In the Company of Strangers Read online

  About In the Company of Strangers

  Ruby and Cat’s friendship was forged on an English dockside sixty years ago when, as terrified children, they were shipped off to Australia. It was a friendship that was supposed to last a lifetime but when news of Cat’s death reaches Ruby in London, it comes after years of estrangement.

  Declan too has drifted away from Cat but is forced back to her lavender farm, Benson’s Reach, by the terms of her will. He turns to his troubled friend Alice, who is desperate for a refuge.

  Can the magic of Benson’s Reach triumph over the hurt of the past? Or is Cat’s duty-laden legacy simply too much for Ruby and Declan to keep alive?

  ‘Byrski’s strength is to give us insight and empathy into the psychology of her characters’

  WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN

  ‘[Byrski] radiates the same sense of purpose and possibility her novels impart’

  COURIER MAIL

  Cover

  About the book

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Acknowledgements

  About Liz Byrski

  Also by Liz Byrski

  Copyright page

  For my family – Neil, Mark, Sarah, Bill, Jamie, Sam and Ashley with love

  uby is in the kitchen when the mail arrives. She is sitting at the table in her winter dressing gown and tartan Marks and Spencer pyjamas, and although she hears the clatter of the postman pushing letters through the slot and the soft thwack as they land on the doormat she stays just where she is. Her usual enthusiasm for the mail is the stuff of legend and her staff frequently tease her about it. Sometimes she thinks it’s the first step in role reversal, they’re preparing to become the elders of the tribe when she starts to lose it. Not that she minds this, in fact she finds it quite endearing and plays up to it by deliberately demonstrating other eccentricities on which they can pounce with glee. As she has no intention of declining into dementia for a long time yet, and hopefully never, she sees no harm in indulging the younger generation with some amusement at her expense. She does have a childlike enthusiasm for the mail; where others dread crippling power bills, parking fines, requests for donations or news of death and destruction, Ruby anticipates good news of old friends, fresh connections and interesting possibilities.

  There is a moment of silence after the mail drops, then a ring at the bell. Jim, who has been delivering the mail for decades, always rings to let her know the post has arrived, but still she doesn’t get up.

  It’s pleasant here at the kitchen table with the comforting heat of the Aga on her back, her feet encased in ugg boots. Ugg, Ruby thinks, is a good name because despite the warmth and comfort they are fiendishly ugly, and have a worrying look of slovenliness about them, but now they seem to have become a fashion item. Not long ago, as she thumbed through Hello magazine while getting her hair trimmed, she’d come across a photograph of two pale, waif-like models with straggly hair wearing floaty cheesecloth dresses with ugg boots.

  ‘How ridiculous!’ Ruby had said, holding up the magazine so that Amanda, the hairdresser, could see it. ‘If it’s hot enough to wear cheesecloth it’s too hot for fur boots.’

  ‘That’s the fashion these days,’ Amanda had said. ‘Ugg boots with cheesecloth, army boots with florals and frills. That’s fashion for you, Rube. Madonna, Elle McPherson, they’re all doing it.’

  ‘We’ll they’re both old enough to know better,’ Ruby had replied. ‘Madonna – well what can I say? Fashion has always made fools of women if you ask me.’

  But it’s not just comfort that keeps Ruby from the mail this morning, it’s her list, the secret list that might invite rather more affectionate teasing than she would enjoy. Apparently it’s called a bucket list, lord knows where that came from, some film, she thinks, but she likes the idea of setting priorities. This morning, woken early by a dream in which she was chasing her mother along a railway line, Ruby had failed to get back to sleep. The dream had left her puzzled and anxious – did it mean she was about to meet up with her mother beyond the grave? Not wanting to dwell on that thought she’d got out of bed, donned the dressing gown and ugg boots and had come downstairs to the warmth of the kitchen. And while she’d waited for the water to boil Ruby had fished the list out from its hiding place in the drawer of the kitchen table. It is not an inspiring document and from time to time she speculates on how much more interesting the bucket lists of some contemporaries whom she admires might be: Vanessa Redgrave, Tariq Ali, Germaine Greer, Tony Benn, Margaret Drabble would doubtless be more inspiring.

  The bell rings again.

  ‘All right, Jim, I heard you the first time,’ she calls, but now there is a third ring and she gets up and pads irritably to the front door and opens it to discover that it is not Jim but some new postman aged about twelve, his nose and cheeks glowing shiny red from the freezing wind, holding a receipt book and a pen.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Put it through the door and then remembered I need a signature. It’s special delivery – overseas.’

  ‘What is?’

  He points to a bulky manila package lying on the floor. ‘That one. Special delivery for Dame Ruby Medway, can you sign for her?’

  Ruby resists the urge to claim her rightful title. Tartan pyjamas and ugg boots could be misleading. He probably thinks dames drift around in lacy negligees and have their mail delivered on a silver tray by a butler.

