The Sisters' Song Read online

  LOUISE ALLAN is a debut author from Western Australia. In 2014, this novel was awarded a Varuna residential fellowship and shortlisted for the City of Fremantle-TAG Hungerford Award.

  Louise grew up in Tasmania but now lives in Perth with her husband, children and dogs. Her first career was as a doctor before she took up writing in 2010. She has had several of her short stories, essays and articles published in literary anthologies and medical journals. She also has a passion for music.

  You can find her at her website: louisejallan.com

  Published by Allen & Unwin in 2018

  Copyright © Louise Allan 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 76029 631 5

  eISBN 978 1 76063 389 9

  Set by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Cover design: Christabella Designs

  Cover photographs: Elisabeth Ansley / Trevillion Images (women) and Shutterstock (flowers)

  I dedicate this book to the memory of my grandmother,

  Olive Ivy May Allan.

  12.6.1910–19.2.1984

  She and Ida have a lot in common.

  There are some women not meant to have children, and there are others born to do nothing else.

  Ida Bushell, 1947

  CONTENTS

  PART I: FOR ALL WOMEN WERE GIRLS ONCE, WITH DREAMS OF THEIR OWN.

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  PART II: SHE DUG IN THE SOIL, A GARDEN. AND SHE SAW IN THE FLOWERS, HER CHILDREN.

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  PART III: THEY CAME FROM THE MOUNTAIN, AND TO IT THEY RETURNED, TO SLEEP.

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  EPILOGUE

  NOTES

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Part I

  For all women were girls once, with dreams of their own.

  Chapter 1

  My memories of my father are scant and faded, and I have only two photos of him. The first was taken by Uncle Vernon with his Box Brownie when we were on a picnic at Ben Craeg in 1924. It’s a distant shot of all of us sitting on a tartan blanket in a paddock. Above us arches a clear Tasmanian sky, and behind us is Ben Craeg, the mountain, covered in trees almost to its summit.

  Mum and her sister, Aunty Lorna, sit on one side, all smiles under hats that burst with petals and leaves. Dad’s in the middle, smiling at the camera and sitting with his legs outstretched. Nora, my younger sister, perches on his knee, fair curls framing her cherubic face. I’m next to them. I would have been six at the time, and my face is almost completely covered by a white cloche hat, as if I’m trying to hide. I’m clutching Frances, my doll, and my other hand rests on Dad’s arm, so he wouldn’t forget I was there, too.

  The other photo is of Dad and Mum, just the two of them, and neither of them is smiling. Mum’s hair is pinned and curled, her cheeks are smooth and her lips are tinted pink. She’s sitting as straight as a doll, stretching herself as tall as she can, but she still looks tiny beside Dad.

  He stands behind her and he’s solemn, as well. His chin is long, and he’s all bones and angles so his suit hangs from his frame, as if he’s just a skeleton. He’s changed since the first photo—he was already sick when this second one was taken. That’s why they sat for it. Mum wanted a photo of them together before he died, so they dressed up and visited the studio.

  I remember when I found him behind the chaff shed, red-flecked vomit on the grass at his feet.

  ‘Don’t tell Mum,’ he said, and kept repeating it until I promised I wouldn’t.

  Stomach cancer, I heard Aunty Lorna tell Mr Clarke after mass one day. Each night, we knelt around the statue of Our Lady on the mantelpiece and counted Hail Marys on our rosary beads in the hope that he’d get better. That was all we could do—pray and wait.

  We didn’t see Dad much after that, we weren’t allowed. But sometimes I’d sneak along and, if the bedroom door was ajar, I’d peer in. The blind would be drawn and he’d be propped up on pillows, his cheeks and eyes sinking back into his head as if he was already hollow, the rest of him a thin ridge under the sheets. I barely recognised him.

  Once I saw his arm up in the air, skinny and yellow, waving about as if it didn’t know where to go. Another time, when the doctor left the room, I stood in the doorway and called to him.

  ‘Dad…Dad…’

  His eyebrows shot up and his eyes darted around the room as if he was searching for me. I kept calling to him until he found me and then his eyes didn’t move. He didn’t smile, but he kept looking at me. He tried to lift his head off the pillow and his mouth opened, as though he was trying to talk.

  Then the doctor returned, closed the door as he entered, and that was the last time I saw Dad alive.

  We weren’t allowed to go to Dad’s funeral.

  ‘Why can’t I come?’ I asked.

  ‘Because you’re seven years old,’ said Aunty Lorna, the blooms in her hat jiggling.

  ‘Eight,’ I said.

  ‘A funeral is no place for a child,’ she said.

  ‘But he was my dad.’

  She drew in a breath and released it again. ‘Ida, can’t you just do as you’re told for a change?’

  I swallowed hard and said no more, and swatted at an insect flying past.

  ‘Why do you want to go anyway?’ asked Nora after Aunty Lorna had gone.

  ‘You’re only six,’ I said. ‘You’re too young to understand.’

