I for Isobel

by Amy Witting

  She put the book in her bag, the charm against phone boxes and who knew what else.

  It mightn’t be as bad as she expected.

  The funny thing was, she reflected on her way to the bus stop, the funny thing was that, though it was a short journey in space, it seemed like a long one, in time, yet she had left less than a year ago. It couldn’t be a year since Margaret had stood crying in the empty lounge room, while Isobel stood breathing the air of freedom.

  The suburb she was going to visit belonged to earlier days. She had a confused thought about the city one builds, the insect city with its threadlike paths, inside the geographical maps.

  In the street there were couples strolling, following their own ant-tracks. One couple had stopped to look in a shop window; in the halted stroller the woman had been wheeling, a silk-skinned jewel-eyed baby had captured one of its swivelling legs, thrust the foot, covered with a lacy white sock, into its mouth and was sucking it steadily.

  In the cart carrying forward. Not strollers, she thought with horror, hearing remembered screams, thinking what the price of human love might be.

  When she got into the bus, she was still thinking with anxiety of the enchanting, perishable baby. The cart carrying forward was not a thought to dwell on. Do not dwell on the thought that we dwell in the cart. She squashed the little insect word as it came to life, before it could distract her. This is serious; you are mortal but you must live as if you were immortal—otherwise, who would dare?

  Love begins in the mortal flesh and must not know it.

  You’d be like Mrs Prendergast, making offerings to the idol every minute, sighs and lovely wreaths and little white coffins…forget it. It was bad enough, thinking of that baby growing into, dying into, a stout woman with varicose veins and a hairy wart on her chin—that was death at the rate one could stand it.

  One must know and not know. It was evident that there were degrees of knowing. Or else think so much of life, to believe it was worth it. Worth the coming and the going.

  The bus stopped at the top of the main street of her home suburb. She got off and walked. How quiet it was! Parramatta Road had drawn off all the Sunday walkers; the street was empty, and not only of people. Of course, this stretch, from the church to Parramatta Road, had never been one of her ant-tracks.

  She looked about like a tourist at the old-fashioned houses, the fanlights, stained-glass panels like Fifty-one’s, steps with marble treads and patterned tiles set in the…what was it called, the vertical face? There was a special word…

  Then it began. All the nameless things threatened and the colours pestered: sea-jade, chocolate, no word for the sullen grey-flaked white of marble.

  She felt for the book, took hold and the word factory stood still. She walked on, protected.

  Here was the church, in red brick crumbling away at the corners, so inoffensive…why hadn’t she gone in, attended Mass and thought her own thoughts? Plenty of other people did, no doubt, but not our Isobel. She had to skulk about back streets, pretending she was going to ten o’clock, walking, walking, rapt in a mutter of thoughts she was too frightened to express, like, I have a right to my beliefs, as much as anybody else, but petrified all the time with the fear of being seen and reported to her mother.

  She felt guilty still, not of missing Mass, but of the skulking and the fear, but no more guilty here than elsewhere, less perhaps, because the old building made a statement of peaceful indifference.

  As she walked through the dim porch, with its rack of pamphlets and its parish notices, the holy-water stoup made no claim, but when she went into the church, she understood why she couldn’t have treated it with contempt, a church having it over other buildings, in that it was always a shell, so much less important than what filled it—at this moment, shadowy peace and quiet, stained, here and there, by patches of wordless emotion. Around the big crucifix at the back, she sensed not prayer, but a faded anguish; the crucifix was smaller than it used to be, which was right for the scenes of childhood: the blood-marked feet which had loomed at eye level were now of neat size and remarkably close to the floor. The church broke the rules, being bigger than she remembered.

  About the confessional hovered guilt and unease. At each side of the altar a kneeling angel held the stem of a bright brass candelabrum which branched and sprouted candlesticks, each one tipped with a tiny whitish bulb like a deformed fingernail—she had pinned some furious analogies to those bulbs, glaring secretly from behind her prayer book, condemning artificial virtue, artificial candlelight, artificial devotion, and they were still there, maybe prompting other young anarchists to meditation. There must be a gentlemanly salesman with a hypnotic smile and a slight limp behind the counter at Pellegrini’s. ‘I recommend these, Father. They are very…attractive.’

