Gang of Four

by Liz Byrski

  ‘As I said, I’ll have to pull my head in a bit and I thought I’d sell the flat. I could buy somewhere at half the price and still be very comfortable – scale down, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. I’m so pleased for you. I’ve been worried for so long –’ She stopped suddenly.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Grace said. ‘It’s okay, you’re allowed to be worried now. I mean, I can now accept that in the spirit it’s meant. I think it’ll be okay, it’s a bit scary, but one thing I’m sure about is that I can’t live the way I did before. When are you coming back to Perth, Sally?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. I’m due back at school mid July, my visa expires at the end of May, so I’ll have to leave then. A lot depends on what happens tomorrow, really. It seems to be all I can think about at the moment.’

  ‘Of course. And this man, Steve, is he … well, is he … ?’

  Sally laughed. ‘No he is not an alcoholic. Hard to believe, I know, but I seem to have broken the pattern. I’m so lucky. He may come back with me for a holiday. You’ll like him, Grace, I know you will.’

  ‘I’m sure I will, and he’s the lucky one. Did you have Christmas together?’

  ‘We did. It was a bit fraught, the daughter problem – his daughter. I mentioned her in the letter …’

  ‘She sounds deadly.’

  ‘She’s pretty grim. I’m not sure how all that’s going to pan out, but I guess it’ll be okay in the end.’

  ‘Sally …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re a wonderful woman, my most precious friend. I don’t think I was ever really able to tell you that. Oh God, now I’m crying again. When will this ever stop?’

  ‘You too, Grace. The crying’s good, don’t worry about it. I miss you. You’ll take care, won’t you? So many changes …’

  ‘I will, I’ll be fine, and you … tomorrow, especially … I’m thinking of you. Be strong, don’t be ashamed. I’ll see you in a few months.’

  Grace sat in the darkness staring into the fading fire. This time last year she had been heading off to a New Year’s Eve party, at Isabel’s in-laws, surrounded by friends and acquaintances. Bright lights, laughter, conversation, good food and wine. At midnight they had sung ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and she had gone home to bed exhausted. Now, for the first time in her life, she would be alone as the year turned. She wondered why it had always seemed so important to be out celebrating, surrounded by people, when what now seemed to matter was solitude. She leaned back on the couch contemplating the evening stretching ahead of her: the news, a Cary Grant movie on television, and then perhaps she wouldn’t even stay awake until midnight. Freda settled by the couch resting her head on Grace’s knee. ‘Just you and me tonight,’ Grace said contentedly, stroking her golden head. ‘Happy New Year, old girl.’

  She woke early next morning to an unfamiliar pearly light between the curtains. Jumping out of bed she flung them back and gasped in delight: the garden, the trees, the village rooftops and fields as far as she could see were covered in snow, and it was still falling. Dragging on her tracksuit Grace ran down the stairs and through the kitchen. She thrust her feet into Vivienne’s boots, which stood by the back door, and stepped out into the eerie stillness of the garden. The snow softened the stark winter landscape and muted every sound. It settled cool and delicate on her hair and eyelashes. Freda, who had followed her, sniffed the air and wagged her tail, hoping for a walk, as Grace stood there in the silence letting the snow settle on her, marvelling at the pristine whiteness of the paths and the rose beds, the delicate outlines of the trees and bushes. The snow smelled of damp linen and she inhaled deeply, drawing some snowflakes up her nose, making herself sneeze.

  Alone in the white garden she stretched out her arms, turning around in circles as a sudden shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds and rendered the garden a dazzling, blinding white. Dizzy and breathless she scooped snow in her two hands and held the melting whiteness to her face, feeling the softness, tasting its bland metallic coolness on her tongue. Finally she rolled it into a ball and threw her first-ever snowball, delighting at the way the hardened snow fell apart in a powdery white shower when it hit the gate.