  So on the day of the funeral, Nora and I were sent to Molly Bryant’s house, and while our father was laid to rest, we played with dolls, hung upside-down from the verandah rails and ate iced cupcakes for afternoon tea.

  Everything changed after that. Mum refused to open the curtains and the house was dim and silent. Even the weather seemed to echo our grief. I remember the first time it rained after Dad’s funeral. I parted the curtain and peeked out, but I couldn’t see Ben Craeg, the mountain, because of the low sky. It wasn’t stormy or pouring, just a thin drizzle that trickled in lines down the glass—enough for me to worry about Dad being out in it all alone. I wanted to slip out of the house, run down to the cemetery and lay
a blanket over him.

  The first Sunday we went to mass after Dad died, people swooped on Mum, and Nora and I were caught in the middle. I glanced up, past shadowy legs and drab coats, to doleful faces and shaking heads. As soon as I could, I took Nora’s hand and pushed my way through the legs and coats, out into the air.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, and headed down the gravel path at the side of the church.

  ‘Where’re we going?’ she asked.

  ‘To see our father.’

  We walked past the three firs that marked the boundary of the cemetery and along the rows of headstones towards the newer graves at the back. When I saw the mound of fresh soil, my footsteps slowed. I wasn’t sure I could go any further. I didn’t want to see him in the ground like that.

  We reached the pile of chocolate earth and stood at the foot. A piece of tin poked from the ground. Scratched onto it was a number and Dad’s name, Edward Parker.

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Nora.

  I pointed at the grave. ‘In there.’

  ‘In the ground?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  She let go of my hand and walked around to one side, blonde curls bouncing as she went. ‘I want to get in there.’

  I wanted to get in there, too. Climb in under the dirt and pull it over me like a cover. I stood there in my shiny Sunday shoes, beholding my father’s grave, wanting to burrow down in that earth and be with him again.

  It was 1926. Mum was as old as the century and already a widow.

  ‘You are in mourning,’ Aunty Lorna reminded us whenever we laughed or asked to go outside.

  I did my best to act mournful. I put on a long face and spoke in a low voice as much as I could, but I just wanted to be normal again. I resented the fact our father had died, but, even more than that, I resented that we had to act like it. Sometimes I ducked under the drapes, just to peer out the window and glimpse our old life alive on the other side of the glass. The sky and the grass and Ben Craeg on the horizon.

  I’d suck on my plait and let the sun warm my face while I remembered the minty smell of the outside and our picnics at Ben Craeg. We’d ride in the back of Uncle Vernon’s ute over a dirt track, and Dad would lean out and pluck the leaves off the wattle as we passed. We’d eat sandwiches and blackberry pie for lunch, and Mum would tell me off for staining my dress. Nora and I would race each other through the spiky grass to the trees and sit in the crook of their branches. Sometimes, we’d just lie on the ground and gaze up at a sky filled with clouds that looked as if they’d been painted there with an artist’s brush.

  I remembered, too, our trips with Mum into the township of Ben Craeg. We’d trudge after her, following her from the post office, where she’d collect her parcels of felt, to the bakery, where Mrs Monteath would cut the crusts off the day-old bread for us. In the butchery, Mr Slater would stand in front of his carcasses and smile despite his missing thumb, and at the grocer’s, Mr Douglas, would always give us a candy cane at Christmas.

  Because I was daydreaming, I wouldn’t hear Mum calling my name, and I’d jump when the curtain rustled behind me. She’d swipe the plait from my mouth and say, ‘Stop sucking your hair. It looks like rats’ tails. And there’s no time for absent-mindedness.’

  So I’d save my wishing until night time, when I could lie in bed and suck my hair and pretend we were a normal family again. I imagined what we might be doing: sitting on Dad’s lap and giggling as he bulged his muscles; watching Mum by the fire, steaming felt for a hat she was making and barking at us if we got in the way; or listening to Dad sing in a language we couldn’t understand.

  Take anything of mine, I’d pray, an arm, a leg, whatever you want. Take it if it will bring Dad back, healthy and warm.

  Mum began to spend more time alone in her room. One day I heard her in there, banging on the wall. When I looked in she was nailing a charcoal-grey blanket over the window with a hammer.

  ‘What are you doing, Mum?’ I asked from the doorway.

  ‘It’s too light and I can’t sleep.’

  ‘That’s ’cos it’s day…’

  She swung around and let the hammer fly from her hand. It whirled across the room, spinning wildly in the air. I jumped as it hit the doorframe next to me and clunked to the floor.

  Mum stood trembling by the half-hung blanket, fists at her sides. ‘Get out!’ she screamed. ‘Get out!’

  I turned and ran down the hall, away from her screams. Her moods and her harshness hadn’t seemed so brutal when Dad was alive. But now there was no one to make us smile or laugh, no one to cushion her blows.

  After that, Aunty Lorna started coming every day. She was older than Mum and her kids were grown up. All afternoon, she and Mum would sit in Mum’s bedroom, talking in low voices, while Nora and I tiptoed around in the gloom. Aunty Lorna was the only person brave enough to enter Mum’s room, except I had to venture in to fetch Mum’s chamber pot. I’d brace myself before entering, then whip in and out as fast as I could without spilling any.

