I for Isobel (13 page)

It might be anxiety that made his eyes seem prominent.

Mrs Bowers nodded, turned and went back into the kitchen.

Betty sprang up, took Madge by the elbows and kissed her on both cheeks.

‘I'm very happy for you, my dear.' She put out her hand to Arthur. ‘Congratulations! I know you're going to be very happy.'

‘Thanks.'

Arthur's eyes settled. He looked as if he had run a mile.

Mr Watkin was shaking his hand now and the boys were waiting their turn.

Isobel said truthfully, ‘I like your ring.'

It was a dark glowing striped stone in a heavy setting of gold.

‘It's a hybrid stone. Cornelian mostly but the stripes are tiger eye and ironstone. Arthur brought it with him from the Northern Territory. I don't intend to wear it on this finger after we're married. We'll both wear plain gold bands. I'll wear this on my other hand.'

Isobel swallowed. She never disliked Madge more than when she was doing the very thing Isobel would have done in her place.

‘You'll have a cup of tea with us?' said Betty to Arthur.

‘We just called in, you know, to give the news.'

‘Oh, you must stay. I'll get the cups.'

Betty's eyes levelled with Madge's, delivering a message. She went into the kitchen and came back carrying two cups on their saucers and wearing a little tuck of satisfaction at each corner of her mouth.

‘I'll let you pour, Madge. I suppose you know how Arthur takes his tea. Now tell us all about it. When are you going to be married?'

This was a scene being played, of which Isobel did not know the meaning. Why was Betty playing hostess? Why did she look so smug? Where was Mrs Bowers? She said to herself, I sound like a serial in
Women's Own
. (Now read on…)

When they had finished supper, Betty was still playing the hostess. She said to Isobel, who was stacking the used cups and plates on the tray, ‘Don't bother. I'll do that.'

As if the kitchen were a dragon's lair and Betty the only one brave enough to go in. Mysterious.

It was a dull afternoon at the café, conversations falling flat, boredom roosting on their shoulders.

Kenneth said, ‘How's your boarding house, Isobel? What's new from Aunt Ada Doom?'

This was a promotion, being asked to entertain Kenneth. She did not welcome it. She did not want to talk about the boarding house.

‘Things are bad. Madge has got engaged to one of her religious crackpots and Mrs Bowers doesn't like it at all.'

‘Good for Madge,' said Janet.

Things were indeed bad at the boarding house. With the offer of a cup of tea she did not know how to refuse, she was lured into the kitchen to listen to Mrs Bowers' lamentations about Arthur and Madge's folly. Arthur of course was Madge's folly.

‘One of those religious crackpots. She never should have gone near them. Plenty of decent respectable religions you can take up if you're that way inclined. I told her so till I was tired of it but would she listen? No. You'd think she'd seen enough of men in her own home. And what good can you expect of a man with nothing better to do than sit around in his nightshirt spouting rubbish?'
Om mani padme hum.
Isobel still winced at the thought of it.

‘I said to her, “Never mind about me. It's you I'm thinking of.” Though how I'll manage alone I don't know. I didn't have to tell her not to think of me, believe me. Possessed, that's what she is. They've got her in with their mumbo jumbo. She's always been weak, poor girl. Always been a fool for any man that'll say two words to her. Last time it was a widower with four children. She saw reason about that, but there's no reasoning with her this time. Water off a duck's back. Did you see that lump of rubbish he's given her for an engagement ring? Couldn't run to a decent diamond. I always say, if a girl has a decent engagement ring, she has something of her own. Madam Betty, it was all she was left with. Worth a packet, too.'

‘Of course he's not right in the head. You can tell by the look in his eyes. And I'm beginning to think she's not much better.'

The responses she drew from Mrs Prendergast gave little consolation.

‘Ah, that's the way of it.'

‘It's always a gamble.'

‘An aunt of mine took up with the Christian Science. A very funny lot they were.'

Mrs Bowers shouted in exasperation, ‘This hasn't got anything to do with your Christian Science!'

Mrs Prendergast looked jolted and affronted. She offered nothing after that but a dignified silence.

