by Liz Byrski
It made sense, but it was more than that too. Underneath the chaos lay a grinding sense of loss and grief, feelings she had shouldered aside when Eunice died. Now they came back to haunt her, demanding their inescapable place and resolution. ‘The word that came to me in the night was “orphan”,’ she said. That I am an orphan and that somehow it was my fault, for not asking the right questions, for not recognising and cherishing what was there.’
‘We feel like this when the last parent dies,’ Antonia told her, holding Isabel’s hands firmly in her own. ‘When there is no one left who knew us as children, it is as though that part of us also died with the mother or the father. For you I think it is harder because you are an only child. Now without Eunice, your childhood exists only in memory and imagination. It is not unusual. It is what you might have felt when she died, but somehow you postponed it.’
For several days Isabel was crippled by her grief and a resulting lassitude. On the morning of the sixth day she woke very early to find the pall had lifted and a new and sudden energy drove her out of bed. Still in her white cotton nightdress she ran barefoot from her room and knocked on Antonia’s door. There’s something I don’t understand,’ she said, flopping down on the end of the bed. ‘Klaus, when he left here – what he said to you that day when he got on the bus. Does Klaus know about this?’
Antonia, fully dressed, was sitting at her dressing table, brushing her hair and twisting it into a loose bun. She picked up some large tortoiseshell hairpins and fixed it in place, her eyes meeting Isabel’s in the mirror and holding them with a strange intensity. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Klaus knew.’
‘About you and Eunice?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did he know about me? That Eunice was my mother?’
Antonia put down the brush and turned to face her. ‘Yes, he knew.’
‘But I asked him,’ Isabel said angrily. ‘When I was in Germany I asked him about it. I told him about you sending me the theatre program. He said he didn’t know anything about it.’
Antonia looked away, sighing. ‘It is my fault, Isabel. I asked him, begged him, not to tell you anything. I didn’t know what to do. It was such a shock to discover you were Eunice’s daughter. When you arrived here I felt very close to you, almost as though we had met before, but of course you do not look like your mother, and you have a different name. Then you told us about her at dinner and I was shocked and confused. I didn’t know what to do so I pretended I knew nothing. But in Évora, after that moment in the cloisters, I could not contain it anymore. I was tortured by these feelings – I was drawn to you as though you were Eunice, but also as though you were my daughter. I was mad with the feelings. That night in Évora, after dinner, I didn’t go for a walk – I went to talk to Klaus.’
Anger was more energising than the grief and loss that had trapped her for the last few days, and Isabel felt its stirrings. ‘You told him what you wouldn’t tell me. Antonia, this was something so vital to me, something concerning me so completely, but you didn’t tell me, you told Klaus, a friend who is unaffected by it all. How could you have done that?’
‘Isabel, Klaus is not unaffected by this,’ Antonia said. ‘You see, there is one part of the story I have not told you. Since you arrived you have been so obsessed, quite naturally, with the story of Eunice and me, and how this affects you and your relationship with your mother. So, somehow, I cannot quite bring myself to bother you with the rest of it.’
Isabel, who had got up to pace the bedroom floor, dropped onto the bed again, staring at her. ‘What?’ she said. ‘What else? Tell me now, please. I need to know.’
Antonia nodded and got up to open the shutters. Morning sunlight flooded the room, and she pulled back one shutter to filter the light and stood gazing out down the hillside. ‘It was 1954,’ she began. ’The year that Eunice and Eric went home to Australia. I felt no bitterness, I understood that she had to go, but I thought my life was ruined. José barely spoke to me – he is still so angry. I was young, of course. I still had not learned that one survives, that the loss of one love does not mean that one can never love again.’ She paused, still looking out of the window, her slim frame silhouetted against the light.
‘That was when I met Klaus again. We had not seen each other since we were children. He was a few years older than me and he was doing his research in Lisbon. He called me one day and we went out. I liked him, he was gentle and thoughtful, not like some of the other young men I knew, and he was easy to talk to. He was a delightful companion, so we did everything together but at the same time we behaved like friends. I did not know that Klaus was in love with me. He treated me with great respect. He was very Germanic in this – rather formal, you understand?’ Isabel nodded, her heart beating faster, wondering what was coming.
