Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop (18 page)

‘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.

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.’

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.’

‘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.’

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.