by Liz Byrski
‘You’re reading the book, though,’ he said nodding towards The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which sat on the bedside cabinet.
‘Well, something like this does make you think about forces greater than ourselves – what comes next, all of that. Have you read it?’
‘I have.’
‘And?’
‘Wise and comforting, I think. After all, when it comes down to it we really know nothing. It’s only a matter of the details of belief and the search for meaning.’
‘Maybe you could suggest something else I could read as well.’
‘Of course. I’ll bring something in.’
She selected a forkful of mashed potato and savoured it. ‘The food’s not bad here. Not that I seem to be able to eat much of it. No bacon, though.’
He grinned. ‘I found some first-class bacon in a roadhouse on the way back from Geraldton. I may have to drive you up there to sample it.’
‘It’s a date!
‘Last night I dreamed that I’d died and gone to heaven and I was starting to like it, and then St Peter – well, I guess it was him – came and grabbed me and said I couldn’t stay there because I was reading a book on Buddhism.’
‘I don’t think they’d ban that book in heaven,’ he said, with a grin. ‘But it was a ridiculous dream anyway – they’d never have let you into heaven in the first place.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’re a lawyer. They’re banned.’
She laughed and pushed the plate away. ‘Aren’t you supposed to give me spiritual comfort? I’ll have to complain to the archbishop.’
‘Much good may it do you – he told me that joke himself.’ He got up and moved the tray away. ‘Jim called me. I hear he came to see you.’
Robin leaned back on the pillows and stretched her legs out, pushing her toes down towards the mattress. She was sick of sitting in the bed. ‘Yes, he came. I cried for what seemed like hours and then fell asleep. Then he fell asleep in that chair and got told off by the nurse in the morning. It helped, seeing him. I don’t know why, but somehow he gave me permission not to be strong. Not to pretend to be on top of it all.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Yes. It got a bit out of hand in the morning, though. He started saying he would leave Monica and devote himself to looking after me down at the cottage.’
Father Pat’s eyebrows nearly shot off the top of his head.
‘I know; ridiculous, really, but I believe he meant it when he said it. He always did mean it at the time. Anyway, it’s not what I want, it’s not right and it wouldn’t work for me. I want to see him sometimes but I can’t begin the relationship all over again. I only have enough energy for myself, barely that. Could we go for a bit of a walk?’
Cautiously she turned and hung her legs over the edge of the bed. It always felt as though she would fall down when she put her feet on the floor. Father Pat helped her with her dressing gown and they set off at a slow walk down the corridor.
‘That woman had her mastectomy after me and look at her,’ Robin said. ‘She’s almost back to normal and I’m a wreck.’ The woman was dressed, ready to go home. She was moving carefully but comfortably, her hair done, face lightly made up.
‘Your body has a hell of a lot more to cope with, Robin,’ he said, patting the hand that was hooked onto his arm.
‘Oh, I know, I know. I’m jealous, that’s all. I want to be normal again, I want this to be over and get back to my life. I was having such a good time. Now I know life will never really be normal again – and there may not be much of it left anyway.’
‘I thought you weren’t going to die!’
‘I’m not. It makes a difference, I think, being positive. Don’t you agree?’
He stopped and faced her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think it makes a difference. In some people it’s the crucial difference between life and death, the determination to live. I’ve seen it many times. It defies medicine and science and all expectations.’ He paused. ‘Besides, you’re not allowed to die.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I love you. I told you, I fall in love in most unsuitable ways for a priest.’ He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, and they walked on slowly down the passage.
She could smell the southwest air on their clothes, and their energy breathed life into the bland, colourless room. Their faces were rosy with happiness, shiny from walking in the wind. Sally’s hair was tied in a bulky ponytail, she was light-hearted and more confident. They’re good for each other, Robin thought, really good. Better than Jim and I ever were – perhaps if we’d met earlier, before he was married, perhaps twenty years ago we might have been like that.