‘And then, he asked me to marry him,’ Antonia said, turning to face Isabel. ‘Well, it is a long story but I refused several times. Klaus knew I had been in love but did not know about Eunice. He said to me always, “You will recover, I will give you time, I understand.” But it went on a long time and I could see that if I did not marry him I would lose him. He was soon going back to Germany and I had begun to depend on him. I did love Klaus, though not in the way that would make me want to marry him, but I was frightened of losing him, and finally I thought, he is a good man and I care for him. It will not be grand passion but it can be a good marriage. And so I agreed. We were married in 1955.’
Isabel gasped in amazement. ‘You and Klaus were married! He’s your husband?’
‘Ex-husband. We were separated two years later, and divorced about ten years after that. It was a disaster. He was in love with me, I was not in love with him, and I grew to resent him. I hurt him deeply and I hurt myself too. I was still in love with Eunice, at least with the dream of her. It was a shock to Klaus when he discovered that my great lost love was a woman. In those days he was more conservative, he was wounded by this. It was almost twenty years before he came to terms with it and before we could talk about it together. Then we were able to be friends, dear friends. He is my most treasured friend. That is why I told Klaus, Isabel, because his life has been affected by this just as deeply as yours or mine.’
Isabel got up from the bed and walked to the window, putting her hands on Antonia’s shoulders. ‘Antonia, I’m sorry. I’ve been so selfish. All I’ve done is talk about the effect this had on me and my mother. I never even thought of asking what it all means for you.’
Antonia shrugged and put her arms around Isabel. They stood by the window holding each other. To Isabel it felt as though they were a scene in a tragic ballet danced across the decades.
Antonia stepped back and reached for the tissues to dry her eyes. ‘What Klaus said that day – verweile dock du bist so schön – “please stay, thou art so beautiful”. He said it to me many times before I left him. Now, after all this time, he says it always to me, and I to him, when we meet and when we part. That day, Isabel, you thought Klaus was saying something about you, but it is a talisman for Klaus and me. It is part of our special language for each other, our way of saying you are my dearest friend, I miss you, I love you, I am so happy to see you, don’t forget me. You understand – a few words can mean so many things.’
Doug was standing in the arrivals hall facing the door, his hands clasped behind his back, wearing jeans and a navy sweater. At first she thought that he had lost a lot of weight since Germany, but a second glance told her that these were not new clothes and they fitted the way they always had done. He saw Isabel and walked towards her as she tried to steer the recalcitrant trolley between the barricades. For an instant she felt as though she was in a scene from a movie, a couple meeting, excitement, apprehension, love, anxiety. In the movie you knew something important would happen from this meeting. It was a turning point – whatever happened on those few inches of celluloid would be crucial to the future. She could scarcely breathe because suddenly she wasn’t sure what she was walking into. His anger? The pain of her
physical rejection of him? Pure confusion? ‘I’ll be there,’ he’d said when she told him she had booked her flight.
‘Well, I’m sure Deb’ll come if you’re busy,’ she’d said. ‘It’s a Wednesday morning, and that’s your regular meeting time with the minister.’
‘Isabel, I said I’ll be there,’ he’d said with a calm purposefulness.
She slowed the trolley to a stop and they faced each other across it. He brought one hand from behind his back and in it were half a dozen heart-shaped foil balloons on red ribbons, each one with a legend: ‘I love you’, ‘Missed you!’, ‘Be mine’. She smiled and then started to laugh in amazement. ‘Doug?’
‘You once said it was your dream,’ he said, handing her the red ribbons.
‘I did?’
‘Yes. To have a really silly romantic welcome with balloons and roses.’ He produced his other hand, clutching a bouquet of apricot roses.
‘Doug, darling, that’s so beautiful of you. I never thought I’d see you within five metres of a foil balloon.’
‘Well, I did feel like a bit of a pillock standing here,’ he said, ‘especially when your flight was late. But actually, I rather enjoyed buying them!’
