by Amy Witting
She was sorry she had spoken: she was forming the opinion that Mornington functioned on the brilliance and the charm of Doctor Stannard and hard work and worry from others, such as Sister Connor.
Val, who read people as others read books, had to agree with this.
‘You shouldn’t have been so free with him, just the same.’
‘Next time I’ll remember to tug my forelock.’
‘What nonsense you do talk.’
After lunch Doctor Wang arrived with the promised book.
‘These are not the best translations. The best are made by Ezra Pound. His translation of “The River Merchant’s Wife” is very true, very good indeed. I must find it for you. The notes in this book are good. They will help you to understand the text. Much in the poems is traditional. And now,’ he said, taking the armchair, ‘would you read me a poem of Hopkins?’
She had been in line for a stroke of luck and here it came. She turned to ‘Spring and Fall’ and began to read aloud, with annotations.
He asked, she explained. They talked.
They struck out like swimmers who had been trapped in the wading pool, energetic and joyful.
Doctor Wang was very young, it seemed, not long exiled from the Quadrangle, the Buttery, the café, the noisy river of talk which one took for granted until fate silenced it. He was as lost among the medical staff of the hospital as Isobel was lost among the patients.
‘I have kept you talking too long,’ he said. ‘I shall come back and find out what you think of Li Po. And I want to know more of Hopkins. Perhaps tomorrow.’
‘Great,’ said Isobel.
‘You mean he came right in and sat down and talked to Isobel?’
Val said, thinly, ‘He didn’t get much chance to talk to me.’
He didn’t want to talk to you.
‘We were talking about poetry. That’s all.’
Fortunately there was another subject for conversation. Nurse Baker had left, without notice and without explanation.
‘They said in Room 10 she just walked in and said she was leaving. She was in a fury but she wouldn’t say why.’
‘Didn’t Diana say anything?’
‘According to Diana, Matron sent for Baker yesterday morning and she came away looking like a ghost. White as a sheet and shaking. Diana had to do the afternoon round by herself.’
‘I thought she looked a bit off when she was taking our temperatures.’
‘And Sister Knox wasn’t herself when she did evening rounds with Wang. And come to think of it, Wang was pretty quiet, too. He usually has a nice word for everyone.’
‘Something must be up.’
‘Well, she’s gone.’
‘Not much loss, I reckon. I always thought she was standoffish, myself.’
‘Funny, just the same.’
Val said nothing. She must have been right in her suspicions of Nurse Baker, but she did not even look as if she could have spoken to the point if she had cared to.
This was much to her credit. It was the first time Isobel could record anything to Val’s credit but it was, considering her eagerness for notice, a very good mark indeed.
Reading was now an activity sanctioned and even encouraged by a doctor.
Isobel began to study the poems of Li Po and read Hopkins, looking for the next offering.
She tried to ignore Val’s distress. She had once been on the point of asking, ‘Why don’t you try it yourself, Val?’ but she was checked by the growing suspicion that Val was illiterate.
Was this possible? Could it be that a woman who, if not quite of the bourgeoisie, was far above the submerged masses, could not read nor write? There was that very odd answer she had given to Mrs Kent about the library book. And she had not in all this time read anything, not even a caption under a photograph in the Women’s Weekly which was passed every week from room to room. Illiteracy showed up in odd places. They had discovered during the war that very many recruits were illiterate. Perhaps she could manage a word at a time, with visible effort, sounding out, moving her lips…if this was so, being thrust by misfortune into a literate world, burdened with a companion who read books, talked about books and, finally, diverted doctors from their proper duties in order to talk about books, would explain her constant terror and her need to dominate, even in the matter of knitting patterns. She must be compensating for that hidden helplessness and suffering the fear of exposure as well.
See her as a frail, domestic shrub uprooted by a storm and drifting in a flood where she was exposed to monsters, foreign languages, books, strange talk…
Isobel was feeling much kindlier towards her because of her silence in the matter of Nurse Baker and Janet’s husband. What could she do to show goodwill?