  ‘All my life and I’ve never seen this before,’ she whispered into the silence. ‘And if Isabel hadn’t decided to go away I might never have seen it.’ It seemed suddenly that there was so much more to see, here and in other places, places she had never dreamed of going, places she had always thought herself too busy, too needed, to take the time to see. As she strolled around the garden listening with fascination to the crunch of her footsteps compacting the snow, she felt the tears begin again. They were the tears of wasted time and missed opportunity, the roads not taken because she had stuck so rigidly to what she knew and what she could control. Now, on this brilliant and beautiful English morning, the snow had transformed her view just as it had transformed the physical landscape. How could she have been so frightened? How could she have become such a control freak, keeping everything on such a tight rein to manage her fear? Where had it come from, that fear that had gripped her unacknowledged for decades, the fear that manifested as a hard, tight feeling which had in itself come to mean safety?

  ‘Oh my god,’ she said aloud. ‘I’m fifty-six in a couple of weeks, and there’s so much I still have to do.’ She stopped in her tracks, remembering her last birthday, an evening picnic by the river with Robin, Sally and Isabel, and the feeling that had swamped her as they held up their glasses to drink to her and then sang ‘Happy Birthday’. All the big, important things have happened, she had thought in that moment. Nothing changes from now on.

  ‘Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life, Grace,’ Sally had said that night. And secretly she had thought it a stupid remark but had smiled and nodded because she loved Sally and didn’t want to be ungracious. Now she threw back her head and laughed aloud, the snow falling into her mouth. Then she sat down abruptly in the snow and rolled on her side, laughing again, rolling over and over in the snow while Freda bounded around her, barking in excitement.

  Minutes later, her soaking tracksuit abandoned on the kitchen floor, Grace stood in her underwear in the lounge and stared at Vivienne’s big untidy desk where she had sat a few days earlier to make the life-changing calls to Denise and the dean. On the floor alongside the desk was a pile of files that Vivienne had obligingly removed from the bottom drawer so that Grace could put her feet in it if she needed to. Smiling at the empty open drawer, Grace picked up the files and dumped them back in the drawer, closing it firmly with her bare foot. Then, drawing a deep breath of satisfaction and resolve, she headed upstairs for a shower and some dry clothes to wear on this, the first morning of the rest of her life.

  ‘Well, either the snow or two weeks alone seem to have kicked you further along the road to change,’ Vivienne said five days later as she parked the car in the forecourt of a community hall in south London. ‘I’m having trouble keeping up with your evolving personality!’

  Grace flung open the car door with a laugh. ‘If you’re having trouble, how do you think my kids and the others back home will cope?’ She stepped out onto the ice, stamping her feet to warm them. ‘Imagine how terrified they’ll be when they hear about the early retirement. They’ll all be thinking up ways to stop me trying to organise their lives for them! Meanwhile I’ll just be revelling in my own life. Now, what’s this scheme you and Orinda have been on about for so long?’

  Vivienne locked the car and picked up the stick she had brought along for safety. ‘All will be revealed in a few minutes,’ she said. ‘And you may wish you’d never asked.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t asked,’ Grace said, amused. ‘You’ve been threatening me with it for weeks, but you’ve avoided actually telling me about it.’

  ‘No point trying to get you excited while you were a weeping mass of confusion. Now you’re a woman ready for anything, I can take advantage of you!’ Vivienne retorted. She made her way ca
refully over the ice towards a set of double doors beneath a colourful sign that said ‘The Patchwork Project’.

  The previous day Grace had taken an early train to Victoria Station to meet Vivienne. They had done a lightning tour of the National Gallery and then wandered down into Trafalgar Square, and Grace, who had spent her life with her mother’s terror of birds and other fluttering creatures, had bought a bag of birdseed. She gritted her teeth at the first touch of fluttering wings, but her fear soon faded along with the tight feeling in her chest as she stood still and confident with pigeons flapping around her head and settling on her outstretched arms. From the square they had gone to an organ recital in St Martin-in-the-Fields, and then eaten a thick bean soup with crusty bread at the restaurant in the crypt. Vivienne had booked them into a small hotel where the rooms were too hot and the water not hot enough, and they had collapsed on their beds for a couple of hours to recover before calling a taxi to take them to the theatre. Seeing The Mousetrap, now in its forty-fifth year, had been close to the top of Grace’s list of must-dos while in England. As they drove out of London heading for home the next morning, Vivienne had suggested a detour to introduce Grace to her sewing scheme in south London.

