I for Isobel (11 page)

‘He hasn't mentioned it to me.'

‘And another thing. If you wouldn't laugh so much at Mr Richard. I know he can be difficult, but…these things are more important than you think.'

‘What am I supposed to do? Cry?'

Olive sighed over the difficulties of life.

‘You could have Rita's job when she goes, you know. Now that you have shorthand and typing you'll be in line for a big promotion. If only you will just…Mr Walter is happy with your work, but he does have some doubts about your attitude. It is best to be straightforward, isn't it, in a case like this?'

Olive pleaded for approval.

Isobel said briefly, ‘Thanks. I'd better get back to work.'

‘Oh, ho!' said Frank. ‘Who's in a nasty little temper, eh? Been warned off me, have you?' He put on a confidential air. ‘Frank is a Communist.'

‘They want more than they pay for.'

‘Come on! Who doesn't? You just worked that one out?'

‘And you have to put up with it!'

Frank gave a little rein to his own temper. ‘The trouble with people like that Olive is that they don't only put up with it, they like it. They're the ones who make me sick.'

‘I didn't think it would be like this. I thought you would do your work and take your money and that would be that.'

‘Speaking of taking our money, I suppose we'd better get on with the work.' He had levered open a large packing case and begun to feel through the packing straw. He paused and said, ‘Bel?'

‘Yes?'

‘What do you want out of life? I mean, it stands to reason, doing your work and taking your money isn't enough. It isn't enough for anyone, let alone you. Now, it isn't home and kids; you're not out to please the boys, or you wouldn't be pulling that nice little face around making funny remarks.'

Isobel felt deep astonishment at the words ‘nice little face'.

‘Just as well too, I would say. You got a long way to go before you think about that. Do you ever think about being a writer?'

‘What made you think of that?'

‘Well. No need to bite my head off! You nearly made me drop a week's wages.' He brushed the packing away from a moulded iridescent fruit bowl and set it on the table.

‘1—324 Fruit Bowl iridescent one only.'

‘Check.'

‘I'm sorry I snapped.' She could offer no explanation either for the panic reaction.

‘Well. You have this way of putting things. I thought of it when you said that about your little number fours. Summed it up in six words and made me mad, what's more. Made Olive madder, I'm thinking. Everyone can't do that.'

‘I wish you'd drop it, Frank.'

‘OK. But, to come back to it, what
do
you want out of life? What do you want to be? If you say Mr Walter's secretary, I'll award myself a big horse laugh.'

‘I want to be one of the crowd.'

Frank got his horse laugh after all.

‘That'll be the day. It'll be some crowd. You'd better start looking.'

‘1—325. Footed compote.'

‘Check. Awful stuff this is. No pleasure in it. About the Communism, I used to shoot my mouth off at work, preaching a better world to all. They told me to stop. OK. I like my job and it's their premises. But if you want to know anything about the Party, off the premises, I'll be glad to oblige, because I think it just might be the right thing for you.'

‘Thanks, Frank. 1—329, crystal-backed mirror, comb and brush.'

‘Lord preserve us. And here they are, all right. Large as life and twice as horrible.'

Two Saturdays later, the special crowd appeared. She was reading and drinking coffee in one of the booths that lined the wall of the coffee shop in Glebe Road when a group of six young people came in, greeted the proprietor and began moving chairs and pushing tables together. She was irritated at first by the noise they made as they settled themselves, and concentrated more firmly on
The Prime Minister.

One of the young men spoke to the whole group.

‘I've finished my assignment for Joseph. A neat little thing, I think.'

He made an exaggerated throat-clearing noise that commanded the attention of the others, and Isobel's, too, though she kept her eyes on her book.

‘Said Auden to Spender,

“I'm just a weekender,

My boy, on Parnassus,

While you're a commuter.

Will you be my tutor?” '

‘Said Spender to Auden,

“Apply to George Gordon,

Most fluent of asses,

The facile Lord Byron.

Then he'll be the siren

And you'll be the warden

To cozen the masses.” '

Among the laughing voices, a light, precise one cried angrily, ‘Unfair! Unfair to Auden!'