She didn’t intend to give up reading. She could not sacrifice conversation with Doctor Wang. She did not even intend to unpull her knitting, which had progressed so well that she was about to shape the shoulders and cast off the back section.
The most I can do, thought Isobel, is protect her from discovery. She won’t know about it, but it will make me feel better.
She went back to her book and looked for a poem which would help Doctor Wang to the insight he looked for into the Western mind.
*
The trouble with reading, memorising and discussing poetry was that it prompted the urge to write, which would certainly have to be suppressed.
Reflecting that Hopkins seemed much more difficult when one planned to explain his poems to somebody else, she settled on ‘Pied Beauty’ and began to read it with care.
Val stared through her window at emptiness.
The hooter sounded. They reclined, hands above head, eyes closed, breathing quiet and regular.
At four o’clock the hooter released them. Isobel sat up and opened her book. Val sat up, sighed and stared through the window.
At evening rounds, Sister Knox said, ‘Isobel. About your admission form…’
‘Yes.’
‘What is your religion, dear?’
Isobel temporised.
‘Isn’t it on the form?’
‘OD. That isn’t a religion, is it? Now, dear, what does OD stand for?’
Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
‘Orthodox Devil-worship.’
Sister Knox met this with a brief angry titter. Beside her, Doctor Wang glimmered quietly.
‘Now you mustn’t be silly, you know. There isn’t any such religion.’
‘But indeed there is, Sister. And with some very interesting ceremonies. Isobel must tell us more about them,’ said Doctor Wang.
I’ll murder you, you smooth bastard, thought Isobel, eyeing him with meaning and feeling suddenly cheerful.
‘It means Other Denominations, that’s all.’
Sister Knox was gently reproving.
‘I don’t really think that it’s a thing to joke about.’ Doctor Wang must be experiencing a rush of blood to the head.
‘It’s a paradox, Sister. The people who make jokes about religion are often the ones who take it seriously,’ he said.
Sensing communication from which she was excluded, Sister Knox responded with a prim little smile of annoyance and said no more.
Later, in the dark, Isobel asked herself why it was impossible for her to make a false statement on the subject of religion. She had not intended any sort of heroic stand. Given that one must not leave a vacant space on an official form, she had supposed that OD would be an adequate offering. She could not offer more.
Why not? It’s no use pretending that you never tell a lie. You tell plenty when it suits you. Then why not say she was Church of England? Why not that particular lie? She could find no explanation for this obstinacy, yet she knew she could not escape it.
But then, why did they care so much? She hadn’t noticed anyone praying. Maybe people did, of course. Maybe there were silent prayers rising in the night, but those prayers wouldn’t be coming from conformists, she was sure of that. They want too much. Wh
oever they were. Placating these unknowable authorities seemed to require eternal vigilance, like liberty.
All too difficult. She closed her eyes and slept.
Next day Doctor Wang arrived after lunch. She read ‘Pied Beauty’ aloud, first with annotations, then without.
‘To Hopkins, then, the beauty of the world is an affirmation of God’s existence?’
On the edge of Isobel’s field of vision, Val sat upright in her bed, mouth open, gasping for speech, body straining, quivering like a puppy waiting to be taken for a walk.
Isobel narrowed her field of vision and spoke with haste.
‘Yes. It’s an intensely religious poem, that’s true.’
‘Are you a believer, then?’
‘Um.’ Isobel reflected. ‘You know that Voltaire said, if God had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent him. Well, He doesn’t exist, and we do invent Him. Sometimes for good and sometimes for evil. With Hopkins, it’s for good, that’s all.’
Wang nodded.
‘And sometimes very much for evil. That’s an interesting thought. Is it man’s responsibility to invent the true God?’
‘We haven’t made much of a job of it yet.’
Wang grinned at her.
‘About that OD?’
‘Oh, dear. At the other hospital they said I had to have a religion, so I thought I’d be a Buddhist. I’ve always liked the idea of it. Oh, am I being offensive? Are you a Buddhist?’
