Gang of Four

by Liz Byrski

  Robin dropped her bag in Grace’s spare room and splashed cold water over her face. She suddenly felt relaxed and refreshed. She had dreaded an inquisition from Grace about the lump, about her health, about Jim, and none of it had materialised. She brushed her hair in front of the mirror, staring intently at her reflection. The anger of the morning had dissipated. She was looking forward to spending the Easter weekend with Grace, remembering the pleasure of her friends and realising how much she had missed them. She picked up her jacket and ran down the stairs. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let’s go.’

  ‘I thought we might go to Fremantle for fish and chips,’ Grace said.

  ‘Fish and chips! You? You always grumbled about it. You like designer food and trendy coffee shops.’

  ‘I do, but these days I like lots of things I usen’t to. And this is the new me – I’m trying to economise. Have you heard from the others? You know Sally’ll be back in a few weeks …’

  On Tuesday morning Robin had coffee with Alec Seaborn and the woman who had bought her share of the partnership. Diana Hooper was in her mid thirties, plump, plain and bristling with energy that seemed to spark and crackle around her. She had an engaging manner and Robin suspected she was also tough and uncompromising. Diana, clearly fired up by her new business venture, could barely sit still long enough to drink her coffee.

  ‘She’s going to wear me out,’ Alec said wryly when she left the table to take a call on her mobile. ‘D’you remember when we were like that, Robin? When you first came here?’

  ‘I was thinking of exactly that.’ She smiled. ‘And thinking that I’m glad all that ambition and drive are over for me.’

  Alec shook his head and put more sugar in his coffee. ‘I’m beginning to think it may be over for me too,’ he said. ‘It’s all starting to seem a bit much. I’m thinking maybe you’ve got the right idea, Robin.’

  She wandered back through the city shops and splashed out on new moisturiser and a pair of beautiful pyjamas in fine white Indian cotton. Grace was getting lunch and after that Robin thought she would call Dr Chin’s rooms. All being well, she had planned to head back home this afternoon but Grace had persuaded her to stay another night and leave early the next morning.

  Grace was on the phone when Robin got in. ‘Oh look, don’t hang up,’ she said. ‘Robin’s just walked in.’ She held the receiver out to her. ‘Dr Chin for you. He called the mobile but you didn’t answer.’

  Robin’s insides did a somersault. She took the phone from Grace and sank onto the nearby chair while Grace went out to the kitchen, filling the kettle and cutting thick slices of rye bread for their lunch.

  ‘What news?’ she asked, looking up as Robin’s shadow fell across the kitchen doorway.

  Robin stood white-faced. ‘He wants to see me right away. Like now. He wouldn’t say anything else.’ She swallowed hard. ‘It’s bad, isn’t it, or he’d have told me?’

  Grace put down the bread knife. ‘Well, it’s probably not the best. You’re going now?’

  Robin nodded. ‘I wondered if you’d come …’

  ‘Of course,’ Grace said, taking off her apron. ‘I’ll drive.’ And she urged Robin towards the door. ‘C’mon, Robin, bring your bag. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’

  She put her arm through Robin’s and led her out of the apartment building to the car park, urging her gently into the front seat of the car.

  TWENTY-TWO

  When Isabel found herself face to face with Antonia in Klaus’s kitchen on Christmas Eve, she was galvanised by the same intensity of feeling she had experienced in the cloisters at Évora. Antonia, elegant in a long-sleeved, long-skirted black wool dress, her silver hair knotted in a loose bun at the nape of her neck, was sitting on the edge of the kitchen table talking to a distinguished-looking man who leaned against the draining board. As Klaus ushered Isabel into the kitchen Antonia turned and slid from the table, setting down her glass. ‘Isabel,’ she said, moving towards her. ‘I am so happy to see you again,’ and she reached out both hands.

  Isabel’s mouth was dry, her face flushed with shock. ‘Antonia,’ she said. ‘I’d no idea … Klaus didn’t say …’

  ‘Of course not, Isabel. As I tell you now, I didn’t know until this afternoon,’ Klaus said. ‘But it’s a wonderful surprise, is it not?’

