Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop

by Amy Witting

  She could not talk of that to Olive and to Terry. It would break the mood.

  Terry brought a bottle of sherry and three plastic beakers out of a carrier bag.

  ‘Is this allowed?’

  ‘Anything is allowed today.’

  Terry poured the wine and lifted his beaker.

  ‘Here’s to better days coming! For all of us.’

  Isobel drank a mouthful, which made her feel rather giddy.

  How I’ve misjudged this world, she thought. How wickedly I’ve misjudged it. She put the beaker down carefully.

  She was feeling dangerously elated.

  ‘I don’t think I’d better have any more just now.’

  ‘Right. Take it easy.’

  ‘I suppose you get the message of the violet vase,’ said Olive.

  Terry spluttered into his wine.

  ‘Does he want me to come back? I won’t be working full time, maybe for two years. And I wouldn’t want to take Jenny’s job.’

  ‘But to do the German mail?’ Olive giggled. ‘You are positively the only hope he has of getting rid of Mr Oskar. If old Mr Stephen knows you want your job back, that’s about the only thing that will move him to sack his old pal.’

  ‘I made a bit of a scene, remember.’

  ‘Oh, but you were sick! They’ve all agreed that you were sick. That’s the only way they can save face.’

  ‘I suppose I could do that. Yes. I’m sure I could manage the mail. I’m so used to it. But I don’t know how long I’ll be here.’

  ‘You said in your last letter you might be out early in the New Year.’

  ‘It’s not definite. It all depends on Doctor Stannard. He has the last word.’

  ‘If you do take the job,’ said Terry, ‘just make sure that they pay you properly. Olive says that old fool gets as much for his efforts as you got full time.’

  ‘I shouldn’t tell secrets about the pay book,’ said Olive.

  ‘That’s how you play into their hands,’ said Terry sharply. ‘Remember they’re out for what they can get and they’ll give nothing away.’

  ‘Except a violet vase,’ said Isobel, who had drunk another mouthful and begun to giggle.

  ‘We mustn’t tire you out. Time to go.’

  Olive got up to wash the beakers at the sink. She left the rest of the wine, saying, ‘You might feel like a glass later. It will put you to sleep.’

  ‘I was expecting such a miserable Christmas,’ said Isobel, ‘and I’ve enjoyed it so much. Tell everyone thank you. And I hope I’ll meet Jenny some day.’

  ‘Make it soon,’ said Olive and kissed her on the cheek. Terry nodded goodbye, with a smile that promised friendship.

  Elsa did not return.

  In the New Year, Sim came to collect her belongings.

  He was snappish, even apparently resentful, as he said, ‘She’s better already.’ He added firmly, ‘Very much better. Never should have been here, of course. It was because of that operation, which was supposed to work miracles and has been nothing but a setback. And that wretched medication which did nothing but make her ill.’

  As he spoke, he was folding Elsa’s clothes into the small suitcase from the luggage room.

  Isobel watched, tormented by anxiety.

  No word for me? Is there no message for me?

  Elsa had wept, saying, ‘Don’t take her away from me!’ and that after hearing Isobel’s confessions. Her tears had made nothing of Isobel’s transgressions, had convinced Isobel that she was after all an acceptable person.

  But had she wept only for fear of worse? Was it only because Isobel was quiet, read books, spoke Elsa’s language a little?

  She prolonged the conversation, hoping the message would come. Perhaps Elsa had sent it and Sim had forgotten it.

  ‘What does Doctor Stannard think?’

  Sim shrugged.

  ‘She has her own man in the city. He gave me a letter for Stannard. Whatever happens, she’s not coming back.’ About to shut the suitcase, he looked about for trifles he might have overlooked.

  There on Elsa’s cabinet were the small salt and pepper grinders.

  He picked them up and handed them over.

  ‘You’re to have these. She said to tell you…wait a minute. You are to continue to cast aspersions. Those were her words.’

  ‘Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. And tell her I appreciate the thought.’

  Sim laughed at her enthusiasm.

  ‘It isn’t a very rich gift, after all.’

