Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop

by Amy Witting

  ‘You too.’

  Eily went away, leaving Isobel to wonder what she had meant by that quite superfluous piece of advice.

  ‘Isobel.’

  ‘Yes, Elsa?’

  Isobel had completed the back and the front of the khaki sweater and was now working on a white cuff. She put it down in order to respond to a request from Elsa. She did this willingly, for Elsa asked for little and was most considerate.

  The request, however, was unexpected.

  ‘Tell me about yourself.’

  She answered in alarm, ‘You know you mustn’t talk too much, Elsa.’

  ‘I shall not talk much. I shall listen.’

  ‘But what sort of thing do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything. Love, work, ambitions…’

  ‘Oh. Love as in tennis. That is, zero.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can’t answer that.’

  ‘You are an attractive young woman. You must have had approaches.’

  Trevor and Robbie. She thought of them with painful regret.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were they not acceptable to you?’

  ‘They would have been if I had been acceptable to myself, I suppose.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’m not a good girl. I’m not dear, sweet little Isobel. I’m a tramp. That’s the truth. I go with men who despise me and treat me like dirt, but if a man comes offering…anything, affection, admiration, anything but beastly, cold sex, I go for my life.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It all began, I think, because my mother hated me.’

  ‘That happens oftener than people suppose. They never want to believe it. Did your parents get on together?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you had no model for sexual happiness.’

  ‘I could not believe that love existed,’ said Isobel. ‘Or at least not for me.’

  She began to talk, to tell the story of Frank’s odyssey.

  ‘Not that he was in love with me, no way. But he cared for me and it made me feel, I have to look at things differently, somehow, or he’ll have done all that walking for nothing. I don’t know if you can follow.’

  ‘You saw yourself through the eyes of the enemy. You must learn to see yourself through the eyes of those who love you.’

  ‘It’s not just myself. It’s like, I’m a member of the human race, and every member of the human race deserves…I don’t know. Respect? If you deny that to yourself, you’re damaging the fabric, somehow.’

  ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself. First, love thyself.’

  ‘It’s a lot to ask, in the circumstances.’

  Elsa after a long pause said, ‘Would you like to tell me the circumstances?’ She added, ‘There’s no harm in talking to me, you know.’

  Her own circumstances at present were strangely privileged.

  ‘Well, when I say that my mother hated me, I mean that she hated me so much that she acted out murder fantasies. My earliest memory…people ask you sometimes for your earliest memory, like a parlour game. But mine is of my mother holding me down a lavatory and pulling the chain. It wasn’t so much the terror and the humiliation as the desperate desire to be rid of me, to flush me away like…oh, hell. In all my life, I’ve never felt that I had firm ground under my feet. I’ve always been…like…suspended over a void. A great, black void.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘I suppose two. I don’t really know. But it happened. I remember it.’

  ‘Yes. It would not be easy to forget. Go on.’

  Elsa’s voice was calm and matter of fact. That tone, and the quiet of the room, which their subdued voices hardly interrupted, made speaking easy.

  Isobel went on.

  ‘I think it was that she had planned for a son. Fate hadn’t just frustrated her. It had disobeyed her. You understand?’

  ‘Yes. I see her clearly, I think. Were you the only child?’

  ‘No. I have an elder sister. She was acceptable.’

  ‘I think that is enough for today. Tomorrow you will tell me a little more.’

  This was the first of many conversations—of one conversation, rather, with pauses sometimes of a day or a few hours, sometimes of two minutes or so while Elsa gathered breath or Isobel found words.

  She told her life story, little by little, even to the matter she had never thought to confess.

  ‘I used to make phone calls. To people I didn’t know. Hideous phone calls, spitting out rage and hatred.’

  ‘To men and women?’

  Suddenly, Isobel began to laugh.

