‘Men! I shan’t ring them up then, dear, if you’d rather I did
n’t. I’ll just give you a little test in typing and shorthand. I have to be sure of your efficiency, you know.’

  The thought of Mr Walter or Mr Richard in the grip of lust could brighten the gloomiest moment. She dismissed that entertaining image in order to concentrate on practical matters.

  The job wouldn’t start till next Friday. Eight shillings for next week’s rent. Fares and lunches for the week at the office.

  She certainly didn’t want to go to the bank, where the account was at danger level.

  She opened the food cupboard, which had begun life as a washstand: tin of powdered milk, sliced bread still in its waxed wrapper, four tins of soup, three of baked beans, one of Spam, two (small) of spaghetti in tomato sauce—it would be tight, but she could make it.

  The thing to take was a bottle of whisky, a personal present for Duncan and Liza. She didn’t see herself lugging a flagon; besides, she had seen Duncan accepting a bottle of whisky with gratifying enthusiasm. It would need to be a good brand, too.

  Think of it as an investment in the future.

  She could do without dinner tonight and hold out for supper—one of Liza’s wonderful suppers, savoury mixtures wrapped in fragile pancakes, leek and mushroom pie…meanwhile she could stave off hunger by grazing with discretion on the savouries. There was always plenty to eat at the McIvors’.

  She put the cover on the typewriter. Perhaps George and Anna might get together overnight.

  Now for the expedition to the bathroom. This was not a simple affair. She got her duffle bag and a bath towel from the store cupboard, added soap and washer from the corner basin and clean underwear from the suitcase under the bed.

  With all personal items concealed in the duffle bag, her door locked, the key in the pocket of her slacks, she moved quietly down the five steps that took her to the half-landing above the staircase, moved even more quietly down six steps and craned to look at the door of Mr Lynch’s room.

  If it was ajar, Mr Lynch would hear her step, no matter how lightly she tried to move. He would come out of his room to watch her pass. The bathroom was a flight further down; even if she got past before he came out, he would wait, patiently, for her return. He did not speak. At first she had nodded to him, but he had made no response. He seemed only to want to watch her go past.

  He was a small, pastel-coloured man with silver hair and pink-rimmed pale blue eyes. His gaze was steady; his mouth on the other hand moved with the shiftiness one expects of eyes.

  He frightened Isobel very much. If his door had been ajar, she would have retreated to her attic and made do with ablutions at the washbasin.

  She had asked Mrs Foster the manageress if that old gentleman in 14A was all right in the head.

  ‘Old Charlie Lynch? There’s no harm in Charlie. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  Which did not answer the question.

  Isobel waited. Mrs Foster yielded, grudgingly.

  ‘What’s he doing anyhow?’

  ‘He just watches me all the time. Whenever I go downstairs, he comes out of his room and watches me. I tried to speak to him but he didn’t answer me. It’s a bit creepy, that’s all.’

  ‘A cat can look at a king, I suppose.’

  The look she directed at Isobel had nothing to do with cats and kings. It said clearly, ‘And if you think yourself too good for the company, you can take yourself off.’ Mrs Foster hadn’t wanted Isobel as a tenant. She had looked with meaning at her office clothes and said, ‘It’s three floors up. A bit of a climb.’

  Isobel in her turn studied Mrs Foster, an ageing woman with faded red hair, a puckered mouth and cold, pale, desolate eyes. She was neatly dressed, appearing slatternly only because she wore the remains of beauty like a dilapidated model gown.

  ‘That’s all right. I like to be high up.’

  Mrs Foster had stared again, more searchingly.

  ‘You’re not on the game, are you? I won’t have that.’

  ‘What game?’

  The quirk of the mouth which was possibly a smile did not soften the woman’s countenance.

  ‘No, I can see that you’re not. All right then. Have a look at it. Here’s the key. Eight shillings a week, including gas and electricity, gas used for cooking only, rent payable in advance Monday morning. No incoming phone calls and no men.’

  The attic had appealed at once. It was spacious. The sloping outer wall was masked by a partition in which a central door opened on storage space, room to hang washing to dry or to keep unwanted articles out of sight.

  All the furniture was shabby but came of two different species: the narrow iron bedstead with its thin mattress (certain to discourage illicit sex), the bedside cabinet, the table and the straight chair were utilitarian, but odd pieces seemed to have come down in the world as they migrated upwards—the heavy glass-fronted bookcase, with a large crack across one door, the marble-topped washstand, the chest of drawers with one drawer broken-fronted, and most of all the table under the gas ring, with its curved legs and its two carved drawers seeming to protest against the sheet of tin nailed to its upper surface, had all begun their lives in better circumstances.