She had got up to sit in the chair and they sat on the end of the bed facing her. Life had become a series of shifting scenes with different characters, and she felt as though she was watching herself perform from a great distance. Were these scenes sent to illuminate things for her? Were they just little windows for her to see life outside? She wondered where she had got to with planning for her future care. It all seemed to keep slipping away. Sometimes she couldn’t remember what she had considered and dismissed, and what had seemed a real possibility.
Steve handed her a package of photographs. She opened them and she was back there, on the deck, watching the setting sun, dodging the rabbits as she ran along the clifftop path, strolling down to the shop. Tell me you loved it,’ she said, moving the photographs so that her tears wouldn’t mark them.
‘We loved it,’ Sally said. ‘Even in the storm we loved it.’ She put a little cloth bag on Robin’s lap. ‘From your beach.’
Robin put her hand in the bag and drew out a handful of shells, small stones, bits of driftwood and seaweed. A huge lump rose in her throat as she lifted them to her face and breathed in their aroma. ‘Beautiful,’ she sighed, flicking away the tears. ‘Better than drugs. And Maurice?’
‘In cat heaven,’ Sally said. ‘Dorothy is spoiling him silly.’
‘So did you go to the bookshop as well?’
‘We did,’ Steve said. ‘It’s there in the pictures.’
She went through them slowly. There were shots from every angle, on the street, inside the shop itself, the Tranters sorting books, David on tiptoe at the top of his ladder, Sue talking to Sally, and pictures of the upstairs apartment. ‘So it looks as though you like the shop too. How are David and Sue? They must be fed up with me for not making a decision yet.’
‘They’re fine, Robin,’ Sally said. ‘They understand perfectly, but of course they do want to get away. And we … well, we wanted to talk to you about it. Have you decided what to do yet? Will you keep it or sell it?’
She leaned back in her chair looking down at the photographs. ‘You know, I realise it’s not sensible but I can’t bring myself to sell it quite yet. It would be like giving up. I’ve decided to find someone to run it for me short term. He or she could live in and manage it. Alec Seaborn has said he’ll take all that on – advertise, interview, then get it down to two or three possible people and I can meet them and decide. Eventually I suppose I’ll have to sell it because I’m never going to be able to run it. Don’t you love the way they put those tall, round things with seats and shelves through the shop? It makes it so cosy.’
‘Robin,’ Sally said. ‘If you haven’t found anyone yet, would you consider us?’
Robin looked up at her in amazement. ‘You? In the shop?’
‘Yes, the two of us,’ Steve said. ‘Me managing it, but us living there –’
‘And I’d transfer to a school in Albany,’ Sally cut in. ‘I’ve checked and there are a couple of vacancies coming up at the end of the year.’
Robin looked at Steve. ‘But I thought you had to go back to California.’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘But I’ll be back here to stay before the end of the year. I have to do some research for my book and organise selling my apartment.’
‘And in the meantime,’ Sally said, ‘I could take another si
x months’ unpaid leave and run the shop. Then I’d go back to teaching in the new year.’
‘You don’t have to answer now, Robin,’ Steve said, an anxious frown crossing his face. ‘We probably dumped too much on you all at once. But I fell in love with that place, the shop, Albany, the apartment. Sally did too. Eventually we could buy it but I have to sell my apartment in Berkeley first. With the exchange rate and the California property markets as they are, I’ll be quite well placed to buy here, but it’ll take a few months. No hard feelings if you say no. Take your time, think about it.’
Robin reached out for Sally’s hand. ‘I don’t have to think about it,’ she said. ‘It’s more than I could have dreamed of. With you two there, I’ll still feel close to it.’
‘I’d understand if you want someone with experience,’ Steve went on. ‘I mean, I know quite a bit about books, though not the book trade as such, but I can learn, we both can.’