  And that’s all you know, thought Isobel.

  Now it was Isobel’s chance to move into the bed by the window. She did not have the heart to claim it.

  After lunch, needing occupation, she went to work in the stock room. When she got back to Room 2, she found the bed occupied by a small, scrawny girl of about seventeen, pale-haired and pale-faced, who stared at Isobel with small, frightened eyes.

  ‘Hullo. Who are you?’ asked Isobel, sounding bright and reassuring.

  The girl whispered, ‘Cheryl.’ She tried again and gave it more voice. ‘Me name’s Cheryl.’

  ‘How long have you known?’ asked Isobel.

  ‘About a month.’

  ‘Gives you a shock, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You’re dead right there. I just about passed out. You’re Isobel, aren’t you? The nurse said you’ll show me the ropes. Tell me anything I want to know, like? That’s what she said. What’s it like here?’

  ‘Not bad. Not bad at all.’

  ‘She said, that nurse said, it can happen to anyone. The lady in the bed before me, she was a real famous person, a pianist. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  Cheryl uttered a small, nervous giggle.

  ‘Well, you gonna find me a bit of a change.’

  Isobel grinned at her with instant affection.

  ‘Perhaps I was due for a change.’

  She was now becalmed.

  This was the time to take out the long story which Fenwick had returned and to reread it, at least.

  She considered that idea and dismissed it. She thought, not yet.

  She did take out Robbie’s poem, added a line or two, decided it was all too difficult and put it away.

  Wang said that this was a normal state, that she must not let mind and conscience impose on her body, which had its own timetable.

  The literary discussions had lapsed since Lilian had gone down to surgery. Isobel did not miss them. She did not want to make the effort even to read poetry. She swallowed detective stories whole. They were smoothly written, intended for easy consumption. She visited the library and helped herself.

  She worked on the dress of khaki wool which she was to wear next winter in the outside world, which seemed far away, unreal, in spite of letters from Olive and magazines from Tom Fenwick. She found the magazines a burden, a test of intellect.

  Cheryl watched her knitting and said, ‘Do you get the wool for nothing?’

  ‘Indeed you do.’

  ‘Will you show me how to do it? I could make a jumper for Mum.’

  Isobel was delighted.

  Mothering Cheryl was the liveliest element in her present existence.

  Cheryl loved Mum. She and Mum clung together, supporting each other in a life of hardship.

  Dad had cleared out and good riddance to him. Mum worked at a sewing machine in a factory, making shirts. Mum said to make the best of it, you was being looked after and getting the best attention, you might be worse off. Mum would be delighted that Cheryl was learning to knit. She wasn’t to be told. The jumper was to be a surprise. Mum said, any chance you get to better yourself, take it. They don’t come your way that often.

  Mum and Cheryl were very poor indeed. It was the rent. If you had a roof, you had a great start, but there it was.

  The Red Cross had donated Cheryl’s pyjamas, two pair for summer and two pair for winter, and a dressing gown, the first she had ever owned.

  Isobel said that she had never owned a
dressing gown either. Hers had been given to her at a hospital.

  ‘We just put our coats on. They were on the bed anyhow, as blankets.’

  ‘Funny. I’d have thought you was one of the other lot. You know.’

  ‘No. We were poor, all right. I know all about stuffing my shoes with newspaper when there’s a hole in the sole.

  And water that soaked in turned paper into papier-mâché one could mould with one’s toes. One of the innocent pleasures of childhood.

  She heard her mother saying, in cultivated tones, ‘We have a good holiday every year.’ Poverty and pretension were a very unfortunate combination.

  ‘It’s brains that does it,’ said Cheryl. ‘I was no good at school. Did my best. Mum used to say, that’s all anyone can ask. Mind you, I’d have done better if they hadn’t gone so fast. Just when I was getting the hang of it, they’d be off onto something else.’

  Isobel helped Cheryl with the spelling of her letters to Mum and did not think Cheryl so poor when she observed the open and trusting love she expressed in them. Was this how daughters spoke to mothers, then? ‘My own darling Mumma’, ‘your loving Bubba’?