Unfair to Byron, thought Isobel angrily. Orden? Spender? Who were they? Daring to sneer at Byron! So many sensations swept over her at once—since the first moment of hearing verse spoken aloud as if it was part of the conversation, she felt her head swimming in amazement and had to hold to her anger for support.

She looked at them then. The young man who had cried, ‘Unfair to Auden!' was short and thickset; his large head was crowned with deep glossy weaves of black hair, his small neat features made him look like a small landscape in a heavy frame. He was writing now, while the other one watched, wearing a droll, wary look.

‘Said Spender to Auden,

“I couldn't afford an

Apprentice so gifted.

I'd find myself lifted

To the empyrean,

So I'd rather be an

Admirer than…”

‘Damn, I've lost your rhyme scheme.'

‘Lost your rhyme too, I think.'

‘There's something wrong with your rhyme scheme. Give me your copy a minute.'

That was living as she longed to know it. Did they know how lucky they were? Probably not. The lucky ones never did.

‘Look after it, then, I want it for Joseph.'

They stirred, making room for the waitress with the coffee.

Isobel had seen one of the girls before somewhere. She was tall and beautiful, with a calm, diamond-hard, golden-skinned face and fair hair falling in an elegant sweep. School. The hair had hung in plaits then.

The other girl, the dark-haired one, spoke in a soft pleasant voice. ‘Are you really going to give it to Joseph?'

‘Of course I am. A commentary on Auden's
Letter to Lord Byron.
One thousand words, but I'm offering quality instead of quantity.' He looked virtuous. To say that his face was expressive still made too little of the expression and too much of the face, which, however, came almost to rest, delicate-ugly and childlike, when he added complacently, ‘Joseph will say, “That's very nice, Kenneth. Now bring me the other nine hundred and fifty words. By Friday.”'

His air of repose tormented Isobel, so that she realised her anger came not from loyalty to Byron, but from jealousy.

‘You should have another line at the end of the first verse, it ought to go
a a b c c b
, and you've got an extra line in the second verse.'

What was the girl's name?

‘Ah well, it was just a trifle, tossed off…'

The dark girl said, ‘In the hope of dodging a bit of work. You'd have done better to write your thousand words.'

‘I'll just think of a good story. The inequality of the stanzas is deliberate, as I am imitating the style of each writer…'

‘Are you making out that Spender is wordier than Auden? What a lie!'

‘Well, the extra length of the second verse gives more force to Spender's indignation. How about that?'

If Isobel could remember the girl's name she would go up to her and claim acquaintance. Though the prospect frightened her, she would do it.

‘It won't do you any good with Joseph.'

‘I know that, but it's fun trying.'

The other poet said, in a voice that scratched with annoyance, ‘What you don't understand, Kenneth, is that Auden's so much at home on Parnassus, he can go about in shirt-sleeves and slippers. Don't underrate him because he doesn't dress for dinner.'

It was the name of Joseph—the loved, respected authority—and the affection with which Kenneth pronounced it, that cracked Isobel's matchbox cabin and sent it sliding towards the black pit.

‘I think,' said the dark girl, ‘that you're being a bit hard on poor old Byron. Granted that he's facile, he's done a few good things. What about
Don Juan
?' She pronounced it Wahn.

‘Oh, yes,' said Kenneth. With a condescending tone, a careless movement of the hand, he turned ridicule from Byron onto himself. ‘I don't condemn him utterly.'

‘How kind.' The girl smiled, showing long, quite ugly teeth.

The beauty was bored. She appeared to be wondering how she had come to be there. How happy Isobel would have been in her place! If she could only remember her name…Hullo, Oats; Hullo Barley…Vinnie. Vinnie Winters.

The squat young man pushed his copy back to Kenneth, drank his coffee quickly, put a coin in the middle of the table and said, ‘I'll be off, then.'

When he had gone, the dark girl said, ‘You've upset Mitch!'

Kenneth grinned and chanted softly, ‘Where he cannot dom-in-ate, He will not part-i-ci-pate.'

‘Mitch wears a dinner jacket,' she said thoughtfully.

