Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop

by Amy Witting

  ‘Izzy?’

  ‘Yes?’

  She looked up from her book.

  ‘Your face. It gets me. Something about it just gets me.’

  Isobel knew her own face well and could envisage it with all the intimacy of dislike: the small, full-lipped mouth—some people might call it a rosebud mouth but in moments of self-hatred she had an uglier name for it—round chin, heavy straight eyebrows set in a permanent frown. Illness had reduced the full cheeks she had likened to a baby’s bum. She hoped they never came back.

  She said sourly, ‘I wish it got you back to bed.’

  (And that, she thought later, was her first error. The proper answer would have been, ‘Don’t talk such bloody rot,’ or something just as decisive.)

  ‘Izzy, I mean it.’

  He slid from his perch and came to kneel beside her bed, advancing his face to subject hers to a closer scrutiny.

  She wanted to dodge. She had to control the disgust she felt at the closeness of his sick body. Poor little devil, she had to spare him that.

  She said gently, ‘Don’t be a little ass, Lance. Go back to bed now.’

  He got up and went, still thoughtful.

  Who am I, she thought, to feel disgust? If he is diseased, so am I.

  She hoped he would not come so close again, for all that.

  The next day, he came closer. He came in and knelt beside her bed, brought his face close to hers while he peered with intensity at her features one by one, and she forced herself to control her dislike of the proximity, then with a purring sound he pressed his lips to her cheek.

  She was paralysed by a conflict of emotion; the disgust she felt as his thin lips climbed her cheek like a small rodent was inhibited by the pity she felt for the fever smouldering in his flesh.

  She withdrew to Czechoslovakia.

  You would go to bed with any Tom, Dick or Harry who asked you, and you make a carry-on when a sick, unhappy kid kisses you on the cheek?

  Yet what she wanted most to do was thrust him away, with violence.

  It could be the final rejection, the blow that would finish him.

  The look on his face as he withdrew was strange, remote, with an almost religious serenity.

  Was that good?

  Why was it so difficult to tell the difference? Why could one not have some sort of litmus test for right and wrong?

  She could not take the responsibility of rejecting that physical contact. After all, there wasn’t much to it, was there? Nothing you’d really call disgusting, nothing sexual about it.

  So she endured, trying to talk herself out of the disgust she felt at his touch.

  Enlightenment came one day in the corridor. An arm went round her shoulders and pulled her into a cheerful and careless hug.

  ‘Love that dragon of yours!’

  ‘It comes from Hong Kong, just like you.’

  The arm released her and Wang went on his way laughing, leaving her with an important fact about body talk.

  It was good or bad, like eggs, oranges or voice tones. There was no need to rationalise it. In Wang, good. In Lance, bad.

  Bad above all because it did not communicate. Wang’s hug spoke directly to her; Lance’s body talked to itself.

  Val would not have been fooled for a moment. Nor would Tamara. ‘If he lays finger I smack hard, no worries.’

  The next time Lance, on his knees beside her, closed his eyes and advanced his face to hers, she dodged and said firmly, ‘Don’t do that! I don’t like it!’

  He went at once into comic mode, whining, ‘Izzy, don’t you love me?’

  She had given much thought to this and had her answer ready.

  ‘The point is that you don’t love me. This isn’t what kissing is about. Some day you’ll want to kiss somebody for the right reason, so keep it till then. Okay?’

  The change in his expression was slight but startling, that trance-like serenity dissolving, his lips tightening and his eyelids opening to reveal rage.

  He was baulked of revenge. She had aligned herself with authority, she was bitch Lawson, helpless and available for insult. This was the tin kettle in the Christmas gift wrap and she had been forced to accept it—but now, like bitch Lawson, she was escaping.

  She looked at him in dismay while he got control of his rage, seeming literally to swallow it.

  With his instinct for saving himself at the edge of the pit, he said thoughtfully, ‘I think I’ll go look for dumber company.’

  He got up from his knees and walked away, for once without shuffling.

  He won’t find much dumber than I am, thought Isobel morosely.