  ‘Elsa, you are like a priest. Do you know the story of the man who had committed murder? He wasn’t found out but he couldn’t bear the burden on his conscience any longer, so he decided to kill himself. On his way to the river he passed a High Anglican church with the notice: Confessions 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. So he went in and told the minister about his horror murder, and the minister said he would go with him to the police and give him spiritual comfort as he confessed. He didn’t want to go to the police, he thought he preferred the river. But further down the street he passed a Catholic church and he thought he’d give it one last try. So he went in to the confessional, knelt down and said to the priest. “Father, I have sinned. I have committed murder.” And the priest said, “Yes, my son. How many times?”

  ‘I tell you my worst sin and you say, “To men and women?” Just the same tone. Well, if a man answered the phone I said, “Sorry. I must have the wrong number,” and hung up.’

  For Elsa, laughter was a dangerous indulgence. She smiled.

  ‘So they were the words you couldn’t say to your mother.’

  Isobel was silent in astonishment.

  ‘So they were. I never thought of that. And isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘I should like,’ said Elsa, ‘to say a word or two to her myself. Your anger is understandable. I think it is inescapable. And that is enough for today.’

  ‘Isobel!’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about your mother and about anger.’

  ‘For two whole days?’

  ‘Not continuously. But I have a thought which might be useful. I believe there is some progression here. Would you accept that your mother suffered physical abuse as a child?’

  ‘Yes. No doubt about that, I should say.’

  ‘But her attacks on you, damaging as they were, were, as you say, sham. Not real murder.’

  ‘Poison in jest. No offence in the world,’ said Isobel with bitterness.

  ‘Plenty of offence, but no murder. Infanticide does happen. It didn’t happen that time. Perhaps she was learning to manage her anger a little.’

  ‘I thought it was fear of the consequences that saved me.’

  ‘That might have been a motive, but perhaps she was fighting her own anger. And you went a step further, into verbalising. And in a way that did as little damage as possible. After all, getting a nasty anonymous phone call isn’t much to worry about. We’ve all had them and survived.’

  ‘You’ll be turning poison pen letters into a virtue.’

  ‘I’m not saying that they are a virtue. Only that they are better than poison. And those letters go to a chosen target. That makes a difference. I think you handled your anger very cleverly. You made a great commotion of evil in your own mind without doing any real harm. One might say that you spent your rage on the air, the almost empty air.’

  ‘You make it all sound very trivial,’ said Isobel, mock pettish yet pettish.

  ‘I diminish your sins. If I diminish you, it is because you identify yourself with your sins.

  ‘Elsa, are you a psychiatrist?’

  ‘No, my dear. A pianist.’

  She spoke the word with a touch of amusement which made Isobel aware that many people would have known this.

  Elsa added, ‘But I have lived and sinned. Who hasn’t had to cope with anger?’

  She closed her eyes, which was the sign that she was too tired f
or speech.

  *

  Later, Isobel resumed the conversation.

  ‘About anger. Sometimes it sneaks up on you, in disguise. Like tactlessness. You think, “Whatever made me say that, to her of all people?” And it’s anger that’s writing the script.’

  She told the story of Val and her misadventures with foreign language, of her jealousy of Isobel’s friendship with Wang and then of the poem read in Mandarin, at her request and under poor Val’s nose.

  ‘It was a cruel thing to do. I thought so afterwards, but I couldn’t really say I didn’t mean it. It was too precisely tailored to the situation.’

  ‘Perhaps it brought enlightenment.’

  ‘I don’t think Val ever sought enlightenment.’

  Elsa was now exhausted and the conversation ceased.

  Mrs Kent brought with the library books a crochet book with instructions for flowers and other motifs.

  ‘Miss Landers asked me to buy it in town. I hope this is what you want. What’s it all about?’

  ‘We are trying to shift some of that khaki wool. I’m going to crochet motifs to sew on the shoulder of a sweater.’

  ‘Well, I wish you joy, dear. I don’t think that khaki will ever move. Even the moths won’t touch it.’

  ‘It’s not too bad.’ Isobel fetched the completed sections of the sweater from her cabinet. ‘We’re experimenting with contrasting colours. Then I crochet a motif and we put it all together as a kit. This one is going to be a sample.’

