Isabella: A sort of romance

by R. A. Bentley

  But then who shall I be? Shall I still be this me, with additions, or a completely new me? Will Simon still love me if I'm a totally new me? Even if I start to like Frank Sinatra and Edith Piaf and wear trouser suits and be pissed by lunch time? Come to that, would I still love him? Yes of course I would; I'll never not love him, no matter what. Oh dear, it's all so unsettling. I wish he were here now. He's always so sensible, he'd be able to sort me out.

  As she's stopped anyway, Bella takes the opportunity to crouch behind the seats and using a handy policeman's helmet, have a pee. It occurs to her that her mother might be watching that too but it can't be helped, she's desperate. The rain rattles down, making her shiver, and she spends some time familiarising herself with the heater controls before selecting, from the numerous fancy-dress costumes at her disposal, a nice, warm highwayman's cloak. Wrapped in that, she starts to feel better and rather ashamed of herself. The fact is, no-one can help, not even Simon. She will just have to be strong. Perhaps, she reflects, the worst is over now. At least there shouldn't be any more nasty surprises. She would like to rest but finds herself propelled back to the driver's seat by that inexorable and still-growing force. Is this what it's like for turtles, for eels, for salmon, leaping up waterfalls, exhausting themselves, this awful imperative that swamps every other urge?

  People are starting to put their lights on. I suppose I should too. Let me see: lights . . . lights . . . Ah, lights. Hmm, they don't seem to make much difference, do they? Why aren't they making a difference? Perhaps it's not dark enough yet. One thing's for sure, I'm obviously not going to get there in daylight. The tank's still half-full, fortunately, so I don't have to worry about that. Not that there's anything I can do about it anyway because I haven't any money with me. I haven't anything with me, not even a toothbrush. Plenty of grub and booze, though. What a pity they'll be in mourning; we could have had a really fantastic party. Never mind: another few hours and I'll be in my nice old bed. Of course, it won't be aired or anything.

  No I won't, I'll be at the Stones, where I belong. Even in the rain.

  Aunty'll be wild of course. It'll be, 'Just where have you been, young lady? You've had me worried sick. Have you any idea how long it is since you last rang? Don't they have telephones where you live? Don't they have stamps? Look at you,' prod, prod. 'Don't they have food in London? Don't they eat? I suppose it's all that nouvelle cuisine nonsense. Rat, look at this child, she's nothing but a skellington.'

  And Uncle will just say something like: 'Then let us kill the fatted calf, for the prodigal has returned.'

  I suppose these lights are fully on? I can hardly see a thing now. Mummy, I need to know about lights. What am I doing wrong? Quickly please.

  No, look. I'm really going to have to stop this. I'm really going to have to stop talking to you as if you were alive; I mean, to her as if she were alive. Because you're not. Of course you're not. You're just a few kilobits of not-quite-assimilated data, probably not enough to fill a floppy disc. By tomorrow you'll be a part of me and I won't know any different; or if I do, you'll just be a few useful skills and memories that I can draw on or not, as the fancy takes me. 'Like the jargon, by the way.' Cheek! I probably could do his job. It's only selling. I could sell. I'd use my feminine wiles.

  Wait a minute! Where am I? Blast! I must have taken a wrong turn. This isn't the main road, it's just a lane, it's all twisty. Hey, dip your lights! I can't see a damned thing. Dip your bloody lights!

  This is really, really important, Best Beloved.

  Bella, temporarily blinded, bearing down on her nemesis — a small creature, frozen in fear, or indecision, nothing, really, but a pair of yellow eyes. A cat! Bella, braking fiercely, steers hard right; the cat scampers right. Bella steers left; the cat scampers left. Squeal of tyres, loom of hedge, a juddering thud and she is airborne, she is flying, tumbling over and over in a dusty whirl of costumes, clothes hangers, masks-on-sticks, silly hats, face paint, streamers, plastic cutlery, trestles, beer kegs, glasses, plates of cling-filmed food; all accompanied by a rending, tearing, buckling, bouncing, bruising, smashing, wheel-spinning confusion of sound.

  Then, quite abruptly, a chill white silence, like a fog, broken only by someone moaning, far away, and the slow drip of what smells terribly like petrol.

