Gang of Four

by Liz Byrski

  The Sunday that Tim and Angela broke the news, Grace had been to see her father in the morning, and arrived at their house, a mass of tension, looking forward to taking Emily for a walk by the river. It was a chilly July afternoon and she sat on the pure white sand of the foreshore while Emily waded into the shallow rippling water in her red wellies. Grace missed Sally desperately, and missed Isabel more than she had anticipated. She hadn’t fully appreciated quite what the Gang of Four meant in her life until everything changed. Her friendship with Robin had only existed as part of the group. Now it seemed that they were stuck with each other and Robin was preoccupied, probably with the appeal but also, Grace suspected, with her secret love life. It irritated her that Robin thought they were all too blind to see what was going on. She was offended by Robin’s secrecy. Did she think her friends would spread gossip about her, or was she afraid they would admonish her for her illicit affair?

  Grace had been at school with Monica McEwan. Perth was like that, so small everyone seemed in some way connected to everyone else. She had never liked Monica since the day when, aged twelve, they and some other girls had been caught smoking behind the drama hall. Monica, who was the ringleader and who had supplied the cigarettes, told the principal that the cigarettes belonged to Grace, and so she had taken the bulk of the punishment. Even so, Grace was wary of being unfair to Monica over the Robin–Jim affair. She hated it when a wife was demonised as some sort of justification for betrayal. Had the subject been up for discussion she would have taken care not to say anything derogatory about Monica, but in her heart of hearts she thought Monica deserved everything that might be coming to her.

  Grace stood up, brushing the sand off her immaculate jeans. ‘Emy, darling, come on out of the water. Let’s go home.’

  Emily turned, lurching slightly in the water, and waved a bent stick. ‘Ganma, come water!’ she cried. ‘Come water.’

  Grace smiled, walking to the water’s edge, and bent to pick her up. ‘No water for me, Emy,’ she said. ‘I don’t have lovely red boots like you. We’re going home. Mummy’s making brownies for you.’

  Emily pressed her face close to Grace and planted a large wet kiss on her cheek. ‘Emy love Ganma.’

  ‘And I love you too, darling,’ Grace said, hugging her and breathing in the delicious scent of young skin and baby shampoo. ‘You’re my sunshine.’

  ‘Shunsine,’ Emily repeated. ‘Shunsine, Ganma.’ And Grace set her back on her feet and they walked hand in hand towards the car.

  She had thought there was some tension in the air when she arrived from the nursing home but they were halfway through lunch before Tim plucked up the courage to tell her.

  ‘I know it’s a long way, Mum,’ he said cautiously, watching the look of horror on Grace’s face. ‘But there’s a direct flight from Perth to Tokyo, and it’s only for two years.’

  ‘But Japan! I’ll never see you. And why would you want to live in Japan?’

  ‘It’s the job, Grace,’ Angela said, sitting down beside her. ‘It’s a wonderful opportunity for Tim, for the three of us. We’ll have a rent-free apartment, and there’s a huge away-from-home allowance. It means we’ll come back here at the end of the two years with heaps of money in the bank. And we’ll be back in time for Emy to start school.’

  ‘But Japan!’ Grace said again. ‘It’s so …’

  ‘It’s a very sophisticated and civilised country, Mum,’ Tim ventured. ‘We’ll have a two-bedroom apartment in Kyoto. You’ll be able to come and visit us.’

  Grace felt like Alice in Wonderland in the rabbit hole, small, lost and as though she was tumbling from a great height into endless unfamiliar space.’ Will you come back at all? I mean, before the two years are up?’

  ‘We get a trip home for four weeks each year,’ said Tim. ‘And if you come over a couple of times, well, that won’t be so bad, will it? You know we’ll miss you but we’re so excited about it.’

  The wise and generous mother in Grace knew she should be thrilled for them. The devouring, possessive, insecure woman wanted to howl. She wanted to whine and sulk, to ask how they thought they would manage without her help, and how they could leave her alone. She paused, her body tense with shock and distress.

