by Amy Witting
‘Of course I don’t mind.’ She put on a coy look. ‘I had no idea I was so fascinating.’
Olive looked startled. ‘Well, that’s the way to take it,’ she said, but doubtfully.
‘You’re a sketch, you are,’ Rita said, and yawned. ‘See you tomorrow, girls.’
Isobel put the German dictionary away in a drawer and gave it a secret affectionate pat. It shed its virtue over the memory of the day.
There was no reading that evening. She could hardly keep a decent countenance during dinner and went to bed straight after.
The next day was peaceful. Mr Richard was not there, and the German mail went faster. Only two letters left to translate.
Betty was not at dinner. The young men were subdued, which was odd, because it was Betty who subdued their excesses. They went out after dinner; Madge disappeared; only Mr Watkin was left in the dining room, doing a crossword puzzle in the daily paper. Isobel brought down her book and spent the evening happily in Barsetshire.
Next day she finished the German mail in the morning and spent the afternoon in the storeroom checking invoices while Frank, the storeman, unpacked glasses.
‘Six etched Bohemian, stemmed. Azure. 0 dash 234. Six ditto lilac. 0 dash 235. Six ditto clear…’
Frank was a neat, cheerful little man who radiated some of the virtue of the chance-found German dictionary. He handled the pretty glasses with a secure and gentle touch and called Mr Richard the dickybird.
‘You couldn’t trust the dickybird with this job,’ he said. ‘He’s a disaster.’
She had suspected he might be.
‘He’s a suffering soul, see, and he takes it out on the glasses. And then, when he breaks one he suffers worse, because it’s money down the drain.’
‘I wouldn’t trust myself with it, either,’ said Isobel, and went on quickly, ‘Aren’t you a suffering soul, then?’
‘Some can wear it, some can’t.’
He lifted a rose-tinted goblet out of the packing straw, wiped it briskly and delicately with a cloth and held it to the light.
‘Pretty.’
‘Not top quality. Pretty enough. Now, where’s its number?’
Between the pretty glassware and the plain talk, the easy, sensible employment, that afternoon passed pleasantly and five o’clock came unlooked for.
Away from Plummer Street, at ease in her own large kitchen, Aunt Noelene made a new impression.
She sat at the kitchen table; sunlight through the window lit the brilliant silk shirt she wore over narrow black pants, but did not make her ridiculous; one did not think, of her keen bony face, whether or not it was plain. She was scribbling a sum on a notepad.
‘So, when you’ve paid your board, you have twelve and six left for the week. You won’t get far on that. I’ll fix the Business College. I’ll send them a cheque for the term.’
‘But, Aunt Noelene, I don’t need shorthand, and I can type well enough for the German mail.’
‘With two fingers. You keep that up and you’ll never learn to type properly. And suppose this job folds? Where would you be then? You take my advice and get your qualifications while you can.’
‘You do too much for me. I don’t want to be a burden.’
‘Well, that’s…’ Aunt Noelene snapped the remark off cleanly but too late. Isobel was blushing as the past rose round her like a stench of stale urine. In a less boisterous tone Aunt Noelene went on, ‘You can’t be expected to look after yourself at your age. Who else is going to look out for you, for God’s sake?’
She went back to her sums. ‘You’ll need to eat out, three nights a week. You’ll be paying for meals that you’re not getting, that’s a nuisance. No use asking for special rates at a boarding house. You end up being a skivvy. What’s it like? The boarding house?’
‘Oh, good.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ Aunt Noelene was finding her heavy going. ‘Three pounds a month ought to do it. Make it four, a bit over for a bit of fun. You can come here for lunch, the first Sunday in every month, and I’ll give you four pounds to tide you over. Now, that means I’ll expect you on the fifth. If something happens that you can’t make it, ring me up. You have my number, don’t you?’
‘It’s too much.’
‘You might as well have it now as after I’m dead. It’s now that you need it. Don’t look so down. We’ll cut it out as soon as you get your rise. You’ll just have to see to it that you do get it.’
At the thought of asking Mr Walter for a rise, Isobel felt faint.
