by Liz Byrski
‘And the dreadful daughter?’
‘Stacey? Not so dreadful, after all. In fact, she turns out to be a perfectly normal, vulnerable human being. Nancy and I have both been amazed at the change in her. I’ll tell you all about that later, though. I want to know about your cottage and the bookshop.’
When Steve put his head around the door, Sally and Robin were eating chocolate and speculating on what Isabel was up to in Europe and when exactly she might be back. ‘Let me have a look at you, Steve,’ Robin said, reaching out a hand to draw him closer to the bed. ‘I want to see if you live up to your advance publicity.’
He took her hand, flushing slightly with embarrassment. ‘All lies,’ he said. ‘I have feet of clay.’
Robin smiled. ‘That’s splendid,’ she said. ‘That makes you one of us. I’m so pleased to meet you at last. Are you surviving the inspections?’
‘Everyone’s been terrific to me so far.’ He grinned. ‘I feel real welcome.’
‘And Perth?’
He turned to look out at the view across to the city. ‘Looks good to me,’ he said. ‘But anywhere with Sally in it looks good to me!’
They walked on down the stairs and out to the car park. ‘I have to find out more from Grace about what this means in the long term,’ Sally said. ‘It looks to me as though it might be a very long time before Robin is able to cope on her own.’
Steve nodded, unlocking the car door, and held up the keys to Sally. ‘Are you driving or am I?’
‘You, please,’ she said. ‘You seem to have taken to it rather well. Do you mind?’
He shook his head and slipped in behind the wheel. ‘What about that guy she was involved with? A judge, wasn’t he? Where’s he in all this?’
‘Out of it completely, it seems,’ Sally said. ‘It’s over, they’re friends, but it won’t go any further.’
Steve started the car and they moved slowly into the traffic heading out of Perth south to Sally’s place. ‘What she said about the cottage,’ Sally asked him, ‘what do you think?’
‘You mean when she offered it to us to stay in?’
‘Yes. Would you like to go?’
‘Honey, I’d love to but this is your call. You may not want to go away at the moment – you just got home. It’d be great to go down there, but you have to decide what feels right. I’m happy whatever I do, just so long as I’m with you.’
Sally hesitated, looking out of the window. ‘She made out that it might just be nice for you to see that part of the state, but I got the feeling she wanted us to go there. It was almost vicarious. As though it brought it closer to her. What do you think?’
‘I told you what I think.’
‘Then let’s go for a few days. Later in the week, perhaps, when we’re over the jet lag and I’ve found out a bit more from Grace.’
‘So what does it all mean, really?’ Robin asked.
‘It means, Robin, that the prognosis is not good,’ said Dr Chin, making a steeple with his fingertips. ‘A few months perhaps, a little more, a little less. Of course there are people who do recover, but it’s unusual.’
‘And there isn’t anything you can do?’ She was feeling stronger today, and having Grace there with her helped.
He shook his head. ‘We can control the pain, and to some extent the other symptoms. But we can’t cure it.’
Robin swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘And in the meantime?’
‘You’re going to have your ups and downs. And they really will be up and down, times when you’ll feel really good and others when it’s rock bottom. In the main you’ll feel pretty weak and you’ll need help. You’ll be very tired, no energy. You’ve had that heart condition for years. What you thought was indigestion was a lot more sinister and the cancer puts your whole system under stress. I think you should resign yourself to the fact that you won’t be able to manage alone.’ He looked across at Grace. ‘You understand, Grace. I don’t want to exaggerate, but Robin will need care.’ Robin saw Grace nod and felt her squeeze her hand. ‘Now the hospital can help you with arrangements. There are various solutions …’
Robin nodded, feeling the exhaustion take over. She had no stamina – she had been sitting there for about fifteen minutes and felt as though she had done an eight-kilometre run.
Dr Chin took her hand. ‘One day at a time, Robin,’ he said quietly. ‘One day at a time. That’s the only way to do it.’