  ‘Of course,’ she said shakily. ‘Of course it’s a wonderful opportunity. I understand, I do, really, it’s just that it’s a bit of a shock. I’ll miss you all so much, Emy will be so different … but of course you’re right.’

  Angela took her hand. ‘We’ll call often and email. I can scan pictures of Emy into the computer and send them – I’ll do it every week.’

  Grace smiled. ‘I know, Angie, I know. When are you actually going?’

  Tim shuffled his feet and looked more uncomfortable than ever. ‘Actually, they want me up there urgently – next week, in fact. I’m leaving on Thursday. Ange and Emy are coming up two weeks after that.’

  Grace’s head spun. She looked at the battered fluffy rabbit on the floor and Emily’s tiny bare toes, which were curling under her feet as she concentrated on getting some round plastic people into a red and blue toy bus. ‘So soon,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘Well, you must have heaps to do, so how can I help?’ And she pushed down the urge to vomit.

  Robin dreamed she was driving somewhere in Portugal trying to find a remote village like the one on Isabel’s postcard. She had no map and no idea in which direction she was travelling. It was hard to see the road because she was crying but she knew that if she could only get to the village everything would be all right. Isabel would be there; she’d know what to do. She turned a corner, speeding downhill, and suddenly a woman stepped out into the road and waved at her to stop. It was Isabel. But when Robin put her foot on the brake, nothing happened, the car just raced on and then plunged to the edge of a steep cliff, where it stopped suddenly, hanging perilously with its front wheels over the edge. Scared of tipping it, Robin moved slightly in the driving seat and woke, her heart thumping with fear and a cold sweat prickling her skin.

  It was five o’clock. She always had bad dreams if she fell asleep in the afternoon. She shivered slightly, pulled the doona further up the bed and curled closer to Jim’s back. They must have slept for about an hour. He’d said he needed to leave by seven because he’d told Monica he was playing golf and then going for drinks at the club. Robin tried to shake off the residual anxiety of the dream. She didn’t know much about the meaning of dreams but she thought she knew what this one meant. She had dreamed it several times in the last month, and each time she woke determined to tell Jim how she felt, and each time she changed her mind.

  She buried her cold face in the warm curve of his neck, tasting his skin with her tongue. He stirred slightly at first and then, waking, turned towards her smiling, his eyes still shut. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Five – just turned. Heaps of time.’

  ‘Yes. Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘I’d love some coffee, but I’d like a kiss first,’ he said. He opened his eyes and, slipping his hand behind her neck, pulled her down towards him.

  Robin could feel her resolve dissolving into his mouth. ‘I want to talk to you,’ she murmured, moving away.

  ‘That sounds ominous.’ Jim grinned, reaching out to stroke her back as she got out of the bed. ‘I’ll definitely need coffee to gird my loins.’

  ‘Keep your loins there and ungirded,’ Robin said. ‘I’ll bring the coffee in here. It’s cold this afternoon.’

  He was sitting up in bed reading the Sunday paper when she came back with the coffee and she paused momentarily, watching him from the doorway. He looked older than his fifty-three years, but he was fit. Spare frame, square shoulders, strong neck and a lean face topped with crinkly grey hair made him look more like a sports coach than a judge. He looked up, blue eyes smiling. ‘Excellent room service!’

  ‘Every service available at a price,’ she joked, handing him a mug of coffee and climbing back into the bed beside him.

  ‘So, talk away.�
� Jim tossed the newspaper onto the bedroom floor and sipped his coffee.

  Robin took a deep breath to quell the butterflies in her stomach. Jim reached out and covered her cold hand with his warm one. ‘Heavens, Rob, you’re frozen. Here, put this on.’ Leaning over the side of the bed and balancing his coffee with one hand, he grabbed his sweater from the floor.

  She pulled the dark blue cashmere over her head and felt its softness settle comfortingly around her. She didn’t know how to begin. ‘These conversations we keep having …’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘The conversations about us, you telling Monica, us taking the risks …’ She paused briefly. ‘Well, we always end up doing nothing and now I feel … I can’t … I can’t cope with it anymore.’

  Jim set his coffee mug down on the bedside table and took her hand in his. ‘Go on.’