‘Won’t they give it to me, without my asking?’
‘No.’ She made a comic turn out of saying so, looking dead-eyed at Isobel and wagging her head. ‘Understand this. You will get nothing out of this world unless you fight for it.’
Fate was stricter than any headmistress. She must fight for money or be a burden on Aunt Noelene. Both prospects were intolerable, but not equally. She thought she could learn to fight rather than impose on Aunt Noelene.
‘You want to keep your eyes open at the office and find out what’s what. What do you do, apart from the mail?’
‘Keep the petty cash, check the invoices when Frank unpacks the glass. I help him to polish it and set it out in the showroom and sometimes I take the mail to the GPO. Otherwise I do anything Olive wants—filing, mostly.’
‘In fact, you’re the junior, except that you translate the German mail. For a junior’s wages. They sound like shysters to me.’ She frowned and rubbed her thumb across her chin as she reflected. ‘You’ve started off on the wrong foot, there. It’s a special skill, the German, and you should have a loading, but you’ll see, once they’ve got it for nothing, they’ll go on taking it for granted. Who did the job before you came?’
‘I don’t know. They never mention it.’ She added with feeling, ‘Perhaps she threw her typewriter at Mr Richard.’
Aunt Noelene’s laugh must be what was called a guffaw. ‘Mr Richard! What a berk! Lord of the Manor, is he?’
‘There’s Mr Richard and Mr Walter, you see.’
‘Dick and Wally, right. This Olive is the head girl, I suppose?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who else is there? Who takes the dictation, does the shorthand for Wally and Dick?’
‘Rita, mostly. Olive and Nell do sometimes, when Mr Stephen is in and wants something done. I’ve only seen him once. He’s the salesman.’
‘You’ll have to find out a few things, like what pay the others get. And find out about the one whose place you took. Are you making friends with anyone?’
‘Well, Frank, I suppose. That’s the storeman.’
There was a pause, Aunt Noelene said, ‘I need a drink. I could do with a gin and tonic. Can I get you something? Lemonade?’
‘No. Thank you.’
Having fixed her drink in silence, and carried it back to the table, she said earnestly, ‘Look, love, I don’t think you’ll make it. You’re no fighter. They’ll tread you into the ground.’
Isobel had not known life was like this. She had expected it to be simpler.
‘Why don’t you go for teaching? Your Leaving pass was good enough. Apply at the end of the year. You’d get an allowance, you can live here if you like, get your own meals. There’s a room at the back, even got a sink and gas ring. I used to let it before the business took off, don’t bother now. You’d be independent and you’d meet a few people of your own type, go to dances and such and have a bit of young life. Why not?’
‘I didn’t like school. I don’t want to stay here all my life.’
‘I can sympathise with that. OK. But there are other jobs. Librarian, what about that?’
Isobel sat silent and dejected.
‘All right. Give it till the end of the year. From what you say about those people, I think if you want to get anywhere there you’ll have to hold a gun at their heads. You have to be prepared to tell them you’re leaving; if they let you go, we’ll think about a change. How about it?’ Her purse was on the dresser. She go
t out the four pounds Isobel didn’t deserve and didn’t know how to earn. ‘This is for your first month. And try to put a bit away every month. Even if it’s two bob in a money box, try to get a bit behind you. Well, I’m glad you can smile.’
‘I was thinking about Mr Micawber. In David Copperfield. “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds, nineteen and six, happiness.”’
‘Well, yes,’ her aunt said vaguely. ‘That’s the idea.’
Mr Micawber seemed to have been the last straw for her. She drank her gin in silence. They were both relieved when the phone rang in the hall.
Isobel thought she could hear relief in Aunt Noelene’s voice as she said, ‘Oh, Stan. That’s OK.’ Laughter. ‘I’d have had a piece of you if you had been there. You and your certainties!…No, not too bad, made it up just about on Peter’s Dream in the fifth…twenty to one…Vi and her magic pin again…Yes, I told her she’d better get a forked stick and take up water divining, she’d be a sensation.’
Aunt Noelene had tamed money, made it into a kind of playmate, a spirited horse, great fun if treated with caution.