Isobel was disappointed at the frustration of Mrs Prendergast's story about the Christian Science. She was bored and embarrassed by Madge's love affair and even more by Mrs Bowers. She had nothing to offer but her presence, which she regretted. It was fortunate that Mrs Bowers could go on talking with only minimal response.

Something else was bad at the boarding house. The other boarders, except Mr Watkin, who moved like a small planet in his own atmosphere, were hostile to her now.

‘Where did you get that coat, Isobel?'

Norman had studied it with insulting curiosity.

‘I inherited it.'

‘It looks like it.'

Betty had looked it up and down and said crisply, ‘It's been a good coat in its day.'

Isobel had in return looked Betty up and down, said nothing but drawn a little blood.

‘The very kind of bitchery I most detest!' she had cried that night to Joseph. ‘Besides, I think she's beautiful. Her age doesn't matter. I didn't have anything to throw at her except being eighteen, and what's that? Everyone is eighteen sometime or other. But oh, Joseph, why do they hate me? If it was just the Eleventh Commandment I could bear it.' The Eleventh Commandment was
Thou shalt not be different.
‘I don't care about Norman either. Whatever is eating him he is welcome to.' She had an odd idea about what was eating Norman. She drew it from the poltergeist rages that affected him whenever Betty was away and the calm her return brought him. He thought youth was too good for the likes of Isobel. But Betty. Why should Betty, who was amiable and well-mannered, though perhaps a little cold-hearted, turn on her so? ‘I wanted her to like me. This is when I worry, when people dislike me and I don't know why.'

Joseph had no answer. Joseph was a listener only.

Squalor and misery at the boarding house. She was thankful for the interruption when Janet, who was facing the doorway, groaned softly, ‘Oh, my God. Look who's here.'

Nick stiffened and remained quite still.

A tall dark girl with avid eyes was staring at them from the doorway.

‘She's been to Fifty-one, I suppose. Helen wouldn't have told her. She must have looked in by chance. Damn.'

Kenneth had lowered his eyes against an indecency. Trevor got up, put his money on the table and hurried towards the girl. He put his arm around her waist and walked away with her.

Janet said angrily, ‘No self-respect at all. None. Nick, I do think it would be better if you faced it and talked to her. If you could make her see it's no use…'

‘I should think she knows that,' said Kenneth.

‘Then what's the point?'

‘Well,' he answered slowly, ‘she is annoying him. That might be better than nothing.'

Nick had lit a match, let it burn down, placed it carefully between his hands and was now staring at the identical images of the burnt match that lay at the base of each thumb. The excessive innocence of his face must be hiding fierce embarrassment.

‘There is not one damned thing Nick can do about it, except wait till she gets tired of it, so don't nag at him.'

To turn oneself into a weapon, to throw oneself like a stone or a rotten tomato, to be so lost—Isobel felt a keen thrill at the thought of it.

This must be Diana, the past participle. And Nick had laughed at that spiteful remark. Perhaps there had been nothing else to do.

She pitied Diana but was curious too. She wanted to know what it was like. She felt about Diana as she had felt about children who got the cane at the convent; they knew what it was like.

‘Well, I suppose it's safe for you to go home, Nick,' said Janet. ‘I think I'll walk around to Fifty-one too and see Helen. Oh, what about Mitch? Wasn't he supposed to be bringing his sonnet sequence?'

Kenneth said, ‘That could be another reason for going to Fifty-one.'

‘I'd like to see you,' thought Isobel, ‘I'd like to see you standing wrung in a doorway staring at someone you love, hopelessly.'

‘He'd be here now if he was coming, I suppose. All right, then.'

Nick and Trevor lived at Fifty-one. It was a cabalistic number to Isobel.

They counted out money and split the bill.

‘Are you coming, Isobel?'

After all, she thought, nobody sees into my mind. Everyone dislikes Kenneth from time to time. But nobody wants to miss a word he says, and that includes me.

Now they were on their way to Fifty-one, Janet subduing the energy of anger to a casual stroll, the young men walking ahead, Isobel looking with wonder at the back of Nick's head, picturing the beautiful calm face which hid vulnerability, confusion, helplessness.

