The Sisters' Song Read online

  ‘Can’t you stop it before it leaks out?’ I said one morning.

  ‘Please don’t tell,’ she begged. ‘I don’t want Mum to leave again.’

  So we’d pull the bedcovers up before Mum spotted the wetness, and at night we’d climb back between the still damp sheets that reeked of ammonia.

  Each wash day, when Mum found the mouldy sheets, Nora and I would both cop the switch on our behinds—Nora for peeing the bed and me for lying about it.

  However, no amount of walloping stopped Nora’s bladder from leaking. Mum took to punishing her by bolting her in the chaff shed, where she had to sit on her own amongst the dust and Grandma’s old furniture. The sun was usually setting before Mum would unbolt the door and let her out, but Nora never complained.

  I used to feel sorry for Nora, alone in the shed without anything to eat or drink. One lunch time I slipped some bread and dripping onto my lap, waited until Mum left the room and snuck outside.

  ‘Nora…Nora…It’s only me,’ I said as I peered into the keyhole. I squinted until I spotted her sitting against an old chest next to a bassinette, drawing pictures in the dust. ‘I’ve brought you some bread and dripping,’ I whispered.

  I checked Mum wasn’t in sight, then I crouched on all fours, my cheek against the ground so I could smell the dirt and wood. I slipped the bread through the gap. Nora’s boots came closer until I could have touched them on the other side of the door. She picked up the bread and sat down again by the chest.

  After that I started taking bread and dripping to Nora every time Mum bolted her in the chaff shed so at least she wouldn’t go completely hungry. After a few weeks of this, one day when Nora had been hauled out to the shed yet again, I overheard Grandma and Mum talking in the lounge.

  ‘I don’t think it’s right to be punishing a child for wetting the bed, Alice,’ said Grandma.

  ‘Well, I can’t be washing sheets every day,’ said Mum.

  After a pause, Grandma cleared her throat. ‘Belting her and locking her up isn’t going to make her stop.’

  ‘I don’t know what will then.’ Mum’s voice was shrill.

  ‘Time. Time and patience. And letting her grieve her father’s death.’

  Mum sniffed. ‘I’m grieving, too.’

  ‘I know.’

  Another pause.

  ‘I just don’t know how to keep going without him.’

  ‘You have to,’ said Grandma. ‘We both have to, for the girls.’

  The mantel clock chimed and they said no more. A minute later, Mum opened the door. I pretended I was rearranging the trinkets on the hall stand and didn’t notice her red face or watery eyes as she strode past and into her bedroom.

  Later, when I took bread and dripping out to Nora in the shed, I stayed crouching by the door.

  ‘I don’t reckon Mum’ll lock you up again,’ I said into the gap, and I told her about the conversation I’d overheard. ‘Grandma said to give you time to get over our father’s death.’

  We were both quiet for a while, then Nora said, ‘I don’t remember him much anymore.’

  ‘I’m frightened I’ll forget him, too.’

  ‘I remember his voice when he sang,’ she said. ‘So deep it made the floor tremble.’

  ‘I remember his muscles. I’d try to make mine big like his and he’d say, “Like a pimple on a pumpkin,” and I’d think that was really big.’ I felt my lip quiver. ‘Every night before I sleep, I imagine having our family back as it was.’

  ‘I just want Mum to love us again,’ she said.

  Then I heard Mum’s voice. ‘Get back inside, Ida, or I’ll put you in there, too.’

  I scrambled to my feet, brushing the dirt off the side of my face and my dress. ‘Just collecting more kindling.’

  A short while later, Mum unbolted the door and let Nora out. I don’t remember Nora wetting the bed again after that.

  About a year after Dad died, in the autumn of 1927, ladies began calling in to be measured for Mum’s hats. Mum started advertising in the local newspaper and Mrs Flanagan even began selling them in her millinery shop in the main street. Soon, the women of the district were wearing Mum’s hats to church and to the races, and Mum became known for her beautiful millinery.

