Gang of Four

by Liz Byrski

  They had got out of the train at the turning point and wandered, with the meandering trail of other visitors, down the steep path to a clearing where the river boiled and churned over a steep fall of rock. ‘So now,’ said Josie, crouching at the water’s edge and trailing her fingers in the sparkling river, ‘you have to tell me your darkest secrets too.’

  ‘I told you.’ Robin grinned, avoiding eye contact. ‘The retreat is my dark secret.’

  ‘Not good enough! There’s more. There has to have been more than three terrific women friends and the law.’

  The silence hung between them while sightseers wandered around taking photographs and struggling to keep their children from attempting to paddle in the treacherous surge of the river. ‘Sorry,’ said Josie, standing up. ‘I shouldn’t be so pushy.’ She dried her hands on the seat of her jeans.

  ‘No, it’s okay,’ Robin said. ‘It’s just that it’s difficult, not something I can really talk about. There was someone … still is, but …’

  ‘Married?’

  Robin nodded. ‘Married, high profile, teenage kids. And that’s part of what I’m working out by being here. It’s not the reason for making this retreat, but it is a major thing I have to sort out for myself in the process.’

  The hoot of the train siren called them back on board and they rattled down into town. Robin drove Josie back to the guesthouse and then took a stroll around the town before following Dawn’s instructions for getting to Camilla’s house for her massage.

  ‘The local trout is usually good,’ said Father Pat as they examined the menu that evening in the pub restaurant. ‘You see, Robin, I find my way around the state by the gastronomic signposts! Only trouble here is, the portions are usually too large.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Robin. ‘Portions everywhere are too large for me. How do you feel about sharing?’

  They ended up ordering two portions of grilled trout between the four of them, and supplementing them with a large mixed salad and French fries.

  ‘We should have a toast,’ said Father Pat, who had ordered a local chenin blanc and filled their glasses. ‘To old friends and chance encounters.’

  ‘To old friends and chance encounters,’ they chorused, and started on the food.

  ‘You know,’ said Robin, helping herself to salad, ‘this is so strange. I was told that I was due for a chance encounter.’

  ‘Who by?’ Dawn asked.

  ‘Before I left on this trip a friend read the tarot cards –’

  Josie, who had just swallowed some wine, almost choked. ‘You had someone read the cards? Ms Rationality herself consulting the tarot?’

  ‘Not really,’ Robin said, blushing. ‘Never before, in fact. It was just that I was talking to this woman and she offered, and so I went along with it.’

  ‘Wonders will never cease. So what did she say?’

  ‘Actually, she made a lot of sense, about quite a few things,’ Robin said. ‘But just at the end she said something about there being a chance encounter and she wasn’t quite sure, but she said I should take care.’

  ‘Good advice considering the company you’ve fallen into,’ Father Pat said.

  ‘As a matter of fact, the chance encounter she said I needed to be strong for was with a man.’

  ‘Ha! She meant you, Father Pat.’ Josie laughed. ‘They’re even issuing warnings about you now!’

  ‘I love the tarot,’ said Dawn. ‘It’s the way it makes you think about things in different ways. I mean, I know it’s only what you choose to make it but I’ve often found it helped me to clarify things. Could you pass the wine, please, Robin.’

  It was as she leaned across to hand Dawn the bottle that Robin glanced up and found herself looking straight at Jim, who was heading into the restaurant with Monica and another couple. Robin froze as Dawn took the bottle from her hand. She saw the shock and indecision on Jim’s face as his eyes met hers, the slow turn of Monica’s head and her instant recognition. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. She saw John Jackson watching with obvious interest, and the guy from The West Australian raising his eyebrows.

  At that moment Robin realised that Monica knew. They had run into each other in a restaurant or at a function before. Jim would stop to speak to her, and she and Monica would exchange a polite greeting. This time it was different. Monica, her hand on Jim’s arm, turned to the table they were being shown to and paused to choose a seat that would place her with her back to Robin. Jim’s eyes flickered warily and he gave Robin a polite but almost imperceptible nod of recognition. She stared down at her plate feeling physically sick. They were accustomed to maintaining distance; she didn’t want him to come to the table, but the fact that he had not, and the look on Monica’s face, spoke volumes.