  Cheryl’s way to self-improvement must be through reading. She had brought in her suitcase a surprising number of grubby and battered paperbacks, their colourful covers bearing pictures of blonde young women and dark, muscular young men, the young women rarely completely dressed and the young men apparently up to a considerable amount of no good of a sadistic or amorous kind.

  This, thought Isobel, is what is called an avid reader, as she watched Cheryl clutching her book, as much with her eyes as with her hands. We all read for escape; Cheryl read with the speed and the desperation of a prisoner digging under the wall of her cell.

  Mrs Kent winced at the sight of The Price of Passion, eased the loved book out of Cheryl’s hands and substituted Daphne du Maurier.

  Cheryl clung to her paperback. Mrs Kent left Rebecca on Cheryl’s cabinet and with a glance commended it to Isobel’s attention.

  ‘Well, I like her nerve,’ said Cheryl resentfully. ‘Nearly tore it away from me. Me own book, isn’t it?’

  ‘Read it when she isn’t around. And you can read Rebecca too, to keep her quiet. You’ll like it, I promise. You can manage both of them. There’s nothing wrong with your reading speed.’

  Rebecca had hard covers. Books with hard covers were full of words Cheryl didn’t understand.

  ‘You can look them up in the dictionary,’ said Isobel, understanding a moment too late that dictionaries, which were to her the disregarded furniture of even the poorest life, were alien objects to Cheryl. Not unknown, but alien.

  ‘If I got you a dictionary, you could look up the new words. That would be bettering yourself, the way your Mum wants you to.’

  Cheryl reflected.

  ‘Okay. If you show me how to use it.’

  Isobel wrote to Tom Fenwick, described Cheryl and her situation and asked him to scrounge a dictionary, ‘nothing elaborate, something like a Pocket Oxford that a student has outgrown.’

  She felt no embarrassment about this. Scrounging in a good cause had become a respectable occupation. She was simply a little annoyed at Tom Fenwick’s tactlessness when the dictionary arrived—a brand new Pocket Oxford inscribed ‘To Cheryl, with best wishes, Tom Fenwick.’

  Cheryl stared at the inscription and said, without grace, ‘Do you mean I’m supposed to keep it?’

  Isobel did not answer.

  ‘Hey, what’s the matter with you? What’s the blub for?’

  She was not there. She was nine years old. It was her ninth birthday and she was staring at a parcel on a table in a lakeside boarding house. The parcel was small, wrapped in pink paper and tied with gold string. There was no name on it. Could she dare to suppose that it was meant for her?

  She had said in a surly tone, ‘Is that thing mine?’

  She had been beaten later for ingratitude. Ingratitude!

  She shook her head, dislodging the single tear which had settled on each cheekbone.

  She could be sure at least that Cheryl had never been told to keep her birthday secret, for fear of embarrassing the family.

  ‘Nothing. I just thought of something. He’s just trying to be kind, that’s all. Now the next time you see a word you don’t know, we’ll look for it in the dictionary.’

  ‘Do I have to write and thank him?’

  ‘Not if you don’t want to. I’ll do that for you.’

  *

  Mrs Kent was delighted with the dictionary.

  ‘What a wonderful idea! You can be enriching your vocabulary while you read. It’s so sad to see a young person wasting time, getting nothing out of the experience. I wish there were more like you, darling.’

  Seduced by approval and dazed at the notion that she owned a vocabulary, Cheryl spent more time with Rebecca and less with her paperbacks.

  She paused over the title of Love’s Minion.

  ‘Hey, Isobel. What’s a minion?’

  Isobel paused.

  ‘I’m not too sure. I think it means “darling” and I think it means “servant”. Give me the dictionary, will you?’

  Cheryl handed the dictionary over. Isobel found the place and read, ‘“Minion: favourite child, servant, animal etc., slave.” I think this time it means “slave”.’

  Cheryl had listened in deep silence.

  ‘I thought you knew all the words.’

