I for Isobel (15 page)

Diana sat down on the settee.

‘I know they're here. They saw me coming and they cleared out. I don't blame them. I know I'm a curse and a bore.'

Shocked, Isobel thought, ‘She doesn't know me. She doesn't even know my name.' A naked soul was just as shameful as a naked body.

Diana picked up the paper and ran her finger lovingly over the crossword. Thinking of plain, sandy Dan, Isobel bit her lip.

It's not funny. She's suffering.

‘He was sitting here, doing the crossword.'

‘Who?' Isobel thought there might be some good in reminding Diana she was a stranger.

‘Nick.'

Pronouncing his name, she began to cry and had to pause to swallow her tears and dry her eyes.

‘Nick was here. Nick is here. He is in this house and I can't see him. Anyone else in the world can see him, but I can't, and I'm the one person it's life or death to.'

Embarrassed as she was, Isobel couldn't help being interested in hearing these worn words take meaning, like old hulks with their sails filled out by the wind.

She said, ‘Nick's not here. He's away for the weekend.'

How safe she felt, being able to pronounce the name indifferently.

Diana smiled and closed her eyes. When she opened them she said, ‘I suppose you think I'm shameless. I'm not.'

I'm a stranger, but she takes it for granted that I know about her; she knows that people talk about her. She's a corpse all right with the flies buzzing round her, and she hears them buzzing, though she's dead.

‘I feel shame, all right, the way nobody else can know it. Sometimes I think it's all I ever feel. If you knew the things I've done! I've followed him to that girl's house, I've stood outside till they came out and I've followed them. I followed them to the theatre and I couldn't get a seat, so I stood outside and waited for them. If they'd got a bus, I'd have followed them but they got a taxi. I rattled them so much they had to get a taxi.' She said this with a faint sneer. If this was shame, it looked very much like arrogance. ‘I did that and I did it again. Can you imagine that? I've got no pride, no self-respect left. I've got nothing. I've lost my job now, and no wonder.'

I'm a messenger, Isobel thought with resentment. I'm supposed to tell Nick she's lost her job.

She said, ‘That's terrible. What are you going to do?'

Diana shook her head, smiling a faint complacent smile of despair.

‘I used to think he'd come back to me when he saw how much I was suffering. Of course that never happens, but it was something I had to think. Something I had to hold on to. Now I know that he won't, but it doesn't make any difference.'

The idea of losing a job was so alarming to Isobel that she could not leave the subject. ‘But what are you going to do? You have to have a job. You have to eat!'

Diana considered that idea carefully, then shrugged.

‘I've got some money saved.'

‘And when that's gone?'

She sounded quite belligerent. Interesting. Here was someone feeble enough to bring out the bully in Isobel.

‘What do I care? I don't care about anything. I'm finished. I'm as good as dead.'

Isobel reflected. ‘You know, I think that's right. I mean, if you take life as change and development—and I think it must be, life must be always changing…if you had a life without change, it might be as good as death, I suppose…well, when you can't change, I suppose you are as good as dead.'

She was so interested in this idea that she forgot Diana and spoke with detachment, then was startled at the fury in Diana's eyes. True to form, she made a note: masochists prefer to devise their own sufferings. True to form also, she retreated before anger.

‘I'm not talking about you, particularly.' (But I ought to be; that's where the offence is.) ‘I just meant anyone who can't adapt…Look, Nick's not here, truly. He's away for the weekend. Let's go. We can't go on just sitting here, can we?'

She could not leave Diana, who was looking cynically now at the coffee cups.

‘It wasn't Nick doing the crossword. It was Helen and Dan. All right, they did get up and run when they saw you coming. What do you expect? They can't do anything for you.'

She was shocked by Diana's sick, stunned look and her heavy nod.

I've gone too far. I'm no good at this sort of thing. Why did I even get into it?

Diana picked up her bag and made for the door. Isobel followed. They walked abreast, but not together, up Glebe Road to the bus stop, Isobel full of misery and remorse and longing for the moment when she could take refuge with the brothers Karamazov.