  ‘Okay.’ Vivienne grinned, leaning heavily against the door that scraped noisily over the stoop. ‘This is it, my baby that’s grown into a monster. Ta-rah!’

  Before she walked in, Grace could hear the music coming from a stereo system and the voices of women singing along, loud and flat, with Barry Manilow. It was a small hall with a floor of bare boards and a preponderance of ugly green paint. On the stage at one end cardboard boxes were stacked deep and high, and on the floor were piles of cotton dresses, skirts, blouses and curtains. In the middle of the hall a collection of tables set out in a square formed a work area and around them sat more than a dozen women, laughing, talking and singing as they worked. Some seemed to be cutting off buttons and stripping out zips, others were cutting the fabric into large squares and stacking it in piles. A couple of small children sat on the floor amid the piles of clothes, playing with a plastic truck and some coloured bricks.

  ‘Whoa, look out, girls, the boss is here!’ called a birdlike woman with pure white hair. ‘Stop looking as though you’re enjoying it.’

  She dragged herself up with her walking frame and slowly made her way towards Vivienne while others called out greetings from the table.

  ‘’Bout time you paid us a visit, Viv, and I thought you’d’ve got rid of that stick by now,’ she said with a grin as Vivienne enveloped her and the walking frame in a bear hug.

  ‘I’ve only got it because of the ice, Florrie. Mostly I don’t use it now, honest!’

  ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it. Didn’t have a stick meself until I got to eighty, so you’re not allowed one in your sixties. Brought us another volunteer, have you?’

  ‘A visitor rather than a volunteer,’ Vivienne said, turning back to Grace. ‘This is my friend Grace, she’s from Australia and she stayed on after the quilting retreat.’ She gave Florrie a nudge in the ribs. ‘I’m hoping she might get involved, so make it look like fun.’

  Florrie extended a bony hand that disguised a grip of steel. ‘Pleased to meet you, Grace. You’re a marked woman if Viv’s got plans for you. Don’t expect to get back to Australia without her drawing some promise of blood, sweat and tears.’ She gripped Grace by the elbow and drew her closer to the table. ‘What you see here is a sweatshop.’

  ‘And Florrie’s the tyrant who’s worse than any Victorian employer,’ called a plump young woman who was breastfeeding a baby at the far end of the table. ‘Take a seat, come and join us.’

  ‘What it is, you see, is not a sweatshop,’ Vivienne explained as they sat at the table with mugs of tea made by a smartly dressed woman in her fifties who would have looked more at home at a charity lunch. ‘It’s a workshop. All this cotton clothing comes from the major charities. They get this stuff given to them for their op shops but half the clothes they can’t sell, so instead of sending it to the rag merchants who only give them a few quid for it, they give it to us—just the cottons. It’s all washed. There’re a couple of big washers and driers out in the back kitchen. Then we bring it back in here and start work on it.’

  ‘Too much talk, not enough action,’ Florrie called, pushing a couple of pairs of scissors towards Grace and Vivienne. ‘Talk and work at the same time. Get the buttons and the zips off that pile of stuff.’

  Vivienne picked up the scissors and began snipping the buttons off a blue floral dress. Gathering them together, she slipped them into a small snap-lock plastic bag. ‘It’s a value-adding project, which means it adds value to the stuff that’s given to us by the charities. When the cottons are clean they’re brought in here, the buttons are taken off and sealed in bags, the zips come off and they’re packed into bags of two, four or six. Then they go back to the op shops and get sold, and we get the money. You know how expensive buttons and zips and trimmings are, well, these are all in good condition, and sorted and packed they sell like hot cakes. We can get more for a pack of six or eight buttons than the op shop can get for the blouse they come from, or for a huge pile of clothes sold for rags.’

  ‘And zips!’ cut in the elegant tea-maker who was now sitting beside Grace. ‘Think what you’d pay for six zips these days. But you can buy this pack of six secondhand zips for half the price and we get money for our running costs. I’m Zena, by the way. I’ve been coming here a couple of mornings a week for the last three years.’

