Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop Read Online Free PDF Page B

Stephen?’
    Since he seemed to want her to like Stephen, she was inclined to say no, out of peevishness over the lost supper, but there was something about Robbie—he was so guileless that it would be a mean trick. He made himself so open to attack that one was never inclined to attack him.
    ‘Mmm.’ She added fretfully, ‘I’m starving.’
    ‘Come on, then. I’ll buy you a pie. There’s bound to be something open along here. We’ll eat a pie in the park.’
    Robbie did not seem to be at all downcast by the failure of the party. He seemed oddly excited.
    They had reached the main road, passed a few of the ejected guests waiting at the tram stop and went on till they found a lighted milk bar where Robbie paused to read the notice in the window.
    ‘Fresh sandwiches, sausage rolls, hot pies. I should say the sandwiches are probably about as fresh as the notice. I think it had better be pies. Is that all right with you?’
    She nodded, although the word ‘pie’ brought cold sweat to her forehead. She must discipline herself. Pies are food. I must eat. This is hunger, only hunger.
    While Robbie was buying the pies, she leaned against the window, breathing deeply.
    He came out carrying two paper bags. As he handed one of them to her, he bowed and said, with odd formality, ‘Will you accept this pie as a token of my devotion?’ He breathed deeply and said in a quick breath, ‘Dearest Isobel!’
    She knew at once, of course. She saw them laughing together after her departure; they must have been laughing at her. Never had heard love talk, poor girl. Have to do something about that. He wouldn’t have thought of it by himself; they must have put him up to it, told him that it would be a service to literature.
    ‘What sort of fool do you take me for?’ she shouted. ‘Do you think I don’t know what you’re at? Who put you up to this?’
    His jaw sagged and he looked at her like a loon. When he had got his face under control, she saw a brief, dead sadness in it. She had done murder. Even if it was of a little thing like a light in the eye, death was still death, the irremediable absence. Nothing would bring that light back, ever again.
    Thought and pain returned to his face. His lips trembled; he turned away quickly and hurried in the direction from which they had come.
    She stood in an absolute blackness and bleakness, the pie in her hand like a warm little corpse growing colder. At last she thought with disgust, ‘But I have to eat. Like a horse munching its way through a bunch of roses it doesn’t know the meaning of, that would go on munching even if it knew, because horses must eat.’
    In spite of the blackness and bleakness, she was relieved. They were safety. Better to lose now than to be always anxious, waiting for the blow to fall. Robbie was safe, too. Imagine Robbie’s cheerful, direct gaze reaching into that black desert.
    She couldn’t finish the pie after all. She threw it into the gutter and walked on until light and the sound of known voices drew her through the open door of a pub lounge.
    She bought a beer at the bar though her gorge rose at the smell of it. The lounge was a small room, nearly empty. Seven guests from the aborted party at the McIvors’ were sitting round two small tables pushed together.
    In spite of the empty spaces, two withered, brightly coloured old women were sitting sipping gin close by, as if they needed and got some comfort from the crowding.
    She wanted after all to sit alone, but the group was moving chairs to let her in. They acknowledged her with brief smiles, then went back to the talk about Liza.
    Was this a genuine breakdown, or a way of telling Duncan she was overworked? Why not both? Wasn’t a breakdown always a way of telling somebody something?
    ‘I feel so guilty,’ said one of the women.
    Perhaps Liza had had that in mind, too.
    ‘But it was the standard she set,’ said another. ‘I never dared to offer help. It was Liza the perfect cook, Liza the