I for Isobel (2 page)

The chauvinism that writers of her generation faced cannot be understated. In the mid-1970s she published a story about sex from a woman's point of view in
Tabloid Story
, an alternative literary magazine. Not only was she named in parliament as a ‘scribbler on lavatory walls' by an outraged state education minister, but the editors who asked for her author photograph were apparently so aghast that a woman in her fifties could write such material that they published her story with a sultry shot of a heavily made-up twenty-year-old, identified as Amy Witting.

Towards the end of her life, in an interview with the critic Peter Craven, the eternally modest Witting displayed just a glimpse of anger about the years she fought to be heard as a writer. ‘You have no idea what it was like. It was like a woman preaching. It was like words said by a parrot. It was beyond belief.'

It seems to me a particularly Australian kind of punishment that a writer of Witting's talent was destined to spend most of her life in service to other people's words, as an English teacher. Characteristically sanguine, she explained, both in fiction and interviews: ‘It's the eleventh commandment: thou shall not be different.'

And different she was. In this novel, Witting's self-determination as an artist mirrors Isobel's as a woman. The stylistic and tonal shifts in the last section are an exhilarating shock. With a new focal distance comes a shift in sympathy, and a leap into prose with the density and ruthless compression of poetry. This is the risk-taking of a real artist. Here is not someone who wants to be liked, but a writer in pursuit of her own expansive imaginative truth. It is thrilling.

I am often disheartened by the use of psychologese to discuss literature, for those dreary stock phrases (
childhood trauma, family dysfunction
) can only ever homogenise and flatten. But the best writing defies such labels and shows how uncontainable is real human experience.
I for Isobel
is a feminist work partly because it refuses to pretend that women are higher beings; all through the novel are uncontainable women, from Mrs Callaghan and the boarding-house mother Mrs Bowers to the shamelessly emotional student Diana and—finally—Isobel herself.

Good literature shows us that one person's escape from or surrender to the forces which shaped her is always specific, always shocking, always new. Isobel's is a potent victory, a powerful claim for selfhood. It is a thunderous, irrevocable statement of
I
. I for Isobel.

In her interview with Craven, Witting praised Auden and Byron, saying: ‘I love that kind of verse. It's so dead tough serious.' I love this book for the same reason. It's sharp, funny, clear-eyed, humane—and so dead tough serious.

I for Isobel

1 • THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT

A week before Isobel Callaghan's ninth birthday, her mother said, in a tone of mild regret, ‘No birthday presents this year! We have to be very careful about money this year.'

Every year at this time she said this; every year Isobel chose not to believe it. Her mother was just saying that, she told herself, to make the present more of a surprise. Experience told her that there would be no present. As soon as they stepped out of the ferry onto the creaking wharf and set out for Mrs Terry's lakeside boarding house, where they spent the summer holidays, the flat reedy shore, the great Moreton Bay fig whose branches scaffolded the air of the boarding-house garden, the weed-bearded tennis court and the cane chairs with their faded flabby cushions, all spoke to Isobel of desolate past birthdays, but she did not believe experience, either. Day by day she watched for a mysterious shopping trip across the lake, for in the village there was only one tiny store which served as a post office too; when no mysterious journey took place, she told herself they must have brought the present secretly from home. Even on the presentless morning she would not give up hope entirely, but would search in drawers, behind doors, under beds, as if birthday presents were supposed to be hidden, like Easter eggs in the grass.

Mrs Callaghan, too, kept the birthday in mind and spoke of it now and then.

‘January,' she said, ‘is too close to Christmas for birthday presents,' and later, serenely, ‘It is vulgar to celebrate birthdays away from home.'

Whenever she found a new argument against birthday presents for Isobel, a strange look of relief would appear on her face, and Isobel would be forced to accept, for the moment, that there would be no present.