  ‘I don’t know why you let that go on so long,’ said Val.

  Out of sheer damned stupidity.

  She wouldn’t give Val the satisfaction of telling her so.

  The search for dumber company did not keep him away for long from Isobel’s bedside. He returned next day, but with a significantly changed demeanour. He perched silent and thoughtful on the end of the bed and seemed to be looking for words in which to speak new thoughts.

  Perhaps he had got new insight into his behaviour. Perhaps this was the time to tell him…tell him what? What prospect could one offer?

  Better to have left him alone than to set him considering questions to which she had no answer.

  She felt guilty and inadequate, but relieved not to have that insect mouth hovering round her face.

  Oh, but she was tired of contemplating problems she could not solve.

  Doctor Stannard lost patience with Isobel’s fever chart.

  After staring irritably at it, he picked up her latest X-ray, frowned at it, put it down and picked up the chart again.

  ‘I can’t understand this fever, Sister. Why isn’t it settling down? There has to be some reason for it.’

  Sister Connor could not offer a reason. Nor could Isobel.

  Val spoke.

  ‘She gets out of bed! She says she’s going…’ About to commit the impropriety of mentioning the lavatory to a doctor, she halted. ‘She stays away sometimes more than half an hour and she won’t say where she’s been. She just says, “Oh, about the place.” She does it every day.’

  She inhaled a breath of righteous indignation, expelled it and sat proud and defiant, having done her duty in spite of all obstacles.

  ‘Oh, indeed.’

  Doctor Stannard turned his eagle gaze on Isobel. She met it with all the aplomb of a school prefect caught smoking in the lavatory block.

  ‘Mmm. That will be B grade and bread and water, Sister, until further notice.’

  The mischievous grin had been fleeting, almost subliminal, but it registered with Isobel, and also with Sister Connor, whose exasperation was far from subliminal. She suppressed it quickly out of respect for the white coat, but her expression boded ill to Isobel.

  Doctor Stannard moved on, looked at Val’s X-ray, asked after her health and departed. Doctor Wang followed him, avoiding Isobel’s eye, avoiding everyone’s eye.

  Isobel hid her face on the arms she had crossed and supported on her propped knees. She did not stir or speak.

  Val remained defiant, though she had done the unthinkable. Wog does not eat wog. Patients do not peach. One protects the smoker and the truant, since one does not know when one’s own hour of need may come.

  As soon as the doctors were out of range, Lance came running to Isobel and put his arms round her shoulders, grievances forgotten, the embrace expressing only sympathy.

  He said to Val, ‘You beast. You beast. Putting Izzy in. Getting her back on B grade.’

  Isobel could not raise her head. She could not show her face. What she was hiding was not misery, but the shining of her eyes. A small, discontented animal which had long been prowling her mind had lain down, curled up and gone to sleep.

  Picturing that grin again, she told herself, I’d do anything for him. I’d follow him anywhere.

  She had not known that helplessness could be so exquisite a sensation.

>   Time to sober up, to bury this—in the heart, wasn’t that the traditional burial place for such things? She must sober up and face the world.

  She raised her head.

  ‘It’s all right, Lance. I’m not really on B grade. He was joking. Just B grade would have meant something. B grade and bread and water doesn’t mean a thing.’

  ‘Oh. No thanks to you, though,’ he said to Val. ‘It was a rotten thing to do, that’s all.’

  ‘It was for her own good,’ said Val.

  Her tone was sulky, her expression puzzled. Her attack on Isobel had not had quite the result she had anticipated.

  Lance too looked puzzled.

  ‘Why would he be joking? He doesn’t joke when she goes on moaning to him about me. Just says not to do it again.’

  ‘He doesn’t put you on B grade either. Maybe he knows it wouldn’t be any use.’

  ‘S’pose you’re right. No call for Val to go peaching, just the same.’

  On the verandah after rounds, there was high drama.

  ‘Isobel’s back on B grade. Is that right?’

  ‘Val put her in for getting out of bed.’