  CHAPTER THREE

  "You have to put them in the recovery position," says a sensible child's voice.

  "That's right, Bluebell," says a woman, from somewhere further off. "And can you tell me what the recovery position is?"

  "You put them on their tummy with one knee up and one arm up."

  "Well done! That's very good."

  "Hmm, ah'm no suir that's enteerly appropriate, Bluebell, in the praisent case," says a gruff male voice.

  "It's only what it says in the first-aid manual. If it says it in the book, it must be right, mustn't it Mum?"

  Well I'm obviously in good hands, once they sort themselves out, thinks Bella. She is about to return to cosy unconsciousness when a much younger voice pipes up: "Is she going to die, Uncle McNab? She's awfully squashed."

  "It's not a girl, stupid," says a second small voice, functionally identical to the first. "It's a boy."

  "No it's not! It's you that's stupid. If it was a boy, it would have a willy. It hasn't got a willy so it's a girl."

  "It's a boy."

  "It's a girl!"

  "O coorse it's a boy," says the man, rather irritably. "It's a wee tom d'ye ken."

  Bella decides it's time to open one eye. Straining to pierce the all-enveloping white mist she finds herself meeting the concerned gaze of neither man nor child, but a young woman, strangely dressed in black and white; a creature of such exquisite, heart-stopping loveliness that she almost gasps out loud. Pink of skin and blue of eye (such enormous eyes!) she smiles down with a wonderful, beatific expression that somehow manages to combine unstained innocence, infinite wisdom and deep, empathic understanding. Bella immediately discovers an intense yearning to reach up and kiss those chastely perfect lips, but though she tries with all her might she finds her body will not answer. As if in a dream, she cannot move.

  A nun! she thinks wonderingly. A beautiful nun! I must have landed in a convent. Or am I dead, and gone to heaven? For it suddenly occurs to her that this unlikely vision has no aura, no aura at all.

  No, silly me, it's white! A pure and perfect white! I just can't see it because of this stupid mist.

  "Well I'm a boy and I don't look like that," persists the child.

  "Yes you do," says the other.

  "No I don't!"

  "Stop arguing you two, you'll frighten him," says Bluebell, who sounds about fourteen and rather bossy.

  "You can't tell me what to do."

  "Yes I can."

  "No you can't."

  "Nou leuk whit ye've daen!" grumbles the man. "Ye've waukent the lassie."

  Bella decides she might as well open the other eye and sees, not Beauty this time, but the Beast. Leaning over her, illuminated by what look like dancing flames, is a truly hideous being, his face as ugly and repulsive as the nun's is beautiful. His aura, in stark contrast to her saintly white, is red; a red that makes Bella shudder with fear and revulsion; a red so deep, so intense, that it seems to have stained his corporeal shell. From his wild, unkempt hair to his long, shaggy beard, all is red. His wind-burned skin is red. His great, beetling eyebrows are red. Red hair grows in generous tufts from his protruding, simian ears and from his enormous, carbuncular, purplish nose. The only things that are not red are his heavy-lidded, slow-blinking eyes, and they are black. Bella goggles in helpless terror as he reaches out with a hand the span of a dinner plate, clearly intending to tear away the thin sheet which is all that covers her, when suddenly he stops and looks up.

  "Wheesht! Listen!" he admonishes the still-arguing children.

  "Listen to what?"

  "Jist shut up will ye? There's somebody oot there." Suddenly he disappears, calling out, "Pat, the duir!"

 
; Bella now becomes aware of an all-too-familiar sound: a drunken party, getting out of hand. There is the chink of a bottle breaking, a girl's squeal, an oath. Then, much closer, she hears singing, perhaps a dozen voices.

  "Where's this fuckin' stripper, then?" calls someone, seemingly at her ear.

  "Yeah, come on. We want the stripper."

  "Dah dah dah dee dah dah dah. Let's be 'avin' you, darlin'!"

  "Just you keep away, Tom Kite," cries the presumed mother of Bluebell et al. "And you, whoever you are. You're not coming in here in that state. Look at you, you're filthy! Filthy and drunk. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

  There is a brief silence, followed by low muttering, a burst of raucous laughter, a cry of "Heave ho then lads. Let's shake 'er out!" and the whole room is set into violent and improbable motion.

