Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop

by Amy Witting

  Her mind however was not in the rest-period mode. She was angry.

  What the hell does it have to do with her? Bloody odious woman.

  Her rage was affecting her breathing. That wouldn’t do. She controlled the breathing and with it her rage.

  Keep calm. Keep calm. Don’t let her get to you. I’m going to do it my way, I’ll finish it my way even if it’s a disaster. But that’s letting her get to me, too.

  Breath control again.

  I’m not here. I’m in Czechoslovakia with Mr Vorocic.

  If that didn’t work, she would proceed to the next resource, silently reciting a favourite poem.

  Oh, do not die, for I shall hate

  All women so, when thou art gone…

  The metre was soothing. She finished the hour in the proper state of remedial torpor.

  With thick wool and coarse needles, and Isobel’s pleasure in the movement of her liberated fingers, the work went quickly.

  Next day, she was ready to start on the disputed pattern.

  ‘You’re not really going to knit that ridiculous stitch, are you?’

  Isobel nodded, reading aloud from the leaflet, ‘Purl 2, wool round needle, knit 3, wool forward, slip 1, knit 2 together, pass slip stitch over, wool forward, knit 3.’

  Against this argument, Val had no defence. She sighed in exasperation and was silent.

  Lance wandered in.

  ‘Wotcher doing, Izzy?’

  ‘Knitting. And go back to bed.’

  He settled instead on the end of her bed preparing to watch her at work.

  To continue to knit would be to condone his presence—his too frequent presence. She put down her knitting, repeating, ‘Go back to bed, Lance.’

  How many times already had she said those words?

  ‘Yeah, in a minute.’

  ‘Lance, don’t you have anything to do? Don’t you have correspondence lessons or something?’

  ‘Finished with all that stuff, kiddo. Turned sixteen. Never made much of school. Knocked a bit of fun out of it sometimes, me and Buzz and Trigger. Buzz used to get some great stuff from the joke shop. Got a smoke bomb once, set it off in the science lab and got the school cleared out for the whole afternoon. That was great. Lucky for Buzz they never found out who planted it.’

  His face expressed no pleasure in the memory. It retained its air of absent-minded melancholy.

  ‘And once he got a farting cushion and put it on old Mary Lawson’s chair. That wasn’t too bad. Gave us a real buzz when she plumped down on it and oh! Boy! The class hit the roof.’

  ‘Charming. What did she do?’

  Lance showed genuine emotion.

  ‘Oh, that bitch! You could never reach her whatever you did. Always chasing you for homework and keeping you in…She picked up the cushion and put it on the desk and gave it a great bang like you could hear the fart next door. “And that expresses my opinion of the perpetrator of this vulgar trick.” And then she did it again. You’d have thought she was enjoying it. Pretty crude, for a teacher.

  ‘The boys thought they’d got to her at Christmas. Trigger found an old kettle on a dump, and they put it in a box and wrapped it up in fancy paper, like a real Christmas present, ribbon and all. We was all waiting to see her open it. Bitch! She never blinked, just took it out and held it up and said it was lovely of us to give her something that would always remind her of us. A dirty old kettle. And then she turned it up, it had a rusty bottom with three holes in it, and she put on a goofy look and said, “Whenever I look at it, I shall see your dear faces.” She should talk about faces, the old bag. She’d never see thirty again, I bet.’

  Who was it said that teaching was a contest with Marquis of Queensberry rules on one side and all-in wrestling on the other?

  ‘Did you think she was going to love you for it?’

  ‘That’s not the point. She’s a teacher, isn’t she? Teachers aren’t supposed to get personal. They ought to know better than talk about people’s looks.’

  ‘I don’t believe she was thinking about your looks. She might have been looking into your nasty little minds.’

  Perhaps she had not been so badly off after all, with Mr Richard as her only burden.

  ‘You’re just as bad. Should have been one yourself.’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to put up with me. Go back to bed.’

  ‘Tea’ll be along in a minute. I’ll go back then.’

  ‘And stay there.’

  Lance assumed his dying duck expression.