  Val could not escape criticism for this breach of the unbreachable code.

  ‘Somebody had to tell him. It was my duty.’

  ‘Could have given her a warning. Back on B grade. That’s tough.’

  Val was a large, innocent bear chained to the stake of righteousness and baited by yapping dogs.

  ‘I had to do my duty.’

  She did not try to correct the notion that Isobel had been sent back to B grade.

  That was left to Isobel.

  ‘I’m not on B grade. He was joking.’

  ‘Joking? Stannard doesn’t joke.’

  The tide of opinion began to turn against Isobel. Friendship with Doctor Wang was almost acceptable, since he was one of us and Chinese, after all—but joking, being teased by Stannard…

  ‘No joke when the rest of us get caught getting out of bed.’

  ‘One law for the rich!’

  She was forced to smile.

  ‘Nobody ever called me rich before. Listen, it was sort of like a joke, but he meant it just the same. I mean, I know I mustn’t do it again.’

  She was tired. She was really extremely tired. No doubt it had been wrong of her to get out of bed to write poetry, and Sister Connor was angry with her.

  ‘Well, he never jokes with anyone else, that’s all I can say.’

  ‘Oh, but Isobel isn’t like other people. Isobel is different.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Isobel is different!’

  There came that eleventh commandment again: Thou shall not be different.

  Was it going to pursue her all her life?

  This time she had tried to conform, a wog among wogs.

  She had called herself a wog until Wang had banned the word—but there it was. He didn’t ban it with other patients. But what other patient would be using it to a doctor? And he had known very well that she was playing a game—out-Romaning the Romans, as he had put it.

  It was all too difficult. One couldn’t after all avoid being oneself, with all faults. They were right to resent her. Let them get on with it. She was too tired to try, too tired to care.

  She roused herself, however, to defend Doctor Stannard.

  ‘Oh, give it away, will you? Doctor Stannard is nice to everybody. And you mustn’t say that he cares more for one patient than another. He cares about us all. He just knew I’d get the message.’

  ‘And how do you know that? You on a wavelength with him?’

  She had sometimes thought that this was so, that Doctor Stannard’s moments of withdrawal were in truth moments of communication. She could not forget that comment he’d made at their first meeting, delivered without looking at her: ‘Such things do occur.’ She was sure that he had told no-one of her forced entry into the wrong hospital, had never spoken of the intervention of the police. But perhaps he had forgotten or thought it too trivial to mention. It did not do to be fanciful.

  Sister Connor arrived after lunch on her disciplinary errand. She said to Isobel, ‘There is no special dispensation for you, you know. You can keep the rules like everyone else.’ To Val she said, ‘And if you have any worries about another patient, you can bring them to me before you talk to a doctor.’

  Val said, ‘It was for her own good.’

  Isobel said, in desperation, ‘I’m not away long. I just have to be by myself sometimes, for a little while.’ She added bitterly, ‘To remember what peace was like.’

  Val said, ‘Well!’ in outrage.

  Sister Connor took pause.

  ‘This room is like a railway station. There’s always someone in here gossiping.’

  ‘I don’t ask them to come. I can’t tell them to go away.’

  Sister Connor seemed to be giving this matter more thought than it warranted.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you can. Still, there’s too much of it. Val, couldn’t you do something about it? Limit the visitors? You can tell them that Isobel has had enough for one day.’

  Isobel dared not look at Val. Her reaction to this impious suggestion must be quite astonishing. She saw its reflection in Sister Connor’s startled expression.

  ‘Well, perhaps not. No.’

  Positively, Sister Connor was stammering, apologetic.

  Isobel had been nursing her anger against Val since the morning.

  ‘Right. I’ll keep to my bed. And if you really are concerned about my health, you can stop bullying and pestering me to wake up in the morning. There’s something very wrong with you if you can’t put up with your own company for an hour or two. I’ll stay in bed but I’m going to sleep as long as I please, and I’m not going to say an unnecessary word to anyone before ten o’clock. Not you, or Lance, or anyone else!’

