by Liz Byrski
A face peered out of the window into the darkness, then moved away. Seconds later the woman stepped out onto the porch and shone a torch beam towards the tree.
‘It’s okay, Loretta, it’s only me loitering out here,’ Isabel called.
‘Thank goodness,’ Loretta said, lowering the torch beam to the ground and walking towards her. ‘Whatever are you sitting about out here for? We thought you were an aggrieved husband planning a breakin!’
Isabel leaned back. ‘Sorry. I needed time to think. I’ve just finished a council meeting.’
‘D’you want a cup of tea or something?’
‘No thanks, I’m fine.’
Loretta switched off the torch and they sat together in companionable silence.
‘I might go away for a bit,’ Isabel said.
‘A bit? What’s that mean? How big a bit?’
‘Several months …’ She hesitated. ‘A year, maybe.’
‘That’s a big bit. Doug got some flash posting somewhere?’
‘No, no I’m going on my own. Time own … time to myself.’
‘Well, I guess if anyone needs time out it’s you.’
‘I haven’t told Doug yet.’
‘I see …’ There was a long pause.
‘I’ll tell you more later, when it’s clearer. Don’t mention it, will you? I haven’t told anyone else yet.’
‘Sure. If there’s one thing you learn from working in a refuge, it’s when to keep your mouth shut.’ She put her hand on Isabel’s arm. ‘You’re okay, though?’
‘I’m okay, just need a break, time for me. You’ll still be here?’
‘You know me – they’ll carry me out of here feet first but not for another couple of decades. If you’re asking me if I’ll be here to look after things, you know I will.’
Isabel swallowed hard on the lump in her throat.
‘Thanks, Lori. I don’t think I could go if you weren’t here.’
‘Lord bless us, of course you could, I’m not indispensable. Let me know the plan of action when you’re ready.’
Isabel opened the car door and slid into the driving seat. ‘I will, thanks again. Oh and, Loretta –’
‘Yes, I know, the hedge needs cutting. The guy’s coming the day after tomorrow. We’ll be all neat and tidy by the weekend.’
For a while Isabel had struggled with the feeling that her overwhelming need to get away had to be directed to some serious and important purpose, but eventually she came to the conclusion that this was just what it should not be. For more years than she could remember, she had been occupied with serious and important purposes; with work, raising children, helping with the grandchildren, looking after her mother and stepfather, and fitting everything around Doug’s job, fighting for the refuge, the council. What she wanted was an end to purpose, time to drift, time free of other people’s needs and expectations.
She got out the old wooden box filled with her mother’s postcards – Lisbon, Granada, Seville, Monaco, Nuremberg, Vienna, Berlin – and spread them on the table alongside the map of Europe in her old school atlas. As a child she had marked the locations on the map as the postcards arrived, charting Eunice’s travels with the dance company from one exotic location to another. More memories sprang out as Isabel studied the map: Bruges, where women sat making lace in the streets; a story about eating raw herring by the canals in Amsterdam; and dancing on the broken bridge at Avignon.
They were dream places far away from the stifling heat of her grandparents’ home in the hills with the chook pen in the back yard, the Coolgardie safe, and the tiny sleepout that was her bedroom. When the mail came, Isabel and her grandmother sat together in the swing seat on the verandah to read it. She could feel it as if it were yesterday; the comfort of Grandma’s warm body, the smell of face powder and rosewater, and the sound of seat posts creaking as they swayed. Each card was a promise that her mother might be back soon. Isabel studied them, hoarded them, first in a biscuit tin and later in the wooden box her grandfather had made especially for the purpose. By the time Eunice gave up dancing and came back to Australia with a new husband, Isabel was eleven years old and her collection of postcards filled the box.