  You’ll go to Hell, Isobel Callaghan, for laughing in church.

  The pulpit was a surprise. She could have sworn it was higher and enclosed in carved oak, but it was low-set, unpretentious, with only a faded red curtain hanging from a brass rail. The pulpit for some reason touched her feelings, giving out the same friendly calm as the book.

  God, you’re a nut, going about like a water diviner holding a twig in front of you waiting for it to dip…yet she had felt it twitch in her hand and was disturbed.

  She stood waiting, but the pulpit had nothing to say to her, so she went out walking along past the presbytery to the school and a memory she didn’t have to grope for, the terrible day of the mental arithmetic test. Fifty questions and Isobel has got them all right, so she is sitting alone among empty desks, the rest of the class being crowded round the walls. There is to be one more question each and the wrong answer will bring down the cane the nun is brandishing. One thin little girl with bright straight brass-coloured hair has grey eyes that hold a skyful of fear. Isobel’s face is expressionless. Nobody else knows what that word means; it is not being calm like marble, but naked, skinless. It is a disgusting failure of privacy, like an exposed liver.

  Why couldn’t you have got a couple wrong? Why did you have to set such a standard for the rest of them? But how many would be safe? You might have been out there too, and you couldn’t risk that, could you?

  She peered through the wire fence, past the camphor laurel trees, at the neat pale concrete of the playground, empty of children and of ghosts. No ghost running—she had walked, first, with the others gathering behind her, keeping stamping time with her tread, and whether she quickened her step or they did, she did not know, but she was running, round the side of the building to the cul-de-sac of the lavatories—poor thinking, Isobel, but then, what’s the use of thinking? That won’t help you. She had run, with the pack after her, and had fetched up in an angle between the brick buttress and the wall. She had turned round in despair and had found the leading boy close behind her, so close that their eyes had met uncomfortably. And after all, nothing. Nothing had happened. The boy had advanced his hand, given her hair a gentle, ceremonial tweak, then stood staring. Somebody at the back had shouted, ‘Get on with it,’ and so released him to turn and shout, ‘Mind your own fucking business,’ and to plunge back into the mob which rolled away on its new centre. Leaving her disappointed. She had not been so close to anyone before.

  She followed the fence around the corner, found the buttress of brick and the sloping half-brick which covered the join between the thicker base and the upper part—stopped and gaped, because she remembered the purplish sloping half-brick coming level with her nose. The mental arithmetic expert, the political animal, the survivor, was a little girl twelve-and-a-half bricks high.

  Isobel Callaghan, pick on somebody your own size.

  Another thing that astonished about the bricks was their nakedness: no Isobel there, hiding her guilty face in the angle, nothing but a piece of information, a true memory. Of course, in a true memory, you don’t see yourself. All the miserable self-images were invention, or at least embroidery.

  She hoped nobody would ever find out what a fool sh
e was.

  As she walked back past the the church another memory popped up and made her halt, seeing a young priest standing in the pulpit, looking with a friendly face at the congregation, talking about insects that scuttled in the cobwebbed cell of the soul, looking right into Isobel and accepting what he saw.

  And that was it. It all came now, the calm elation, the sense of everything solved, of peace.

  She had received the Holy Ghost, or something.

  Well, she had known from the beginning that it was a mistake, meant for the woman next to her, probably. Just the same, having found herself in a state of grace, she had done her best to keep it, and managed it for a few weeks. She understood the saints and their eccentricities, like sitting on poles and not washing, because the joy came first and you had to guess how to keep it—there weren’t any rules. How she had worried because there weren’t any rules, reading everything she could find about the saints, trying to discover the secret. She never could have lasted long, that was certain. Still, she looked back at a spell of tranquil weather, the calm that came when she touched the book. She didn’t remember reading that one, but she might have, or the word Saints on the cover had been enough to bring back the calm of the season.