‘Oh, yes. Mitch wears a dinner jacket. Exquisitely beaded, too.'

They laughed. Three of them laughed.

‘But no spangles. Be fair.'

‘Oh, no. No spangles.'

The young man on the other side of Vinnie Winters was beautiful, too, his face as diamond-hard as hers but pale, his eyes dark blue, his hair black and his features neatly insolent. The sight of him nearly destroyed Isobel's courage, yet she managed to get to her feet, walk across and say, ‘You're Vinnie Winters, aren't you? We were at school together. Isobel Callaghan.'

The beauty's face, already glittering with bad temper, did not change.

‘Perhaps you remember my sister Margaret. She was in your year.'

‘Oh.'

Isobel was regretting her boldness when the deer-like young man opposite, reacting against Vinnie's rudeness, stood up and pulled back Mitch's chair. ‘Are you alone? Come and join us. Take a seat, do. I'll get your things.' He brought her handbag and her book across, smiling over the Trollope.

Silence fell, heavily.

Kenneth said at length, ‘If you were a part of speech, what part of speech would you be?' He added, blowing on his fingernails in self-congratulation, ‘I speak as a verb, a transitive verb. And Janet there is a conjunction, a coordinating conjunction.' He turned to Vinnie. ‘And you, my pet, are an adjective, naturally.' Seeing the necessity, he added, ‘You adorn. You decorate.'

If the compliment had been a coin, Vinnie would have been testing it with her teeth.

‘And Trevor there is a noun.'

The young man beside Isobel said, laughing, ‘I would have thought myself a verb. In the passive voice, perhaps. Well, then, an abstract noun. I'm not sure, Kenneth, that I care to have you reading my entrails, as if I were a sacred bird.'

Isobel laughed, too.

He looked at her kindly.

‘And what are you?'

She said in a racked whisper, ‘I think I'm a preposition.'

‘Oh? Do you govern?'

‘Only small common objects.'

The girl Janet smiled at her. That was astonishing.

‘I wish I could govern small common objects. Like my latch key.'

Kenneth looked at her sharply.

‘To or for, by, with or from?'

The question, if not hostile, was at least challenging. She was not to be so easily accepted.

‘Oh, come,' said Trevor. ‘You didn't specify for anyone else.'

Isobel said on a bubble of laughter, ‘My landlady's a preposition. Against.'

That brought a laugh from them all, even a smile from Vinnie. Isobel felt a little guilty, knowing she would be accepting tea, cake and kindness from Mrs Bowers later in the afternoon. She hadn't intended malice, either, but she knew she would do as much again, offer up anything that made them laugh. Making them laugh might make her acceptable.

Janet said to Kenneth, ‘You may be transitive, but I'm damned if I think you're finite.'

That jolted him. His mock offence concealed true offence. She ought to sympathise with that. But what did Janet mean? Object, no subject. How clever they were.

Now Kenneth was staring insolently. ‘I don't object to claiming infinity.'

‘What am I?' asked the young man beside him.

There was a flash of satisfaction in Kenneth's eye at having drawn the question.

‘You, Nick? You're an adverb.' He began to sing. ‘It ain't what you do…It's de way dat you do it…' He laughed loudly. ‘And Diana is a past participle.'

Nick grinned briefly. Trevor started and looked shocked.

Janet said, ‘Vinnie, have you made up your mind about the dance?'

Vinnie shrugged, ‘It's all right with me.'

‘Kenneth?'

‘If Vinnie has made up her mind, she has made up mine.'

‘That'll be the day.'

‘It is the day,' said Kenneth gently, so that she smiled.

‘We're getting up a party for the Arts Ball. What about it? Trevor?'

Trevor shook his head. ‘In my present delicate financial condition, no.'

‘Nick?'

Nick had lit a cigarette and was now tearing unused matches one by one from the folder and dropping them in the ashtray. He shook his head without looking up.

Kenneth said, ‘He is faithful to his motorbike.'

‘No sidecar?'

‘Positively no sidecar.'

Nick smiled at that. It seemed that Kenneth and Janet were pleased by the smile.

Janet returned to the game.

‘Speaking of parts of speech, some people would just be expletives.'