I for Isobel

by Amy Witting

  She ran down the stairs and opened the front door on to bright daylight in an empty street lined with houses still sleeping, closed on a secret life like the book. That was good, life presenting a mystery. Made it seem alive.

  That’s a brilliant thought, Isobel, making life seem alive. Well, she knew what she meant, if thousands wouldn’t.

  That was the kind of thought that set the word factory groaning, grinding and defining, but for once the word factory was out of action, and oh! the peace and quiet.

  She stepped out happily until she turned the corner into a broad quiet street of trees and handsome houses that led to a main road where cars were flashing past already. On the far corner, a telephone box.

  Memory rose like vomit. Now you remember who you are, Isobel. You’re a pervert, a phone freak.

  But not any more, not any more. Does time ever pass?

  Not for you. For you time never passes. Time becomes space in your mind.

  Crimson, pagoda-roofed, the phone box leered like an evil little joss house for one devil worshipper. She forced herself towards it, thinking angrily, ‘What made them listen? Why didn’t they put the phone down straight away?’ Well, some of them had, and that had become part of the game, fishing up a victim on the end of her invisible line—and in the end there was always a listener, a puzzled voice giving the cues she wanted, not able to free itself in time.

  Collecting pennies for the phone had been a dirty private pleasure but the best worst moment had been when the words came, and she shuddered with satisfaction as she let out the stream of hatred. The kind of bang other people must get out of sex.

  She bent in misery, remembering the calm scornful voice that had said without pity, ‘What an unhappy person you must be.’ She had put the phone down, writhing in defeat and humiliation, had plunged out of the box…she was writhing now, the pain as bad as ever…she felt in her bag, seized the book, held it against her chest.

  Christ but it was comic (though far from funny) standing there in the street pointing bone against bone, book against telephone box, but it worked. She straightened up and walked towards the box, in control. And why not? If a telephone box can make you sick to your stomach, why shouldn’t a book make you feel better? Coming close to the box, with the book held up solemnly in front of her—she couldn’t help guying the situation, it was so fantastic—she felt a needle-thrust of sorrow, remembering the one voice that had answered her with a cry of sadness. That was the one that had stopped her with a real answer; crying ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she had put the phone down on the dirty little game for ever. Like in a black fairytale, the formula had turned toad—well, not into prince, don’t get carried away—but into a human being of sorts. I wish she could know what she did for me, she thought. Perhaps she did know; perhaps the cry ‘I’m sorry’ had carried its message.

  She was past the phone box. Round the corner there was a bus stop and a city-bound bus was coming. She ran to board it, walked past a few passengers, numb-faced with sleep or boredom, to the back of the bus, sat with the book on her knee, thinking, ‘Readable, too,’—which was as funny as if it had been edible. It fell open at a page—she liked that, a sort of ghost-communication—but oh, hell, it was St John of the Cross, not a fun character at all. No joy in the yellowed page, the mean tiny print and St John of the Cross on self and senses: The soul must of necessity—if we would attain to the Divine union of God—pass through the obscure night of mortification of the desires, and self-denial in all things. The reason is that all the love we bestow on creatures is in the eyes of God mere darkness, and that while we are involved therein, the soul is incapable of being enlightened and possessed by the pure and simple light of God, unless we first cast it away.

  Therein—what a fat, complacent word.

  She shut the book, wishing she had one or two of the things the saints had cast away. Wouldn’t even mind a few desires.

  Well, that was a washout.

  Once it was shut, the book was a talisman again. Mysterious. Book against telephone box—she knew what the telephone box meant all right, but what was it about the book? The cover? A faded purple cushion? Happiness in a room with purple curtains? In Auntie Ann’s house? Purple wasn’t in, then. Purple was religion and funerals. If you did know, the charm might stop working. Take what comes and be thankful.