‘Of all religions, it is the one I respect most. But I agree with you, I think. There is no religion men will not use as a source of power and an excuse for doing evil. Buddhism is as vulnerable as any other faith.’
‘We should read “God’s Grandeur”. I’m not sure how well I can manage it, but I’ll try.’
Wang stood up.
‘We shall travel hopefully.’
He nodded cheerfully to Val as he departed.
‘It would be very nice,’ said Val in fury, ‘if I could be allowed to get a word in.’
Deliberately obtuse, Isobel answered, ‘I didn’t know you were interested in poetry, Val.’
Val did not answer. In silence, she breathed banked-down fire.
Doctor Wang continued his visits. They moved from Hopkins to Auden. He read Li Po and Tu Fu aloud, and even, at Isobel’s request, in Mandarin.
This provocation was not deliberate. She had forgotten Val’s sensitivity to foreign languages. It could only make the situation worse for Val, who was suffering the torments of Tantalus. To be in the glamorous, life-enhancing company of a doctor while being denied his attention brought her to the limit of her endurance.
‘Am I ever going to be allowed to talk to Doctor Wang?’
‘Of course you can talk to him, Val. But not about your symptoms.’
‘He’s a doctor, I suppose.’
‘Well, yes, but he’s off duty. He can take half an hour off, can’t he?’
‘If he can listen to the rubbish you talk, he can listen to me.’
‘If there’s something worrying you, you can keep it till evening rounds. That isn’t very long to wait.’
‘It’s not the same. It’s not like having a doctor sit with you and listen. There are a lot of little things I could ask him about, if you didn’t talk all the time.’
Val had as much chance of joining their conversation as an obese cripple of jumping on a moving bus. The bus must stop, wait, she must be helped aboard. This did not occur.
Doctor Wang’s unorthodox visits also kept Lance most unwillingly in bed.
‘Shouldn’t be hanging about patients’ rooms,’ he grumbled, as he came shuffling in a minute or two after the doctor’s departure.
‘Better tell him so yourself,’ said Isobel, who maintained obstinate calm in the face of all attacks.
I’m having this. You won’t take this from me.
Doctor Wang remained unaware of the disturbance he was creating in the lives of the patients, and of the bitter glances that were directed towards Isobel.
Isobel had reached the armholes of the front section of the disputed grey sweater. She was measuring the one against the other when Mrs Kent arrived with her trolley.
Mrs Kent took the completed section and held it up for display.
‘What a clever little puss you are, Isobel. I didn’t think anything could be done with that awful grey wool and look at it! It’s absolutely charming. For all the world like cast iron lace. Don’t you think so, Val?’
Val answered with a deep sob and a spurt of angry tears.
Mrs Kent, with raised eyes, sought reaction from Heaven, then stared at Isobel.
‘Val doesn’t think the pattern was right for the wool.’
‘But…’
Mrs Kent despaired, shrugged and pushed her trolley away, shaking her head as she went.
Isobel put her knitting aside, but only to look into the new library book.
Is it possible to cause so much misery to another human being, simply by being oneself? she wondered, feeling a reflection of that misery. No help for it; she must continue to be herself.
Isobel had an unexpected visitor.
When she saw the tall figure in the doorway, she held out both hands, crying out in amazement, ‘Olive!’
Olive came across the room to her bed, kissed her on the cheek, set down a paper carrier bag and her handbag on the floor and took the armchair beside Isobel’s bed.
‘How did you get here? How did you find out where I was?’
‘You took some finding,’ said Olive with a severe note in her voice. ‘But Frank refused to give up. I don’t think he has thought about anything else for months. First of all, we thought you were coming back. We all thought you’d turn up on pay day. After all, they owed you three days’ pay. Why should you let them get away with that?’ She shook her head in disapproval. ‘But the week passed, and then the fortnight, and there wasn’t a sign of you, so we got really worried. Frank went right into Mr Walter’s office…I’ve never seen Frank so angry. He really shook him up. He told him that if he couldn’t find anything better for his boob of a brother to do than torment decent hardworking members of staff, he’d better keep him out of the office. You know that’s the first time anyone ever said right out that Mr Richard wasn’t…’
‘Not the full quid?’