Well, this year she would remember. This year, one week before Margaret's birthday, she would remember to say, in her mother's own tone, ‘No birthday presents this year!' and see what they would make of that. But she knew, even as she muttered bitterly to herself, that she would not remember. She had no grasp of the calendar yet; holidays surprised her and the seasons were not attached to the names of months. Only Christmas could be foreseen, because of the decorations and Santa Claus in the shops. She got presents at Christmas, being lucky enough to have Christmas the same day as everyone else. Margaret's birthday, with the present—the real present wrapped in paper—was a black day for Isobel, but it always came without warning. It was not talked about beforehand, like her own.

This year, the day before the birthday, her mother said in her real voice, ‘Now, Isobel, you are not to go about tomorrow telling people it's your birthday. I could have died of shame last year, with you running about like a little beggar telling everyone it was your birthday. We don't want any more behaviour of that kind.'

Last year she had disgraced the family, that was true. On a giddy impulse she had run into the garden among the deckchairs, shouting, ‘It's my birthday! Today is my birthday!' Skinny, crinkled Mr Daubeney had shouted back, ‘Catch this then!' and spun a two-shilling piece in the air. She had caught it in the lap of her skirt—she hadn't had time to begin to be clumsy—and somebody else had cried out, ‘Here's another!' ‘Over here!' ‘Here you are, Isobel!' She had held up her skirt like a pouch and had caught all the coins, spinning round and laughing, and the grown-ups were laughing too, as she called out, ‘Thank you very much!' and ran inside with her treasure.

Her mother was standing watching inside the long glass door of the bedroom. She dug her fingers into Isobel's arm and hissed, ‘Let your skirt down! Let it down!' She took the coins Isobel had gathered, stared at them in her hand and moaned, ‘Asking for money, asking for money. How could you shame me like this?' When her father came in, her mother pointed to the money and said, ‘She's been going about begging for money, telling everyone it's her birthday. Oh, what shall we do? Can we give it back?'

Isobel was sitting on the bed, not allowed to go out in case she disgraced the family again, and subdued because her mother was too upset even to be angry.

‘Can you remember who gave it to you?'

She shook her head.

Her father said, sounding tired, ‘I don't think we had better say any more about it. You mustn't ask people for money, you know, Isobel.'

Last year, the day had been terrible, and the worst thing about it was that the lovely moment of the spinning coins and the laughing voices had turned out to be bad behaviour. Thinking about it, she wondered what had become of the money, but that didn't matter very much. The money had been real treasure when it was flying through the air—after that it had been only a cause of shame.

She forgot about last year when the meaning of her mother's words sank in, that she was not to tell, not to tell anyone that it was her birthday. She was by nature timid, anxious only to know what was required of her so as to keep out of trouble, but she didn't think she could do that. It was like being asked to walk into a crack in the wall—it was just not possible.

Now she was sure there would be no present. Tomorrow morning she would not look, and that was a step towards the kind of person she longed to be but did not have words to describe—someone safe behind a wall of her own building.

But not to tell, not to say just once, ‘It's my birthday today!' She thought, I shall tell the tree. She saw herself hiding her face between two sharp folds of the tree trunk and whispering, ‘It's my birthday today,' and felt a thrilling pain in her tight throat, as if she was reading
The Little Match Girl
in the old book of fairytales at Auntie Ann's.

That put her in a reading mood. She went into the lounge, where there were bookshelves full of books for guests, with a special shelf for children's books. She had read that out long ago; she looked through it but there was nothing new and nothing she wanted to read again, so she began to look through the other shelves. She took out a book called
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
, thinking that adventures could never be dull, read the first sentence,
To Sherlock Holmes she is always
the
woman
, and was disappointed—that didn't sould like the beginning of an adventure. She turned to the next story,
A Case of Identity
:

‘My dear fellow,' said Sherlock Holmes, as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, ‘life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on…'

Birthdays, injustices, parents all vanished. She sat on the floor reading till the noise of cups and saucers in the kitchen warned her that the grown-ups would be coming in for afternoon tea, then she went to the little room where she and Margaret slept, next to their parents' bedroom. It was too hot there, but if she went outside to the cool shade of the fig tree, Caroline and Joanne Mansell would come asking her to play with them, or Margaret would want her to go for a swim. Besides, it wasn't hot in Baker Street.

