Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop (23 page)

‘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.

There was Billy, who was dying quietly and patiently in Room 12. He would not die there; some day he would be moved discreetly into unknown regions. People did not die on C Ward. There was Wilf, who shared the room with Billy and would one day share his fate. Isobel thought this hard for Wilf, but he was buoyant, humorous, given to teasing Tamara, saying, ‘Don’t come here with your naughty temper. Rum Zwoelf, no!’ opening and shortening the vowel to a wicked mimicry of her accent. Wilf had sent Tamara scudding along the verandah and skidding across the linoleum to Isobel’s bed blazing with rage to say, ‘Thin-skinned what mean?’ Nevertheless it was accepted that Wilf had turned that corner and was on the way downhill.

There were what Isobel thought of as the professionals, Eily and Gladys and others who had been in one hospital after another, who sometimes hopefully went home only to break down and return, recidivists. There were those waiting for a lobectomy like the two young nurses in Room 9. Those were the lucky ones; they would be as good as new. There were those whose future was not yet known: Lance, perhaps, and perhaps Isobel.

I’m going to get better. It’s up to me. I’m not going to die being sweet little Isobel, no.

I’m a self-appointed bastard, she said to herself and felt a little cheered.

When she got back to Room 2 at four o’clock, Val was resting quietly. Doctor Wang must have given her a sedative.

Oh, dear, what must he be thinking of me?

She caught herself up. She must not care what others thought of her, not even Wang.

Next morning Isobel stayed in bed, while Val, still silent and unforgiving, went to visit Gladys.

Doctor Wang came in from the verandah to sit by her bed.

‘Where do you go on your secret excursions?’

She studied him warily.

‘You won’t tell?’

He placed both hands upon his heart in a gesture worthy of Lance.

‘Honour of a schoolboy.’

‘You mean Scout’s honour.’

‘I beg your pardon. I never was a Scout.’

‘I didn’t suppose that you were. I hide in the bathroom and write poetry.’

‘Ah. May I read it?’

‘No. No one can read it yet.’

If he wanted her secrets, he must trade.

‘Is my X-ray getting worse?’

Now less affable, he paused.

‘Let us say that you are not progressing as quickly as we had hoped. But progress is not always steady. There are plateaux.’

‘And reversals?’

He said obliquely, ‘You must trust us. Meanwhile, I think you must give up the poetic excursions.’

Then with a professional nod and a smile, he departed.

That, thought Isobel sourly, was called evasive action.

Eily, who had been lingering by the door, came in a moment later and took the chair by Isobel’s bed.

‘Listen, kid. I’ve been thinking. Val is buddies with Glad. She’s down there this minute moaning about her miseries. You and I get on all right. What about asking Sister Connor if we can switch? You’d keep nit for me if I wanted a fag and I’d cover for you if you went walkabout. Who wouldn’t, in this place?’

‘I’d like that very much.’

‘I’ll go down and talk to them while they’re in a huddle. I can’t see what’s against it if we all agree. The only thing is, I wouldn’t stand for that little bugger being in here all the time.’

‘You’d be doing me a favour if you could keep him out.’

‘Trust me. You let them all get on your back too much.’

Isobel had come to the same conclusion.

She waited hopefully while Eily went to consult with Val and Gladys and was disappointed when on Eily’s return she saw at once from her expression that the suggestion had been rejected.

‘Val squealed at once, “Oh, I must have the bed by the window!” and Gladys said straight away that she couldn’t stand having the bed by the wall, never could.’ Eily sighed. ‘What do they think this is, the bloody Ritz? Fact is, dear, Glad listens to her moaning and encourages her, but she doesn’t want to be stuck with it all day. So there you are.’

Eily too was disappointed. That was comforting.

Eily studied her with an admiring grin.

‘Some day you’ll have to tell me how it’s done. Wang I can understand, but Stannard? Care to have a try for Hook? Bet you two bob to a pound you won’t get him.’

Was this Isobel the siren, the charmer of doctors? What next?

‘Don’t be an ass, Eily. He was just being kind. He’s kind to everyone.’

‘Yeah. But not in the same way. Maybe he thought Val was being a bit of a bitch.’ Eily shook her head. ‘Hasn’t got those green eyes for nothing.’