Not only was her new father a stranger but her mother had become a stranger too. No longer the glamorous, exotic dancer of the postcards, she was a tired, disappointed woman in her thirties with injuries to her legs and feet that would confine her to a wheelchair by the time she was forty-five. Isabel’s father had been killed in action a few months before she was born in 1943. When the war was over, Eunice somehow managed to get herself to London for an audition and was soon touring Europe. She had left Isabel with her parents, promising to be back in a year or so. But she was still dancing in 1953 when she met Eric at a cocktail party in Monaco. He was an under-secretary at the British consulate with a promising career in the foreign office. They were married that year, and just a few weeks later their car was hit by a drunk driver as they rounded a steep bend on a narrow road between Nice and Grasse. Eric escaped unscathed but Eunice’s feet and legs were crushed. For months she languished in hospital before she was well enough for Eric to be able to get her on a ship back to Australia. Slowly she learned to walk again, but she always needed a stick and as she grew older, arthritis locked her joints to rigidity. By the time Isabel was eleven, she was living in Perth with a mother she barely knew and a stepfather who adored her as if she had been his own daughter.
Isabel scanned the international listings of women who offered accommodation to other women travelling alone. It was a network she had joined years before but never used, although she had played host to women visiting Australia – a Turkish woman had stayed once, and one from Bratislava. Finally she worked out the cost of the trip and added twenty-five per cent for emergencies. Eunice’s legacy would more than cover it. She wondered briefly if there was something distasteful about using the money so soon after her mother’s death. People might think she had been waiting for Eunice to die so that she could get away. But she had spent too much of her life wondering what people might think. It had stopped her doing so many things, and driven her to do others. She looked at the important dates in her diary: the expiry of her mayoral term, Doug’s birthday, Kate’s birthday … but if she looked at all the dates there would be no right time to leave. She might just as well close her eyes and stick a pin in the calendar. Monday 12 May, the pin said. She wrote it in her diary and dialled the number of the travel agent.
Isabel knew that everyone thought she was a good organiser. She had a dogged quality, an intellectual and emotional stamina that enabled her to stick with things, to retain the grand vision as well as to struggle with the tedious detail. She wanted to go through all Eunice’s papers before she left – it would be good to take some of the diaries with her – but first she would have to think about organising things at home for the time she was away, although organisation was the easy part. The rest would be much harder. How do you tell your husband and children that, much as you love them, you are leaving them for a while? That for the next twelve months they must carry the burden of servicing the complex web of relationships that sustains the family? How do you tell your closest friends that you are no longer content just to discuss this midlife angst, this restlessness, this longing for solitude, but plan to turn it into action?
Isabel woke at night with her heart thumping in her chest, sweating over plans that were thrilling by day and terrifying by night. She stared at herself in the bathroom mirror and wondered how she had arrived at this point. This plump woman with fine blonde hair twisted into a knot at the back of her head, the unmistakably pale Celtic looks – who was she? Eunice’s daughter, Doug’s wife, mother to Luke, Debra and Kate, motherin-law to Mac and Jason, daughter-in-law to Jack and Freda, grandmother of Danny and Ruth, closest friend of Robin, Sally and Grace … But who was she really? Who would she be away from all those relationships, those roles, those responsibilities? Who was Isabel Carter?
‘You can’t be seri
ous,’ said Grace. ‘You can’t honestly mean you’re going away for a year, leaving Doug, the kids, everything?’
Isabel knew it would be tough and that Grace would be the toughest, but she had decided to tell her friends first. She needed a test run, a chance to talk about it before she told Doug and the family. They were waiting for an explanation. Robin, with that thin, intense look, leaning forward, her hands curled around her coffee cup, as though listening to a submission by opposing counsel. Sally, leaning back to run her hands through her wild hair, her glasses perched on top of her head, and Grace, immaculate as ever, crossing her legs, folding her arms and turning slightly in her chair, her body language oozing disapproval.
Isabel paused as the waiter piled their dirty cups onto a tray and took the order for more coffee. She felt a great wave of embarrassment and vulnerability. These were her closest friends. They had supported each other through personal and professional crises, parents dying, and children leaving home, job changes, house moves, political activism, diets and really bad haircuts. Suddenly they seemed like strangers. She had hoped that they would see it as she did, that she wouldn’t have to explain. She swallowed hard and began to shred a paper napkin with nervous fingers.