  ‘Good Heavens, no! There are thousands of words I don’t know. I just keep on learning them.’

  Cheryl’s words emerged from that long silence.

  ‘Do you mean that anybody can?’

  ‘Sure, anybody can. I do it all the time.’

  Still thoughtful, Cheryl opened her book.

  Isobel picked up her knitting.

  Cheryl broke the silence with a giggle.

  ‘Isobel?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you Doctor Stannard’s minion?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you’re his favourite child.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Oh, just the way he looks. And his voice goes different when he talks to you, like you both had some joke you weren’t telling.’

  ‘That doesn’t make me his minion. I’m not a servant or a dog. I wouldn’t want to be anybody’s minion. Neither would you. It isn’t a good thing to be. You’d better read your book and find out.’

  She had spoken with unnecessary force.

  ‘Well, don’t get off your bike. It was just a thought.’

  Minion, indeed! Isobel was never going to be anybody’s minion.

  That dictionary had been a very good idea. Cheryl, with the means of learning in her hands and under her control, applied herself to the study of English. Isobel explained ‘archaic’ and ‘derogatory’, a definition which made Cheryl giggle again.

  ‘You mean like “poofter” and “shit”?’

  ‘And “mug” and “no-hoper”.’

  Miss Landers contributed a notebook and a pencil. Cheryl listed new words for the edification of Mrs Kent. Isobel helped with emotional support and occasional explanations.

  Cheryl was on the way to a higher standard of literacy, and, perhaps, the office job which was Mum’s ambition for her.

  Isobel tried not to be too proud of this. She hadn’t, she reminded herself, had much success with Lance. Anyone with Cheryl’s passion for reading even lurid paperbacks must be sensitive to language.

  Mum’s jumper grew quickly.

  Only Cheryl’s X-ray showed no change.

  One day in February, Sister Connor said to Isobel, without enthusiasm, ‘Doctor Stannard wants to see you. Two o’clock today in his office.’

  Isobel grimaced at the undertone of disapproval.

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Search me.’

  But, as so often, Sister Connor knew more than she told. No use asking.

  At two o’clock she knocked at the door of the superin
tendent’s office trying not to feel guilty. Damn it, she hadn’t done anything wrong. It was just that atmosphere of the headmaster’s office that made one apprehensive.

  He called, ‘Come in, Isobel.’

  He smiled at her encouragingly. ‘Take a seat. I think it’s time we had a talk about your future. Do you feel up to a bit more activity?’

  ‘I’ve been helping Miss Landers with the occupational therapy.’

  It would not do to mention her gratifying success with the sweater kits: six placed, one khaki and turquoise, two khaki and white and three khaki and beige. They would be able to place another if Mrs Kent could find turquoise wool in the town.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve been a great help to her.’

  Politely he repressed amusement.

  Perhaps it’s more important than you suppose, thought Isobel.

  ‘What I was thinking of was helping Chris in the office. Just start with an hour a day for now, till we see how you go.’

  ‘I’m used to office work. I think I could manage it.’

  He smiled again.

  ‘That’s not quite what I meant. It’s your health I was thinking of.’

  He rubbed a knuckle against the corner of his mouth, a sign of hesitation.

  ‘You’ve made a very good recovery, but at one stage…’

  ‘It was touch and go?’

  ‘Well, there was some cause for concern. We want you to take it slowly, and if you start work here, we can monitor your progress. In fact…’

  She waited.

  ‘How do you feel about staying with us for a while? Chris could train you in the office work. We need extra help in the office, particularly someone with shorthand who can help me with the correspondence. It wouldn’t be a paid job just yet, but you could have one of the chalets and get your meals here, of course, which would help with the pension. Then when you begin real working hours, we make up the pension to award wages.’

  Isobel did not know what to say. She did not know what to think.

  ‘Well, there’s no hurry. Think it over and let me know.’

  Still too astonished to speak, she got up, nodded and went away.

  Sister Connor was blunt.

  ‘You do know that Doctor Stannard is married, don’t you?’

  Isobel gaped in shock and indignation.