  ‘Don’t you love me, Izzy? Sending me away, it isn’t nice.’

  ‘I love you enough to want you to get better. Now be off.’

  He sighed, shrugged and shuffled away, leaving Isobel to reflect that he had shown one genuine emotion, hurt over the teacher’s sarcasm. The antics with the wares from the joke shop had seemed to be a wretched substitute for anything called fun. His juvenile attempts at sexual insolence were just as much a wretched substitute for love.

  ‘You play up to him,’ said Val.

  ‘I don’t want to. I try not to get drawn in. I really want him to stay in bed. How about telling him yourself? He might listen to you.’

  ‘Why should I? It’s none of my business. He doesn’t come to talk to me.’

  Isobel might have known that flattery would get her nowhere.

  She mastered Embossed Leaf Stitch in spite of interruptions and managed to complete two repeats. She liked the effect of heavy iron grey lace. It put her in mind of balconies in Paddington.

  ‘You’re wasting your time, you know. You’re going to have to pull it out in the long run.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s all right, myself.’

  ‘It is simply ridiculous.’

  Being involved in the tricky business of knitting two together through the back of the loop, Isobel let the comment pass.

  On Thursday morning, Doctor Stannard paused and frowned over Isobel’s fever chart.

  ‘Time that fever settled down.’

  If you had to spend your time keeping Val’s head above water and keeping Lance in bed, she thought, you might have a fever too.

  The news on the balcony was that Eily had failed D grade.

  ‘Have to put on more weight. He said to give it another couple of weeks. But I never do put on weight. It isn’t my nature. I’ll be here for ever if that’s what they want.’

  ‘Try drinking water, Eily. Fill yourself up before you go up there. That’ll do it.’

  ‘I’m near enough to wetting myself when I’m up there anyhow. Wouldn’t want to risk it.’

  Pat was to move down to surgery next Monday.

  Gladys was called to witness that Isobel’s knitting was ridiculous.

  Cautiously, she agreed that maybe it looked a bit funny.

  ‘Who’s going to wear it?’ asked Eily, with meaning.

  ‘Isobel, I suppose,’ said Val. ‘I can’t imagine that anyone else would.’

  ‘May I have it back, please? Or would you like to put it back where you found it?’

  This missed its mark entirely, since Val could see no wrong in taking Isobel’s knitting from her cabinet and putting it on display without her permission.

  On Friday, Val watched Janet’s husband walk along the verandah.

  She said, ‘I have a terrible thought about this. I think Janet’s husband is having an affair with Nurse Baker.’

  Isobel was startled.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I think that is why he changes the time of his visits. He comes when she is on duty.’

  ‘But they never have a word to say to each other.’

  ‘And that’s another thing. It’s not natural. It’s not just that they don’t speak. They pretend not to see each other. I saw them pass each other on the verandah yesterday and they didn’t exchange a look. That isn’t how people behave, unless they have a reason. What other reason could there be? And they both look so wretched. He ought to be happier now that Janet and Brett are doin
g so well, but he’s looking more and more worried. And she was looking wretched too when she walked past him.’

  ‘Well, I hope you are wrong.’

  She hoped also that, if Val were right, Janet’s husband would have the sense to vary the time of his visits. Hadn’t the unfortunate lovers heard of the telephone?

  On Sunday Geoff and Pauline came to visit Val. Isobel, remembering her breach of manners the week before, opened her book and tried to withdraw from the scene. She was distracted from Ngaio Marsh by the mention of her own name.

  Val said, shrill with exasperation, ‘I cannot get Isobel to wake up in the morning. I have to keep at her and keep at her!’

  Since Geoff and Pauline in response stared at her in shame and consternation, she said, ‘She would lie there all day if I didn’t wake her.’

  Isobel said dryly, ‘I don’t have a train to catch.’

  She regretted her sarcasm at once, for it increased the embarrassment of the visitors.

  How odd this human connection was. Isobel felt for Pauline, who felt for Geoff, who must feel for, or at least because of, Val, who felt for no-one.

