I for Isobel (7 page)

It was interesting that Aunt Yvonne had the finer sentiments, but Aunt Noelene was going to pay for the clothes.

Isobel was packing most of her books into a box to be stored at Aunt Noelene's, and was feeling her first chill of sorrow at being parted from them. She hoped Aunt Yvonne would win the argument, for it was reassuring that grief had its uniform and its routine—she could join the army and become anonymous.

‘All right. Have it your way. I'll take them into Graces' this afternoon. And a pair of shoes for Isobel. I've never seen…' her voice dwindled and was lost.

Aunt Yvonne answered, ‘They're lucky to have had a good education.'

Dead, thought Isobel, trying the word again. It still meant only silenced. There was no hope of calling up any decent feeling from her evil heart, which was rejoicing in the prospect of freedom and even of new shoes. She picked up Shakespeare, Byron, Keats and Shelley and carried them into the bedroom, where Margaret was sitting on her bed, dazed and weeping, silently and slowly, tears dripping like blood from a cut finger.

‘Do you mind if I take the Shakespeare? It isn't mine but I'd like to have it.'

Margaret shook her head, sending two tears running quickly down her cheeks. It wouldn't do to tell her to cheer up. Somebody should be giving Isobel the opposite advice.

Yet there was in her, deeper than her relief, a paralysing sorrow, not at her mother's death but at being unable to grieve at it. That one was going to stay with her; she looked for distraction from it in the cheerful business of packing and buying new shoes, but knew that any cheerfulness was, in the situation, shocking. She feared she had shocked Aunt Yvonne already.

Perhaps the funeral would touch her feeling and make her a member of the human race.

‘I heard Aunt Yvonne talking to Aunt Noelene in the kitchen. I think we're going to buy dresses for the funeral this afternoon.'

At that, Margaret began to sob, lay down and hugged the pillow to her face, crying, ‘Poor Mum. Poor Mum.'

Oh, why couldn't she do that?

It was no better at the funeral. All that Isobel could think, of the coffin and the candles, the hymns and the praise, the relatives who never visited while her mother was alive, but came now with serious faces to the church and the grave, was that her mother had become like other people at last.

As they lowered the coffin into the ground, she told herself urgently, ‘Feel something, feel something!' for this was her last chance, but she could only see her joy flaring like a great red flower among the pallid chrysanthemums.

Ritual had failed her. That depressed her so much that she became respectable and, in the car on the way back to the house, earned a kind glance from Aunt Yvonne, who looked up from comforting Margaret to see her dejected air and to misinterpret it.

‘Now,' said Aunt Yvonne, as they sat drinking a cup of tea in the kitchen, ‘we have to think what's to be done. I'd like to take the girls back with me for a while, to have a holiday and get over the shock.'

‘I've got the chance of a job,' said Isobel quickly. ‘I have to go for an interview tomorrow.'

Aunt Noelene said, ‘But you haven't started at Tech.'

‘They'll take me without shorthand and typing because I got honours in German. They want somebody to translate the German mail.'

‘Well,' Aunt Yvonne uttered an inscrutable sigh, ‘perhaps that would be the best thing.'

‘Make sure you get your shorthand and typing,' said Aunt Noelene, frowning.

‘Where is she going to live?' asked Aunt Yvonne, looking steadily at Aunt Noelene.

Isobel held her breath, but Aunt Noelene preserved a beneficent silence.

‘I can get board somewhere.'

‘Well, yes.' Aunt Yvonne rubbed her temples, wearily. ‘I'll see to that before we go. And then there's the furniture.'

‘What about Margaret's job?' Aunt Noelene sounded aggressive.

‘It's not much of a job, is it? I don't see that it matters if she does give it up. She can do better than that.'

‘If you think so.' They understood now that Margaret would not come back. ‘The girls can pick out any bits of furniture they want to keep and I'll store them at home. We can get a dealer in to take the rest and be done with it.'

Isobel wept her first tears and wiped them away in surprise. She thought hard for something to ask for, to keep, but, except for her books, which hardly counted, she could find nothing. That dried her tears and deepened her depression.