‘Look, we’re constantly talking about how we feel, about anger, frustration or needing solitude. We’re always joking about menopause and midlife crises and … well, we joke but it’s serious too, and sometimes I feel it might swallow me up, like I might wake up one morning and find that all those feelings are smothering me and I can’t actually draw breath.’
She paused, hoping that one of them might pick up on her lead but they said nothing. ‘I’ve been living the same life for decades, married to Doug, being a mother then a grandmother. I feel so desperate that one day I’ll be dead and it will be all I’ve ever done. Sometimes I feel as though all the important things in my life have already happened.’
‘But your life is changing all the time,’ Grace said. ‘You’ve said it yourself. Okay, you’ve lived here for thirty-odd years, and been married to Doug, but in that time you’ve had jobs, had children who’ve grown up and left home. Look at what you’re doing now. You’re the mayor, for heaven’s sake! All sorts of things have happened to you.’
‘But that’s exactly what I mean,’ Isabel said. ‘It’s happened to me, life has happened to me. I haven’t directed it, I haven’t made things happen. I’ve just responded to things, fate, nature, opportunity … whatever you want to call it. Doug, his job, the kids, their kids. I did what I had to, and it’s precious to me, all of it, but now I want to do something different. Something just for me, something I’ve chosen.’
‘The refuge didn’t just happen, being the mayor didn’t just happen,’ Grace persisted. ‘You chose those things, you had to campaign for them, and look what a fantastic job you’re doing.’
‘My second term is up at the end of April and I’ve already said I won’t run again. Six years as mayor and five as a councillor is enough – for me and for the council. You’re right in one way, Grace, but those things were an outer journey, this is different. I’m not sure if I can explain it but I think now I’m ready for the inner journey.’
The silence was long enough to make her uncomfortable.
‘I’m not quite sure what you mean,’ Sally ventured. ‘Are you saying you’re going away and not coming back?’
‘No, no, not at all. I just mean that I want a break, an adventure, something totally different and totally on my own, away from here. I want a year of my life all to myself. I am so tired of running around doing what other people expect me to do, and what I feel I ought to be doing.’
She was close to tears, almost at the point of apologising for considering it, but she could not let it go. ‘And I want to see the places where Mum was, get some sense of her life there. Grace, you’ve often talked about going off somewhere quiet, to the country, having time to do your patchwork, starting the organic herbs business. You even did a business plan. That’s your dream.’
Grace turned to her impatiently. ‘Honestly, Isabel, I think you’ve gone off your rocker. Of course I talk about it but I couldn’t afford it. I need to work for at least another eight years. I don’t have a husband anymore, and Ron and I weren’t good savers. He didn’t leave me a fortune, you know.’
‘I think it’s wonderful, Isabel,’ Sally said. ‘It’s so exciting and romantic going to all those places where Eunice danced. I bet you’ve been planning it secretly for ages.’
Isabel smiled at her in relief. ‘Well, I’ve always wanted to do it but somehow it didn’t seem possible. But then Mum died and there was her money and I realised this was something I could do. Christmas finally decided me. That was when I actually started to plan it seriously. You know, I feel that I’ve been making it possible for other people to make their journeys – Doug, the kids – now it’s my turn.’
Robin skimmed the froth off her coffee with a teaspoon. ‘I think it’s wonderful too,’ she said. ‘I was reading another one of those books on menopause, and there’s a chapter in there about tribal communities where the women go away for a year when they reach menopause. They spend time grieving for the loss of childbearing and then preparing for the new phase of their lives. It’s a ritual.’
‘I thought she wanted to get away from the rituals,’ Grace sniffed. ‘And don’t tell me Isabel is grieving because she can’t have more kids. We’re all thankful we don’t have to worry about that anymore.’
Sally reached out to put a conciliatory hand on Grace’s arm. ‘Hang on, Grace, what are you getting so upset about? Anyone would think that Isabel was asking you to go away for a year. I’d love to do something like that. Move right out of my own life for a while.’