  ‘I don’t suppose she’ll mind,’ she says instead, and scrawls her name in his book. ‘Where’s Jim?’

  ‘Jamaica,’ the man-boy says, tucking the book into his pocket.

  ‘Jamaica?’

  ‘His kids give ’im and the missus two weeks there for their fortieth anniversary. Lucky bugger.’

  ‘Lucky bugger indeed.’

  ‘On me way then. That’s special delivery, mind,’ the postman says, pointing to the manila envelope. ‘Better give it to Dame what’s-her-name soon as possible.’ And he is off down the steps into the freezing February morning, where the rain turns to ice on the pavement.

  Back in the kitchen Ruby dumps the mail on the table and returns to her list. There’s something significant about writing a list of things to do – it seems to constitute some sort of commitment. The list is pretty dog-eared now, littered with cryptic comments and crossings out:

  1. Write a history of the Foundation

  2. Get the conservatory built (ring Barry re tradesmen etc)

  3. Travel on the Orient Express

  4. Make amends to anyone I’ve hurt (too many – not generous enough)

  5. Make love to someone twenty years younger than me (pretty unlikely due to lack of opportunity)

  6. Visit Cat (do I really mean this?)

  The trouble with a bucket list is that it has to be open-ended;
one might have one day left or ten, a year or ten, or maybe even thirty. That would make her ninety-nine, so that’s probably overdoing the optimism. And should it be prioritised bearing in mind that certain things need to be done while one is still physically fit or rather on the grounds of passion and enthusiasm? For example – should items 3 and 5 become 1 and 2? The trouble with thinking about it is that it suddenly becomes complicated. Keep it simple is what she would say to anyone else but Ruby’s never been good at taking her own advice.

  It’s another half-hour before she finally starts to shuffle through the mail: an invitation to the opening of an exhibition by an artist with whom she had a brief and torrid affair in the eighties, a message from Readers Digest full of stamps that you peel off and stick in various places on a form for the promise of a prize, a postcard from a friend on holiday in Greece, the latest edition of a quarterly journal, and the special delivery envelope, which has an Australian stamp. Cat? It reminds her that she owes Catherine an email and has done for two – maybe even three months. Pushing aside the other mail Ruby sees that the envelope bears the stamp of a solicitor in Busselton, and she slips a kitchen knife under the flap and draws out the contents with a sense of foreboding.

  A small cream envelope with her name scrawled across it in Catherine’s characteristically bold hand slips from between the pages of folded documents. Cautiously Ruby puts it to one side and flattens the papers onto the table. The letter regrets to inform, it provides facts followed by instructions. Everything she needs to know and to do, it tells her, is detailed in the attached schedule which is included along with a copy of Mrs Benson’s will, and a personal letter from the deceased. It offers condolences and requests a prompt reply.

  Ruby reads the letter twice and sits there, staring at the small envelope, realising that although Catherine’s writing is still easily recognisable it is also somewhat changed: the letters look wobbly, they have odd tails hanging off them as though the hand that formed them couldn’t stop in the required places. It looks, Ruby thinks, like the writing of a very old, frail person, not like that of a robust, outspoken woman only a year older than Ruby herself. It is the writing of someone who is – was – severely diminished, and the thought catches her in the chest and she presses a hand over her mouth, takes a deep breath and opens the letter.

  Dearest Ruby, it begins.

  By the time you get this I will have gone to God or, more likely, to the other bloke. I know you’ll be angry or hurt or both that I didn’t tell you what was happening, but what would you have done except worry and feel you should try to get here to see me? Well, selfishly I didn’t want that. Oh I wanted you to visit, and I’ve been trying to persuade you to do that for years but you kept finding excuses not to. But when I got sick I wanted there to be someone who couldn’t see what was happening, someone with whom I could be in denial. So now I have the satisfaction of knowing someone will remember me as I was before I started to look like a bald and withered stranger.

  I’ve left it too late to say all I wanted to say except that you are my oldest and dearest friend, a far better friend than I deserved. It’s nearly fifteen years since we met up again and even then the past still haunted us, but the gift of rediscovering you has been one of the greatest joys of getting old. Apologies for the past are useless and self-indulgent; you know I am more than just grateful for your forgiveness.

  I have made a will that asks more of you than one would normally ask of a friend. Harry’s nephew, Declan, inherits almost half of Benson’s Reach but I’ve left you a controlling interest. Since I got sick I’ve let things go and someone needs to get it back to its best. I’m not sure Declan can do that alone. He’s an odd bod – indecisive, can’t hold on to relationships, a bit of a lost soul, but he has a good heart and fine mind when he bothers to use it. Perhaps this is the challenge he needs. In the long term you and he can decide what should happen but please, Ruby, give it a year. Do this for me, for us, for the past and what we once shared.

  I wish we had met to say goodbye. Take care, Rube, make the most of what’s left, every precious minute of it.

  My love, always and ever.