  How odd, too, that Val, who could hunt down unhappy lovers with whom she had no connection, did not seem to notice the harmony of feeling which prevailed between Geoff and Pauline.

  Perhaps they were not guilty lovers, but most observers would see them as lovers. Sex was not the whole of it, after all.

  ‘Look at it this way,’ said Isobel to herself. She was lying motionless, arms above her head in the prescribed position, while she surveyed her situation. That was probably against the rules, but fortunately undetectable. ‘You are a public patient. You are getting every morning a life-saving shot of streptomycin with six large dollops of paz, free for nothing. The state is even going to keep you.’ This thought brought a quite perceptible wince, which was certainly against the rules. She had, under the eye of Mrs Blair the almoner, filled in an application for the invalid pension. No help for it. As she had written her name in the space allotted to the signature of the applicant, she had promised herself that one day she would write that name in a more honourable place, but the vow had brought little comfort. ‘So, in these circumstances, enjoyment is not to be looked for. Tough it out. Survival techniques are required.’ But what techniques? Retiring to Czechoslovakia with Mr Vorocic was for the moment only. Besides, it was not practical here, where she was, face it, trapped and exposed. Her usual invocation of Saint Thomas More: ‘Both must ye die, both be ye in the cart carrying forward’, would not do here. One did not invoke the rumble of the cart when the cart was standing at the gate. ‘My problem is that people are making claims I resent. Well, sort it out. There are false claims and true claims. Val wakes me up in the mornings because she’s afraid to be alone. That’s a true claim. I can just about carry on a conversation with her without actually waking up. That’s the best I can do. But I don’t have to squirm when she makes a fool of herself on rounds. She’s not asking me for anything. I must detach. That’s not true pity that makes me squirm, it’s some sort of false vanity, identifying. She’s doing it. I’m not. Detach. This is like family life—enforced intimacy. But this doesn’t last so long.

  ‘Lance, now. That’s different. All his claims are true, poor little devil, but somehow they aren’t direct. Well, no-one can really meet them. Make me well, make me happy, give me love. And all the time, making himself the most unlovable little bastard out. Well, that figures. I’ll just have to do my best from minute to minute with that one.

  ‘I wish I could set Val and Lance on to each other. No such luck. Val has a son, nineteen years old. Why doesn’t she ever ask about him? Why doesn’t Geoff ever mention him? Not my business. Survival is my problem.’

  Mental discipline was required. ‘I shall learn a poem by heart, every day.’ That had worked before, a survival technique she had forgotten till now. ‘I shall start with Hopkins, because he is the toughest. And maybe the most supportive. I can sneak a line or two at odd moments, something to hold on to.’

  Pat went to surgery and was replaced by Donna, who took Isobel’s place at the head of the bath queue.

  She came as instructed to call Isobel for her bath—a plump, pink and gold young woman who said in a tone plaintive and puzzled, ‘The water’s cold.’

  ‘That’s right. The heating starts at half past six, but the baths have to begin at six, because they have to be finished by ten. That’s when the bathroom is cleaned, you see, and we can’t use it after that. You get used to it.’

  One more move and Isobel would be in hot bath territory. She thought it would be heartless to gloat over the prospect.

  ‘Well, it seems odd to me.’

  Isobel discovered later on the verandah that many things seemed odd to Donna and were met with the same plaintive bewilderment. Her children, like Gladys’s children, were in care for the time being.

  ‘They haven’t written to me once since they were at the home. Not once. I wrote and asked the Matron why I wasn’t getting letters from the children and she just wrote back and said that the children hadn’t heard from me.’

  She looked at Isobel as if she were waiting for an explanation of this extraordinary attitude.

  Isobel could only shake her head in sympathy.

  I have desired to go

  Where springs not fail,

  To fields where flies no sharp and…

  Hopkins was proving to be a support.

  After lunch Miss Landers paid a visit.

  Val told her to look at Isobel’s ridiculous knitting. ‘She’s just wasting time. It’ll have to be pulled out.’ Miss Landers came and looked and was dubious about the grey lace.

  ‘But if Isobel likes it…You knit beautifully, Isobel. I wouldn’t have expected that, somehow.’