‘Of course you must come to my place,’ Grace said once Robin was back in bed. ‘We can plan from then on. We’ll manage something … together.’
Robin looked at her and smiled. ‘No, Grace, you don’t want that and neither do I. You know it’s not the answer. It’s wonderful of you but it can’t be that way. You have to have your new life and I don’t want to be dependent on you –’
‘But you have to have somewhere to go when they discharge you.’
‘Maybe, but only temporarily. You must be clear about that. This is not a long-term arrangement. This is not what the last year has been about for you or for me. The other thing is, I don’t want to be in Perth. It’s too close to all the things I want to escape from. I want to go south again, that’s my home now.’
‘So how do you think you’ll cope?’
Robin smiled again. She felt calm somehow, and was thinking more clearly. ‘Dear Grace, you hate being in this hospital, don’t you!’
Grace looked like a child caught stealing from the cookie jar. ‘How can you tell?’
‘It’s just … well, it’s just so obvious. You’re dying to straighten the sheets, or fill the water jug or take my temperature.’
Grace gave a wry smile. ‘You’re too smart by far, Robin. I thought I was doing rather well.’
‘You’re doing wonderfully but I can see it’s a struggle for you. Your days of looking after other people are over, Grace. You’re awfully good at it but there are other things you want to do now.’
Grace nodded. ‘But I don’t want to let you down.’
Robin laughed. ‘You’ve never let anyone down in your life and you’re not doing it now. Help me work out something else. Look, I’m not hard up, maybe I could find a retired woman, a nurse or a carer, who’d share the cottage with me.’
‘Could you cope with that? A stranger living with you? You’ve lived alone for years.’
‘It’s a compromise I may have to make,’ Robin said. ‘There are other possibilities that are worse. I need to be able to talk about it without you feeling guilty or thinking you’re letting me down. The best thing you can do for me now, Grace, is to let go of feeling responsible for me and just help me sort it out.’
Grace bit her lip and looked away, nodding. ‘You’re right, of course. We need to look at all the possibilities.’ She laughed suddenly and looked back at Robin. ‘We’ll do it your way, Robin. I promise not to take you prisoner!’
Robin lay back and closed her eyes. She thought about Sally and Steve, who seemed as much at ease as people who’d been together for years but were just as much in love as when they first met. She thought about the way Steve put his arm around Sally’s shoulders as they left, the way he looked into her face, smiled at her, and she wondered what it was like to have something so perfect, so comfortable. It had never been like that for her. Decades of avoiding relationships, and then Jim. Well, she thought, some people get it right and others just don’t. Almost a week had passed since Dr Chin had laid out the situation to her and she still had no solution, but tonight she was too tired to think about it anymore. She was tired, always tired.
‘We’ll go to your place for the weekend,’ Sally had said a couple of days earlier. ‘Is there anything you’d like us to do while we’re there?’
‘I just want you to see it,’ she’d replied. ‘Be in it. It’ll give me so much pleasure to think of you there. Come back and tell me about the light on the water in the early morning, the smell of the ocean and the gulls strutting about on the rail around the deck. And see if Maurice is okay. I think he�
�s moved in with Dorothy and Ted at the shop.’
‘I’ll take some photographs,’ Sally said, ‘and we thought we’d go on to Albany for a couple of nights.’
‘Yes, yes please. And go to the bookshop, talk to the Tranters. They’ve been so good to stay on. Tell them I’ll have something worked out soon. I can give you the name of the guesthouse where I stayed.’
They would be in the cottage now, Robin thought, curled up together by the fire. It was June and she had never seen it in June. The tears squeezed out between her closed eyelids. It was so unfair. She had done everything right, left Jim, made her own life, and now it was all being taken away. The cancer was a thief in the night, a thief who crept in while she slept and took everything she cherished. She wanted to rage against it but she didn’t have the strength. There had been so many visitors – Grace this morning, then Alec with the draft of her will.