  So now she knew. It was religion, after all. How sad. She felt in her bag for the book, feeling nothing as she touched it but melancholy. She had told herself, you have to know, and had exchanged a useful spell for something she knew already, that religion made you happy. Of course it made you happy; that wasn’t the point.

  Where was she going? She was halfway down the main street, past the park. Her feet were taking her home from school.

  After all, why not? Might as well do the thing thoroughly, go and look at the house and maybe lay a ghost or two. She was going undefended, since virtue had gone out of the book, but the whole place looked so empty, so peaceful, she felt she could risk it. She took the familiar turning, though it was no longer familiar. Estrangement. She climbed a hill, crossed a road, descended, turned, climbed again. There was the house, dead as a dead tooth. She stood and waited for something, anything, felt only blankness. She walked on.

  A voice called, ‘Isobel! Isobel!’

  Run, Isobel, run! You put a lady’s name in the paper, Isobel. She’s going to have you put in jail. We can’t save you; you should have asked Mummy, you should have asked Daddy. Run, Isobel, run! Run and hide!

  Too late. Too late to run past, head down and heart banging. Caught. She forced her face towards the woman who was coming down her front path to the gate—such a tiny little woman that Isobel in her big quaking body felt like Alice after she had been at the magic drink. Drink me. She could do with a few of the cakes, right now.

  Mrs Adams. Mrs Adams lives three doors from me. Mrs Adams was coming towards her, smiling. Could she have forgotten? Mrs Adams the bogeyman, bogeywoman, was coming towards her smiling brightly.

  ‘Well, Isobel. Fancy seeing you. What are you doing with yourself now?’

  ‘Working.’ She stopped to steady her breathing. ‘I’m working in an importer’s office in town.’

  ‘That’s nice. And how is Margaret? Does she like it in the country?’

  ‘Yes. She likes it very much. She’s very well.’

  ‘I am glad. Such a dear little girl. You’re not in a hurry, are you? Come in and have a cup of tea.’

  Oh no, Mrs Adams, it’s a trap. You’ll call the police to put me in jail.

  What rubbish it was. Of course you didn’t go to jail for putting a lady’s name in the paper—certainly not at the age of nine. Still, she had to force herself to follow Mrs Adams down the narrow dim hall into the bright kitchen. The ignorance of her parents, and the years of misery it had caused her! Years of terror: doing the messages, she had bolted past the house in a frenzy of fear, getting past unseen, usually, but when Mrs Adams had seen her and called her, how she had run, till her legs went to jelly and her breath hurt her lungs.

  In the confessional, she had whispered, ‘I put a lady’s name in the paper.’ ‘That’s not a sin.’ Not a sin; no hope, then, no absolution.

  ‘Sit down while I put the kettle on,’ Mrs Adams said.

  The smell of gas and breadcrumbs, polish over mould, just like their own place, was getting to her, taking her back as the sight of the house hadn’t done. She thought, I always expected to be happy, getting home. Never learnt from experience.

  Mrs Adams got down cups, put tea in the teapot and biscuits on a plate, then said, ‘Now, wait a minute. There’s something I want to show you.’

  She went out and came back carrying a photograph album, set it open on the table in front of Isobel and pointed to a photograph of a cat, with a newspaper cutting pasted below it.

  ‘I don’t suppose you remember that, do you? Dear old Smoke. Do you take milk, Isobel?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  She was reading, her face burning and her head buzzing like a bee in the sunlight.

  Mrs Adams lives three doors from me.

  She has a cat. Smoke is his name.

  He curls around the corner silently.

  When he jumps, his name should be Flame.

  Blue Certificate to Isobel Callaghan (9 years).

  While she was reading a lot of things came back.

  There’s a writer in there, Isobel; a naked infant greased and trussed in the baking-dish with an apple jammed in its mouth.

  Mrs Prendergast knew all about it. Mrs Prendergast’s weird world was the true one. ‘I won’t be a minute, dear. I’m just popping the baby in the oven.’

  Mrs Adams said, ‘I was so thrilled with that little poem of yours. Everybody telling me Smoke was a silly name for a cat. That was just the way he walked and I called him Smoke because of that, not the colour, though that came into it a bit. I didn’t see the poem myself; my niece’s little girl—well, she’s not a little girl any longer, she’s the same age as you—well, she cut it out to show me, and my niece said to me, “Well, what do you know, Smoke’s famous!”