  She got off the bus at Central, walked up to the station to get a cup of coffee in the cafeteria, then to the Ladies. She had put the book on the ledge above the basin and was doing her hair, looking in the glass and hating her face, as usual, because she had got so much of it from her mother: little mouth with thick full-blown lips; sharp chin and heavy straight eyebrows, a face made for gloom, people always telling her she was sulking when she wasn’t, when the face shaped and softened with the beginning of a laugh because she was thinking those features weren’t her mother’s; she had had the tenancy of them for fifty years but they had been on the go for generations; that nose had taken snuff, sniffed at pomanders, plague posies, smelling salts, rose hip, orris root—things she had never smelt and never would—as well as honeysuckle, gas leaks and lavender, not to mention…and the mouth had prayed and cursed, kissed and said ‘I love you’—it must have, to get so far, it stood to reason…and the eyes—what cities had they seen? What arches, branches, long galleries of leaves becalmed, sober asphalt leading down to drunken sad-breathed seas, spires pointing out of the dirty brocade that sunlight lays on house-covered slopes…

  She loved the place, the world, the vast, the multitudinous…blue-white pinnacles, marble mirrored in still water, lost cities overgrown, mysterious altars, forests and castles and the great shining slow-moving glaciers, the infinity of skylines…the wealth of the world and the sense of being nineteen years old, those cells fruiting so precisely into eyes and mouth and all, every one of them nineteen years old, sent her upwards on a Ferris wheel of joy, so that she bent her head forward to hide her shining face behind the fall of hair she was combing till she settled quietly on earth again.

  She was still so carried away though that she went without the book, ran back to get it and put it in her bag with such relief—shabby little object that it was—she had to laugh at herself.

  And speaking of books…My Book of Picture Stamps of the World—India: The Taj Mahal; Peru (Cuzco): The Ancient Temple of the Sun; A Peasant of the Pyrenees…it was out of those sober little stamps that the great wheeling vision of the world had come. How strange, a joy you cellared when you were maybe ten years old coming up so drinkable at nineteen.

  Feeling buoyant enough to go back and face her room, instead of drifting about the town, she took a bus to Glebe and walked to the rooming house. Buoyancy was needed when she opened the door on the squalor of the room, the unwashed china and the greasy frying pan on the table, the heap of dirty clothes on the floor in the corner—a person couldn’t make such a mess by accident, she must have been trying to tell herself something.

  Silence and solitude. Silence had started the word factory, solitude had driven her to the evil telephone game. Squalor within demanded squalor without: she dropped her dirty clothes in the corner and was more depressed to see them there.

  One works from the laundry bag inwards. Suiting action to thought, she took the bag from the hook behind the door and put the clothes in it.

  She didn’t have to be solitary. She could go with Frank to Party meetings, where, he said, she would meet people like herself.

  ‘I don’t try to sell it to people usually, Isobel. I just happen to think it’s the right thing for you.’

  ‘You have to think what they tell you to think.’

  ‘But what they tell you is right.’

  She wanted a cause to live for but could not adopt one; the cause would have to find her.

  Sitting on the bed, she looked around her, considering how to make the room more liveable. The worst thing in sight, apart from the dirty dishes, now that she had (so easily!) removed the heap of clothes, was the flap of wall
paper hanging loose above the table. She had tried to glue it once; the glue had failed and she had resigned herself to it, though it nagged at her with the urge to seize it and rip, making things worse. She could trim that off and hide the patch, tack up a colour print from a magazine—she was caught by a longing for richness, for padded satin stitch glowing in crimson and russet, a panel of embroidery.

  You could make one.

  Of the dogs of the past that were always yapping at her heels, one nipped her so that she winced. Well known for her exquisite embroidery, our Isobel. Miss Harman the sewing teacher. Bitch. ‘Now bring out your work, Isobel Callaghan.’ (Free design for a flower in long and short stitch, or filled-in stem, choose your colours from the cotton box, girls.) Out she had bustled, expecting praise (Miss Harman’s tone having promised the class a treat) for the big shining flower with streaks of pink and scarlet radiating from its crimson centre. Not warned by all the others with their demure roses shading from pink to cream, their yellow-eyed white daisies.