Aunt Yvonne said, ‘I might as well look through the sheets and towels and the crockery.' She sounded astonishingly refreshed by the thought. ‘They're things you can always use.'

The girls were shamed, not by Aunt Yvonne, but by the poverty she was about to uncover. Aunt Noelene looked with quick deep contempt at Aunt Yvonne; Isobel caught the look and stored it away, as she did everything that reached her from the world outside.

Margaret and Aunt Yvonne sat together on the back seat of the taxi, as like as mother and daughter. It was agreed now that Margaret would make her home with Aunt Yvonne; she wore the dreaming look of one who has just received a declaration of love. Isobel sat beside the driver.

They were on their way to the boarding house the aunts had found for her, a respectable establishment where she would find young company, then to the railway station where Aunt Yvonne and Margaret would begin their journey home.

‘Number a hundred and five,' said Aunt Yvonne to the driver. He slowed down while they peered at house numbers, Isobel breathing quickly in excitement. ‘Here we are.'

The taxi stopped in front of a large two-storeyed house of red brick with bay windows which glared at a small ragged lawn.

She got out. The driver got her case from the boot and set it beside her on the pavement.

‘Well,' said Aunt Yvonne.

There was a moment of blankness. Something was expected; neither girl knew what it was. They looked awkwardly at each other. Aunt Yvonne looked disconcerted. Isobel had seen that expression on other faces. She had never been able to interpret it.

‘Well,' said Aunt Yvonne very brightly, ‘don't forget your board is paid till Sunday week. You have the receipt, haven't you?'

‘Yes, Aunt Yvonne.' She added, ‘Thank you,' though she thought it most likely that Aunt Noelene had paid her board. Still, the word filled a gap.

‘Noelene will be in touch about the money for the furniture. Don't forget we expect you at Christmas.'

Isobel nodded.

Margaret leaned forward.

‘Goodbye.'

‘Goodbye.'

It wasn't a last word. It was a first word. She picked up her suitcase, walked to the front door and rang the bell.

Here we go.

The door was opened by a tall elderly woman, ruddy-faced and ginger-haired, who must be Mrs Bowers, the landlady.

‘It's Isobel, is it?'

Time had carved a sourly humorous expression on her face and her voice matched it in harshness, but her words were welcoming.

‘Come on in. We've been expecting you. Leave your case in the hall. I've just made a cup of tea. Your room's upstairs, first on the right with the door open. You'll find it all right, I don't take the stairs on account of my legs. Come and have a cup of tea before you go up.'

Isobel followed her along the hall into a large bright kitchen, where an old woman sat at the table slicing beans, or, it seemed, resting from slicing beans, while she stared with vague salt-water blue eyes into the distance. She was a real confection, the old woman, large and so soft she seemed to be made of whipped cream, and topped with a floss of silver hair.

‘This is my friend, Mrs Prendergast. This is Isobel; she's taking Rosemary's room, you know. Lost her mother, poor little thing,' she added surprisingly.

Isobel was wearing her funeral clothes. Aunt Noelene had settled on a black skirt, which would be useful later, and a black blouse with white pin spots, in defiance of Aunt Yvonne. Isobel hadn't been quite aware till Mrs Bowers spoke that she was wearing mourning. She hadn't, after all, much choice.

Mrs Prendergast returned from the distance and focused her eyes. ‘Sudden, was it? What was it? Her heart?'

Mrs Bowers said sharply, ‘She wouldn't want to be talking about that. Now sit down. How do you like your tea?'

‘No milk, thank you.'

From shyness her voice almost failed her, but this was acceptable in a poor orphan. She was able to drink her tea and eat a slice of cake in silence while the two women chatted.

‘Thank you very much.' She set down her cup and stood up.

‘Dinner's at half past six. The dining room's next door, through the hatch there. The bathroom's at the end of the passage upstairs. Change your linen Sunday morning. Madge will show you round. That's my daughter, Madge,' she added stoically.

Mrs Prendergast answered her tone, with sympathy.

‘Still in with those people?'

Mrs Bowers shrugged. ‘Doesn't do any harm, I suppose.'