  Cat

  Ruby stares at the letter and wonders why she isn’t crying, why the threat of that first sob has dissipated, why not a single tear is sliding down her cheek. It contains too much, she thinks, too much of the past, too many complex and conflicting emotions; it’s an ending which both robs and liberates. Theirs was an old but severely tested friendship that had begun in childhood and was shattered years later leaving them estranged for more than two decades, until the day Catherine turned up here, in London, on Ruby’s doorstep, wanting to repair the breach. When she’d left two weeks later to return to Australia, Catherine clearly felt she’d achieved her aim but for Ruby the situation had been more complex. She was prepared to resume contact, but she had been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to give more than that. In the past fifteen years she had disclosed little of her own life, sending just one letter or email for every three or four of Catherine’s, which she had read with detachment. Now Cat is gone, and with her that connection made by two terrified children on the crowded dockside more than sixty years ago. Did they ever talk about that moment, Ruby wonders now, about how their eyes locked, each recognising the fear in the other? Two little girls torn from their roots about to be herded like cattle onto a ship that would take them to a country they couldn’t even imagine. Ruby had seen a girl a little taller than herself, wearing a double-breasted tweed coat with round leather buttons and a velvet collar, very much like her own. A girl with her hair in two long plaits holding a small brown leather suitcase, and she knew that the girl’s whole life was in that suitcase just as her own life was contained in the coarse canvas holdall that hung over her own shoulder.

  ‘Keep calm now. Two at a time,’ the man had said, as the lines of children pushed towards the gangplank.

  The girl squeezed through the crowd towards Ruby. ‘We could go together if you like,’ she’d said, holding out a woollen-gloved hand. ‘I’m Catherine.’ The label on her coat said Catherine Rogers – London to Fremantle.

  Gripping hands, they were carried along in the throng of children, some crying, some struggling, others, like her and Cat, silent and terrified as they reached the deck.

  ‘Cheer up,’ said a man in a dog collar, his nose blue with cold. ‘Jesus loves you and you’re going to the sunshine.’

  And Cat gripped Ruby’s hand harder as the ship’s hooter fired a triumphant blast into the dank London air.

  Ruby reads the letter again and pulls her bucket list across the table towards her. Pen in hand she pauses briefly and then strikes out the last item. ‘Too late now,’ she murmurs, ‘too damn late.’ It’s more than a year since she compiled it, and almost fifteen since she promised Cat she would visit, a promise which at the time she’d had no intention of keeping.

  It’s much later that evening when Jessica turns up, sweeping into the house in a cloud of cold evening air, tiny snowflakes melting across the shoulders of the black velvet vintage coat she bought last week in Camden Passage.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says, shaking snow from her hair. ‘Really sorry, it was one of those days. Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Ruby says, hugging her, knowing that she looks anything but – that she looks, in fact, as though someone has punched her in the face. ‘Well, as fine as could be expected.’

  Jessica hugs her again. ‘I’m so sorry, it’s very sad. Why didn’t she tell you? You’d have gone over, wouldn’t you?’

  Ruby shrugs. ‘She wanted there to be someone who didn’t know, someone she could pretend with that it wasn’t happening and that was me. So, if it helped … well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

  Jessica unwinds the scarf from her neck, and unbuttons her coat. ‘I guess. So what have you decided?’

  ‘I’ve booked a flight for a fortnight today,’ Ruby says, urging Jessica into the warmth of the kitchen. ‘Drink? I’ve just opened a
bottle of red.’ And she pours some into a glass and hands it to her.

  ‘You didn’t go all the time she was alive, but you’re going now – now that she’s dead?’ Jessica takes the glass and leans against the front of the Aga. ‘I don’t—’

  Ruby holds up a hand. ‘No. I will explain, but not now, not yet. It’s a very long story and I’m not ready to tell it yet. But I’m going now because it feels right. I need to look at the place, see what’s happening, meet Declan. And I need to be there for …’ she hesitates ‘… emotional reasons as well. You can cope with everything here, can’t you? You practically run it all anyway but we can get some help in for you.’

  ‘Of course I can cope. You must go, you’ve been saying for years that you would and now …’

  ‘Yes, yes, I should have gone after she came here but it all seemed … oh, I don’t know … too much baggage, I suppose. Anyway I’m going now.’

  ‘Will you be okay?’

  ‘Of course, I’m a tough old bird as you well know.’

  ‘I could come with you if you want. We could get Amy back to run things, or there are other possibilities.’

  ‘Thanks, that’s lovely of you, but it’s not necessary, I’ll be fine. Besides, I think I need to do this alone. So I might be gone for a while, a month, maybe two.’

  Jessica nods, and gives her a long look. ‘Of course, but you don’t need to worry about anything here.’

  ‘You’re such a blessing, Jess, and very efficient. The Foundation would have ground to a halt by now without your taking on so much.’

  ‘And twenty years ago I would have ground to a halt without you and the Foundation helping me.’