I for Isobel Read Online Free Page A

I for Isobel
Book: I for Isobel Read Online Free
Author: Amy Witting
Tags: Classic fiction
Pages:
Go to
she sat on her bed, reading and looking from time to time at the brooch, unwrapping and wrapping it carefully each time.
    The sound of her mother’s quick, foreboding tread made her push the box in a panic under her pillow. Now, she remembered: she had been told not to tell, and she had told. She had told Caroline, who had told Mr Mansell, and retribution was coming, as her mother advanced with set face and luminous glare and began to slap her, muttering, ‘Don’t you dare to cry. Ungrateful little bitch. Don’t you-dare-to-cry. You little swine, thankless little swine, you couldn’t say thank you, couldn’t even say thank you.’ Slap, slap. ‘Don’t open your mouth, don’t you dare to cry.’
    There was not much to cry about, for her mother’s intentions were far more violent than her blows. Her hands flapped weakly as if she was fighting against a cage of air. She straightened up and drew breath. ‘Mr Mansell rowed right across the lake to get you that brooch and you couldn’t take the trouble to say thank you. It’s no use going anywhere with you; you bring disgrace on us wherever we go. Ah, it’s no use. Words are wasted on you, gawping there like an idiot.’ She put her hands to her head and walked out in despair.
    Isobel took the box from under the pillow, took out the brooch and looked at it while she rubbed her stinging legs. Why hadn’t her mother taken the brooch? It would have been so easy. Isobel could even supply the words she had dreaded to hear: ‘Give me that, you don’t deserve to have it. Come on, give it to me.’ Why hadn’t she said them? Could it be that there were things her mother couldn’t do?
    That idea was too large to be coped with. She put it away from her, but she took the brooch and pinned it carefully to the neck of her dress. It was hers now, all right. She went and looked at it in the glass and stood admiring it. In one way or another, she would be wearing it all her life.

2 • FALSE IDOLS AND A FIREBALL
    Isobel could honestly swear that she did see a fireball once. It was long ago, when she was quite small. Coming from school she was caught in a thrashing rainstorm and when she reached the house she found it locked and empty, so she was standing in the yard ankle-deep in water when the sky cracked and this pink ball came streaking past and then the water she was standing in turned rosy red. She could swear to that, although fireball became another word for lie and the rosy water was dammed up forever behind a wall of derisive laughter. In the days before she conquered enthusiasm she would sometimes come running in crying, ‘Guess what I saw!’ and her mother would say, ‘A fireball?’, sliding a glance of sophisticated amusement towards any other occupant of the room, for it was a well-known joke.
    In another mood, Mrs Callaghan would say shortly, ‘Thought you saw,’ and sometimes she would hear Isobel out, then begin to question her: ‘Where did this happen? When? What happened then? Now I thought you said…’, ending always, ‘You don’t know, do you? You don’t know whether you’re telling the truth or not,’ with a sigh of resignation.
    It was well established that Isobel was a liar. When asked, ‘Did you spend your mission money on chocolate, Isobel?’ she would say no, though she had, and Mrs Callaghan would send a contemptuous knowing glance towards her elder daughter Margaret, who had brought home the information, while Margaret would look back with her mouth sagging and her eyes full of misery, then turn on Isobel the same look, a real blackout curtain of sorrow. Isobel did not expect to be believed, but she felt that a lie was the only contribution she could make to the respectability of the occasion. She lived well enough herself with her cowardice, her dishonesty and her greed, but others had to be protected from the shock
Go to

Readers choose