The Sisters' Song

by Louise Allan

  The kitchen was small, with a wood oven and wooden bench tops, and cabinets I painted cream. We bought a second-hand Kelvinator fridge and a dresser with leadlight in the doors, which we set against the far wall.

  I wasn’t a fancy cook—nothing French or anything like that—just plain meals like shepherd’s pie and lamb casserole, or fried fish if Len had caught any. After he’d eaten, Len would mop his plate with bread until the floral pattern was the only thing left on it, then hand it to me and say, ‘That was beautiful, Ide.’

  My favourite place, though, was the garden. I pruned the rose bushes by the front fence and struck more from cuttings, like Grandma had taught me to do. I tended the geraniums in the verandah boxes, and they grew thick and rich. I planted hydrangeas, daffodils and irises, and scattered a few marigolds amongst them to keep the bugs away. Out the back by the fence, I prepared a vegetable garden and planted all sorts of winter and summer vegetables, as well as a rambling strawberry patch. I set up a trellis for tomatoes and climbing beans. There was an apple tree, too, and when they were in season, the house smelt of stewed apples and cloves.

  We ate at the tiny table by the kitchen window from where I could see my garden. As I ate with my husband, overlooking the veggies and the flowers, and the clothes flapping on the line, I felt content with my life.

  It didn’t take long for me to fall pregnant, and I had to stop working for the Godfrey-Smiths. The girls were nearly in high school by then, so Dr Godfrey-Smith just employed a housekeeper after I left. On my last day of work they gave me a pram made of white wicker and chrome that gleamed in the sunlight.

  ‘Please visit, Ida,’ said Dr Godfrey-Smith. ‘And bring the baby.’

  ‘I will,’ I said. ‘I’ll never forget you, any of you. You’ve taught me more than I ever learnt at school.’

  Mr Godfrey-Smith drove me home, and Dr Godfrey-Smith and the girls came out to see me off. As the car headed down their driveway for the last time, I told myself that even though I had to leave them, it was better to have known generous people than never to have met them at all.

  Len’s cousin gave us their old bassinette. I sanded down the wicker and painted it white, and set it up in the room opposite the lounge. I sewed a white cotton coverlet and embroidered it with teddies, and bought some fine, white wool and knitted a shawl, booties, mittens and a jacket.

  Each Saturday, I lay in the bath and ran my hands over my growing belly. Then I began to feel the baby moving, its touch as soft as a whisper, like a goldfish swimming around inside. It grew bigger and started to kick and tumble as if it was somersaulting. One night in bed, I lay with my belly pressed against Len’s back and the baby kicked. Len rolled over and rested his hand on my tummy as it kept kicking.

  He leant over and kissed me. ‘Ide, this is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. I don’t care if nothing else ever happens after this.’

  I kissed him back. ‘You just want someone to take fishing.’

  Len fell asleep, but I lay awake with my hand on my belly, feeling the life we’d created tumbling around inside. Here I was, an ordinary woman and nobody special, yet within me, a new life was beginning.

  Just before midnight on 18th February, 1939, six months into my pregnancy, my waters broke. At first it was a slow trickle and I thought I’d wet myself. Then the contractions started.

  Len ran to our neighbour, Stan, and he raced us to the Queen Victoria Maternity Hospital in his plumbing van.

  They tried to stop the baby coming, but he was born at twenty to five in the morning. He came out and didn’t take a breath. I lay with my feet still in stirrups, craning to see him.

  ‘No, Mrs Bushell, don’t look,’ they said as they wrapped him in a towel.

  ‘What is it?’ I said. ‘A boy or a girl?’

  ‘A boy.’ They whisked him out the door before I even saw him.

  I lay on the starched sheets in the maternity home for ten days, listening to the nurses wheeling crying babes to their mothers every four hours. I lay there wishing it was my baby they were bringing to me.

  Every morning when the nurse came in and flicked the blind open, I gazed out at the circular driveway and the bluestone fence, and beyond, to the city below where everyone was getting on with their lives, unaware I’d just birthed a dead baby.