  ‘And what kind of flower is this, Isobel?’ Miss Harman’s lips had twitched. ‘Is it a rose? Do you think it is a rose, girls?’ She had held it up for the class to see (as Isobel had foreseen, but so differently). ‘No, I don’t think it’s a rose.’ The class had begun to snigger, perceiving that it was invited to a moment’s holiday. ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a flower like that, and I’m sure I would have remembered.’

  Shouts of laughter and Isobel not knowing what to do with the smile on her face. She had to get rid of it as best she could, knowing that its slow fading would be the best part of the joke, so she widened it and pretended to go along with the laughter. That had made Miss Harman furious. She had handed back the piece of cloth saying, ‘Go back to your place, you stupid girl. There is nothing funny about vulgar bad taste.’

  Saint John of the Cross was right up the pole. The obscure night of mortification of the desires and self-denial in all things—what came of that was people like Miss Harman. Saints that get drafted. Compulsory sainthood.

  Well, she had put Isobel off embroidery for life.

  But why? She still felt in her fingers the pleasure of placing the silk thread deftly and precisely. Miss Harman was far away, perhaps dead, and Isobel could embroider flowers in any colour she liked, pink, purple, whatever. This was known as freedom. She began to laugh, then looked at the clock. Ten to eleven; she could make it to Grace Brothers and shop before closing time. She jumped up, ran to the loo and back, picked up her bag and was off again, crazy for the embroidery panel.

  She came back gasping with fatigue after a rush of shopping and dropped her parcels on the bed: a book of embroidery designs, carbon paper, tracing paper, pencil, ruler, scissors and needles, linen, silks (no purple after all—bronze, gold, crimson, cream, pink, olive green, dead-leaf brown). She opened the book of designs to the one she had chosen, a stylised tree bearing an improbable miscellany of flowers, fruit and birds.

  How much she had to do before the desired moment when she would thread her needle and set the first stitch: trace the design, enlarge the tracing, trace the enlargement onto the linen. Also wash up, eat, wash up, find out what the book meant…

  Working on the tracing went well with pondering.

  One thought she had been dodging—suppose it was religion that gave the book its power? If it was, too bad. Religion was out. She used to think a lot about God; then, one day, she had asked herself if He existed, and that had been that. But she had had a religious craze once—she must have been quite small, for the plaster feet with their painted blood and the ghastly nail driven through them were at eye level when she had knelt in front of the big crucifix. It had been kid stuff—God the imaginary friend—going in to pray, or to visit, before she went home (one might well). She had given it up quite soon because as an imaginary friend God was limited. You couldn’t tell Him everything, you had to be on your best behaviour. Besides, she hadn’t liked Him, and the more she had dealt with Him, the less she had liked Him. No, it couldn’t be religion. What the book meant, the atmosphere…aura…shut up, this is important…the book meant friendship, company at least. Communication and understanding.

  If she had ever had that, she wanted to know it. Boring or not, the book had to be tackled.

  When she grew tired of tracing, she went back to the book and considered opening it.

  Come on, it isn’t all Saint John of the Cross. Some of the saints were real dashers, like Augustine (not yet!) and Saint Thomas More.

  How did she know? Something stirred in the dead country. How did she know so much about the saints? Not from the convent; she had left it too young—and there it was all bright little holy pictures of the nuns’ favourites. Saint Joan in silvery armour had been Isobel’s favourite, Saint Isabel being a dull old queen who didn’t rate holy pictures and Saint Agnes with her lamb, her eyes turned towards Heaven, altogether too much of the good child. Those holy pictures were a bright spot in memory; there were special ones, set on plaster of paris with a ribbon to hang them by, prizes for good work—she could remember carrying one home, full of pride at having done the right thing for once.

  The book.