Robin threw back her head and laughed. ‘Steve, really, it’s perfect. I’m sure you know as much about books as I do, so does Sally – probably more. If I thought I could run it, why wouldn’t I be happy for you to do it? This is the best idea that anyone has had in a very long time.’ She reached out for his hand, and he took it in both of his and bent down to kiss her cheek. ‘Got some other news too.’ He grinned, looking across at Sally.
Sally blushed. ‘It feels so strange,’ she said. ‘I never, ever thought I’d do this. We’re getting married when Steve comes back at Christmas, so you just have to be well by then.’
Robin cried a lot that night. She cried with happiness for Sally and Steve, and with satisfaction for herself. She cried for what they had and she had never known and would now never know. She cried for the loss of dreams, and for all the things she had stuffed up in her life, and the things that had gone wrong in spite of her doing her best. And she cried with fear and panic and the terrifying sense that she had lost control of everything in a particularly unfair way. At eleven the night nurse found her still crying and made her a mug of Horlicks, and they sat together in the dark talking about life and death and love. Robin felt as though they were floating in a dark bubble totally detached from the rest of the world. The nurse encouraged her to take a sleeping pill and she rearranged the pillows and said goodnight. Robin lay very still wondering where the bubble would land and wishing that she could see Isabel.
Hours later, as the early winter sun crept between the slats of the Venetian blinds, she opened her eyes and thought she was still in a dream. Standing at the foot of her bed, the sunlight striping her like a tiger, stood Isabel. A thinner, older but more beautiful Isabel, with a haircut and clothes that Isabel would never have worn, but a smile that was unmistakably her own.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Isabel had been in Monsaraz for four weeks when Grace’s letter arrived. Antonia had gone to meet a client in Évora to discuss the translation of a guidebook and Isabel walked to the mailbox and back up the hill, her conscience pricking her as she looked at Grace’s envelope. She had not been a good correspondent. The others would have seen through her cheerful travelogues and known that there was some far more complex emotional journey in progress. In contrast their letters had been rich in personal stories, honest and soul-searching. She knew hers hadn’t done them justice, but until these last weeks in Monsaraz, she hadn’t felt able to translate her own intense and confusing journey into words on paper. She walked up the hill in the late morning sunshine, enjoying the anticipation of reading the letter and reminding herself that it was already the end of May and she must soon start her journey home.
During her first week in Monsaraz she felt that she might never be able to leave. Now that she knew the truth she was desperate for more, she wanted to draw out every anecdote, every detail, every nuance. The Eunice that had returned to Perth in 1954 had been an enigma and had largely remained so until her death. ‘She was always hidden from me,’ Isabel explained to Antonia in one of their many conversations during the days that followed Antonia’s revelation. ‘It was as though there was a part of her that was never accessible to me. She wouldn’t let anyone else come close either. Eric and I, and Grandma, were closest to her, but there was always a part of her that was shut off. I suppose she’d made a choice and she was doing the best she could to live with it, and of course with the results of the accident. It’s terrible, to have lost so much – first you and then her dancing.’
‘But there was always you and her love for you, and she must have been so proud of you, Isabel,’ Antonia said.
‘I wish so much that she had told me her story. It could have been so different between us. Imagine all that love and loss buried for all those years – all my confusion – such a waste.’
‘It’s easy to look back, always it is easier to be wise for someone else and wise after the event. It is water under the bridge, Isabel. It is best to let go now, I think. Eunice could not tell you because she thinks maybe you cannot accept it and forgive her. And Eric, she would not tell you for Eric’s sake.’
‘I know.’ Isabel sighed. ‘I can see all that. But I wish … I wish so much that I had known while she was alive. Now it’s too late.’
‘But it is not too late for you, Isabel, not too late for what this means to you, for what you will make of it.’