They hugged each other, the balloons and roses caught awkwardly between them, the other arriving passengers and their families crowding around and past them. She saw that there were tears in his eyes, and new lines around them. She leaned forward again and kissed him on the lips. ‘I’m really pleased to see you,’ she said, and clutched his arm with her free hand as he took over driving the trolley.
Doug nodded. He didn’t say anything, just nodded as though he couldn’t speak. But as they pushed their way through the concourse and out onto the pavement, he drew in his breath and smiled, and when he had lifted her bags into the boot of the car he put his arms around her again and they stood there in the busy car park, just a couple of people holding each other as cars shunted in and out, and people loaded and unloaded baggage and talked about the late arrival of the flight and what the weather had been like while they were away.
TWENTY-NINE
‘What kept you?’ Robin asked with a smile.
‘Just a few thousand kilometres, and a bag full of intense personal crises,’ Isabel said, bending down to hug her. ‘I thought I told you to take care of yourself. I go away for a while and look what happens.’
‘So much for the healthy lifestyle.’ Robin laughed. ‘It’s wonderful to see you. You’ll hate this but when I opened my eyes and saw you there I felt like a child seeing its mother!’
‘You’re right,’ said Isabel with a grimace. ‘I hate it. I’ve had enough of mother issues for a very long time.’
‘You look different!’
‘Everybody looks different,’ Isabel said. ‘Grace looks different – all those sharp angles have gone and she’s positively blurred around the edges. Sally looks like a teenager and you …’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, you look different too, and I don’t just mean you look sick. You look – how can I put it? There’s something in your eyes, it’s … I think “unequivocal” is the word. When I last saw you, you look tortured, confused, uncertain. Now, amazingly in view of the circumstances, you actually look quite calm and peaceful and strong … really strong.’
‘Facing one’s mortality has a dramatic effect,’ Robin said, leaning forward and swinging her legs out of bed. ‘Pass me my dressing gown and I’ll sit in that chair. They’re letting me out next week – on a short leash, you understand, but at least I’ll get a change of scene.’
‘Grace told me. She says you’re staying with her for a while.’
‘Yes,’ Robin grinned. ‘But a very short while. I have to get my act together and organise something quickly. It’s not fair on Grace. All this stuff is interfering with her plans and making her very twitchy. You’ll see it.’ She smiled affectionately at the thought of Grace. ‘She’ll be in here being the new Grace, calm, centred and, as you say, blurry round the edges, and then something will trigger it and she’ll start wanting to take my temperature and reprimand me for not having drunk enough water. Looking after me is the last thing Grace needs at the moment.’
‘You can come to us, you know,’ Isabel said. ‘I talked to Doug after I talked to Grace. We’d love to have you while you sort out something more permanent.’
‘Poor Doug,’ Robin said, settling back into the chair. ‘I’m sure he’d like to have you to himself for a while after all this time. He must be starving for some special Isabel-type attention.’
Isabel laughed and sank down into the other chair. ‘Doug’s okay,’ she said. ‘Much more okay than I imagined he’d be after all that happened. Since I’ve been back we’ve covered a lot of ground. I thought I was in for a battle getting him to accept the change in me and what that means for him, but it seems he’s already done a lot of the groundwork on his own, or at least with some help from Deb. We had a disastrous time together in Germany and so I’d expected disaster here too, but it seems we are past the worst. I’m very lucky.’
‘You’ve been very secretive about what’s been happening for you.’ Robin smiled. ‘I’m learning that one privilege of being sick is that one can ask intrusive questions, and people feel it’s their duty to talk.’
‘Actually, I’m dying to talk about it,’ said Isabel. ‘But I want to know more about you first, and sort out the practicalities. By the way, did you know it was Doug who told Jim where you were?’
Robin nodded. ‘I know, and I know he did it with the best of intentions. Don’t worry about it. In the end it’s all worked out all right. I’ve got all that Jim stuff to tell you too. Will we ever have time?’
‘Well,’ said Isabel, ‘we will if you come to us when they release you. I’m sure you’re right – the last thing Grace needs right now is a patient, and frankly the last thing you need is to feel you’re holding up her plans.’
Robin leaned back and stretched out her legs. ‘I think I fancy a walk down the corridor. Let’s go and take a look at the view.’