  ‘Do you mean that Val wakes you deliberately?’

  ‘Yes. That is what I mean.’

  Sister Connor turned on Val, who stared at her whispering, ‘Morning. Morning.’

  Sister Connor drew a deep breath and spoke.

  ‘You do not take it upon yourself to wake anyone out of sleep. This is a rest cure and sleep is the best possible rest. You will not disturb Isobel’s sleep again. Doctor Stannard is very worried…’ She halted, alarmed, closing her lips on an indiscretion. ‘You are not the only patient in this hospital. It’s time you learnt to respect other people’s rights.’

  On this she departed, without taking notice of Val’s reaction.

  It was Isobel’s turn to be defiant and self-righteous.

  Val drew in a long breath and expelled it in a sob, which was the start of a bout of weeping. She slid under the covers, turned to the wall and gave herself over to her grief.

  Isobel lay still, trying to absorb an unwelcome piece of information. He had said, ‘Don’t be frightened, we’ll cure you. You’re going to get better.’

  She hadn’t doubted that statement till now. Now she assembled evidence to the contrary: his frown at her X-ray, his complaints about the continuing fever, his general shortness of temper. Would he have joked, if things were so bad? But it wasn’t actually a joke. He knew she’d take it seriously. And they hid things. You had to work it out for yourself.

  Meanwhile, Val’s crying had increased in intensity. It became frightening. It was no longer like a human sound, but the noise of an ocean in which a body was drifting helpless, awash, abandoned.

  It can’t go on like that, thought Isobel.

  She wasn’t doing it for effect, either. She wasn’t doing it at all. It was something dreadful that was happening to her.

  There was nothing Isobel could do. Her voice would not be calming. She was the cause of the trouble.

  Maybe she’s having a breakdown. Maybe she’ll have a haemorrhage if it goes on.

  It can’t go on like this for long. She’s like a baby. She’ll cry herself to sleep.

  Her crying slackened at last, but it did not stop, taking instead the steady, laboured
pace of her customary speech. At that pace, it could go on forever.

  Eventually Isobel got up and went looking for Sister Connor. She found her talking to Sister Knox at the end of the verandah.

  ‘Sister, Val just won’t stop crying. Do you think you ought to look at her?’

  Sister Connor groaned and said, ‘I’ll fetch Doctor Wang. You’d better go into the visitors’ room, Isobel. You can lie down on the couch there for rest period. Sister, get her a blanket out of store, will you? And just remember, Isobel, that none of this would have happened if you had stayed in bed as you should have.’

  Isobel thought there were other elements in the situation, but she was not in a position to argue.

  When Sister Connor had gone, Sister Knox put her arm around Isobel’s shoulders and said, ‘Isobel, you’re such a sweet girl, with a kind word for everyone. Couldn’t you just be a bit kinder to poor little Val?’

  A finger of white bone had touched Isobel’s chest in the fourth intercostal area and had left her chilled with dread.

  She said, carefully, ‘She’s as big as I am, she’s twice my age, she has a family and a home to go back to, she has a husband who comes to see her every Sunday. Now what would you like me to do for her?’

  Sister Knox took her arm away. She went to fetch the blanket, brought it back and departed in dignified silence.

  Isobel lay under the blanket, fuelling her indignation.

  That would look well on a tombstone. Here lies Isobel Callaghan. She was a sweet girl. More fool she.

  Asperity gave way to terror. That tombstone was real. It reared above her, threatening to topple and blot her out from this world she wasn’t finished with yet. No. Not by a long chalk. No.

  I won’t. I won’t go.

  She lay cowering under her blanket, afraid to move, afraid to breathe. This was fear as she had never known it.

  But Stannard wouldn’t have grinned if it was too late.

  And Wang. She would have known, she would have seen it in Wang’s face.

  They were worried, but not frightened.

  She must just remember that death was a possible outcome.

  She thought of the future, considering alternative outcomes. C Ward was a good place for considering alternatives. It displayed them all, except for those who had had successful surgery and were waiting in the upper wards to go home.