At the bus stop Diana turned to her.

‘Come home with me, will you? Come and have a meal. I think you could help me.'

Oh, no, you'd eat me alive. On and on. Once you got hold of me, I'd never get away.

‘I'm sorry. I can't. Not this evening.'

There had been a different look on Diana's face, a waking look. Isobel realised that as it faded.

‘No, of course not. People have dates on Saturday night.'

She smiled that peaceful, distant smile.

They waited in silence then till the bus came and she got on it without saying goodbye.

And now for the brothers Karamazov.

She wished Trevor would not say those puzzling things. It was so interesting to listen to him and wonderful to be able to borrow his books; why did he make these odd little remarks that made her feel awkward with him?

Back in her room, she opened the book with great anticipation, but she could not concentrate on reading at first. Diana's face with its waking look kept appearing on the page.

You shouldn't have talked to her at all if you didn't care enough to go all the way.

She might have meant it. You might have been able to help her. The turning point. Isobel the turning point. That is ego. You're kidding yourself. She lit up because she thought she had a new victim.

Victim. That's a funny word. The poor girl is suffering terribly, she's the victim. Selfish and heartless Isobel.

I did feel for her. Once or twice I felt for her very much.

You didn't act on your feelings, so that doesn't count.

The story took over at last. She read till the dinner bell sounded angrily. Since Madge had left, the boarders all seemed to be conscious of Mrs Bowers' anger glowing like a portable stove in the kitchen. It drew them closer. Betty helped with the serving, showing a domestic streak which made her seem more of a likeable duck than a daunting swan; the boys were quieter and more companionable. Isobel, who was avoiding Mrs Bowers because of the idiot in the attic, was trying again to be acceptable to the others. She said, ‘I'll get the plates, Betty. You might spoil your dress.'

Mrs Bowers, dishing up at the stove, gave her a mean look that made her quail. She didn't want Mrs Bowers to like her, yet she quailed. Her body was a dog that answered to the orders of others.

She looks at everyone like that, she's in a general rage, Isobel thought, taking the first two plates, yet it was extremely difficult to go back for the others. She had meant to help with the washing up, but decided against it.

Tim said to Betty, who was wearing her good black, ‘Big date tonight, Betty?'

‘Yes, doing the town tonight.'

Isobel saw Diana's remote smile again. People have dates on Saturday night.

She did not read the meaning of the smile till later, in the moment before sleep, which it banished. Diana had a date too; she was going alone to that most private of all appointments. Isobel was sure of it; the peace and decision in the smile told her so.

As good as dead. You told her she was as good as dead.

What exactly did you say?

She was familiar with that question and knew there was no answer to it, but she couldn't help looking for one, over and over.

You are as good as dead.
You
are as good as dead. It was all in the stress. She hadn't meant Diana, particularly. She couldn't have been so cruel as to say that to Diana.

Oh, yes, you could, if you weren't watching yourself. The idiot in the attic is a spiteful little bastard.

This was a terrible way of passing the time, like being made to work out one of those infinite repeater things in Maths for ever.

It doesn't matter how you said it. What matters is how Diana heard it. You could see that, all right.

You told her she was as good as dead, then you let her go home alone, though she asked you to come. That might be when she made up her mind, thinking, ‘I'll ask her to come home with me.' Like tossing a coin. ‘If she says no, I'll do it.'

Nobody will ever know it was me.

Oh, God! Isobel!

Abject as the thought was, she clung to it, to silence the infinite repeater, to be able to get to sleep.

Keep away from people, don't meddle in future. That was the lesson.

Every day she bought the paper to look for a paragraph headed
GIRL FOUND DEAD IN FLAT
.

Sometimes she was sure Diana wasn't dead, that her obsession was ridiculous. She conjured up Diana's face, looking for reassurance in it and seeing the deadly little smile again.

