I for Isobel (5 page)

It wouldn't be easy. She could give up fighting with Margaret—she couldn't imagine now why she ever had. And stop being lazy, too. And answering back. That would be the hardest thing, but she could do it. Only. They were a kind of club, the virtuous, and they didn't like being asked to move up one.

The parish priest had come up to Mrs Callaghan after Mass one Sunday and said, ‘You must be pleased with Isobel's exam results, Mrs Callaghan. A good, well-behaved girl besides, so the sisters tell me. And Margaret, too. You should be proud of your daughters.'

Mrs Callaghan had walked home almost silent, crippled by this injustice. At last she had drawn a deep breath and muttered, ‘Oh, I could tell him a thing or two. Street angel, home devil. Street angel, home devil, that's Miss Isobel.'

But surely, thought Isobel now, you're allowed to be good, if you want to be? And looking at it another way, the harder it was, the better. You would know then that you deserved the light.

As soon as she got home, she took off her Sunday dress, hung it up, put on an old one and went into the kitchen to peel the vegetables and set the table for dinner. Margaret came in as she was putting the potatoes into a basin of cold water.

‘It just so happens that it's your turn to wash up. You're not going to get out of it that way, coming in here and taking the easy job.'

First test. Isobel was careful.

‘I forgot.' True. ‘But I'll wash up, don't worry.' Offensive enough to be inoffensive.

‘So you say.'

Mrs Callaghan had come in behind them.

‘What's the matter?'

‘It's her turn to wash up and now she's done the vegetables and set the table. I was just coming to do it.'

‘I'll wash up. I just forgot.'

Her mother looked at her with a considering frown and said nothing.

During the meal she said, airily, ‘It's too hot for you to go round to Auntie Ann's this afternoon, Margaret. Isobel will have to go.'

Margaret looked delicate, gratified, but faintly astonished.

There was a silence. They waited for Isobel to scream, I won't! I won't! It's not fair! I won't go!

Isobel said nothing. Dreamily, she chewed cold mutton and looked with wonder at past rages. How could it matter whether or not she went to Auntie Ann's? She liked going there. There was a shelf of children's books in the old dresser on the back verandah which was her delight and Auntie Ann would give her a glass of homemade lemonade.

Her mother said, ‘What's come over you? You look like a cow chewing its cud.'

Margaret giggled. ‘Perhaps she's been converted. Saint Isobel of Plummer Street.'

Knowing what to say was the hard thing. Isobel paused over it, then said simply, ‘I don't mind.'

She knew as she said the words that they were inadequate but she realised too—it was a new idea—that there was nothing her mother could do about that. She would have to make do with them.

After a moment, her mother came to the same conclusion. With a harsh expulsion of breath in the tempo of laughter, she set about a boiled potato and said no more.

Isobel found her great-aunt dozing on a chair where the latticed roof of the fernery made a patch of shade and dank staghorns and hanging baskets of maidenhair suggested the idea of coolness.

‘Trying to catch a breath of air, love. Fancy you walking round here in all this heat.'

‘Mum sent me round with the meat press. She thought you'd be wanting it.'

‘Well, that was nice of her. Put it on the kitchen table, my petty, and save my old legs.'

‘Can I stay and look at the books?'

‘Of course you can. There's a jug of lemonade in the ice-chest. Get yourself a glass of that but don't go drinking it while you're hot.'

Such warnings were the common coin of love to Auntie Ann. Isobel found them silly but soothing and liked being told not to sit on stone or drink water after eating grapes or sleep with the moon shining on her face.

She sat on the back verandah with a glass of lemonade beside her and a copy of
The Wide, Wide World
open in front of her. The book had large illuminated capitals at the beginning of each chapter and a coloured frontispiece of two girls wearing white pinafores and long black socks, with a frill of petticoat showing under their skirts.

Now for a lovely afternoon.

But it wasn't as lovely as usual. She was never again going to be happier in one place than another. Grace was like what the priest had said about Heaven, the eternal sunshine which had neither climate nor seasons nor night nor day. At the time she had thought, ‘nice but dull' and the thought came again. But there was no going back; that was unthinkable.