  ‘You okay, Robin?’ Josie asked. ‘You’re looking a bit flushed.’

  ‘Must be the wine.’

  ‘You’ve hardly tasted it,’ said Dawn.

  They were still trying to sort out the seating at Jim’s table as she took deep breaths to calm herself. She would just have to sit it out, she thought, thankful that they would not actually have to meet and speak. But it was not going to be so easy. As Jim moved around the table he and Father Pat saw each other, and Father Pat raised his hand in greeting and beckoned him over. Jim hesitated and then, excusing himself from his party, he walked across the room.

  Father Pat stood up, holding his napkin, hand outstretched. ‘Your Honour,’ he laughed. ‘Good to see you, Jim, it’s been a long time.’

  ‘Your Holiness! How are you? I heard you’d be acting bishop this weekend.’

  ‘You’re here for the celebrations tomorrow, Jim?’

  ‘We … I am,’ Jim said, looking carefully at Robin. ‘The premier’s opening the trail and launching the policy. I’m unveiling the plaque at the courthouse.’

  ‘Let me introduce you to my companions,’ said Father Pat, turning back to the table. ‘This is Justice Jim McEwan. Josie Fletcher and Dawn Lockyer, who run the Lavender Hill Guest House, which you are sadly missing out on by staying at some fancy hotel. And Josie’s friend Robin Percy.’

  Jim smiled and shook hands with Josie and Dawn. ‘Robin and I know each other already,’ he said, looking straight at her. ‘Haven’t seen you around for some time, Robin.’

  She looked up, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘I’m taking a bit of time off,’ she said.

  ‘Not everyone wants to spend their life in a courtroom, in a funny wig,’ said Father Pat, suddenly seeming flustered and trying to cover it.

  ‘Indeed not. And you’ll have your best dress on tomorrow, I hope. The little white and gold number?’

  ‘I certainly shall,’ said Father Pat, looking increasingly uncomfortable. ‘Well, this is a nice surprise.’

  ‘Yes, but I mustn’t keep you from your meal.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Father Pat with some relief. ‘You must get back to your friends. Good to see you, Jim.’

  At the end of the restaurant the small bush band suddenly struck up ‘Click Go the Shears’ and Jim, ostensibly giving the band his full attention, made his way back to his table.

  ‘A judge, eh?’ said Josie, helping herself to the last few fries. ‘You two have friends in high places.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Robin and Father Pat in unison, and as she met his eyes across the table, Robin saw that he knew exactly what the score was. She stumbled on through the rest of the meal, the plates were cleared, desserts refused and coffee ordered. The added noise of the band, and a few people who had decided to turn the minute uncarpeted space in front of it into a dance floor, helped to mask her discomfort.

  Josie, resplendent in tight black jeans and T-shirt, a black leather belt with studs, her platinum spikes shining under the warm lights, was trying to urge Dawn to dance. ‘C’mon, darl, when do we ever get the chance?’ she pleaded. And Dawn shrugged off her fringed shawl and stepped onto the floor with her, like a redheaded gipsy in her black T-shirt and scarlet skirt.

  Alone at the t
able with Father Pat, Robin felt her embarrassment mounting and started to shred a paper napkin between her fingers until the priest’s hand settled on hers to still it. ‘I’m sorry, Robin. That was my fault.’

  She looked at him in surprise.

  ‘I beckoned Jim over, I didn’t realise …’

  ‘How did you know?’ she asked, swallowing hard.

  ‘I’ve known Jim for years. We’ve served on committees together, we’re both members of the Irish Club. I’d heard the talk about him and a prominent lawyer. Frankly, I’d forgotten the name until I went to introduce you to him.’

  She leaned back in her chair sighing. ‘I’ve taken time out,’ she said. ‘But I suspect that tonight is an indication that things have changed for him in my absence.’

  ‘Would you like to leave?’ Father Pat asked. ‘We could walk back to the guesthouse together and leave the girls to their dancing.’