  Mrs Kent picked up the khaki and white sweater front and studied it.

  ‘Well, perhaps you’re right. It doesn’t look too bad. Perhaps if one called the colour something else. Like desert gold, perhaps.’

  ‘Don’t put ideas into my head,’ said Isobel glumly. ‘I’m trying to make it respectable.’

  ‘Don’t be wicked, now. What a little treasure you are. I hope it doesn’t make Elsa cry. Remember poor Val bursting into tears when I said I loved the grey lace?’

  ‘She thought that knitting lacy patterns in 8-ply was positively illegal.’

  Elsa whispered, ‘I think it’s charming.’

  ‘How is Val, by the way? Has anyone heard?’

  ‘Gladys had a letter. She’s very well. She has to go back for a check-up at the Clinic in six months. Have you had any news of Eily?’

  ‘You won’t hear any more from Eily, dear.’ Mrs Kent knew something she did not care to tell. ‘Out of sight out of mind with that one.’

  ‘That one’ pronounced in a tone which suggested the less heard about Eily and her doings the better.

  This saddened Isobel, who would have liked very much to keep in touch with Eily.

  Sim appeared when Elsa had been in residence for a fortnight. He came in bearing a hyacinth in a pot, advanced and kissed Elsa on both cheeks, saying, ‘Darling! I only just heard. I got back from Italy last week and rang Lee, who told me the news.’

  ‘Not very good news.’

  ‘No. Well, here I am.’

  ‘Sim, this is Isobel. Isobel, Sim Frobisher, a very old friend of mine.’

  ‘Sim short for Simon, a name I much dislike,’ he said. ‘My parents could never understand why I screamed so loudly at my christening. They thought it was an instinctive dislike of organised religion. There was that, too, of course. Happy to know you, Isobel.’

  Isobel was now free to study Sim’s appearance. He was elderly. He could never be called old; age instead of withering him seemed to have peeled him, so that the skin of his sharp-boned face shone pink. He had sharp, bright blue eyes and sparse white hair, a figure of less than medium height but neat proportions. The words ‘spry’ and ‘dapper’ seemed to have been coined for him. His pale grey suit was of excellent cut, his shirt was snowy white, his tie was of rich silk in darker shades of grey. His shoes shone. One guessed that someone else had polished them.

  ‘My room mate. Though I am not very good company for a young woman.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sim, observing the book Isobel had been reading. ‘But a young woman who reads Kafka. I should think she would find you very good company.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Isobel. ‘I’m the one who profits by the acquaintance.’

  Such formal talk seemed in the circumstances to be acceptable.

  Sim was pleased by it.

  ‘That was nicely said. I have profited very much from her acquaintance, too.’

  ‘You’re a flatterer.’

  She smiled at him as if flatterers were her favourite people.

  ‘It is really good of you to come so far to see me. Did you drive up?’

  ‘Yesterday. I’ve booked into a marvellously decadent old pub, with stained-glass transoms over the door to the loos. I do not lie. Stained glass. I’m here to stay.’

  ‘Sim! How long?’

  ‘Why…’

  They won’t mention death in front of me, thought Isobel. Like sex…not in front of the children.

  ‘You’ve given me so much joy with your music, my dear. It’s time for me to repay. I’ll give Europe a miss next winter. I’m staying for as long as you need me. If you get tired of me, you can say so and I’ll take myself off.’

  ‘It may be years.’

  ‘I very much hope so. We’ll make them good years.’

  Elsa turned her head away. Sim took her hand.

  Isobel bent her head to her book, wishing she could give them the privacy they deserved.

  She considered getting up and going out on the pretext of a visit to the lavatory, the only excuse for leaving her bed, but the moment had passed.

  Elsa said, ‘Now tell me about Italy. Talk about the landscape.’

  This was subject matter to which one could listen without offence. Sim talked, and talked well, conjured up cypress trees, olive groves, hills crowned with ruined temples, until Elsa closed her eyes.

  He got up to go.