  She tried Augustine first, thinking of that prayer: Give me chastity and…something…only not yet. It wasn’t there, surprise, surprise. They had the scene in the garden, but she skipped that because it made her nervous, the thought of being tapped on the shoulder, press-ganged, by the Almighty or anything else.

  Saint John of the Cross. Now come on, no dodging.

  She read the instructions for entering the dark night of the senses, trying to give them respectful attention though she thought that anyone who gave away worldly pleasures when he didn’t have to was mad.

  Rules for mortifying truly the desire for honour…well, here’s something for you, Isobel.

  1. Do those things which bring thee into contempt, and desire that others may do them. (Like wearing a notice KICK ME on the appropriate spot. You do that all right.)

  2. Speak disparagingly of thyself, and contrive that others may do so too. (You’re still in.)

  3. Think humbly and contemptuously of thyself, and contrive that others may do so also.

  It was such a picture of Isobel the nuisance that she had begun to giggle at the first one and after the third she was laughing quietly but steadily. Well, well; on the way to Heaven and she hadn’t known it.

  Still grinning, she turned to Saint Thomas More.

  On Death

  …Reckon me now yourself a young man in your best lust, twenty years of age, if ye will. Let there be another ninety. Both must ye die, both be ye in the cart carrying forward. His gallows and death standeth within ten miles of the farthest, and yours within eighty. I see not why ye should reckon much less of your death than he, though your way may be longer, since ye shall never cease riding till ye come at it.

  That had wiped the grin off her face. Her tears indeed had begun to run quietly as she read young man in your best lust. They were for Nick, for whom she hadn’t felt entitled to grieve—but she was entitled; she was one of them. She saw Helen and Trevor, holding each other so tenderly, but Mr Walter, too, and Olive, moved to such kindness as they heard the rumble of the cart.

  She closed the book. It wasn’t news, of course. Mrs Prendergast had had the same message, but Saint Thomas More put it better. It was just the putting it better that made it news.

  Mortality. That’s where love and brotherhood have to start, in what we have in common: you belong because you are mortal. Like: Never send to know for whom the bell tolls—that isn’t religion, it’s a kind of poetry.

  And for those who hear nothing, the dead in life, her mother and Diana—you could shed a tear for them, too, but don’t get carried away. Look to your own awakening.

  That was enough of the book for today. She went back to her tracing, knowing what she had to do tomorrow. She must go back to the suburb she grew up in, retracing her steps to see if she could find a memory, a clue to the meaning o
f the book. She could hardly believe it of herself that she was going down memory lane, can you imagine, what a scenic tour, the corner where she had wet her pants and waddled home with the cold wet cloth sagging between her legs and Deirdre Fitzgerald following her all the way uttering complicated peals of grown-up laughter and pointing to her wet socks.

  That memory encouraged her, because she didn’t feel any particular shame at seeing it again, could have been either of the little girls, the one waddling or the one laughing; you had so little choice in what you did.

  Now she put two and two together and connected the agonies of her bladder with the big girl, the class dunce with the moomoo eyes and the long, spindly legs, who had defended the entrance to the lavatories against her, dodging from side to side with hands outstretched ready to slap. Jesus Christ, everybody has the right to go to the lavatory; you don’t have to be a charmer for that. She looked back at the waddling figure with a new tolerance.

  She woke up next morning knowing at once what she had to do, but putting the thought of it away for the moment. She spent the morning washing her clothes and working on the enlargement—at this rate she would put in the first stitch this weekend. The loose flap would still be visible, of course—she was amused at that, but it did not matter, since she had discovered a small authentic piece of her lost self.

  After lunch, she got ready to go out. One thing, it wasn’t far to go. As she went to the bathroom, she thought, the bathroom being at the back of the house, this is the furthest point, and the loo being at the back of the bathroom…what a thought. At least there wasn’t anybody dancing about in front of it, that was progress. But how far? Two miles? Not very far to travel in nineteen years, not counting work, of course, and some excursions, like that boarding house where they used to spend the summer holidays, but that was different—she had been taken there. On her own, she hadn’t got far.