  At home she’d tell us if she was expecting someone for a hat fitting, and she’d say their name as if she was announcing royalty. They were usually from farming families, far richer than us. I remember the day the doctor’s wife came. Mum swept the front verandah and ran around the house with the duster. We were banished to our room and told not to make a sound. At the knock on the door I heard Mum say, ‘Good morning, Mrs Crocker,’ in a voice far posher than the one she used with us.

  Mum talked a lot to these ladies, too, more than she did to us, telling them about our great-grandfather who’d been Speaker of the House, and about how there was a castle named after our family in England, which I think she just made up because to this day I’ve never heard of Parker Castle.

  After the ladies had gone, the house would go quiet again, and I’d venture in to see Mum. She would be holding a damp cloth and wetting the felt stretched over a wooden block while the flat iron heated up in the coals nearby. I’d ask if she wanted me to hold the drawing pins or fetch more felt, but she’d bark at me to leave her alone while she worked, so I’d reluctantly slink back out.

  I didn’t want to leave because I liked watching Mum work. She’d always been skilled with her hands—she could knit or sew or craft anything, big or small. She made all of our clothes, bedlinen and tablecloths. She’d embroider the edges with dainty flowers in canary yellow or cornflower blue, and their leaves in mint-green.

  I used to watch her hands as they formed the stitches, the needle and cotton pushing in and out, in and out, in tiny, delicate strokes. When she knitted, her fingers flicked the wool like levers and the needles clicked faster than I could blink.

  One day I asked her to teach me how to knit. She shook her head, then looked up and seemed to change her mind. ‘All right. I suppose you’ve got to learn some day.’

  I sat between her legs, and felt the warmth of her arms around my shoulders and the softness of her hands over mine. She showed me how to loop the wool over the needle, then slip one stitch through the other and slide it off. I wanted to stay there forever, enveloped in her arms. But I wasn’t very good at knitting and Mum soon tired of teaching me. Still, I kept trying, just so I could sit on the chaise beside her. We didn’t speak, but were close enough so our arms and legs touched and our needles nearly clicked in time.

  Although our family was never the same again, our lives did settle. We got used to the routine of school and chores, prayers and Sunday mass. I didn’t always like it, but I was learning that there are things in life we have to bear whether we want to or not. Things like mass on Sundays, dreary days in winter and the death of a father.

  Still, there were things I didn’t dare voice, not to anyone. Malicious thoughts that if I’d told the priest at confession, he’d have made me say rosaries for a week. But I had thoughts I couldn’t help thinking and feelings I couldn’t help feeling. Unkind thoughts towards kids in my class, whose parents were still alive. Kids like Beth Prosser. She was my best friend, yet each week when she stood in front of me at mass with her mother and her father, I glared at her back for the whole hour. Sometimes I even willed bad things to happen to her, to all of her family.

  I never told a soul about these fantasies.

  At least there was the garden. While I was there, all my anger and grief seemed to melt away. I spent the afternoons outside with Grandma, deadheading the roses, their scent still faint on the air. We turned the soil in the vegetable patch out the back and fertilised it with chicken poop, and we trimmed the strawberries and the fruit trees. It felt good to come inside at the end of a warm afternoon with dirt under my fingernails and my face freckled by the sun. I was excited when we could pick the strawberries and enjoy their sweetness, and I felt proud when I looked out the window and s
aw the hollyhocks and marigolds in bloom.

  It wasn’t the easiest of childhoods, but it wasn’t all bad. We were fed and we were clothed, which was more than I could say for some. And scattered amongst the bleakness were moments of peace and kindness, which I held onto.

  May was the month of Mary. Her statue stood on the mantel and, ever since I could remember, each day in May Mum made us kneel below it and say the rosary. Mary’s skin was pearly white and she gazed down at us with benevolence. She wore a blue cape trimmed in gold, which draped softly over her arms. Under this, her cream dress fell to her feet, where a snake coiled, its fangs visible in its open mouth. Every time I spotted that snake, I marvelled at Mary’s serenity and how she didn’t appear afraid.

  It was the second year after our father had died, and Grandma told Nora and me that she’d buy us each a set of rosary beads once we were good at saying our Hail Marys. But reciting the same prayer over and over bored me. As the words marched from my mouth, I’d start scratching at my knees, or gazing out the window, or pursing my lips and blowing air at the candle beside Mary until it flickered.