Grace pulled her arm away in irritation. ‘I see, Sally, so you’re going to chuck everything in and disappear up a mountain for a year or so? Give up teaching art, get into rock painting and become a hermit? Go on some mystical retreat?’
‘I don’t really see it like that,’ Sally said slowly. ‘But I’ve often thought of taking time out – a sort of sabbatical, away from everything and everybody.’ She turned to Isabel. ‘It’s more than a sabbatical or retreat, really, isn’t it? An emotional and spiritual journey.’
Grace pushed her coffee cup aside. ‘I think you’re completely mad,’ she said. ‘Do you honestly think you’re going to enjoy traipsing around Europe on your own for a year? What would you do? You’ve got a husband, a lovely home, you’re respected here. You can’t really mean you’d risk all that simply to go off on some inner journey. What about your kids, and the grandchildren? What about Doug, what does he think about it?’
There was a silence and Isabel stared at her coffee.
’Oh my god, you haven’t told him yet, have you?’
She swallowed hard and shook her head. ‘I wanted to talk to you three first. Sort of nut out the issues, to help me when I talk to him.’
‘So how do you think he’ll take it?’ Robin asked gently.
‘He’ll be devastated, of course,’ Grace cut in. ‘He’ll think she’s leaving him.’
‘Are you?’ Robin asked.
Isabel shook her head. ‘No, not leaving him in the sense that Grace means. I’m just stepping out of my life for a while. But I’m coming back. Of course I’m coming back.’
‘What if he isn’t there when you do come back?’ Grace asked, leaning forward. ‘What if he’s gone off on his own journey? How would you feel about that?’
Isabel looked at her, pondering the question. ‘Pretty devastated, I suppose, but I would think that he had a right to do it. And I’d hope that he’d come back too.’
Grace laughed. ‘You’re mad! Robin, come on, you’re the rational one – make her see sense.’
Robin paused, looking from Isabel to Grace. ‘Actually, she sounds perfectly sensible to me,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s a risk, but one she’s prepared to take. It’s exciting, really, an adventure. Like that movie Shirley Valentine, the bit where
she talks to the wall and asks whether this is all there is, when she feels sort of betrayed by life.’
‘Oh, Robin, really, Shirley Valentine was a great movie but that character was a downtrodden housewife. You’re single, a brilliant lawyer with a beautiful home and plenty of money. You have what a lot of women would kill for – and so does Isabel – and you can hardly compare poor old Doug to that domineering, oafish husband in Shirley Valentine.’ Grace shifted her chair further under the shade of the cafe awning. ‘Isabel’s hardly oppressed and downtrodden, she’s always been free to do what she wanted.’
Robin had flushed with embarrassment at Grace’s first onslaught but now she bounced back. ‘Since when did you become the reverend mother, Grace?’ she snapped. ‘I can recall many conversations where you talked of feeling burnt out and wanting to be left alone. I think I can recall times when you talked about how nice it would be to get away and not have all the responsibilities of being a successful nineties woman.’
‘But that’s just talk,’ Grace responded. ‘It does us good to have a whinge from time to time, gets it off your chest. I’ve never said I wanted to go off on some inner journey to transform myself.’
‘Nor have I,’ said Robin. ‘But right now the idea is very tempting. I’m feeling really exhausted and … well … scattered. I’m just longing for solitude and space for myself.’
Grace picked up her bag, searching for her sunglasses. ‘I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.’
Sally leaned across, putting her hand on Isabel’s arm. ‘I think that if you can do it, if you can handle the family side of it, it would be the most wonderful thing. But in any case, Isabel, you don’t need our approval.’ She paused, grinning sideways at Grace. ‘You don’t even need Grace’s approval.’
‘Well, that’s for sure!’ Grace said. ‘I’m off. I’ve promised to babysit for Tim and Angela. I’ll see you all soon.’ She looked across at Isabel. ‘In the meantime I look forward to hearing that you’re nominating for a third term. I’m ready for another session of doorknocking. Why don’t you book a couple of weeks’ getaway down south, that’ll give you time to yourself. Bye now.’ They watched her weave her way between the tables to the door, shoulders square, slim hips swinging with determination.