  ‘That’s it, really. I can’t cope with it anymore. I feel absolutely wrecked. Wanting you so much, the secrecy, living for the times when you can get away, not being able to go out together, not being able to do anything normal. Most of the time I’m eaten up with jealousy and anger because I feel trapped, as though my life is completely controlled by your marriage. I’m powerless. Only you can change it. I’m sorry if you think I’m neurotic and unreasonable but I can’t do this anymore.’

  Jim held her hand tighter and looked out of the window where the sky had darkened to a dull grey, and the wind was whipping up waves that crashed to the beach in showers of white foam. ‘You’re not neurotic or unreasonable. Not at all.’

  Robin started to shake with emotion. Jim got out of bed, closed the curtains, switched on the heater and a bedside light and climbed back into bed, putting his arms around her. ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘I want you to leave Monica now … for us to be together. I don’t care about the gossip. I don’t care about my job. I worry more about your job, but at the same time I feel quite desperate, as though I’m fighting for my life.’

  The silence was painfully long. Her heart pounded in her chest as Jim rested his cheek on the top of her head. ‘

  You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry to have put you in this position for so long. I’ll talk to Monica tonight.’

  Robin checked her watch. It was two minutes later than the last time she checked. Ten thirty-two. She felt weak and nauseous. The night stretched before her like an eternity. It was more than three hours since Jim had left, promising to talk to Monica as soon as he got home. Would it be a civilised discussion, or a dramatic scene? Surely Jim and Monica wouldn’t just go to bed as usual after he’d told her he was leaving. He would call her, or more likely pack a bag and come back. They must still be talking. She knew it was too soon to hear from him but the waiting was driving her crazy. She wished she could talk to Isabel. The silence was torture. She wrote a note and put it on the kitchen bench, where Jim always dropped his car keys. Then she grabbed her waterproof jacket from the laundry, went out the front door, down the path, and started walking briskly along the footpath to the beach.

  The salt-edged wind from the sea stung her face and whipped her hair out of her hood. Half closing her eyes she saw what she had seen every day for weeks, the image of a woman running along a cliff top towards a small cottage, a woman running for her life. She started to run hard and fast against the wind, until she could feel nothing but the burning in her chest and the pounding of her feet on the pavement. Then she turned and ran again, all the way back to her house where the lights glowed soft and welcoming through the rice-paper blinds and where Jim’s car would probably be in the drive, or his reassuring voice on the answering machine. But the drive was empty, and no light blinked on the answering machine. Robin took a hot shower, washed her hair and crawled into bed. She buried her face in the pillow, breathing in his scent, wondering what was happening ten kilometres away in that strange and threatening other life that he had, until now, shared with Monica.

  At six o’clock the next morning Robin dialled Grace’s number. ‘Can I come over?’

  ‘What? Now?’ said Grace, who had also had a sleepless night and was feeling like death.

  ‘Now – I need to talk.’

  ‘Well, so do I. Come on over. I’ll make coffee. Do you want something to eat?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Robin said. ‘Just coffee – I couldn’t eat a thing.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Not really. What about you?’

  ‘Terrible,’ Grace said. ‘Sounds like mutual counselling.’

  ‘Uh-huh! I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’ Robin put down the phone, threw some cold water on her face, pulled on her clothes and went out to the car. It was a bleak morning with a sharp chill in the air and fine rain falling from a solid grey sky.

  Grace opened the door in her dressing gown. ‘My god! You look like you were up all night.’

  ‘I was. How about you?’ Robin asked, wishing desperately that she hadn’t come, wishing it were anyone but Grace.

  ‘Same, really,’ Grace said. She put mugs and the coffee pot on the table. ‘Tim and Angela are going to Japan for two years.’

  Robin raised her eyebrows. ‘Work?’

  ‘A really good job. Of course it’s wonderful for them but I feel simply terrible. Silly, I suppose. Somehow it feels like a personal insult – and I do know how ridiculous and selfish that must sound. First Isabel and Sally go, then June dies, now this.’ She forced a laugh. ‘My life seems to be crumbling around my ears.’