‘Frank’s very words. Not to Mr Walter, of course.’ Olive relaxed into an unladylike giggle. ‘I think he was frightened that Frank would leave. They could never do without Frank. Anyhow, Frank got the full fortnight’s pay for you. He said you’d been driven beyond endurance and it was constructive dismissal and you should have pay in lieu of notice. Then he went after holiday pay and got an extra week. He said, while he had them running, he was going to do his best for you. I’ve got the money here. And how could you, walk out and let them get away with it?’
‘I was too embarrassed.’
‘You didn’t have to be nice to them, did you? You only had to turn up and collect what they owed you. Well, we saw that you had cleared out your desk and we realised that you weren’t coming back, so Frank went to your room to give you the money. That’s when we got really worried. They said you’d left and hadn’t left a forwarding address.’
‘I didn’t think of it. I wasn’t expecting any mail.’
‘So we didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know any of your friends and we knew you had no family. Then Sandra remembered that you had a story in a magazine called Seminal. She went out at lunch time and found a copy in a bookshop. We thought they might know your address. Frank got me to write to the editor and ask him if he knew where you were living. He wrote back to say he couldn’t give out addresses but he could send on a letter. So I wrote again to tell you we were worried and wanted to hear from you, and then we waited. Weeks. At last Frank took the morning off and went to the office of the magazine and saw the editor. A very nice man.’ Olive made no attempt to disguise the length and the severity of this odyssey. ‘He said he was worried too, because he’d writ
ten to you and had expected an answer, so he gave Frank the address.’ Olive paused in remembered horror. ‘Isobel! That place!’
Isobel whispered, ‘The rent was cheap. I kept myself to myself.’
‘I should hope so. But if you had seen Frank’s face when he came back from there. Didn’t you ever think?’
‘No, she does not,’ cried Val, who had been listening with avid interest to Olive’s story. ‘That’s what I keep telling her. She’s just too self-centred.’
Olive turned in astonishment and said gently, ‘I thought you would understand that this is a private conversation.’
After one gasp of outrage, Val slid down under the covers, turned and presented her back to the undeserving world.
A brief silent dialogue of raised eyebrows and shrugged shoulders—Olive could not know that telling Val to mind her own business was like telling a carnivore not to eat meat.
‘Well, you’d gone from there, too. My letter was there in the rack, and the letter from the editor. I have them here. Mine doesn’t matter. The other one…’
She fetched from the carrier bag a bulky envelope addressed to Isobel herself in her own handwriting.
A returned manuscript. Isobel accepted it and put it aside, deferring dismay and disappointment.
‘I did miss you all,’ said Isobel, who had been listening with increasing pain and mortification. ‘I was just too embarrassed. After what I had said to Mr Richard.’
‘It was a little strong. But Frank always said you bottled up too much and one day you’d boil over.’
‘I boiled over all right.’
‘You weren’t yourself. We all thought you were ill, you know. You never seemed to shake off that cold…you should have had more time off. That’s another thing Frank threw at him, that he was too lousy to give you a bit of sick leave…oh, words flew, I can tell you. But you were always sucking cough drops, and you were so quiet. We all missed your funny little sayings. It was building up.’
‘But you found me.’
‘Frank got another idea. He wanted to know if you’d cleaned out that room yourself. He had it fixed in his mind that you were sick. If you’d cleaned it out yourself, then he’d know at least you were on your feet.’ At Isobel’s whimper of shame, she said without mercy, ‘I hope you do feel badly. So you should. Well, he went back to that place and asked the woman in the office—not a very nice woman, she couldn’t have cared less—but she did admit that somebody else had come to pack up for you and she had kept the letter in case of trouble. I think that’s the only reason that woman would ever do anything. And there was a note from you, folded up in the back of the rent book, and it had the address of a hospital. Well, at least we knew.’ Olive sighed.