  ‘Life is full of surprises,’ said Isobel, smiling at Miss Landers, who was receiving little encouragement in her progress along the rooms.

  Garry would have no part of occupational therapy. He met Miss Landers’s timid suggestions with a look of sullen contempt which made persuasion futile. Lance had added half an inch to the basket he was weaving. Eily had not begun to put together the pieces of white lambswool she had been given to make a toy koala for Gladys’s baby.

  ‘I did spread it all out and looked at it, Miss Landers. Then all at once I thought, “Bugger it!” and put it away again.’

  This Miss Landers had met with a nervous laugh.

  Gladys was using the same grey wool to make a cable sweater for her elder son. This was an added reproach to Isobel.

  ‘I thought knitting was supposed to keep you warm,’ said Val. ‘It won’t be much use with those great holes in it.’

  ‘You’re wrong there, Val,’ said Miss Landers. ‘Weight for weight, lace fabric is warmer than solid. It does seem strange but it’s true. It traps air pockets, I think. That’s why cellular underwear is so warm.’

  Val met this with silent disbelief.

  Miss Landers braced herself.

  ‘How are you getting on with your own cardigan, Val?’

  Reluctantly, Val rummaged in her saddle bag pocket and brought out a sleeve in progress.

  ‘Dear me. Isn’t that the same sleeve you were doing last week?’

  Her small store of courage being now exhausted, she did not demand an answer.

  Isobel continued to knit.

  When Miss Landers had left, she said, ‘Val, why do you care so much about it?’

  ‘But it’s wrong and you won’t be told.’

  ‘Right and wrong don’t apply to knitting patterns. You drop stitches or you don’t, that’s all.’

  To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail

  And a few lilies blow.

  At evening rounds, Doctor Wang came across to pick up the book of poems from Isobel’s cabinet.

  ‘I can’t read this Hopkins,’ he said. ‘I find him too difficult. Such odd word order and strange words. It all seems to me unnecessarily complicated.’

&nb
sp; ‘Not unnecessarily,’ said Isobel. ‘I know he’s difficult, but that’s part of his…what he calls his inscape. The struggle for expression is part of his subject matter, always.’

  ‘Well, it seems to me uncivil for a poet to betray his difficulties to his reader. Shouldn’t he conceal them?’

  ‘It’s a very individual style, more like forging poems out of metal than simply writing them.’

  ‘You like poetry, then?’

  ‘Very much indeed.’

  ‘Do you know of our great poets Li Po and Tu Fu?’

  ‘I’ve heard of Li Po. Didn’t he fall out of a boat and drown while saluting the moon?’

  ‘It’s a sad thing that our great poet should be known only for the folly of his death.’

  ‘Well, it’s nothing against his poetry, I suppose.’

  ‘Would you care to read some? I can bring you some of his work in translation.’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘And you may help me to understand Hopkins. I should like to know more about English poetry. My education is lacking in the subject.’

  The conversation had demanded too much of Sister Knox’s loving-kindness. She began to move restlessly from foot to foot. The hint was not to be ignored. Doctor Wang nodded and moved on.

  On Thursday Sister Connor followed Doctor Stannard into Room 2, still protesting at Lance’s misconduct.

  ‘He’s oftener in this room than he is in his own bed.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t my fault,’ said Isobel. ‘I keep telling him to go back to bed and he takes no notice. The only way I could keep him in bed is to move in with him and that is just too much to ask.’

  ‘Oh, quite beyond the call of duty,’ Doctor Stannard agreed, retreating into vagueness and picking up Isobel’s chart, over which he looked thoughtful. He put it back without speaking and went to ask about the wheeze in Val’s chest.

  The caravan moved on.

  Val said, ‘You shouldn’t speak to Doctor like that. You could see that Sister was annoyed with you.’

  ‘She was annoyed with me because I let Doctor Stannard off the hook. He doesn’t want to think about Lance. The boys are a problem he can’t solve and he doesn’t want to be reminded. I gave him the chance to get off the subject, that’s all.’