Visitors were so tiring. She wanted to see them all and then wanted them to go away because she had no energy for them. She was trying so hard to be strong, to convince them that she was okay, to banish the anxiety from their eyes by trying to keep the conversation light. It was hard work but she kept doing it, because perhaps by convincing them she could convince herself. She wondered what time it was – ten o’clock perhaps, ten-thirty? Steve and Sally would be asleep in her bed. It was a place for lovers and for very special friends. She imagined them there, the Gang of Four, cooking breakfasts in the kitchen, talking by the fire, walking up the cliff path and scattering their sand-clogged bathers and thongs across the deck. She was too tired to open her eyes to look at the clock. From the corridor she heard the low rumble of a trolley, and the phone rang at the reception desk. The door of her room was opened, the rubber sound excluder swishing heavily on the floor. She feigned sleep, not wanting to talk to the nurse, but then sensed that it was not a nurse and that someone was standing very still close to the bed.
She opened her eyes suddenly and Jim jumped in surprise. ‘I thought you were sleeping, Robin,’ he whispered. He looked strangely uncomfortable in the hospital room, his usual confidence missing.
Robin dragged herself into a sitting position and he moved forward to help her with the pillows. ‘How did you get in at this time of night?’ she asked.
‘I just walked in. No one attempted to stop me.’ He smiled. ‘I guess I’ll be discovered and evicted shortly. I came straight from the airport.’
‘Father Pat called you?’
He nodded. ‘I was in London, at a conference. I was able to juggle the bookings and get back a few days early.’ He sat down on the bed, his hand on her arm. ‘I’m so sorry, Rob. I don’t really know what to say to you.’
Robin shook her head and looked away, finally unable to control the great well of sadness that had been growing inside her, sadness about her illness but most of all about lost dreams, the dreams they had had together, the dreams she’d had for her life after him. She began to cry and couldn’t stop. Jim leaned forward and took her in his arms and she sobbed harder at the feel of him holding her, the familiar scent of his skin, the way he stroked her head and rocked her gently.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she told him, barely comprehensible through her sobs. ‘I just don’t know what to do. I can’t be brave about this anymore.’
And he said nothing, just kept holding her, letting her cry until her sobs waned and she was too exhausted to cry any longer. He laid her back against the pillows and wrung out a face cloth in cool water, and gently wiped her face, which was burning from the tears, and he sat holding her hand until she fell asleep.
TWENTY-FIVE
Isabel had wondered how she would fill the time until she could head back to Portugal. Doug’s visit had left her restless and anxious. She worried about how much she had hurt him and how he would feel once back at home. She called him more often, and he sounded as he had before he left Nuremberg: vulnerable, cautious and uncharacteristically introspective. He was very different from the ebullient, energetic man who had arrived on her doorstep on Christmas morning. He listened more attentively, and he asked her to find an Internet café in Nuremberg. He needed to write some of his thoughts to her and wanted to do it by email. He was busy, the new minister was an alarmist without the knowledge and background of his predecessor, so it meant more work for Doug and a great deal more irritation and frustration. He asked her again to come home early and again she told him she would return by June.
She had spent most of her life doing the right thing, being a good girl, first for her grandparents and then for Eunice. Her only real misdemeanour had been her period of hostility to Eric. The good girl had invariably let Doug call the tune. But she couldn’t do it anymore. She was through with passivity and being taken for granted. Doug loved her, of that she was sure, just as sure as she was of her own love for him, but the relationship had to change if that love was to survive. Returning early with her own journey unfinished would destroy the future.
She made the most of Klaus’s willingness to act as a guide, reading and learning about the history of Nuremberg and Hesse, and taking trips to Berlin and Munich. She enrolled for a six-week course in German and contacted some women from the 5W network. She had already acquired some of the language and began to feel at home in Germany, enjoying the people and the disciplined way that things got done. By the end of March, by which time she’d still had no word of Antonia’s return, it was growing warmer, the snow was gone and there were signs of spring. The air was cold and some mornings there was still a fine film of frost covering the grass in the park, but the evenings were becoming lighter and the sun began to deliver some warmth.