  ‘I’ll be back tomorrow morning. Is there anything I can bring you?’

  Elsa opened her eyes and said with astonishing energy, ‘Tomatoes!’

  This amused them all, Elsa included.

  ‘Tomatoes it shall be. I suppose the food is rather dreary.’

  ‘It’s not so bad if you season it properly. Freshly ground salt and pepper make a difference.’ She gestured towards the grinders and summoned a smile. ‘Isobel calls them the aspersions. Casting aspersions on the food. But I’m persuading her.’

  Sim looked with interest at Isobel.

  ‘She’s lucky in your company. She loves a joker. Even gives marks for trying.’

  ‘I’ll admit it wasn’t much of a joke,’ Isobel agreed amiably.

  She was not sensitive on this subject, being aware that her own wit often outstripped her wellbeing. She was pleased to see that she had startled him.

  He recovered quickly.

  Indeed, one did give Sim marks for trying. His eagerness to please was reassuring.

  Isobel looked back always to the first weeks of Sim’s visit as a happy time. In the company of grieving Sim and dying Elsa she was happier than she had ever been. There was the physical pleasure of health returning: she knew that the illness was over and the languor which kept her quiescent was the beginning of convalescence. There was the animal satisfaction she got out of enjoying food again, eating from hunger rather than forcing food down with determination and often with fortitude.

  Elsa too was growing stronger. She was conscientious in attempting the food Sim brought and sometimes managed half a portion. Doctor Stannard smiled and declared her condition stable, if not a little improved.

  Isobel was living on the shore of a great, shining lake of devotion which sometimes overflowed to touch her. It made no demands of her, except the respect she gave unasked; it did not exclude her. It existed, simply, and changed the climate round her.

  Sim observed the routine of the hospital. He arrived every morning during the free hour, which gave him some private time with Elsa, while Isobel joined the group on the verandah. He brought gifts of food, w
hich Isobel shared, stayed to prepare the lunch and then drove to the restaurant on the highway for his own meal. He came back for a visit at some time in the afternoon, observing the rest period with care. He was tolerated by the staff, his devotion to Elsa being much admired.

  On Friday afternoons he drove to the city for the weekend.

  ‘I have to collect some scandal to amuse you, darling,’ he said to Elsa.

  He talked at her request, or they were silent in a shared peace which made Isobel feel that she was in church—not the Catholic church of her childhood but some empty church in a foreign place, a space which imposed respect though it asked no obeisance.

  At these moments she wished she could offer them privacy, but they were unselfconscious, untroubled by her presence, so that she began to share their serenity.

  Sim brought salads and fruit and delicacies from David Jones’ food basement: anchovies, caviar, foie gras, which Isobel did not like at all but was glad to have tasted. It would be useful for future fiction to know what the rich ate.

  His main mission was to persuade Elsa to eat. He searched the town for supplies of appetising food, arriving one morning in triumph, carrying two screw-top jars which he set down one on each cabinet.

  ‘Potato salad with sour cream dressing,’ he said modestly. ‘I have found the most divine little delicatessen. Run by migrants, a married couple, Czech, and such charmers. And they take food seriously. We talked for half an hour about recipes. They grow their own herbs. Basil on the tomatoes. I couldn’t believe it.’

  Isobel, who could hardly believe that cream which had been acknowledged to be sour was considered fit for human consumption, eyed her portion with apprehension. She was determined not to betray her inexperience to these sophisticates: she attempted the first mouthful with apprehension, the second with relief, and the third with appetite.

  There was food for the mind, too. Sim talked about the theatre, reporting on the plays he had seen in London, and Isobel made no pretence of absenting herself from the conversation. She had too many questions to ask, and his answers were enlightening. Indeed, she was useful, since Elsa confined herself to listening and smiling.

  He did bring back scandal from the city: political scandal, literary scandal, stories of betrayal, divorce, slanderous anecdotes about the lives of people whose names were known to those who did not know them. She should not have listened to that, of course, and did pretend to be reading, but it was too entertaining to be ignored.