  Antonia put her hands on Isabel’s arms and leaned forward to kiss her. Isabel’s cheek burned at the kiss and she struggled to return it.

  ‘It was a sudden decision, Isabel,’ Antonia said. ‘My brother José, he lives here, and he is going to visit our sister in America, she is very sick. I decided to meet him here in Nuremberg and travel with him. Please, let me introduce you,’ and she drew Isabel across the kitchen. José bowed slightly and shook hands. He was older than Antonia and the likeness was unmistakable, but he had a coldness about him that made him seem totally different from his sister. Isabel felt strangely unnerved and intimidated – José was formally polite but not particularly friendly, and later he seemed to be deliberately ignoring her.

  Isabel was tongue-tied. For months she had conducted an intimate imaginary life of the heart and mind with Antonia. She had so often rehearsed the conversations they would have when they met again, the way she would demand answers, the feelings she would try to express, but now she was awkward, embarrassed. She felt like she had as a teenager, when she’d had a crush on an older girl at school. The intense and intimate friendship she had nurtured in her imagination then suddenly seemed foolish and naive when she found herself alone with the object of her affection in a railway carriage. She had been gauche and awkward, and she felt the same way now.

  Klaus and José herded them back into the dining room where, along with the other guests, they took their seats at the table. Isabel found herself on Klaus’s right while Antonia sat on his left. Close enough for casual conversation, too far apart for anything significant. The young man on Isabel’s right was a philosophy lecturer with perfect English who was fascinated by Australia. At the far end of the table, José was deep in conversation with Klaus’s cousin, a doctor from Mannheim. Antonia’s eye contact was steady, with no sign of the defensiveness of the last days in Monsaraz, but as the evening wore on, it was clear that this was not an occasion for intimate conversation.

  ‘I must see you again. I need to talk to you – alone,’ she told Antonia as they sat by the fire after dinner.

  ‘Of course we must talk,’ Antonia replied. ‘But José and I fly to New York the day after tomorrow. I don’t know … perhaps you are free tomorrow afternoon? It is Christmas Day, but –’

  ‘Yes,’ Isabel cut in. ‘Tomorrow afternoon will be fine. Where shall we meet?’

  ‘I know the apartment where you are staying,’ Antonia said. ‘If you wish, I can come there at four o’clock?’

  ‘Please. That will be perfect. I need to ask you some questions, Antonia.’

  ‘And I owe you an explanation and an apology. Tomorrow then.’

  Back in her apartment Isabel, though exhausted by the mixture of excitement and anxiety, was too keyed up to sleep. She made tea and sat in her dressing gown in the darkened lounge watching the snow falling silently on the rooftops of Nuremberg. She finally fell into bed just after four – twelve hours to wait. She had nothing planned for Christmas Day and was relishing the idea of spending it alone. Perhaps she would walk to the cathedral to listen to the mass, wander the snowy streets, a silent observer enjoying her solitude. Antonia had not been part of the plan, but for Isabel there could have been no more perfect addition to Christmas Day.

  It was the front doorbell that woke her and she sat up bleary-eyed in the strange, steely white light of a snow-filled sky slanting between the gap in the curtains. The bell rang again and, wondering who on earth could be visiting her at nine o’clock on Christmas morning, she swung her legs out of bed and pulled her dressing gown around her. ‘Ja, ja, ich komme, ich komme,’ she called, making her way to the door and pressing her eye to the viewing hole. Doug was stan
ding in the hallway.

  ‘Surprise, surprise! Merry Christmas, darling!’ he cried, dragging his suitcase across the threshold and wrapping her in a bear hug. ‘It’s bloody cold here, isn’t it, but the snow’s wonderful. Here I am, a gift from Father Christmas. I bet you didn’t expect to see me this morning. I’m dying for a coffee and some breakfast. They feed you absolute crap on these flights.’

  Isabel ran her hand through her hair and tightened the belt of her dressing gown. ‘You’re not due for another week,’ she ventured, leading him through into the kitchen.

  ‘Ah, but I thought I’d surprise you. Are you suitably surprised?’