  ‘I was thinking of going –’ she said.

  ‘It’s best if we go together. They’ll worry about you walking home alone. I’ll let Josie know.’ He edged his way through the dancers and spoke to Dawn and Josie, who turned to her and waved goodnight and went on with their dancing.

  Robin took her jacket from the back of her chair and walked with him to the bar, deliberately avoiding eye contact with John Jackson while she waited for Father Pat to pay the bill.

  ‘You must find this very difficult,’ she said as they walked side by side up the hill in the clear, cool moonlight.

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘You must disapprove of me … the other woman … breaking up the good Catholic marriage.’

  ‘Aha! I see! I should have a scarlet letter ‘A’ tattooed across your forehead, and then start the stoning. Breaking up a good Catholic marriage, is that how you see it?’

  ‘It’s how I think others would see it,’ Robin said. ‘I suppose it would have been easier if Jim weren’t so well known, and if Perth weren’t such a small, parochial city. I’m starting to realise how naive I was, thinking we had kept it quiet. My friends all seemed to know, you knew, and in the pub there were a couple of reporters …’

  ‘I doubt that it’s ever easy,’ said Father Pat, gazing up at the perfectly clear sky to locate the Southern Cross. ‘Every community is small in some way, especially when it comes to extramarital affairs.’

  ‘I thought you’d be giving me a sermon on the way home.’

  ‘Is that what you’d like? Would it help to assuage your guilt?’

  ‘You think I should feel guilty?’ she snapped.

  ‘I think you do feel guilty, that’s different.’

  ‘I should roll up to your confessional and you could tell me to say three Hail Marys, give me absolution and tell me to go forth and sin no more.’

  His laughter rang sharply in the still air. ‘Dear me, how very old-fashioned and cynical you are, Robin. I think nothing of the sort.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That was very rude of me.’ She jumped as a rabbit darted from the scrub across the path in front of them.

  ‘There’s so many of them these days,’ Father Pat said.

  ‘Extramarital affairs?’

  ‘Rabbits.’

  They walked on in silence.

  ‘So what are you thinking about all this, then?’ she asked as they reached the door of the guesthouse.

  Father Pat turned from trying to fit his key into the look and looked at her. ‘My dear Robin,’ he said, leaning back against the door. ‘I think the world is full of basically good men and women who find themselves in exceedingly complex situations, of which this is one. You’re projecting your assessment of the situation onto me. Your dilemma is nothing to do with what I may or may not think.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He unlocked the door and turned back to her. ‘I mean, Robin, that there are many ways of living a life of integrity, and they do not necessarily fit into neat categories. The determining factor, surely, is where we feel our own integrity lies.’

  FOURTEEN

  Isabel stood in line at the post office waiting to collect her mail. There were still three people in front of her and the clerk was moving increasingly slowly as the minutes of the hot September afternoon ticked away. At last the American backpacker at the desk retrieved his letters and the queue moved up. The Alicante post office was in a narrow street of tall buildings a couple of blocks back from the spectacular Ramblas, and just a few minutes’ walk from the small hotel where she had been staying for the last three weeks. Isabel pushed damp strands of hair back from her forehead and craned her neck to see over the shoulder of the man in front of her. The desk clerk was checking every conceivable piece of identification belonging to a young woman who spoke rapidly to him in Spanish and rapped the desk angrily with her fist. The clerk’s pace did not change. Isabel checked for the third time that she had her passport and international driver’s licence. Her irritation was mounting. Doug had told her on the phone that he needed her signature on some papers for the bank. He would mail them to her and she should sign them and send them straight back. The post office arrangement had seemed a safer solution than sending them to the cosy but chaotic hotel, where everything seemed to happen by accident rather than design. The woman moved away from the desk and the man in front of Isabel stepped swiftly forward, slamming his passport onto the counter.

