I for Isobel
Page 16
Where could she buy an exercise book at this time on Sunday? She would have to walk to the main street, unless there was a corner shop still open. It was wonderful to have a problem just that size, something to walk up a street for, instead of drifting like an escaped balloon.
She was so absorbed in her thoughts she nearly walked past the dim light that combed through the bead curtain at the open door of the little shop. The man behind the counter gave her a funny look—no wonder, she thought, looking into the spotted mirror that advertised Fulton’s Orangeade. Behind the lettering she saw herself, wild-haired, blubbered, red-eyed, and thought, This is the happiest moment of my life.
The shopkeeper brought her the exercise book; she groped for her purse and touched the book. That was a moment, when she exchanged one talisman for another.
She said, ‘Don’t bother to wrap it,’ dropped the exercise book into her bag beside the book and went out.
In the garden opposite, an untidy palm tree stood clumped against the fading pastels of the sky, and that was all right, too.
Back in her room at last, she opened the exercise book (this moment will never come again) and wrote at the top of the first page:
The Book is Gone
‘Now see this. I open my eyes and there’s a girl—naked, not a stitch on her—’
‘Half your luck.’
‘Oh well. I’d had my luck, if you call it that. She was a left-over from last night, but what was she doing? Sitting with her bum on her heels in front of my bookcase reading Plato.’
‘So you said…’
‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? No, I didn’t. Though I suppose it was what she was waiting for.’
‘Mean bastard, aren’t you?’
‘I could have been meaner, could have asked her for a few words on philosophy. Instead, I made light of it, tried to jolly her into putting her clothes on—damn it, she’d had plenty of time to get dressed—what the hell are you grinning at?’
‘Your sense of sin. Reading Plato with no clothes on.’
‘Well, now you come to mention it, I did think it was cheek.’
‘The Greeks weren’t so fussy.’
‘Well, this is what’s funny. I went and had a shower, and when I came back, she was gone and—this is it—so was the book.’
‘And her clothes? Do tell!’
‘Of course her clothes.’
‘Oh blast. You just ruined a beautiful image.’
No, not Plato. Plato was too obvious. Something to get the second young man guessing, building up a whole skeleton from a toebone, nagging the first one about it. You can see he’s haunted by the image of a naked girl reading…Turgenev?
She put down her pen and bit at her thumbnail, not for the last time.
The book must go, of course, back to Michael. She would wrap it and leave it in his letter box. She was sad to think of parting with it, but she could live without it. There were words to carry as talismans.
‘Did you have a good weekend, Isobel?’
Christ, was that just a weekend?
I met the ghosts of two murderers when I was out for a walk, found the semi-strangled body of an infant learning to talk…
For a moment she felt threatened, seeing the walls of the word factory coming in on her, but she rallied. Take it down, consider it later. The boy who had chased her and then couldn’t hit her, make a note.
‘Very nice, thanks.’
She smiled so happily that Rita said, ‘I do believe our Isobel has met someone.’
Oh, yes.
Uncovering her typewriter, Isobel greeted it with a warm private smile.
Oh, yes, she thought joyfully. I met someone.
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