  ‘I’m gobsmacked,’ she said. ‘I thought you wanted to have Christmas the same as always for everyone.’

  ‘Right! When I first booked I was going to spend Christmas at home, but Deb said that Mac’s parents were coming over from England so they might just stay home at their place. Then Mum and Dad decided they were going to Bali for Christmas, for a change.’

  ‘What about the others?’ she asked, busying herself with the coffee plunger as she tried to pull herself together.

  ‘Well, Kate and Jason decided to go to his parents in Noosa and as for Luke, well, he didn’t seem too bothered. He and this new girlfriend seemed quite happy to go off somewhere on their own.’

  ‘So much for not being able to do anything different at Christmas,’ Isabel said, instantly ashamed of the harshness of her tone, but it went unnoticed by Doug, who was high on his own arrival. She was a mass of conflicting emotions: delighted to see him, annoyed at the unexpected intrusion and the assumption that she would be thrilled to see him whenever he chose to turn up. Touched by his wish to please her, she was also angry that he took it for granted that he could walk in on her, surprise her in a way that turned her plans upside down. She had always suspected surprises were for the gratification of the surpriser rather than the surprisee, and now her suspicions were confirmed. Doug’s ebullience bounced off the walls of the formerly peaceful apartment as he scattered the contents of his suitcase across the floor, searching for gifts from the family, photographs he had brought for her, a thicker pair of socks for his cold feet.

  Isabel steeled herself, pulled eggs and thinly sliced German ham from the fridge and began to cook breakfast for the first time in months.

  ‘You look fantastic, Iz,’ he told her finally, mopping up egg from his plate with a piece of rye bread. ‘Even in the dressing gown. You’ve lost weight, haven’t you?’

  She nodded, glad that he’d noticed, wanting suddenly to shower and dress and appear as her new remodelled self.

  ‘I have, and I had my hair cut. Look, I’ll go and have a shower and get dressed. Do you want to rest or what?’

  ‘No, I slept for eight hours on the flight, I’m raring to go. I’ll have a wash and you can show me the lie of the land. What’ll we do today?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Well, why don’t we go for a walk in the snow? I’ll show you a bit of Nuremberg and then … I have to meet someone this afternoon. She’s coming here but I’ll take her out for a coffee and you can have a sleep.’

  ‘No,’ he cried, slipping his arm around her waist. ‘Put her off, tell her your husband just arrived, she’ll understand; it’s Christmas, after all. I don’t want to sleep, I want to spend the day with you,’ he said, kissing her.

  ‘We’ll see,’ she said, moving away. ‘I don’t want to change it. You sort your stuff out, there’s plenty of room in the wardrobe. I won’t be long.’

  She stood in the shower in a state of shock, scalding water streaming down her body, wondering how she would handle the rest of the day. She felt invaded, yet she knew that her reaction would seem small-minded and hurtful. She ought to be delighted to see him. In the past she would have been thrilled at his early return from a business trip. But something had changed. She had reclaimed some part of herself, some personal space that was clear to her and not to Doug; she needed him to understand it before he crashed through any more boundaries, but didn’t know how to tell him so soon after his arrival without hurting him.

  ‘Well!’ he exclaimed as she went back into the kitchen dressed now in black pants and the deep purple sweater she had bought on arrival in Germany. ‘You really have lost weight, and your hair looks terrific. So this is what happens when you get rid of the old man for a few months.’ He got up from the floor where he was unpacking his case and put his arms around her. ‘We could always spend the day in bed,’ he whispered, rubbing his cheek against hers. ‘It’s been a very long time.’

  Isabel froze. There were rivers to cross before she could return to the old intimacy. She feigned a laugh and pushed him gently away, running her hand through his hair. ‘Nuremberg first,’ she said. ‘I could do with some fresh air. I had a very short night. Find your walking boots and we’ll get going.’