But what would she make of it? She felt she had been searching for the Eunice of the letters and cards since her childhood and had decided on this trip very soon after her mother’s death. Was it death that gave her the freedom to find the original Eunice? It was spine-chilling to contemplate the serendipity that had brought her first to Portugal and then to Monsaraz. She had been searching for something to fill the void left by Eunice’s death, but also to resolve the contradictions of her life. Eunice and Eric, the devoted couple in conservative fifties Perth, and the quiet companionability of the decades that followed, were so far removed from the passion and intensity that Antonia had described.
‘Eric must really have loved her,’ Isabel commented to Antonia one evening. ‘To put up with everything, to care for her all those years. In the end, you know, she did love him. She depended on him totally. There was a gentleness between them – not passion but peace, I think. She was devastated when he died.’
Isabel put Antonia’s mail on the kitchen table and took Grace’s letter onto the terrace. It was a dull day, heavy and overcast. The distant hilltop villages, usually so clear, were blurred and grey in the haze.
Dearest Isabel
This letter is going to arrive near the end of your trip and I hope it won’t spoil your last days or weeks. I wasn’t sure whether to write but I think you’d want to know what’s happened here.
A few weeks ago Robin was diagnosed with breast cancer and the doctors recommended a mastectomy. At first, quite understandably, she freaked out and disappeared down south, but after a week or so she called me and I went to collect her and brought her back. She had the operation a week ago and is recovering from it. The worst part, though, is the news that the cancer is also in her lungs. All that, combined with a genetic heart condition, means it’s very serious.
Right now she’s refusing to give in. She says, quite rightly, that lots of people manage to get the cancer under control and live for years. She’s very determined. I think her determination is wearing her out.
At the moment we’re trying to sort out some living arrangements. She wants to be independent but she’ll need care and the options are fairly limited.
I’m not saying come home immediately, Isabel, there is still plenty of time. Even at the worst the prognosis is months – maybe a year. But frankly I’m hoping you’ll be back soon and not just for Robin’s sake but for all of us. I miss you, we all miss you. This situation makes me realise how very much you have been the lynchpin of the Gang of Four. Robin is very sick, Sally is madly in love and I’m trying to get a grip on myself and let go of my desire to control everything that’s happening. I didn’t tell Robin I was going to write.
I�
��m so looking forward to seeing you. Sally sends her love. You’ll like Steve – he and Sally are so right together, I’m very happy for them. I’m hoping to set off for the US and then England again, in August. I saw Doug a couple of days ago. He’s looking a bit subdued since his German trip – I hope everything is all right for you both. Hoping to see you soon.
Very much love,
Grace
Isabel read the letter twice before folding it back into its envelope. She ran upstairs to find her tickets and dialled the number for Qantas in Lisbon. Drawing a huge breath she made a booking for the end of the following week. Then she called Doug and told him that she was coming home.
It is the fierce intensity of the night that turns dreams to nightmares and unease to misery and panic. Waking in the darkness and silence, vulnerable to the terrors of both reality and imagination, pastels become bold primaries, the creak of a floorboard becomes the splutter of gunshots, mild pain becomes unbearable. Isabel opened her eyes and felt herself falling apart, abandoned, rejected and rejecting. She had risked everything, lost everything, ruined everything. She was terrified of going home. For hours she struggled with the night terrors; getting up to pace the room, returning to lie absolutely still in the hope that sleep might return and in the light of day everything would look very different. Eventually she slept but the morning brought little relief. Her fear and depression were a confused morass of cause and effect – guilt about her journey, about Doug, guilt about her decades-old treatment of Eric, confusion about Eunice, and countless other mental snapshots from the past that formed an album of pictures of her failures as a wife, mother, daughter and friend. Had she destroyed everything she loved?
‘It will pass, Isabel,’ Antonia told her. ‘It will pass but you cannot force it. You’re returning home, there are big challenges there for you. You took a big risk. You stepped out of a mould which was safe and familiar, you tested yourself. Now a part of you wonders if it was all worth it. Is what was gained worth what may be lost?’