  Towards evening, Aunty Lorna would warm the pot of soup she’d brought. Nora and I would wait by the kitchen table while Aunty fetched Mum. I’d smell the warmth of the bread and soup and struggle to keep my hands by my sides because I wanted to tuck in.

  Mum would teeter along the hallway, still in her nightdress, her face flushed from the eiderdown. She’d stand in the doorway and put a hand over her eyes to protect them from the dying rays of sunlight that angled through the window.

  ‘Close that curtain,’ she’d say. ‘How many times do I have to ask?’

  I’d draw the curtains, and we’d all sit and eat in gloomy silence. I couldn’t stand it and I’d wriggle in my seat or pull faces at Nora or pinch her knee under the table.

  ‘Ouch!’ Nora would say.

  ‘How can you do this to me?’ Mum would snap. Then her voice would falter and her face would crumple. ‘How can you be so dishonourable to your father’s memory?’

  I’d stop pinching Nora’s knee and my shoulders would slope in shame.

  Each day as she left, Aunty Lorna would caution, ‘Be good, Ida.’ She’d catch my elbow and pull me towards her so I’d feel her breath against my ear and smell the floral scent of her perfume. ‘’Cos if you aren’t, your mother will be in the asylum and you’ll be in the orphanage.’

  One day not long after that, Mum didn’t get up at all. Aunty Lorna came and went. An hour or so later, she returned with Uncle Vernon, Dr Crocker’s car following discreetly behind.

  Nora and I stood on the front verandah, our toes poking through the railings. The morning frost had cleared, but we could still see our breath in the air. We watched Uncle Vernon as he carried Mum out to the doctor’s car. She looked tiny in his arms and the blooms in her hat jiggled all the way down the path. The doctor held the door open and Uncle Vernon slid her onto the back seat.

  ‘Where’re they taking Mum?’ asked Nora, after the doctor had driven off. Her green eyes were wide and frightened.

  ‘To a place where she can rest and get better,’ Aunty Lorna said.

  ‘Is it an asylum?’ I said.

  ‘Stop asking questions, Ida.’

  ‘Are we going to the orphanage?’

  ‘No. You’re going to live with your grandmother for a while.’

  ‘Grandma?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But Mum doesn’t like her.’

  ‘There’s no one else to take you. Uncle Vernon and I don’t have room in our house for children,’ she said.

  ‘We could stay here until Mum gets back.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Now come inside and wash.’

  I was quiet as she wiped my face, scrubbed my hands and nails, and made me dress in my Sunday best.

  ‘Lace your boots and keep yourself tidy while I pack the suitcases.’

  I bent on one knee and began to tie my laces. ‘Will Mum get better?’

  ‘That’s up to God,’ she said.

  I took my doll, Frances, outside and sat on the ste
ps of the verandah. Nora came and sat next to me. We both gazed out at the green countryside and the familiar houses on the hillsides. I inhaled it all, the smell of the grass and the forest and the cow pats, so I wouldn’t forget it while we were away.

  When Aunty had finished bundling our clothes into the suitcases, Uncle Vernon loaded them onto the back of the ute, along with a couple of boxes. Then it was time to leave. I brushed the dirt off my hands, ran down the steps and climbed in beside Nora. Uncle started the engine and we bumped down the driveway, past the wooden gateposts, and onto the road.

  Then I remembered. ‘Frances…I forgot Frances.’ I spun around and looked out the back window. Our house was already receding, the blinds down like closed eyelids. At the top of the steps, I could just make out Frances’ curved shape.

  But Uncle didn’t stop. Aunty stretched her fingers over my head and wrenched it back to the front.

  ‘Don’t look back, Ida,’ she said. ‘You’ll just make it harder on yourself.’

  As soon as she let go, I twisted around to look out the window again, but our house was out of sight. All I could see was the dark green of the forest stretching right to the horizon, where Ben Craeg stood, small and lonely, and getting further and further away.

  Chapter 2

  Grandma was our father’s mother and she lived in Tinsdale, the main township of the northeast. Her house was on a street lined with picket fences and rhododendron trees. It was only twelve miles away, but it felt as if we’d crossed to the other side of the world.

  I barely remembered Grandma. She and Mum didn’t get along, so we hardly visited.

  When we arrived, Aunty Lorna lined Nora and me up on the front verandah and inspected us from head to toe. Nora stood tall and looked straight at Aunty. Her curls were still neat, her dress prim and unsoiled. Whereas my hair was a frizz, my clothes streaked with dust and my palms smeared with dirt. I was also still annoyed about leaving Frances behind.

  Aunty praised Nora, then turned to me and shook her head. ‘Oh, Ida, how do you always manage to get so dirty? Can’t you act your age?’ She brushed my dress down, smoothed my unruly hair, then spat into her hanky and wiped it over my palms. They felt sticky afterwards and I rubbed them against the front of my dress to wipe off her spittle.