  Nora was good at praying, though. She’d kneel next to Mum, close her eyes and bury her nose in her hands. She recited each Hail Mary as if she truly meant every word. It was no surprise when Grandma gave her a string of mother-of-pearl rosary beads blessed with holy water from Lourdes. I coveted those beads. Each time Nora brought them out to pray and I saw their dainty shimmer against her skin, I wanted them.

  Nora kept them under her pillow, and I used to sneak into our room and slide them out. I’d finger each bauble and, sometimes, I’d even sling the beads around my neck like a necklace. If I heard someone coming, I’d slip them off and hide them back under the pillow as quickly as I could.

  But one day I didn’t hear the approaching footsteps, or the door opening, and Nora caught me.

  Her green eyes flashed. ‘Take them off!’ she cried, her voice a screech. I tried to pull them over my head as quickly as I could, but Nora’s hands were grabbing at them, tugging on them, and they were cutting into my neck. ‘They’re mine. Not yours. Give them back!’

  With all the wrenching and pulling, they snapped, and the crucified Jesus fell into my lap. I picked him up and held him out to Nora, the three beads for the Hail Marys and the one for the Our Father still attached.

  Nora really began screaming then, one blood-curdling shriek after another, as if I’d crucified Jesus Christ myself.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ I said.

  Mum came running in, followed closely by Grandma. ‘What on earth is going on?’ Mum cried.

  I slunk off the bed, still holding the broken beads and saying, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ I stood by the window while, between shudders, Nora relayed the story. ‘They were my favourite things in the whole world, and she’s broken them.’

  I was whacked good and proper for that—not just for coveting Nora’s rosary beads, but for being so sacrilegious as to wear them around my neck.

  I stayed in our room for the rest of the day, my head buried in my pillow until it became wet and cold with my tears. I wasn’t crying for the walloping but because I couldn’t help myself but behave badly. I hadn’t meant to break Nora’s rosary beads; I just couldn’t resist playing with them even though I knew I shouldn’t.

  As the twilight deepened, the bedroom door opened, but I didn’t look up.

  ‘Ida, are you joining us for dinner?’ It was Grandma.

  I shook my head.

  The door shut softly and the mattress sank as she sat. Then I felt her hand on my cheek, stroking it gently, as if it was made of butter that she feared she might dent.

  ‘Do you know why I didn’t buy you the rosary beads?’ said Grandma.

  I kept my head down, hidden by the pillow. ‘Because I’m bad?’

  ‘Because I don’t think you really want them.’ She paused. ‘You don’t seem to like praying much.’

  I slowly shook my head.

  ‘Your Dad didn’t either. He always played the fool during the rosary, pulling faces and distracting everybody.’ She was quiet for a while. ‘You remind me of your Dad.’

  I lay still.

  ‘Every time I look at you, I catch my breath because I see him. And you have mischief in you, too. Just like him.’

  I turned to face her. ‘I’m sorry I’m so bad.’

  ‘You’re not bad, Ida. You’re a child, that’s all.’

  I rolled over. ‘But Nora’s so good. She never does anything wrong. I don’t even know why she goes to confession—she never sins, and Mum sends me in with a list of mine.’

  Grandma paused. ‘If you could choose a present, what would you like most of all?’

  I pushed myself up to sitting. I knew my answer straight away. ‘A doll. Like Frances.’

  Grandma repaired Nora’s rosary beads and bought me a doll that I named Polly. She was a proper doll—a bride doll—more elegant than Frances, with long hair and a ribbon and a dress of white lace.

  I played with her behind the chaff shed, alone—Nora wasn’t interested in playing with dolls. Besides, I didn’t want anyone to see my pretend games. I used to imagine she was my child and we had our own house. I made her a bed out of twigs and leaves, with a rag for a blanket. Whenever I tucked her in, I kissed her goodnight, like Mum and Dad used to do to us.

  I took Polly to school with me and every lunch time, Beth Prosser and I clambered over the fence with our dolls, making a beeline for the river. We knew it was out of bounds, but we’d found a shady hollow next to a fallen log. It was quiet and private, and no one knew we were there.