  ‘Dear old Smoke, he lived to be ten and I miss him still. I often think, it’s the little poem that brings him back, more than the photograph. I was so pleased, I bought you a book to paste your poems in, and a snap of Smoke, but you used to run away whenever I called you. You were a shy little thing, weren’t you? I asked your mother to give it to you, but she said it would encourage you to waste time away from your school work. I suppose that was only right.’ Right or not, Mrs Adams frowned over it slightly.

  No, they wouldn’t want a writer about the house. A witness, a recorder. Now you’ll show all your poems to Mummy, won’t you? No hope left when she started calling herself Mummy.

  Isobel mumbled, ‘I thought you were angry…becauseIputyournameinthe—paper…’

  ‘Whatever made you think that?’ Seeing the answer, she retreated quickly, murmuring, ‘A strange woman in some ways.’

  ‘Do you still have the book. The book you were going to give me?’

  ‘No. Oh, dear, I am sorry. If I’d thought you wanted it! I gave it to my niece to paste her recipes in.’

  Observing that, somehow or other, she had drunk her cup of tea, Isobel got up. ‘It was very nice of you to think of it, just the same. I’m sorry Smoke died. He was a beautiful cat.’

  ‘Well, nothing lasts for ever, as they say.’

  I hope they are right, Mrs Adams.

  ‘You won’t have another cup?’

  She shook her head. She had to get out, fast, because she was coming to pieces, in great slabs, in chunks, like an iceberg breaking up. She said thinly, ‘No, thank you. I’ll have to be going.’

  Mrs Adams ushered her into the street, which was almost as unsuitable as the house for the tears that were coming. Artesian tears, rising from the centre of the earth. Where could she go to shed them?

  Bastards, bastards, bastards. Cruel, deceitful bastards.

  She hurried along the street; behind the last few houses there was a rocky slope too steep for building. She went downh
ill to the street below and turned back, ran scrambling upwards, found the rock that she remembered and crouched behind it. Then she roared aloud, ‘Spiteful tormenting bastards.’ Her father, too. She used to delude herself that her father had loved her, seeing that he had died too soon to disprove it, but it wasn’t so, he had been just as bad, with his pompous talk about libel and slander—libel and slander, for God’s sake, the woman owned a cat. Run and hide, Isobel, here she comes. Here comes Mrs Adams!

  The tears were coming slowly. How could tears come from so deep, as if she was a tree with tears welling up from its roots? Then they came in a roaring flood that drowned thought; she put her cheek against the rock, which was as rough as a cat’s tongue and unyielding, but she was too far gone to feel any perverse pleasure in that. Her sobs were so loud that even in this wasteland she had to put her hands over her mouth to muffle them; when her mind sobered up her body went on snuffling and heaving along ten years of roadway.

  I am a writer. I am a writer.

  Too late. It must be too late. The poor little bugger in the baking dish; nobody came in time.

  Suppose I tried? Suppose I went through the motions? The writer might come back.

  You’ve tried that with love. It doesn’t work.

  But that was other people, too. This is me.

  The crying had slackened. There was such a feeling of limbs stretching, of hands unbound, she knew she could choose to be a writer. A pen and an exercise book, that was all it took, to be a rotten writer, anyhow. Good or rotten, that came later.

  It meant giving in to the word factory. That frightened her, because the word factory was such a menace. Now she understood why the idea of being press-ganged was so alarming.

  Oh, well. If you can’t lick ’em join ’em.

  Maybe that was what the word factory was all about, the poor little bugger trying to get out of the baking dish.

  She giggled and that was the end of the crying. It was getting dark and she was cold in her thin blouse and skirt. She got up, scrambled down the rocky slope with drying tears stinging on her face, her drenched handkerchief stuffed into her pocket and soaking through to the skin. She stood in the darkening street brushing her skirt and trying to tidy her hair with her fingers, cold, peckish, uncomfortable and utterly happy.