  ‘Then there’s the exciting bit,’ said Vivienne. ‘That’s what’s going on over the other side of the table. The hems and seams are cut off so there are just pieces of clean cotton fabric and it’s packed into those boxes. Then we send the boxes to women’s sewing circles in all sorts of places – Nigeria, Botswana, Sierra Leone, several others. You probably know that Oxfam and some of the other aid organisations have set up sewing groups for women in developing countries? They provide sewing machines and the women are taught to sew so they can earn their living. In fact, there’s an Australian woman who set up a whole lot in East Timor a couple of years ago.’

  Grace nodded. ‘Yes, Mavis Taylor, I read about her, she lived in Melbourne. She’s incredible, she’s over eighty and she’d never done anything like it before.’

  ‘Exactly, and this is similar. What we’ve started to do now is value-add to that. We send women – quilters and patchworkers, experienced women who know the techniques and are good at design – to other countries so the local women can learn patchwork and quilting design and techniques. As well as doing dressmaking and other types of sewing, the women can actually get into designing and making quilts and cushion covers. The patchworkers show them some of the old principles of patchwork and then discuss with them how they might develop patterns and designs using their own cultural symbols and stories.

  ‘Some of the quilts are sold in the towns there – if the women can get them into the markets and shops they’re sold to the tourist trade. But they’re making such incredible quilts and hangings and cushions that we’re encouraging them to make special pieces that can be sold around the world for a really high price. That’s part of what Gary’s doing now through our design company. He markets these special pieces for us. He has them on display in the showroom but he also travels overseas a lot so he takes them with him and sells them to buyers in New York, San Francisco, Paris, Brussels – all sorts of places. Each quilt has a card with its history – you know, stuff about the fabric being rescued from the rag merchants, prepared by volunteers, and then designed and made by the women’s sewing circles. And if the women have a story to go with the design, that goes on the card too.’

  ‘And the money goes back to the communities?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Yes, and now we’ve been going for four years, the money is rolling in. It’s having that vehicle to get to the overseas buyers that has made the difference – the quilts are sold in some really spiffy locations. The retailers have to
sign an agreement that they will only take ten per cent of the sale price, Gary recovers his costs and even so, about sixty per cent of the sale price goes back to the sewing circles. And we’re actually getting special orders now – I mean, the sewing women are getting special orders.’

  ‘C’mon over here, Grace,’ Florrie said, beckoning Grace up the steps to the stage. ‘Come and look at these. Gary’s taking them to an exhibition in Rome next week.’ From a wooden packing case she took a folded quilt that had been wrapped in calico. ‘This one was designed and made by women in Sierra Leone. The first one they made was called “Fire” and it sold for more than three thousand US dollars in New York. It paid for a well to be sunk near the village, so now they’ve called this new one “Water”.’ Florrie held one end of the quilt, resting her arms on her frame, and Zena took the other end, unfurling a gorgeous light, thick quilt patterned in waves of blue and green with showers of tiny patterned fabric strips in blue, green and white cascading between. Grace caught her breath.

  ‘Magnificent, isn’t it?’ said Vivienne, who had now joined them on the stage. ‘You should have seen “Fire”, it was just as spectacular, in red, orange and black. It’s now hanging in the foyer of a women’s hospital in New York.’

  Florrie pulled two more quilts from the case, one made in Botswana, and another from Sierra Leone.

  ‘And all the material is cleaned and sorted here?’ Grace asked.

  ‘No, we’ve got another workshop in Liverpool,’ Vivienne said. ‘But it’s run just the same as this. A workspace donated by the local council. The fabrics come from local organisations, the work is all done by volunteers. The shipping costs are covered by donations and the money that comes from the buttons and zips. We’ve got about sixty volunteers here, haven’t we, Florrie?’

  ‘Seventy-one at the last count,’ Florrie said. ‘The workshop’s open every day, ten till four, and Wednesday evening till nine. You come along when you can, there’s always plenty here. Thing is, you see, it’s company for the women. Some of the young mothers come and bring their kids, and the old dames like me come for someone to talk to, and then there’s the posh tarts like Zena here who come along to bring a bit of class and see how the other half lives!’