  Not until the day Sister Xavier spotted us climbing the fence and followed us. When she dragged us back, we got the yard rule on our behinds, ten hard ones, for absconding.

  During the first year we lived with Grandma, she started teaching me how to play the piano. She sat beside me, demonstrating how to run my fingers up and down the notes.

  ‘C-D-E-F-G. G-F-E-D-C.’

  I tried to copy her, but I couldn’t make my fingers move one after the other over the keys. Before long, I grew bored and started wriggling and gawking about. As soon as my time was up, I slid off the stool and ran outside. I couldn’t make up my mind which I liked less—praying or piano practice.

  Grandma began to teach Nora, too. Even though she was two years younger than me and only seven-years-old, from the first day she sat on the stool and placed her fingers on the keys, she could make music. I used to watch her through the window. She looked so pretty, sitting straight backed, her hands on the keys, eyes squinting at the yellowed page before her. Grandma would stand close beside her, tapping and counting. The sight of them together, bringing the faded dots on the page to life, was like a picture from a storybook.

  I used to sit with Polly on the verandah outside the front window and pluck buzzies from my socks as I listened. How I wished I could do it, too—read those notes and make music from them. But each time I sat, I couldn’t remember the names of the notes and my fingers wouldn’t go where they were meant to. In the end, Grandma told me I didn’t have to do the lessons anymore, and while I can’t say I was disappointed, it didn’t stop me wishing I could play.

  Nora continued her music lessons with Grandma over the next few years. She sat at the piano for hours while her hands chased each other up the keys and back down again. She practised the same pieces over and over until her fingers were skipping and running, and going anywhere she wanted them to. She made music like I thought only possible in stories and movies and dreams.

  Grandma said she had ‘a gift’ and hardly needed a teacher.

  Chapter 4

  It was never explicitly stated that Grandma’s bedroom was out of bounds, but we knew from the way Grandma always kept the door closed that it was private. As tempted as I was, I’d never dared set foot inside.

  After we’d been living there for a couple of years, one afternoon I noticed the door was open a crack and, from within, I heard Gran
dma’s voice. ‘I think you’d like these.’

  I peered in. The room smelt musty and old, with a strong odour of camphor, like the inside of a wardrobe that hadn’t been opened for years. I could see a tasselled mat and a velvet chair draped with Grandma’s clothes. I nudged the door further, and a knobbly fourposter bed covered in a lumpy satin quilt and cushions came into view.

  Nora sat on the other side of the bed, facing away from the door. She was watching Grandma, who was bent over next to her, rustling something I couldn’t see. Grandma straightened, holding a soft bundle wrapped in tissue paper. She dusted off the package and unwrapped it, letting the paper float to the quilt. In her hands were the shiny folds of a sapphire-coloured gown. As she held it up, it tumbled to the floor and the light rippled across it in waves.

  ‘I wore this at the opening of Parliament in 1892, when Father was sworn in as Speaker of the House,’ Grandma said as she draped the dress over the bed beside Nora.

  Grandma continued unwrapping the garments, holding each one and its memory in her hands for a moment before letting it glide to the bed.

  ‘I wore this to a dance at the Albert Hall,’ she said as she let an emerald-coloured taffeta gown with a tight bodice and tiered skirt drop to the quilt.

  ‘And this,’ she said holding up a red satin dress, ‘I wore to see Dame Nellie Melba.’

  ‘You saw Dame Nellie Melba?’ said Nora.

  ‘Yes. In 1903. At the Theatre Royal in Hobart. The tickets cost a guinea, and we sat in the Dress Circle. The Premier and the Governor of Tasmania were there, too. I’d never seen so many people in one place. More than four thousand. When I leant over and saw all the people below, my heart leapt into my mouth. Then the curtains parted and Melba stepped onto the stage. I couldn’t believe I was actually there, seeing her in real life. I clapped so hard my hands were stinging before she’d even started. Oh, her voice—it sounded as if it was coming from heaven itself. How I’d dreamt of being a singer like her…’ She stopped, still gazing at the red satin in her hands. Then she shook her head and draped the dress on the bed with the others.