  Robin heard the false bravado in Grace’s voice but was too distressed to respond with more than a murmur of sympathy. Grace paused, looking at her, feeling the embarrassing chasm of silence.’ Anyway, Rob, you’re in a worse state than me. What’s happened?’

  Robin stared at the floor. She had been mad to come here. She had no idea how to relate to Grace alone, intimately, when they were both in pain. Had Grace known about Jim it would be easier but first she must explain all that and probably answer awkward questions. The fear that had prompted her cry for help now paralysed her, locking her into awkward silence. Grace began to pour the coffee.

  ‘Take your coat off and sit down, Rob,’ she said with uncharacteristic gentleness.’ Is it about Jim McEwan?’

  ‘It certainly doesn’t sound good,’ Grace said, two mugs of coffee later.

  ‘Am I stupid thinking he should have called, or come back?’ Robin asked, desperate for explanations. ‘I mean, I thought what would happen was that he’d go home, tell Monica, they might have an argument, or maybe a long talk, and then I’d hear from him. It’s twelve hours. He can’t have gone to sleep, surely, not after that. I tried calling him but his mobile’s switched off.’

  ‘He might have slept,’ Grace said thoughtfully. ‘Men are so weird. I know you were awake all night, most women would be. But a nurse I once worked with told me that the evening she told her husband she was going to leave him he was terribly upset, devastated. He cried, he begged her not to go and this went on for hours, until she couldn’t bear it any longer. She went to have a shower and when she came out of the bathroom he’d gone to bed and was fast asleep and snoring. She paced up and down all night crying, and he slept right through.’

  Robin looked at her in amazement and Grace leaned forward across the table and took her hand. ‘The trouble with men, Rob, is that they’re different. We expect them to be like us, especially the ones we love, but they’re not. They’re totally different. Once we accept that, once we stop expecting them to behave like women, life with them becomes a bit easier. It took me years to learn that and then Ron died.’ She got up, pulling her white bathrobe in at the waist and tightening the knot of the belt. ‘Even so, I would have thought Jim might have called by now – it’s after seven.’ They both stared at Robin’s mobile lying on the table. ‘Are you in court today?’

  Robin shook her head. ‘No, but I’ve got a case conference at nine.’

  ‘Try him again now,’ Grace suggested. ‘If he answers I’ll go upstairs.’


  Robin picked up the phone, dialled and got the voice mail again. ‘How did you know about Jim and me, anyway? Who told you?’

  Grace rinsed the coffee mugs. ‘I’m going to make some toast. I really think you should have something in your stomach. Someone said something, at work one day, I think. I can’t really remember.’

  ‘So it wasn’t Isabel who told you?’

  Grace looked surprised. ‘Isabel? No. Does she know?’

  Robin shrugged. ‘Yes, has done for a while, apparently, but she only told me just before she left.’

  Drying her hands, Grace shrugged her shoulders. ‘She never mentioned it to me.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ Robin asked.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ Grace countered sharply. ‘Didn’t you trust us?’

  ‘It wasn’t that exactly … it wasn’t that I thought you’d tell anyone else, just …’

  ‘Just what?’ Grace’s eyes darkened.

  ‘I couldn’t face what you might say. That you might think so badly of me. And anyway, you know Monica.’

  ‘Everyone knows Monica,’ Grace cut in before her finer feelings could stop her.

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Oh, I know, I know what you mean. Sorry I was so sharp, but I’ve felt so annoyed that you never said anything. I guess you’re just copping that flak now, when you can least handle it.’ Robin looked away, studying her hands, and the silence descended again.

  ‘Strange, isn’t it?’ Grace said quietly. ‘You and I here like this.’ Robin looked up in surprise.

  ‘I mean, we’ve never been particularly close,’ Grace continued. ‘You were close to Isabel, me to Sally and those two to each other, but not you and me. Now they’re gone we’re … well, we’re …’ She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘Stuck with each other?’ Robin said, raising her eyebrows.

  The moment of tension was palpable, but a slow smile spread across Grace’s face and she nodded. ‘That’s pretty brutal.’