Down Glebe Road, to the left instead of the right, another turning into a street of large houses set in gardens. Number Fifty-one was as ornamental as an old-fashioned sideboard. The heavy front door bore a bright brass knocker; stained glass panels at either side glowed dull ruby and emerald.

‘It's Helen's house,' Janet explained. ‘She wanted to hang on to it when her parents died, so she lets rooms to keep it going.'

Nick opened the door, looked at them with apology, and went up the stairs.

Janet muttered, ‘God, how she bugs him. If she would just leave him alone…'

Kenneth nodded, looking after Nick with a frown of worry that made him, for a moment, endearing.

‘Oh, well. Better go and say hullo to Helen.'

She led them down the hall into a large kitchen where a dark, stocky woman sat at the table reading. She looked up and said, ‘Hullo. I thought Nick and Trevor were with you.'

‘They were.' Janet took a chair. Kenneth sat on the edge of the table. Isobel stood waiting, till the young woman smiled at her and said, ‘Take a seat.'

‘Oh. This is Isobel. Helen. Nick's gone upstairs. We had a visitor at the café.'

‘Oh God. I didn't tell her where you were. I don't say I wasn't tempted. What a bind she is, the poor girl.'

‘Poor girl. Poor Nick, you mean.'

Kenneth said, ‘She's got to give up sometime. I think.' He brightened. ‘Perhaps Trevor will take her over. Greater love hath no man.' He giggled unlovably.

Yet the girl at the café had been beautiful, except for the obsessed eyes. How dreadful, to be a corpse before you died, with the flies buzzing about you, buzzing ‘no self-respect', ‘what a bind'. The flies enjoying it, too, notwithstanding their indignation on Nick's account.

Isobel was frightened by Diana's plight, and amazed that beauty had not saved her.

The stuttering roar of a motorbike started in the yard, counterpoise to Nick's silence.

‘Well, there goes Nick. Escaping.'

‘I did think she'd given up,' said Helen. ‘She hadn't been round for a fortnight. My heart sank, I tell you, when I heard her coming down the hall.'

What a struggle there might have been in that staying away for a fortnight, that nobody gave Diana credit for.

Janet said bitterly, ‘Because she'd managed to finish things between him and Anthea; that's why she calmed down. You wait and see, she'll be as bad as ever if he takes up with anyone else.'

‘It's amazing though,' said Kenneth, ‘what you can get away with if you give up caring about anything else, like self-respect and pride and all that stuff. Turning yourself into a projectile, so to speak.'

This was so close to Isobel's thought that she wondered why she could not feel more sympathy with Kenneth.

Janet said, ‘A new way of throwing yourself at a man's head.'

Isobel saw Nick as an exiled prince, not meant for sitting talking in cafés, driven by a fury out of his own kingdom.

‘But what does she do?' she asked.

‘She stands outside,' said Janet. ‘She follows him and stands watching, wherever he goes. When he took up with Anthea, she followed him there and stood outside, haunting the place.'

Helen said, ‘I think if Anthea had cared about him, she would have tried to weather it.'

‘She didn't get time to find out if she cared for him. And nobody will, unless she gives up.'

‘No followers, that's Nick,' said Kenneth, and laughed wildly. ‘No followers but one.'

Janet looked at him angrily. ‘It must be dreadful for him. He never says. I suppose he talks to Trevor…'

Trevor came in then, looking troubled and remote.

‘Well, did you get her to go home?'

He nodded. ‘Come and look at my books, Isobel. I probably have something you'd like to borrow.'

Trevor was asking her to come into his bedroom. She was locked in panic, with a voice screaming at her from the past, but nobody else seemed to think the invitation odd and Trevor had spoken casually—a little more casually than usual, perhaps. She got up and followed him, so nervous that she felt herself plodding across the room and clung to the bannisters on her way upstairs behind him.

‘I can't lend you
Middlemarch
because I'm doing my thesis on George Eliot.'

It was probably because he didn't think of her as a girl, just as a reader, that it was all right to invite her into his bedroom.

‘Well, come on in.'

He was looking at her with a particular laughing smile that was private, but not unkind. He took a cushion from the armchair and put it on the floor for her in front of the bookshelves. She turned to them as if they were home but was rebuffed by strange titles.