  Throughout all this, the lovely nun's calm, otherworldly expression has not changed, nor has she moved or spoken, but now, without warning, she topples heavily forward and her head falls off. Bella fills her lungs and screams.

  *

  Roz is quite an elderly lady. She was born in nineteen fifty-four and is therefore the same age as Bella: thirty-one. She has a real bonnet and wings, lots of brightly polished chrome and a lovely, curvy old-fashioned shape. When she was a bus she had thirty-three seats (it says so on the back) but most have now been replaced with an eclectic mix of rescued furniture, well bolted down. Curtains act as internal walls and any surplus windows have been painted over with colourful depictions of roses and castles, nicely complementing her deep maroon coachwork.

  She has a tiny kitchen and two bedrooms, each with a pair of bunks, while in the space remaining is a dining table and chairs, a chintz cottage suite and a fat, wood-burning stove. Laden bookshelves are crammed into every available corner and on the walls are numerous examples of childish art, vying for space with family snapshots, postcards, a Mercator's projection of the world and curling posters depicting, 'British wild Flowers', 'Birds of Europe,' and 'The Kings and Queens of England'. For a garden she has window boxes, already bright with geraniums and petunias, and, flanking the front door (which is to say, the passenger door) two clipped bay trees in pots. The door has little wooden steps up to it with a wooden handrail, a real brass letter box and, for some inexplicable reason, a brass number nine.

  For some time now, Roz's home has been the narrow, uncultivated headland of a large cornfield, selected mainly for its handiness to fresh running water (a horse trough) though for this you have to scramble through a hedge of blackthorn and brambles. The choice was felicitous, for dense woodland to the north and east provides perfect shelter from the winter winds, whilst in its lee are acres of pasture for the children to play in and a web of footpaths to explore, one leading to the nearest village, some two miles away.

  At first she was happily alone in this peaceful spot, but one by one some twenty other more-or-less mobile habitations have come to join her, as passing birds will join a flock. Most are converted buses and coaches, but there are also vans and lorries of all sizes and a few caravans. Some are reasonably smart and well cared for – though none are as grand, or as venerable, as Roz – but many more are scruffy and unkempt, with tape-repaired windows, dented panels and flat tyres. Some have only the most basic amenities – a few candles, a mattress on the floor – while others sport roof tanks, generators, industrial-sized gas bottles and TV aerials and have been extended with tented annexes and awnings. Large or small, almost all are decorated in some highly personal way, spanning the spectrum of artistic endeavour from beautifully airbrushed depictions of scenes from Easy Rider and Lord of the Rings through colourful op-art confections in day-glo yellow, orange, and green to crude signs of the zodiac, sprayed on like graffiti.

  The rest of the field is sown to winter-wheat, much trampled, but within the rough circle of the encampment the ground has been churned and rutted to inches-deep mud, scattered with domestic refuse, rusting vehicle parts and immense, oily puddles upon which the morning sun now brightly glistens. In the centre of this space are the remains of a large bonfire, still smouldering, and round it a great number of bottles and beer cans, evidence of last night's wild party.

  It is such a lovely day that they are breakfasting alfresco, sitting on old car seats in a companionable circle with their plates on their laps. Bacon-and-eggy smells waft from Roz's open doorway, and from her crooked tin chimney a thin plume of wood-smoke rises vertically into the blue, rain-washed sky. No-one seems to notice the all-pervasive mud except Bella, who is glad of her borrowed wellies. She is also wearing a striped rugby shirt, many sizes too large, and a truly repulsive bib-and-brace overall, which, judging by its shape, must once have accommodated someone great with quads. It is very early and rather cold, and she is glad she has her basque on underneath.

  "More mushrooms, Bella?" enquires Pat, solicitously. "They're fresh picked."

  Bella smiles at her new friend. "Mmm, please, if you can spare them."

  Pat flicks aside a long, greying plait and heaps a generous helping onto Bella's plate. "I've got loads. No-one but us seems to bother. The children are out picking them before I'm up most mornings." She pauses and looks embarrassed. "I suppose you think they oughtn't to, but nobody should own mushrooms, should they? They're nature's bounty. That's what I think, anyway."