She went home in time to set the table for tea, which they ate in most unusual quiet. When she got up to clear away, her mother said, ‘That's enough, Miss Clever. Leave those dishes alone. Margaret doesn't mind doing her share.'

Margaret looked so taken aback that Isobel began to grin in triumph. In time she saw the danger: quietly and without warning, the world had nearly had her. Her temptation was to be not the rage of defeat but the smirk of victory, for practising humility she had acquired power. That was a new experience and dealing with it would be hard.

The next days passed quietly. The inward light stayed with Isobel, though all she had got from her attempt to gain merit was a material advantage. It was odd that, in spite of her reputation for laziness, she seemed to have less to do now that her mother watched to see that the chores went in strict rotation.

Over the tea table on Wednesday night, her mother said resolutely, ‘I'm not going to put up with any more of this, Isobel. I want to know what you are sulking about.'

‘I'm not sulking.' Astonishment brought the words out clear and strong, but she felt anxious. There was trouble coming.

‘Don't give me any of your lies. What are you sulking about?'

‘But I'm not. I'm not sulking about anything.'

Think of the inward light and hold on.

‘Not sulking not sulking not sulking. You answer me. What are you sulking about?'

Oh, where was it, the tone of voice that made people believed (even sometimes when they were telling lies)? Isobel could never command it. She shook her head.

‘Walking about looking down your nose too good to speak to anyone you nasty little beast. Miss Superior I can read you like a book. Telling me you're not sulking you brazen little liar. What are you sulking about?'

But it doesn't matter, as long as I'm telling the truth. If she doesn't believe me, that's her affair. This was so simple she wondered she hadn't thought of it before. There was another good thing about the state of grace: while that light continued to shine she knew she was telling the truth. Normally by this time she would have begun to think that she must be sulking and lying, since her mother was so sure about it.

There was a pause, so long that she thought it might be safe to pick up her knife and fork again, but as she stirred her mother said, ‘I want you to tell me what you are sulking about, Isobel.'

She was really frightened now, wondering how long she would hold out, foreseeing the moment when she would begin to scream and scream.

She wasn't going to, not ever. She would think of grace and be still.

‘Tell me.' Her mother's voice, which had been rising to a scream, turned calm and gracious again. Like somebody getting dressed. Isobel looked up and saw that her eyes were frantic bright. She doesn't want me to tell her, she wants me to scream. I do something for her when I scream.

Then she saw that her mother's anger was a live animal tormenting her, that she Isobel was an outlet that gave some relief and she was torturing her by withholding it.

Her father used to do that, sitting silently while her mother raged at him, chewing his food slowly, turning the pages of his newspaper deliberately—doing what Isobel was doing now. But one night he had put the paper down with a fierce thump and shown a white face, wild eyes and a mouth gaping as if his tongue was swollen. His chair had crashed over, he had picked up the knife from the bread board and run at her mother, who was cringing away with her head at a strange angle and a meek frown on her face, her hands out in front of her and the line of blood suddenly across her fingers.

But before that, when he had got up, before she saw how real the knife was and how near, there had been two little glittering points of satisfaction in her mother's eyes, two little sea-monsters swimming up from…Standing there, the two of them looking at that awful astonishing blood, frightened like two children who had climbed too high in a tree and didn't know how to get down.

Peace in the house for a long time after that, a shamed, daunted peace.

But I'm not doing it on purpose to torment her, thought Isobel, so that's all right. She didn't care about her mother's suffering. Grace was selfish.

She said, ‘I'm not sulking,' and this time the tone was right.

‘Oh, you…you…you…' her mother said and stood glaring, words deadlocked in her throat. She pushed back her chair, left her dinner and went into her bedroom.

Silently, the girls finished their meal and cleared away, trying not to hear the strange yawning noises from the bedroom. At one moment Margaret drew breath and looked at Isobel reproachfully but whatever she had had to say died in her mouth.