  They walked together through the lightly falling snow, across the bridge that spanned the glassy surface of the river, up the hill to the castle brooding snow-clad above the city. They stopped to listen to a busker playing Christmas carols on bagpipes, and ventured inside the door of the cathedral to hear the choir singing the Christmas mass. And as the time moved on, Isabel’s resentment grew. Doug was revelling in every moment, talking constantly, telling her news of the past months in the department, a change of minister that had required him to brief and support the new arrival. There were problems with the plumbing in Deb and Mac’s new house. His parents had won seven thousand dollars on the lottery, hence the trip to Bali. The grandchildren seemed to be growing fast.

  ‘Did you bring my letters from Grace, Sally and Robin?’ she asked as they stopped for hot chocolate where she had sat with Klaus.

  ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘They’re in my bag. By the way, I ran into Jim McEwan a few weeks ago. That rumour I told you about him and Robin was true – did you know that?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I knew.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t tell me. Anyway, I was at the opening of the new court building and he buttonholed me. Wanted to know if you would know where Robin was, so I told him she was down south. Couldn’t remember where at the time, but when I got home I remembered you mentioned on the phone that she was in Danderup Bay, so I called him back to let him know. It’s only a tiny place, it wouldn’t have been too difficult for him to find her there.’

  Isabel froze. ‘You mean you told him where to find her?’

  He nodded, draining his cup and pouring some more chocolate from the jug. ‘Yes, he was very happy about that. I like Jim. Not keen on his wife, though, so I thought that was good about Robin and him.’

  ‘She went away deliberately,’ Isabel said, hearing the ice in her voice. ‘She asked him not to get in touch. To leave her alone.’

  Doug shrugged. ‘Well, I wasn’t to know that. She’ll probably be delighted to see him. Did you cancel your friend, by the way?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t want to cancel her,’ she said, unable to keep the edge from her voice. ‘She’s leaving for New York tomorrow.’

  ‘It can’t be so urgent it can’t wait until she gets back. What is it – just a girls’ chat on Christmas Day? Is that more important than your husband who you haven’t seen for months?’

  She felt herself about to snap. ‘I can’t suddenly change everything because you’ve arrived a week early, Doug,’ she began. ‘If you’d let me know –’

  ‘If I’d let you know, Izzy, I couldn’t have surprised you, could I? Surely you can sort out this woman so we can spend our first day together. After all, it’s not work or anything important. Just give her a call when we get back and tell her not to come.’

  Isabel couldn’t trust herself to reply. They walked on, Doug still oblivious to her mood, still high on jet lag and the novelty of his surprise. Perhaps he would crash soon, she thought, the flight and the time difference catching up with him. But his energy level remained high as hers evaporated. She was short of sleep, and her desire to see Antonia and her anxiety over how she
could get time alone with her was all-consuming. It was almost three-thirty as they let themselves back into the apartment.

  ‘Can you let me have some marks, please,’ he said. ‘I’ll change some traveller’s cheques tomorrow. And we should give the kids a ring as it’s Christmas Day. What time is it back home? I can’t work it out. Should we call now or later? Is Bali on the same time as WA or is it different –’

  ‘Doug,’ she said, dropping her keys on the hall table, ‘stop. Please stop. Back off, I can’t take this.’

  He looked at her in amazement. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This, this whole thing. You arriving out of the blue, walking in on me. Taking me over like this. You can’t just turn up and expect everything to stop, and me to be like I was seven months ago. It’s different now.’

  He hung his coat on the hall stand and rubbed his hands together. She could see that she did not really have his attention. He was still too caught up in himself.

  ‘Different? Why is it different?’

  ‘Well,’ she began, nervous now, unsure how to phrase it. ‘I’ve been living a very different life, things have changed for me. I wasn’t expecting you, I need time to adjust.’

  ‘Isabel, we’re married, you don’t have to worry about adjusting to me. This is us, you and me. I’ve missed you, a hell of a lot. If you went away to make me appreciate you, it worked, so you can come back now.’

  He laughed affectionately, patting her bottom as he moved past her, and anger shot through her like a bullet. She wondered if he had always been this impenetrable, this immune to how she was feeling. She couldn’t remember if she had felt like this before. She was tired, confused, the past was a blur. Perhaps the way he was acting was just a strange combination of months of separation and the buzz that some people get with air travel.