  "I'm sure no-one will mind," says Bella, reassuringly.

  Pat is a treasure. She is a gentle, quietly spoken woman in her mid-thirties, though looking considerably older with her outdoor complexion and deep, anxious eyes. Rather to Bella's disappointment she doesn't sport carmine dreadlocks or a curtain-material kaftan or boots without laces. Indeed, her clothes are thoroughly dull and mumsy: sturdy brown shoes, a tweed skirt and a well-worn Aran sweater, unmistakably redolent of Oxfam. Even her aura is an ordinary soft beige which as she leans over, mingles comfortably with Bella's own, a necessary requirement for uncomplicated friendship. Bella notices, however, that it perceptibly darkens at the margins, denoting an underlying strength of character and strong views, firmly, even stubbornly, held.

  "Mushrooms, McNab?" asks Pat.

  McNab looks up and frowns. He is deeply involved in replacing the D string on a battered old fiddle, his big, awkward fingers struggling to fit the free end through its peg.

  Bella gazes at him in fascination. In fact, she has scarcely taken her eyes off him since he first crawled from the crude, polythene shelter that appears to be his home. No longer an object of terror he has proven to be a tiny man, scarcely five feet tall, with a cruelly humped back and absurdly large extremities, as if some thrifty, latter-day Dr Frankenstein has cobbled him together from oddments lying about the lab. His extraordinary appearance extends to his aura, which even in bright sunlight continues to envelop him like a flame.

  "Answer required, please," says Pat, impatiently. "Mushrooms, yes or no?"

  Holding the recalcitrant fiddle string in place with his thumb, McNab stops to take a long pull at a grubby bottle, its worn label proclaiming it to be, or once have been, Glenfiddich whisky. "Ah dinnae eat brakfast," he snaps. "Ye shoud ken that by nou."

  Pat sighs and raises her eyes longsufferingly at Bella. "Sorry, I forgot. What I meant, of course, was, more mushrooms Carol?"

  "Humph, ah daursay she'll hae some, the grappie cou."

  Carol is, or rather was, the nun, for today she appears to be a white memsahib or big game hunter, complete with safari suit and solar topee. She sprawls untidily in her chair, entirely ignoring Pat who dumps the last of the mushrooms unceremoniously onto her plate. Sadly, the promise of the night has not survived the day. She proves to be enormously fat, her arms and legs sticking stiffly out of her skin-tight costume like gross, pink sausages. And though her head is now restored – held in place by large, black, tacking stitches – the lovely, saintly-worldly face has become a crude, painted mask, devoid of all expression beyond a vacant stare. Bella sighs deeply, feeling both foolish and inexplicably bereft. She is also rather annoyed at seeing her
property used without her permission.

  "How are you feeling now?" asks Pat, settling down beside her.

  "All right, thanks; still a bit fragile," says Bella, delicately fingering the bump on her forehead. "I can't remember much about it to be honest. Just the turning over and over then waking up. At least the white mist is gone, thank goodness."

  "I think that was concussion. You ought to see a doctor really."

  "No, I'll be fine, don't worry."

  "You were very lucky."

  Bella shrugs. "Yes I suppose so, but then I'm not scheduled to die like that. Theoretically, I'm down to drown."

  Pat puts her head on one side and frowns. "Really? How do you know?"

  "Well, it's the elements, you see: earth, air, fire and water. Great Grandma Clemmie was earth, she fell off her horse, and Grandma Kitty was air because she was killed by a bomb, which makes Mummy fire and me water. It's going to be the old, 'Full fathoms five' etcetera for me I'm afraid."

  "I'm sorry," says Pat, "I don't quite follow."

  "You know, The Tempest: 'Full fathoms five thy father lies; Of his bones are corals made; With pearls for his eyes.' I've always thought it would be rather romantic, having pearls for eyes."

  "'Those are pearls that were his eyes,'" corrects Pat, pedantically. "But I didn't mean that. What I mean is, I don't quite see why being killed by a bomb should be counted as air. I mean, I can just about see why falling off a horse might be earth, but —"

  "Hae ye been tae the toilet yet?" interrupts McNab, looking up from his fiddle.

  "Toilet? Er, no, actually," says Bella. "Why?"