Isobel wondered, as she carried her case upstairs, who the people were who caused concern in Mrs Prendergast and humorous resignation in Mrs Bowers. It appeared at least that Madge was flighty. What they called a mod, perhaps. Then she found the open door at the top of the stairs, went into her room and closed the door behind her. It was a commonplace little room but she was prepared to love everything in it: bed (slightly sagging), chair (straight), faded floral curtains at the window (her own window), combination wardrobe and dressing-table (lucky she didn't have many clothes), a grate in the corner, with a vase of paper flowers delivering the message that it was no longer used for fires, above it a shelf for her books. She unpacked them first: Keats, Shelley, Byron, Shakespeare,
The Last Chronicle of Barset
, from the library. She looked with regret at that. She had been reading the novels of Trollope and whenever she wasn't reading, no matter what was happening in the outside world, she was conscious of being in exile from Barsetshire. She resisted temptation and went on with her unpacking, having a modest ambition to meet life, to be adequate. She had an idea of a life of her own, like the room of her own, where she chose the furniture—no rages, no black passions, no buffeting from the world. She opened her suitcase and took out the box containing the new alarm clock, symbol of the new adequacy, wound it, set it down on the dressing table and began to laugh, because she did not know, not within an hour, what time it was, which marred the symbolic gesture or made it more symbolic still.

Putting her clothes away in a drawer she saw her face in the glass, so happy and hopeful that the likeness to her mother, which seemed to her usually to be a curse from birth, seemed unimportant. After all, a face was only…a glove? It didn't have to be clenched in rage. She couldn't like it: ‘Sonnets from the Pekingese', she said to it, but good-naturedly. She observed it steadily, with detachment, and thought of changing her name to Maeve: Maeve Callaghan, poised, serene, quietly self-confident.

The dinner bell sounded and she went downstairs to meet the human race.

She had arrived first and stood back while they came in and took their places at the table: male, three—one old, two young; female, two—the younger must be Mrs Bowers' daughter, Madge, and to have thought her flighty! The word made Isobel fancy a monumental statue rising and flitting about on small delicate wings. The other must be called old, because her hair was grey, yet her face belonged to a heroine of romance, with delicate features, narrow blue eyes and full lips.

It was she who said, ‘Hello. The new boarder. What's your name?'

She didn't, after all, say ‘Maeve'. They would know. They would look at her with scorn and say, ‘No, you're not. You're Isobel.'

‘Isobel Callaghan.'

‘She'll have Rosemary's place, I suppose, Madge.'

The statue nodded.

‘Come and sit down, then.'

The vacant place was between her and Madge at the end of the table. The elderly gentleman (such a one as the words had been coined for) sat at the other end; he made a half-bow and gave a half-smile when the woman named him as Mr Watkin.

‘I'm Betty, and that pair of larrikins are Tim and Norman.'

Tim was cheerful, pink-cheeked and blubber-lipped; Norman terracotta and hard-boned (she wondered what it would be like to touch him, then dismissed the thought with shame).

They had been talking about football as they came in, were carrying on the conversation at the dinner table and paused in it long enough to nod. If they were the young people who had made the house suitable for Isobel, they were quite unaware of their responsibilities.

‘They improve on acquaintance,' said Betty, just as Maeve would have said it.

‘I give you five to two they'll beat Souths,' Norman answered.

Meanwhile plates of soup began to appear in the hatch that opened from the kitchen, and Madge got up to bring them to the table. She was not, after all, monumental in size, but in stillness and dignity; she moved as if she were wearing an invisible robe and handed soup as if she were taking part in a religious ceremony.

During the main course, the young men's conversation turned from football to the charms of the new trainee at the Bank: figure (Norman sketched on the air, what words could not convey), face (not bad either, not bad at all), altogether a peach, a trimmer, a table bird, everything indeed that Isobel was not and, though she was determined on calm acceptance, the thought was saddening.

Betty looked up at last from her roast lamb and said with amusement, ‘Don't tell us, tell her.'

Norman said, ‘We're tossing up on that.'

‘Be sure to let us know how it comes out. We'll be suffering the suspense with her.'

The remark was crushing and silenced Norman, yet he accepted it with a grin.

Was it dialogue? Were they acting in a play?