  The chamberpot in the cabinet had obviously belonged to an old-fashioned set of bedroom china, being decorated with roses in oval embossed frames. She had been amused by that discovery but the article had soon become functional, supplemented by a lidded enamel bucket which spared her embarrassment on her way down to the lavatory.

  She hadn’t known then about Mr Lynch; as she had arranged her crockery, her cooking utensils and her few books on the shelves of the cabinet, she felt that she was taking possession of her kingdom.

  Today he must be out in the park feeding crumbs to birds. That was his other occupation.

  Probably his observation of Isobel was just as harmless. No harm in old Charlie. Reason could not prevail against the queasiness of her stomach. Her usual homemade prayer for universal acceptance, her invocation of Saint Thomas More, ‘Both must ye die, both be ye in the cart carrying forward’, did not help either. She just wanted the cart carrying Mr Lynch to go a whole lot faster.

  This time she was lucky. His door was still shut when she came out of the bathroom. She got back to her attic without experiencing that lurch of disgust that the sight of him caused her.

  Going without dinner meant time to spare. She went out to buy her present of whisky before the pub shut at six, then feeling disinclined to go back to her room, she set off to walk downtown.

  Though she had spent an hour window-shopping before she took the tram in King Street, she arrived too early at the McIvors’. It was past half past seven but the front door was shut and she had to ring the bell. She was hoping to give the bottle of whisky to Duncan, but it was Liza who came to the door, pale and fair as Hans Andersen’s ice maiden in lime-green tunic and loose dark green trousers.

  Isobel held out the bottle, knowing at once that it was a mistake. Liza was looking at it consideringly, as if she had forgotten that whisky could be drunk. Perhaps only Duncan drank whisky.

  She looked sharply and intently at Isobel as if she were trying to place her, knew she had met her somewhere but couldn’t recall her name.

  ‘Come in. They’re in the living room.’

  She turned and Isobel followed her down the hall, pondering this behaviour. Its openness was somewhat reassuring. Though she might be too frequent a visitor—there was no longer much doubt about that—she was no gatecrasher, nor did her presence cause Liza any real inconvenience. Liza tended to vagueness; she must have something on her mind that had nothing to do with Isobel’s arrival.

  In the living room there were only Ray and Joel, the long and the short of it, sitting side by side in the best armchairs. They looked at her warily, as if she were a traveller getting into their compartment, certainly a nuisance, possibly a bore…

  Now don’t start imagining things.

  After a brief nod, the two went back to their conversation, leaving her exposed to attack from the furniture: nothing
as vulgar as a lounge suite, but deep armchairs upholstered in olive green corduroy, one sofa in tan leather, the big divan in beige velvet, cushions a controlled riot of colour, leaf brown carpet, cream linen curtains. You don’t belong here, it said. You belong elsewhere. In a room where everything is battered, broken, nakedly utilitarian, with newspaper stuffed under the mattress and a slop bucket hidden behind a partition.

  Well, nobody knows that. Furniture can’t talk.

  Then Duncan was beside her. Duncan and Liza demonstrated one theory of love: the attraction of opposites. While she was tall, fair and aloof, he was stocky, dark and eager to please.

  ‘What do you think of our new hanging, Isobel?’

  He drew her towards the side wall where a large square of batik hung above the big divan.

  ‘Interesting, isn’t it? We picked it up at the exhibition of Eastern art and craft in Canberra. Do you see the motorbike?’

  He pointed. On the red-brown background straw-coloured lines drew shoulders hunched over handlebars, a helmet aslant above then, a wheel roaring forward.

  ‘Among the traditional motifs. Fascinating. A marriage of cultures.’

  His tone, apologising for the cliché, was faintly amused.

  Better than any motorbike you’ll ever draw.

  A warm breath of sympathy stirred as she thought of the artist, vague and brown-skinned, innocently in love with the motorbike, making himself an object of amusement to the sophisticated.

  ‘I like it very much.’

  ‘But you don’t have a drink. What can I get you?’

  ‘Oh, later!’

  She had in fact let herself get too hungry. It would be dangerous to drink on an empty stomach.

  ‘I’ll get something later. I know where it is.’

  Was there a flicker there in Duncan’s eyes? Was he thinking, ‘Too right you know where it is’?

  Had Liza told him about the whisky? Had they condemned her as a freeloader?