She wanted to go round to Fifty-one for news of Diana. She was one person who would be delighted to see Diana. She did not dare to go to Fifty-one (which existed in any case only on Saturdays), for fear of showing a special interest in the matter. That showed that she cared more about being found out than about Diana's living or dying.

They'll ask you questions, because you were the last person to speak to her. How did she look, what did she say? Did she give any indication that she was about to take her own life?

I told her she was as good as dead.

Crime and punishment. She was a twopenny Raskolnikov. She could think thoughts like that only in the moments when she believed Diana was alive. The rest of the time she was numbed by depression.

She would never speak without thinking again. She would watch every word.

Meanwhile, she began to see that Mrs Bowers was angry with her particularly. Standing at the stove with the wholesome smell of baked dinner rising round her, she glared at her, looking like a witch that has got hold of the wrong recipe. She couldn't turn such malevolence on everyone, she wouldn't have the energy for it.

Isobel accepted it passively.

‘You wanted Madge's place,' she said to herself, ‘and now you've got it.' She thought of Madge, leaving so splendidly, but could not imagine having so much strength, herself. It was easy to bear Mrs Bowers' dislike, now that she was prepared for it, easy to keep her head low and her eyes averted, much easier than going out into a strange world again.

At the café there was no talk of Diana, only of Mitch's sonnet sequence, which Trevor was sorry to have missed.

They would know by now if Diana was dead. Time let you off at last, as she had noticed before.

‘It's not purely decorative,' Kenneth said. ‘That's the interesting thing. It's full of the usual decorative bits, but there's a context. I'd like to read it again.'

Janet said, ‘You've no idea how delighted Mitch was because Kenneth liked it. The air was full of the beating of angels' wings.'

Kenneth grinned. ‘I hope he didn't notice how surprised I was.'

‘I wish I'd been there,' Trevor said again.

‘Well, it's going into
Hermes
.'

Nick wasn't there, but Nick was never really there. He was the charming exile.

Alone with Isobel on the way back to Fifty-one, Trevor said, ‘I have a weakness for reading things in manuscript. I know it's childish, but there it is.'

‘I think it's exciting, too. I suppose, if you write manuscript, it's print that's exciting.'

‘Yes, I suppose so.'

There was a remoteness in his tone today that made her uneasy. Had she done something wrong? How much she wanted not to offend Trevor.

She asked, ‘Do you write?'

He shook his head.

‘Do you wish you did?' Her jaws were heavy, hard to move as she asked the personal question, but he took it calmly.

‘No. What I want to be is a good critic. You know, the kind who can tell good from bad, when it's new, in a new form…a spotter, in fact. There aren't many. About Dostoevsky. Are you ever going to say anything about Dostoevsky? Why do I nag you? It's quite legitimate to read for reading's sake. And there's the other end of the scale, where people read books only to write about them. Yes, and people write books for other people to write theses about. Why do I complain when I meet a consumer?'

Consumer was just the word.

Her jaws were heavy again. ‘It's not like reading, Dostoevsky especially. It's like living in it.'

Particularly
Crime and Punishment.

‘Um, perhaps no more Dostoevsky for the moment. We don't want you turning tragic and Russian.' He sounded positively like Joseph; she felt an intimate shame, as if he had found out about him.

‘I got
Middlemarch
from the library. I haven't started it yet.'

‘Dear me, you are slipping.'

She wished he would not laugh at her.

In his room he turned to face her, looking like a handsome pale horse about to bolt, took a step towards her, said ‘Isobel', and put his arms round her.

It was her body that fought, not she. It stiffened and struggled against being pushed out onto a tightrope from which it must fall. Her hands went up and pushed at his chest, pushing him away. He dropped his arms, said with a gasp of pain he managed to shape into a laugh, ‘Sorry. Forget I mentioned it.' Then he walked quite wildly to his desk, sat down, opened a book and stared at it.

Nothing to be done. She put
The Brothers Karamazov
on the bed and ran away.

It was all gone in a second, the café, the books, the conversation, and she had hurt Trevor, made him gasp with pain.