Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop (27 page)

‘Clothes make the woman, eh?’

‘You look fabulous.’

Outdoor clothes evoked the outer world, disturbingly. Isobel wondered about Eily’s life out there. Her clothes appeared plain but were reminiscent of Mrs Delaney.

Eily grinned again.

‘You should see me when I’m really trying.’

And that was true. The swollen mouth and the flattened nose did not detract from Eily’s glamour. They made it intriguing. She looked like a fine classical piece which had met with an interesting misfortune.

Meanwhile, Lilian had joined the group on the verandah. She was young, sandy-haired, grey-eyed, with a spatter of faint freckles across her cheekbones. She had delicate features, the most conspicuous a small but pugnacious chin. Her eyebrows and her eyelashes were discreetly darkened with cosmetics, a detail which added to the sophistication of her conversation. She was a teacher of English, articulate, argumentative and extremely well read. Wang’s knowledge matched hers; they talked and argued about writers and philosophies new to Isobel: Sartre, Camus, existentialism…This widened Isobel’s horizon and put her nose quite out of joint. She was ashamed of this; her policy must always be to listen and to learn, and so she did, but without any friendly feelings towards Lilian.

She had never heard of Kafka, found it difficult to believe that a literary masterpiece could deal with a man who woke up one morning and found himself turned into an insect.

‘Truly? An insect?’

But Lilian and Wang both seemed to take this seriously.

‘There’s one thing I understood. When they told me I had TB, I thought, “That’s it! K’s crime! I’ve got it!” I had always identified with K, without knowing why. The secret unfitness, the crime that sets you apart, that’s it!’

‘Oh, no.’ Wang was emphatic. ‘It was being Jewish, clearly. The alien in society, the outcast. It is clear throughout.’

He paused because Lilian was grinning at him and began to smile, himself.

‘To each his own crime.’

‘I am lost,’ said Isobel.

She was also extremely, shamefully, jealous of the understanding between the two.

‘I shall bring you
The Trial
,’ said Doctor Wang, ‘and you can tell us what K’s crime was. Then we shall know more about you.’

‘I’m not sure I care for that, but I’ll read the book.’

She acquired prestige with Lilian by reading the
New Yorker
.

‘Where did you get hold of that? Do you have a subscription?’

‘A friend sends it on to me. Well, he’s not a friend, exactly. I haven’t met him. He edits a magazine and he’s published a couple of my stories, that’s all. It’s very good of him.’

‘You write stories and get them published? Oh, lucky, lucky, lucky you!’

She spoke fiercely, with heart-felt envy.

‘It’s always lucky to be published.’

‘It’s lucky to be able to write at all. If only I could!’

‘But if you want to, why don’t you? All it takes is pen and paper. I mean, you know much more than I do about books. And you can say clever things, why can’t you write them down?’

‘I’ve tried and it doesn’t work. Forget it. Can I have the
New Yorker
after you?’

‘Yes. You’d better have it first. Then hand it on to Wang.’

‘Can I read your stories?’

‘There are only two of them. They’re packed away with my other things. Somebody’s minding them for me.’

‘What’s the magazine then?’

‘
Seminal
.’

‘You must be pretty good then. We had better shut up before I burst with envy.’

After this conversation, Isobel found Lilian less dominating and much more lovable.

Eily was on the wing. Briskly she stitched up the koala she had promised for Gladys’s baby, then announced that she was off.

Sister Connor debated this decision at length and with energy.

‘You don’t give yourself a proper chance, Eily. It’s always the same story. You’re too impatient.’

‘They can’t keep me here if I’m not positive. I haven’t thrown a positive for months.’

‘That’s not the whole story and you know it.’

Eily shook her head.

‘Sorry. I’m off.’

‘Can you be trusted to look after yourself?’

‘Yeah. I’ll take it easy.’ She grinned. ‘Cross my heart.’

‘Well, I suppose you know your own business best. Though you’ve shown no sign of it yet.’

Eily remained obstinate.

On rounds, Doctor Stannard said, ‘Give it a bit longer, Eily.’

He smiled in vain. He sighed and said, ‘Well, try to stay away this time.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

It seemed that Doctor Stannard and Sister Connor shared some saddening knowledge about Eily and the life to which she was returning.

Isobel got an inkling of it when Eily, dazzling in a suit of beige linen and a shirt of coffee-coloured silk, came along the verandah to say goodbye. Her handbag and the matching shoes were of the same colour as the shirt and of the same impressive quality.

Sister Connor at the door of Room 2 said angrily, ‘How are you going to get to town at this hour? And what train will you catch? You’ll be there all day.’

Eily looked at her coldly.

‘I’m not going by train. He’s sending a car to pick me up.’

She shrugged as Sister Connor turned away.

Eily came into the room.

‘Well, goodbye, kiddo.’ She paused, then added, ‘Will you take a piece of advice?’

‘Sure.’

‘Don’t stay around here too long. You’ll get webbed feet.’

‘What a funny thing to say,’ said Isobel. ‘They’ll put me out when the time comes, won’t they? I certainly hope so. Who’d want to stay here?’

‘Well, keep it in mind.’

‘I’ll miss you, Eily.’

‘Likewise. It was nice knowing you. Cheeroh, then.’

‘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 for 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.