What a lucky thing that she had found this new place in time to spend the birthday there. Presents didn't matter so much, if life had these enchanting surprises that were free to everyone.

She read without stirring until Margaret came in and said, ‘Mum says you're to wash your hands before dinner.'

Dinner was the meal which at home they called tea. Mrs Callaghan pronounced the word with a conscious elegance which Margaret imitated, maddening Isobel, who was about to hiss, ‘Tea!' but recollected herself and said, ‘Can I have the light on for a while tonight?'

‘We're not allowed to read in bed.'

‘Oh go on, don't be mean. It's different on holidays. It's only at home that we aren't allowed to read in bed.'

‘You ask them then.'

Isobel hid the book under her pillow.

‘Ho, ho.' Margaret spoke with adult poise, then relented with adult satisfaction. ‘Oh, all right. So long as you put it out before they come to bed. They can see the light under the door, you know. And go and wash your hands because I was told to tell you.'

Isobel went quietly, because of Margaret's kindness about the light.

The birthday still cast its shadow, in spite of Holmes and Watson. While she ate her tea, she was thinking how wonderful it would be if beside her bed in the morning she found a huge box wrapped in paper, with a big bow and a card that said
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ISOBEL
. She would try to lift it but it would be too heavy, so she would rip away the paper and lift the lid, and there would be
The Complete Works of Arthur Conan Doyle
, books and books and books. It was a lovely dream, but then she woke up to reality and felt the worse for it.

After tea she had to play Snap with Margaret and the Mansell girls while she thought about Holmes and Watson and longed to go to bed and read. Bed time came at last and was wonderful; Margaret went to sleep straight away, so she put her clothes on the floor in front of the crack at the bottom of the door and read until she was nearly asleep and could just stay awake long enough to put out the light.

She woke early and thought at once, with tightened heart, ‘Don't look. It isn't any use.' Then she remembered the tree ceremony, which she had better perform before anyone else was up. Quickly she put on yesterday's clothes and ran outside to the fig tree, but when she reached it she saw a pair of legs dangling and there was Caroline, sitting on a low branch looking down at her.

‘You're up early.'

Isobel wanted to say, ‘So are you,' but other words were too pressing on her tongue. She said instead, ‘Can I tell you a secret? You're not to tell anyone else.'

Caroline's eyes lit with interest. ‘Sure. Go on.'

‘It's my birthday today.'

‘That's not a secret.' Caroline was disappointed and resentful. ‘Birthdays aren't secrets. Not ever.'

‘Well, mine is. How do you know, anyhow? Plenty of people might have secret birthdays and you don't know because they are secret.'

‘I don't see why.' Caroline buttoned her lips and shook her head firmly, so that her fat fair plaits swung wide.

‘Well, people have secret weddings, I know that much. In books they have them often. And if you were a baby and you weren't supposed to be born, so you were smuggled away to somebody else, then nobody would know your birthday, so it would be a secret, wouldn't it? What about Moses? I bet nobody knew his birthday.'

Caroline didn't intend to tangle with Moses. She knew less about the content of books than Isobel, but she knew the world better. She said with authority, ‘Somebody always knows.' Then she dropped down from the branch, saying, ‘I think I'll go and see if Joanne's awake. See you later, alligator.' Sauntering across the grass, she turned her head and called, recklessly loud, ‘Many happy returns!'

Isobel would have done better to tell the tree.

She went back to fetch her book, having another celebration in mind—a mean, private one. She was going to hide from her parents until breakfast time, so that if they wanted to wish her a happy birthday they could do it in front of everyone. Or if they liked, they could forget it. All the better if they did—she hated the way they searched her face for signs of sulking, so that they could laugh and say, ‘What a long face on your birthday!' ‘Frown on your birthday, frown all year!', knowing perfectly well that she was miserable because she hadn't got a present.