  Isabel breathed a sigh of relief and moved up, her turn next, and now there were five people behind her. Overhead a dark wooden fan clunked rhythmically as it moved the heavy air around, and outside a couple of bare-chested young men in shorts, boots and hard hats started up a drill to cut through the concrete paving. She had been waiting for almost twenty minutes and was longing to be outside again, sitting at a cafe on the esplanade to catch the cool breeze from the sea. The old gentleman wandered away from the desk clutching a parcel and muttering under his breath and Isabel was at the counter in seconds, pushing her passport towards the silent young man behind the glass screen. ‘There should be one large package,’ she said carefully.

  ‘Qué?’

  ‘Uno!’ she said, holding up one finger. ‘Carta.’ She mimed opening an envelope.

  ‘Sí, sí, señora – una carta. Un momento, por favor.’ He noted down the details from her passport and then gave her a form to complete with the details of her address in Alicante, while he searched the pigeonholes and returned with Doug’s package and another letter.

  ‘Señora Carter, dos cartas! Two letters,’ he said with the flicker of a lazy smile. ‘Sign here, please.’

  She signed and picked up Doug’s heavy padded envelope, gazing inquisitively at the second, unable to recognise the stamp or the handwriting. She moved away from the counter, rummaging for her glasses, and stopped by the door to put them on. It was a Portuguese stamp. Her stomach lurched at the prospect of a letter from Antonia, but the postmark was Cascais, and the sender’s name on the back of the envelope was Sara Oakwood. The instant of excitement had been too fleeting for her to feel any great sense of disappointment. She had not heard from Antonia since she left Monsaraz two months earlier.

  Isabel smiled to herself at the thought of a letter from Sara and, putting away her glasses, she walked thankfully out of the post office and headed for her favourite café. The streets were stirring to life after siesta as she strolled over the cream and maroon tiles set alternately in sweeping waves between the palms. She loved this street – it was what had made her decide to stay in Alicante for a few weeks before heading north up the Mediterranean coast. She was tired of moving around and needed to stop, to be somewhere impersonal, somewhere only pleasantries between guest and hotel staff were required.

  After leaving Lisbon at the beginning of August she had spent a week in Madrid and then made her way south by train to Cordoba, Seville and across to Granada. She was enchanted by the mystery and beauty of southern Spain, and fascinated by its history. In each place she found accommodation with women in the network, the basic two nights with some, a wee
k or more with others. In Cordoba, Rafaela, a retired teacher in her late seventies who had had a wartime fling with an Australian soldier, had been thrilled to have an Australian in her home. Isabel had stayed there for three weeks until Rafaela’s son arrived on a visit from Barcelona and needed the room. The Australian boyfriend had been a Perth boy and it hadn’t been difficult for Isabel to persuade Rafaela that it was not too late in life for her to make a trip to Australia and see his home town. Rafaela agreed. She would come, she said, when Isabel was home again and had recovered from her travels.

  In Seville and Granada and places in between she had stayed in other homes, exploring the cities and villages and reading about their history. It was after her first two nights in Alicante that she felt the need to stop moving for a while and to be somewhere free of the intensity and intimacy of staying in private homes. She found a small fourth-floor room with a bathroom in an old-fashioned family hotel where they gave her a weekly rate that seemed almost too good to be true. Two weeks later she had called home and Doug asked her to stay on for a few days so he could express mail the papers to her. Now she was restless, ready to move on, for she had identified the strange niggling feeling that had followed her since she left Madrid. Eunice’s life in Europe had suddenly taken on a higher priority. She was still wishing she had made time to go through Eunice’s things before she left, but she would get some of those letters and diaries now if Doug kept the promise he had grudgingly made over the phone.

  ‘Where d’you think you’ll be at Christmas?’ he had asked, and she told him she was aiming for Germany. ‘I could get a couple of weeks off at the beginning of January. It’s usually a quiet time. You said I was allowed one visit.’

  ‘You make it sound like prison,’ Isabel had laughed.

  ‘Sorry! Not at all. You’d be surprised how well I’m managing. I’m very self-sufficient these days. But you did promise …’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course, it would be lovely to meet in Germany.’

  ‘We could spend New Year together. I think I should stay here at Christmas. For the family, I mean, keep it all going as normal.’