They made their way from the room along the brightly lit passage to the picture window at the end that looked out across the Swan River to the tall buildings of Perth city. ‘Strange place, isn’t it?’ Robin said. ‘Perth, I mean. Perched on the west coast of this huge island, so isolated from the rest of Australia. It’s quite weird, really. You, Grace and Sally went off to other places and became somehow different in different ways. I stayed close by and became different in a way I’d never bargained for. Now here we are all back again. D’you think we’re still the Gang of Four?’
Isabel put her arm around Robin’s shoulders. ‘Of course we are. We didn’t stop being it just because we weren’t together.’
‘I said something like that to Grace,’ Robin said. ’Last year when I was on the edge of breaking up with Jim, I asked her if she thought we four would ever be the same again. She said no, it couldn’t be. It had to be different.’
Isabel paused, considering the words. ‘Well, she’s right of course. We’re all changed by the things that have happened in the last year. It will be different, but that doesn’t mean it will be less than it was. I mean, look at you and Grace, you’re closer now than you’ve ever been. And Sally, well – she’s having to find out how she manages her friendships with us while being in a very intense relationship. And by the way, I really like Steve. I only met him briefly but he seems lovely.’
Robin nodded. ‘He is, and he and Sally are so happy. You know they’re going to take on my shop?’
‘Yes, I do. That’s good, isn’t it, for them and for you. But now you, Rob. What do you want to do when you get out of here? Say you’ll come to us.’
Robin turned away from the view to look at her. ‘Okay, Isabel; yes, I will. Thanks a lot. It’s a much better solution for Grace and for me. But only for a short time. I promise to sort something out soon.’
‘Don’t worry about it in here,’ Isabel said. ‘We’ll work on it together once
we get you home.’
Robin was bored beyond belief. She couldn’t concentrate for long enough to do more than read through the morning paper or flick through a magazine. The things she had always enjoyed didn’t seem to work for her anymore. She would put on the headphones to listen to classical music and want to punch Margaret Throsby for sounding so deep and meaningful. She would switch to Radio National and find herself bored to tears by Phillip Adams talking more than his interviewees. The constantly changing voices on news radio were more suited now to her short concentration span and increasingly critical frame of mind.
An hour or so earlier on a great surge of energy she had written several pages of her journal. Now she was exhausted and could barely hold the pen. Her arm ached, her back ached, she felt nauseated and she had a pain in her chest. She wondered about the sudden changes, so much energy one minute, barely enough to breathe the next. And she wondered, not for the first time, how long this alien had been living in her.
‘Think about how you’ve been over the last few months,’ Dr Chin had asked her. ‘When did you start to feel something different? Feeling sick?’
She’d been annoyed at first but finally admitted that not long after selling the house and buying the cottage in January she had started to feel very tired. She had stopped running so far and so frequently, convincing herself that she didn’t have to be so obsessive about her running now she was living such a healthy, relaxed life. The pain in her chest had been bugging her again, and she had often felt nauseated but found that it wore off if she ate something plain like a piece of dry toast. ‘The more I think about it,’ she said. ‘I suppose I haven’t been feeling all that good for several months.’
Dr Chin nodded. ‘It is well advanced,’ he said quietly.
Had the cancer been there inside her for months or years? The day she left Jim? The day she moved south? At the pub in Pemberton? She pondered once more on where and how she would live. The thought of living with a carer was depressing and, despite the fact that she felt so weak, the prospect of not having any work to occupy her mind horrified her. The long, lazy, relaxing months at the cottage had always been temporary. Now more than ever she needed a sense of purpose to keep her going. She’d asked for her laptop to be brought in, but Dr Chin made Sally take it away again. Not for another few weeks, he had said. The writing she had begun at the cottage was shapeless although at the time it had seemed important that she keep on with it, but it was hardly going to occupy her seven days a week. She could maintain her interest in the bookshop for a while at least, until Steve and Sally were in a position to buy it. What she needed was something more practical, something demanding that would keep her focused and stop her from burying herself in her illness. She needed something useful to do. While Grace was pulling away from the need to be needed, Robin felt that she, now so dependent on others, needed to find some way of contributing something herself.