In the first week of April a letter arrived from Antonia. Her sister had died, she said, and she would be flying back to Portugal in ten days time. Isabel began to pack. She called Sara, arranging to spend a few days in Cascais before going on to Monsaraz, and Klaus drove her to the station and carried her bag onto the platform.
‘Ach! Isabel, I shall miss you very much. I wish I can make you stay here.’ ‘
I’ll miss you too, Klaus,’ she said, hugging him. ‘You’ve been wonderful. Promise me you’ll come to Australia soon?’
‘Ja, of course,’ he grinned. ‘I love to come if Doug lets me, if he no longer thinks I have dishonourable intentions towards his wife.’
‘He no longer thinks that.’ She laughed.
‘Then he is not wise,’ Klaus said. ‘My intentions are always dishonourable, but I keep them to myself. But truly, Isabel, I love to come. Maybe I come to have a hot Christmas like you have a cold one.’
‘I think,’ said Sara, ‘that I should start a consultancy service for women who want to travel. You looked good when you left here but now that you’ve grown into the look, it suits you even better.’
‘You probably saved my life,’ Isabel told her. ‘I wonder how far I’d have got with all those shoes and a complete wardrobe for all seasons.’
She had taken the train from Lisbon and Sara had walked to Cascais station to meet her. ‘I had a call from Antonia this morning,’ she said, waving down a cab to take them home. ‘She wants to know when to expect you. I told her she can’t have you just yet. I’ve been so looking forward to your visit and her brother’s there at the moment. I hear you met him in Nuremberg.
Isabel swung her bag into the boot of the taxi and climbed into the back seat beside Sara. ‘Her brother? Yes, I met him. I only really said hello and then he ignored me for the rest of the evening.’
‘She told me about him when we met. Did I tell you I had lunch with her a couple of times? I don’t think they get on all that well. Antonia says he’s very cold and silent, but women find him incredibly attractive – they fall at his feet.’
‘Can’t imagine what sort of women. Masochists, probably,’ Isabel said, gazing out of the taxi window across the sea wall to the sunlit ocean. ‘It’s so lovely and warm here. German winters are a bit challenging when you’re not used to them.’
She was impatient n
ow. She wanted a resolution and wanted it quickly. But she was disinclined to head for Monsaraz while José was still there. Easter came and went. The streets, calm and solemn on Good Friday, were filled with coloured lights and music on Sunday. Statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary led lively processions, trailed by small children dressed for first communion, white prayer books clutched in their white-gloved hands.
‘José has gone,’ Sara announced in the week after Easter as Isabel walked back into the house with a bag of groceries. ‘The coast is clear! Antonia would like you to call her and tell her when you will arrive.’
‘I’m going on Friday,’ Isabel told her after she had made the call. ‘I’m going to walk down to the station to book my ticket. Want to come with me and have a coffee on the way back?’
They strolled together along the main street, watching tourists queue for a sightseeing tour in an open pony carriage. ‘Strange, really,’ Isabel said, staring at the carriage as it disappeared down a side street. ‘José, I mean. He and Antonia are so different. She’s so gentle and gracious, and he’s so distant and stand-offish.’
‘Apparently there’s some big skeleton in the cupboard from years ago. Seems they were very close as kids but they had some big fight when they were adults and it never quite got put back together after that.’
Isabel stepped up to the booth and ordered her ticket. ‘So what was the fight about?’
Sara shrugged, waiting for Isabel to put away her change. ‘Dunno, she didn’t say really – but a woman, I think. It was yonks ago. José was working in France, the Riviera somewhere – Nice, I think – and she went up there to see him and … Oh look, that’s all I know. But apparently it was all pretty dramatic at the time.’
Isabel’s skin prickled. ‘How long ago?’