Margaret came home late from school one day, looking tired and dizzy with delight.

‘Where have you been?'

‘We're doing a play at school.
Twelfth Night
. I've got a part. Olivia. Miss Ferguson says, is it all right to stay back and practise after school Tuesdays and Thursdays?'

She looked with sudden fear at her mother's frown.

‘Miss Ferguson says it will give us a much better appreciation of Shakespeare.'

Margaret often began sentences with ‘Miss Ferguson says…' Miss Ferguson was young and slender. She wore her fair hair cut very short and spoke calmly and boldly even to the headmistress, Miss Blundell.

‘Well…' Mrs Callaghan shrugged. ‘I suppose so. Just see that you're home at a decent hour, that's all.'

Margaret's face relaxed.

Why, Margaret's beautiful, thought Isobel.

It was an opportunity for grace, not minding that. She had to tell herself so, quickly.

There were real boys in the play, from the Boys' High School. Miss Ferguson the miracle-worker had talked Miss Blundell into it. Miss Blundell had called the cast together, told them what standard of behaviour was expected of young ladies and what confidence was being placed in them. Jessica Long, who was going to play Viola, performed Miss Blundell's speech for her friends in the playground, pulling her face into a delicious dewlapped solemnity, and Isobel was one of the crowd who gathered to watch, so she heard about the boys, though Margaret didn't mention them.

Isobel saw the seven exotic creatures (troubling in face, strangely satisfying in shape) crossing the playground, looking resolutely casual, on Tuesday afternoon.

Margaret came home at half-past five, tired, full of private joy, and sank into a chair.

Grace was wearing thin for Isobel. She had to do something quickly to affirm it. She shut her book, got up and began to set the table.

Since the scene at the tea table, her mother had spoken to her as little as possible, instead darting looks of luminous hatred at her—real hatred, no mistake about it. She needed armour against them, but then, she had it, not shining on the outside, but so long as she had the light inside, she was safe.

Now her mother said, ‘You leave that alone. It's Margaret's turn.'

Margaret got up unwillingly and Isobel sat down, with grace still endangered. She could make a gesture, like saying, ‘How did the rehearsal go?' but Margaret might think she was playing on their mother's annoyance. So she would be playing on it. She was jealous, and jealousy was no insect. She had better be quiet and concentrate on grace.

Margaret went to bed early. When Isobel came in, she found her propped against pillows, studying her part, her face peaceful and intent as she murmured, ‘By mine honour, half drunk.—What is he at the gate, cousin?'

Shakespeare belonged to Isobel. It was hard to bear the sight of Margaret, so beautiful, and taking his words to herself. Grace, grace.

She got into bed in silence, thinking, ‘I should offer to hear her,' but knowing that would be asking too much of herself.

Margaret said, ‘Isobel?'

‘Yes?'

‘Don't tell Mum about the boys, will you? I mean, there's nothing wrong with it. It's all right, but, you know…'

Isobel was too astonished now to be jealous. Margaret was speaking to her in an ordinary voice as if she was a friend. Trusting her not to tell, too.

‘No, I won't tell.'

‘Oh, thanks.' She murmured, ‘A gentleman! What gentleman?'

Things could change. That was the breathtaking thought.

Thinking Shakespeare belonged to her—that was an insect, all right. Shakespeare belonged to everybody, like God.

The play was a good thing, like a window opening, or at least air coming in from somewhere. Mrs Callaghan resented it, muttering as Margaret learned her part, ‘You ought to be doing your homework instead of wasting your time on that…' She wanted to say ‘rubbish' but was daunted.

‘But Miss Ferguson says this is real study, just as important as homework.'

Isobel was beginning to feel sympathetic, anxious because Margaret did not scent danger.

Margaret came home one evening later than usual, as the immoral dark was beginning to fall.

‘Where have you been till this hour?'

‘Play practice.' Her eyes and her tone were remote. ‘There's just this one scene we simply can't get right. Miss Ferguson had us going over and over it.'

‘She's got no right, keeping you out till this hour. I've got a good mind to ring her up and complain.'