‘No, changed my mind at the last minute, fancied The Oracle both ways and it came in second.’
People spoke poetry. Aunt Noelene spoke poetry: Peter’s Dream in the fifth, The Oracle both ways. So did the boys at the boarding house, with their football teams, their Eels and Tigers, their Saints and the rest, their dishes and peaches.
Why did this fill her with anguish, with longing and a sense of exile? Longing for what? Exile from where?
‘Good. We’ll get up a game then. Friday night, fine. I’d better go. Got my niece with me, Rob’s girl, you know.’
Would it please if she spoke of her father? She did not know what to say that would please, she did not know how to please. She is doing all this for me because she is Aunt Noelene, not because I’m Isobel. More honour to her.
Yet Isobel could have wished to have something to give in return.
Things went better after lunch. They rummaged among Aunt Noelene’s overflowing possessions and she came back to the boarding house with a red belt to brighten up the black outfit, a nearly new handbag, a half-knitted sweater and a winter coat of old-fashioned cut. Aunt Noelene had been doubtful about the coat: ‘Had it for years. Kept it because of the fur. I meant to take the fur off but never got around to it.’ The fur was a deep spreading collar, deep cuffs, and a narrow trim that outlined the two fronts and the wide flaring hem. ‘I don’t know. It’s out of style but it doesn’t look too bad. Maybe it’s so far out it’s in.’ The alternative was to break into the furniture money to buy a coat. The furniture money was a cheque for twenty-two pounds, with which she was to start a bank account.
Isobel thought the fur-trimmed coat was beautiful and gained approval from Aunt Noelene for keeping the furniture money intact.
In spite of that, the general effect of the visit was depressing. Until Aunt Noelene had explained to her the frightening living nature of money, how it had to be hunted, seized and tamed, she had been satisfied with her progress. Everything was manageable except Mr Richard, who still came to loom behind her clucking and sighing.
‘There are two ways of taking it,’ Frank had said to her as they unpacked glass in the storeroom. ‘There’s inner calm, not worrying about him at all. But it’s got to be genuine. If you’re putting on an act, calm outside and boiling inside, that’s no good. It takes too much out of you.’
‘I thought, if I pretended not to care, he’d get tired of it and go away.’
‘I wouldn’t depend on that. Besides, I reckon he’d know. People like the dickybird, they don’t know much but they’ve got their specialities. If you’re putting on an act, he’ll see through it. If you’re boiling inside, you got to tackle him. Just say, quiet and polite, “I’m sorry I’m keeping you from your work, Mr Richard”.’
His primmed mouth and dulcet tones had made her giggle with joy.
‘“Could I bring it in to you as soon as it is finished.”’ He added soberly, ‘That’s the trouble, you know. He hasn’t got any work, poor dickybird. He hasn’t got the brains for business and he hasn’t got the hands for glass. I wouldn’t have him in here for quids, mucking about with my glasses. It’s Mr W. that has the brains and it’s Mr S. that has the looks and style. That’s no excuse for bullying you. I think you’ve got to tackle him, myself. Give yourself a bit more time to get settled in and then tell him, nice and polite, to get his lubberly great frame out of your living space.’
Isobel had giggled again but had decided silently on inner calm. When Mr Richard loomed behind her she could tell herself she had chosen to bear it. It made a change from telling herself she was in Czechoslovakia.
She was altogether satisfied with herself and brought her book down to the dining room after dinner, conscious that she had been adequate to the day. It wasn’t easy to read in the dining room. The bridge players took the table, where the light was good, but she made herself a spot in the corner, out of their way, where it was still possible to read.
For all their talk about peaches, dishes and little bits of fluff waiting to be picked up, Tim and Norman seemed to live a life as restricted as her own. They were happy to sit at the table studying their bridge hands, embryo bank managers learning their social skills.
