Gang of Four

by Liz Byrski

  Isabel put the plates on the bench and looked straight at her. ‘It sounds brilliant. She’s talked about you and Dawn, and how lovely the place is. And you obviously realise we haven’t managed to come up with a solution. Is that what you’ve come to ask her?’

  Josie nodded. ‘Yeah! D’you think it’s reasonable? Okay to put it to her?’

  ‘More than okay, Josie, I think it’s a wonderful and generous offer. My bet is she’ll jump at the idea.’

  Doug put another bottle of wine into the fridge. ‘Great idea,’ he said, refilling Josie’s glass. ‘But would you be able to handle it and the business as well?’

  ‘Oh yes, until – well, until it becomes more complicated. I mean, unless she actually needed nursing,’ she said. ‘We can easily manage it – in fact, we’d love it.’

  Isabel spread the cloth on the table and then changed her mind. It might be winter but it was still warm enough to sit on the deck. ‘Shall we eat outside?’ she asked, and handed the tablecloth to Father Pat. ‘Why don’t you go out and put the cloth on and wake Robin up gently?’

  She pulled out a tray and began to stack the crockery on it while Josie tossed some sliced cucumber into a yoghurt dressing.

  ‘Would you cut some bread, please, Doug,’ Isabel said, and picking up the tray she went out through the lounge to the deck. The sun had disappeared, leaving only traces of rosy wash above the horizon.

  ‘You could have put the lights on, Father Pat,’ she said, setting the tray down on the table and turning back towards the switch.

  And it was then, as she turned, that she saw the silhouette of Father Pat crouched beside Robin’s chair, his head in his hands, the tablecloth a crumpled heap on the floor beside him, and she knew with a sickening dread that the solution to Robin’s future had always been beyond their control.

  THIRTY

  ‘Where do you think, then?’ said Sally, shoving her hands into the pockets of her coat and looking around. The wind whipped her hair across her face and made her eyes sting. They stood together on the headland, shoulders hunched, their collars turned up against the wind. Overhead the gulls shrieked and swooped, their cries harsh one minute, swept out to sea the next.

  Isabel lifted both hands in a gesture of indecision. ‘I don’t know. Grace, you came here with her when you collected her. What do you think?’

  Grace looked behind her and then ahead up the cliff path. ‘Further up there,’ she said, ‘where the path curves. That’s where she used to run. She told me that on the way back, when she got to that bend and could see the cottage, her heart would lift.’

  They struggled on up the hill against the wind, the first drops of rain stinging their faces, until they reached the bend.

  ‘Here?’ Isabel asked.

  Grace turned and looked down to the point where the cottage just came into sight. ‘Yes,’ she said, clutching the urn against her chest. ‘Here, I think.’

  ‘How do you think we should do it?’ Sally said. ‘It feels as though there should be some sort of ritual.’

  ‘Suppose we sit down on that rock and each tell our favourite memory of her,’ Isabel suggested, ‘or say what we loved most about her. Then we can open the urn and take it in turns to scatter the ashes.’

  They headed for the rock and sat looking out across the waves that crashed high and wild. ‘Robin loved this sort of winter weather,’ Grace said, shaking her head in incomprehension. ‘She said it was energising and invigorating. I never could understand that – perhaps you never get over coming from the northern hemisphere.’

  The silence was broken only by the roar of the wind and water.

  ‘Okay,’ Isabel said slowly, ‘shall I go first?’ The others nodded.

  ‘I loved her for her mind. She was so quick at understanding things and analysing them. You could give her a really difficult document to read and she’d speed-read it and have the measure of it in minutes – something that would take me hours. That and her independence, the way she just got on with things on her own. She never expected anyone to help her or to take some of the responsibility. She was very singular and strong.’ Isabel put her hand up to brush away the tears. ‘But the night she told me about Jim, she was so vulnerable, so concerned about what we’d all think of her. It made me realise how important our friendship was to her. I loved her for her vulnerability as much as for her strength.’

  Sally sighed. ‘Yes, I loved that too, her strength and her straightforwardness. She always said she was a dark horse, but I never felt that, I felt that she was very open and honest. It was only the Jim thing that she hid, and that was understandable. There were so many best moments, but I suppose that weekend I took you guys out to do some painting. Remember? We went down to Fremantle, the Round House, and you two did really well, and Robin just couldn’t get it. She kept scrapping it and starting again, knocked over the water jar and got paint everywhere, and she was so frustrated she was nearly in tears. Then when she stood up she knocked over the easel and had a bit of a hissy fit, and we all sort of stared at her in amazement because it was so unlike her. Then she came and hugged me and apologised, and told me how hard it was to admit that she couldn’t do something, or at least couldn’t get the hang of it instantly. I loved her for that. Her ability to apologise and admit that about herself. I’ll miss her so much.’

  Grace clasped her hands between her knees and unclasped them again. ‘I was always a bit nervous of Robin,’ she said. ‘I never knew why at the time but now, in the last few months, I worked it out. I think at some level I felt she could see through me, although at the time I didn’t realise there was something to see through to. She used to make me feel like an impostor and I didn’t know why. Now I think she could just see through my obsessive behaviour.’ She paused and sighed.

  ‘There are two favourite memories, the first while you two were away and she was frantic about Jim and she came to my place early one morning looking like death. We were both very vulnerable that morning. Neither of us would have chosen the other as a confidante if either of you had been around, but we talked carefully, we were feeling our way. It was a turning point. The other was in the hospital when she told me she knew how her illness and the hospital itself was bugging me. I realised she was as concerned about me as she was about herself, which was an incredible thing considering how sick she was. I feel as though, just as we moved into a deeper level of friendship, she was snatched away.’

