I for Isobel by Amy Witting

Author:Amy Witting [Witting, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: CLASSIC FICTION
ISBN: 9781922148742
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2014-01-29T05:00:00+00:00

5 • I FOR ISOBEL

Isobel woke up out of a blue and gold dream: a sheltered bay, shining water, little boats drifting like thoughts.

She was staring at a strange ceiling. She shut her eyes and tried to snuggle back into the dream but it was too late; it had dwindled to its source, the breath of the young man asleep beside her as it beat, soft and warm, on her shoulder.

Eyes open, back to the ceiling: ornate plaster, baskets of flowers linked by swags of ribbon, a stain in one corner, yellow, like…sunshine? butter? honey? paler than pumpkin, darker than pee. Dirty old daylight, if there was a word.

There are words. Words we have plenty of, nasty little buzzing insects that they are. Awake two minutes and the word factory is at it already. And you at the loom, zoom, zoom.

It was going to be a bad day.

It’s a stain-coloured stain and shut up.

The stain advanced like a finger on the soured white plaster. In the corner a clotted cobweb softer than dust. Like Miss Havisham’s wedding cake.

She would have to expect a bad day, after last night. Thrown out, from Kate’s place. Told to bugger off and not come back.

Well, you were always wondering whether you’d go to Kate’s place or not—that’s one question settled. But thrown out! Ouch!

Don’t try to laugh it off, it was ouch! all right, walking that long mile to the door with knees unhinged and each foot weighing a ton.

Just the same, that story Fred was telling was repulsive. Like a long cold snake it slid meandering through an underground littered with the private rubbish of the human body. That was the sentence she had been working on last night, to keep her mind off the story, so her grin must have slipped and that had given Kate the chance to pounce. But she must have been waiting to pounce, beforehand, to pick a thing like that. OK, she was at the bellicose stage but there were other people who were listening with fixed grins, out of politeness.

Politeness cropped up in some funny places.

Not with Kate, though.

‘Who the hell do you think you are, sitting there with that superior look on your face? If you don’t like what you hear at my place get out, go on, bugger off and don’t come back. You only come here anyhow to see what you can pick up.’

The hideous speech rang in her head again and she thought a hardy ouch! to drown a whimper.

Superior. If they only knew!

The funny thing was that Kate didn’t seem to think much of the story either, and by the third paragraph Fred was sounding strained and needed rescue. As for picking people up—that was why quite a few people went to Kate’s, but Isobel knew that what was tolerated in other people was not forgiven in her. She very much wished to know why this was so.

The remark about picking people up must have sent this Michael after her, to

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