There were evenings when Betty didn’t come home to dinner. She had a job on the management side in a big hotel in the city. ‘Working back,’ Mrs Bowers would say, with the raised eyebrows of one who didn’t believe a word of it. On those nights the boys were as rowdy as poltergeists, switching a yelling wireless from station to station, playing a kind of football with a matchbox, shouting in frivolous arguments, practising Indian wrestling. Madge would disappear, always. Mr Watkin sat at the table transferring information from newspaper cuttings to a large hard bound ledger. Isobel would sit at the table too, but the improvement in the light did not compensate for the destruction of her peace. She would wonder that frivolity should seem so like misery.
At last Mrs Bowers would call out from the kitchen, ‘What are you two doing in there? Knocking the house down?’ or ‘Not so much noise, please!’
Norman then would grow silent and sullen, shrug his shoulders and say to Tim, ‘Coming down the street for a milkshake?’ and Tim, with an exaggerated hangdog look, would follow him out.
One bridge night—she had come nearly to the end of Framley Parsonage and was bent intently over her book—she felt a light blow to her cheek, like an insect alighting, and put up her hand to trap a ball of paper.
Norman was looking at her with a fierce grin. ‘It’s alive! It breathes!’
She lifted her book as a shield and to hide the excitement which was making a fool of her face. Her heart was thudding, too. She held the book in front of her face until her heart settled and she could involve herself again in the troubles of Mark Robarts. As soon as the excitement had passed, she was ashamed that such a little notice should cause such a flurry.
Two nights later it happened again. This time she was ready; she caught the ball of paper, cried with delight ‘A love letter,’ stroked it smooth and added with disappointment, ‘It’s in code.’
Norman said impudently, ‘Why would I be sending you a love letter?’
‘Why would you be sending me anything else?’
She was delighted to be invited to join the games young people played, and flattered herself she did it well. (Elegant and spirited: ‘La, Sir!’)
Betty said, ‘I don’t think it’s a love letter.’
‘Oh, well. I shan’t decode it then.’ She crumpled the paper again and returned to her book.
After that, she read in peace and some disappointment, for a week or two.
She was wriggling, trying to find a better position, holding her book to the light, when Norman called to her, ‘Careful, Isobel! You’ll ruin your eyes! Men never make passes at girls who wear glasses.’
‘Seldom,’ she amended. ‘That’s the line. Men se
ldom make passes at girls who wear glasses. And where did you learn that? Did someone recite it to you?’
She looked up and found his gaze fixed on her, tense and dull with hatred. The invisible knife again. This time, after the the first jolt, she was not sorry. If it was not a game but a battle, she was glad to fight it even though she wouldn’t have had the nerve if she had known.
It was sad that the admired Betty was looking at her coldly and said, in a voice as cold as her look, ‘It’s your bid, Norman.’
She saw no sympathy anywhere, but surely she was entitled to read, had seen to it that she inconvenienced no-one. People who wanted her to give up reading were asking too much without offering anything in return. Right behaviour didn’t work unless everyone practised it. Well, now she knew where she stood; there was comfort in that.
She was more at home in the kitchen. where she had the status of a domestic pet. On Saturday afternoons she was fed tea and cake and listened to the conversation of Mrs Bowers and Mrs Prendergast. Mrs Prendergast was an admirer of death, entranced by its ceremonies, awed by its sudden captures, marvelling at its rare defeats. Small coffins and large funerals, broken hearts and lovely wreaths travelled on the placid unchecked stream of her conversation. Mrs Bowers was the enemy of sex and marriage. Her attitude towards sex was simple: it was a disagreeable penalty imposed on the goodlooking; having served her own time, she grew peevish with plain girls who did not know their luck. While Mrs Prendergast reminisced, she turned the pages of papers and magazines looking out for a mention of the enemy, to read it aloud, saying to Isobel with discreet disgust, ‘You’re better out of that sort of thing.’
‘Doesn’t know what she’s in for,’ she would say, of poor brides, rich brides, scandalous brides who must surely know what they were in for, while Mrs Prendergast would be reminded of a funeral that forestalled a wedding, or one that followed close after.
Isobel thought of them as the Fates; she listened passively while she drank her tea.
Mrs Prendergast, though her subject was grisly, had a weird talent for anecdote.
‘I had such a nasty dream about Fred Williams. It’s left me all upset. Poor Fred!’