  The rain was falling faster now, soaking the shoulders of their jackets. ‘Shall we do it then?’ Isabel asked after a few minutes, and she stood up and unscrewed the urn. Slipping her fingers into the ashes she took a handful and, turning her back to the wind, she opened her hand.

  ‘’Bye, Rob,’ she called as the ashes were swept seaward. ‘Peace and love wherever you are.’

  Down in the village, Dorothy, removing a poster from the shop window, looked up at the cliff and saw them standing there, buffeted by the wind. She saw Sally take the urn and then Grace, and watched as they put it down on the rock and stood hugging each other, three figures merging into one against the grey sky.

  ‘God bless you, Robin,’ she whispered, crossing herself. ’I’m going to miss you.’ And she picked up Maurice and turned back into the shop.

  ‘It’s very lonely here,’ Sally said, adding a couple of logs to the fire and stirring it with the poker. It leapt into life and the flames licked around the new wood. ‘Wonderful for a holiday but I wouldn’t want to be here for months on my own, like Robin was.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Grace, sorting through the collection of mail Dorothy had given them from Robin’s mailbox. ‘I’d go raving mad very quickly. But she loved it.’ She picked up a bundle of junk mail. ‘These can all go,’ she said, tossing them into the fire and watching as the flames devoured the brightly coloured pages.

  Isabel came through from the kitchen with three mugs of tea and a packet of Tim Tams. ‘Look what I found in the pantry. She was such a healthy eater, but she loved Tim Tams, did
n’t she? I think she’d want us to finish these.’

  Sally sank down onto the couch where she had so recently lain with Steve. ‘What would she think if she could see us?’ she asked.

  Isabel gazed into the fire, sipping her tea, and shrugged slightly. Grace stood up and helped herself to a biscuit. ‘She’d think we did the right thing, bringing her back here,’ she said. ‘This was where she wanted to be. When I came to collect her for the mastectomy she told me she felt more at home here than she had anywhere else in her life. You’re going to faint when I say this, because it’s not a me sort of thing, but it’s as though I can feel her, as though she’s here with us.’

  Sally smiled. ‘I know what you mean and it is a you thing, Grace. You, now! A year ago you would have laughed if one of us had said that, but you’re a very different person these days.’

  Isabel nodded. ‘Yes, you are. And I feel her presence too. Perhaps that’s why she left the cottage to us. Remember what she said in the will? That it was to be shared between us, to use as we wished, for holidays or retreats, together or alone or with others we love. I wept when Alec read that – where she said she would always be with us, that wherever we went and whatever we did, in the cottage we would always be the Gang of Four.’

  Grace gasped, swallowing a sob. Clasping her hand across her mouth she stood frozen for a moment and then dropped onto the couch, putting her head in her hands. ‘I wasted so much of my time with her, with all of you. Being so obsessive and prickly, especially with Robin, and now she’s gone just as I was beginning to get it right.’

  Sally moved closer and put her arm around Grace’s shoulders. ‘Oh, Grace, it wasn’t wasted time. She loved being in the Gang of Four, she mentioned it to all of us during those last days at the hospital. It meant the world to her. You’re part of that, and you grew so much closer in the last year.’

  Isabel fetched a box of tissues from the kitchen and put them down beside Grace. ‘Sally’s right, Grace. Robin knew how it was, she loved you and she respected you enormously for so many things, and most of all for how you’ve dealt with what happened to you this year.’

  Grace sat up and blew her nose. She straightened her shoulders and stiffened her body. ‘Sorry,’ she said in a harsh, decisive tone. ‘Very self-indulgent, crying. I never cry.’

  Isabel and Sally looked at each other and then at Grace, a smile tweaking the corner of Isabel’s mouth. Sally stifled a laugh and cleared her throat. Grace stared from one to the other. Her face, which had changed moments before from the crumpled looseness of grief to a tightly controlled mask, began to soften again. ‘Well,’ she began, ‘I mean, I never used to … but …’ She stopped again, watching as the other two collapsed in laughter.

  ‘Did you hear that, Robin?’ Isabel said, walking over to the framed photograph of Robin on the mantelpiece. ‘Did you actually hear what she said?’

  Sally fell back laughing, and Grace shook her head and her mouth broke into a wide smile.

  ‘I suspect Robin is deeply shocked, Grace,’ Isabel said from the fireplace, trying to keep a straight face. ‘Her dearest wish was that this should be a place for the passion of tears as well as for laughter. And I think she’d also say that it’s about time we stopped sitting around eating Tim Tams and got on with sorting out what needs to be done here.’

  Sally got up and dragged Grace to her feet. ‘Right!’ she said. ‘To work – let’s organise the new headquarters of the Gang of Four. And to start with, I want to see one of your own patchwork quilts on the bed in the main bedroom, Grace.’

  ‘And I want to hang one of your photographs here, Sally,’ said Isabel, pointing to the wall above the fireplace.

  Grace dried her eyes again and picked up a large cardboard box she had brought with her. Taking off the lid she took out one of several dozen thick white candles and, reaching down further, extracted a curved black wrought-iron candleholder and a box of matches. She pressed the candle onto the holder’s central spike and struck a match. ‘And I want to make a rule,’ she said, holding the burning match to the candle, ‘that every time any one or all three of us are here, we light a candle each day for Robin and for friendship.’

  They watched as the wick caught.

  ‘For Robin, and for friendship,’ said Isabel, raising her mug.

  ‘For Robin and for friendship,’ echoed the other two.

  ‘Now,’ said Grace, ‘let’s get the beds made up – and please remember, I want those hospital corners nice and neat!’

  ‘Yes, Sister!’ Isabel and Sally laughed in unison, and together they pulled the linen from the press and began to make up the beds.

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