  Dr Godfrey-Smith visited me in the hospital. She said stillbirths weren’t uncommon and given my good health and youth, there was no reason I wouldn’t have a successful pregnancy next time.

  But going home without a baby hurt. Sometimes, I went into the baby’s room to check the bassinette really was empty. It was hard to believe it had even happened—that after carrying him inside me for all those months, feeling him moving and tumbling, I didn’t get to keep him after all.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ I cried to Len each night.

  He stroked my arm. ‘We’ll try again, Ida. We’ll have a baby one day.’

  Meanwhile, Nora sent me letters from Melbourne.

  12th March, 1939

  Dear Ida,

  I’m having the most joyous time! I feel as if I’ve finally found my home. I get to wear gloriously outrageous costumes and wigs, and stand on a stage and sing the most dazzling music! I feel as if I’ve come to life!

  I’m working hard to learn everything I must know. I have four lessons each week in singing and two in piano. As well as lessons in Italian, French, German, musical history and musical analysis. There’s so much to learn: all the techniques, the language, the theory and I’m gobbling up as much as I can.

  I love performing, Ida. And I’ll tell you a secret: I adore applause! I feel incredibly vain to say that, but my Italian tutor keeps telling me, ‘Norrra, God has given you a gift, like he has given the flowerrrs theirrr petals. He doesn’t want you to hide yourrr beauty. He wants you to blossom and sharrre yourrr gift with the world.’

  So I tell myself it’s what God wants and I’m morally bound to keep singing! But I couldn’t stop it anyway.

  With love,

  Nora xx

  P.S. Mum wrote me about your miscarriage. I’m terribly sorry for you, but I’m sure you’ll have good news soon.

  Her letters were a respite from my grief and I looked forward to seeing her neat cursive on an envelope in my letterbox. The letters gave me a glimpse into another life, a life filled with music and theatre, a life I could barely imagine.

  21st May, 1939

  Dear Ida,

  Everyone here is so knowledgeable and I feel like such an ignoramus, but I’m doing my best to catch up.

  My Italian tutor, Marco, grew up in the same town in which Giuseppe Verdi was born. Marco learnt music like we learn to read. Imagine that!

  I think I was born in the wrong country, Ida. I should have been Italian. Maybe I was born in the wrong century, too. At least I know now where I’m meant to be and what I’m meant to be doing. And that is singing. I need it like other people need bread and water. Or even air.

  With love,

  Nora xx

  10th September, 1939

  Dear Ida,

  I have a beau. He’s my Italian tutor and he’s lovely. His name is Marco, I might have mentioned him before. You’d laugh at his accent and the way he says things back to front. He’s so different from anyone I’ve ever met and says things other men never say. He’s always calling me ‘belladonna’ and telling me I’m beautiful.

  The only thing we daren’t discuss is food. He refuses to eat anything I cook, says it’s tasteless. He won’t drink tea because it tastes like dishwater! He cooked for me last week and it was divine—spaghetti but not out of a tin! With a creamy sauce, not tomato. My breath smelt of garlic the next day and the other chorus members kept a wide berth!

  Don’t tell Mum, but I’ve been missing mass. We have to go to parties and sometimes I don’t get home until dawn. But, oh, what a time I’m having!

  With love,

  Nora xx

  P.S. I hope you and Len will have some news soon!


  Less than a year after the first stillbirth, I had another one. Another boy. He came early, too, blue and lifeless. I’d knitted him a layette and a shawl, which I folded and set on the shelf in the wardrobe next to his brother’s.

  At least now the doctors could give me a diagnosis: cervical incompetence. Dr Godfrey-Smith explained that the neck of my womb was weak and as my babies grew, I couldn’t hold them in anymore.

  The medical staff told us to try again, and this time, as soon as the pregnancy was confirmed, they stitched my cervix closed. I was confined to bed and didn’t leave. I lasted longer, over seven months, and this baby was breathing when they took him from me. I saw him, silent but alive, before the midwives bundled him in a towel and hurried from the room.

  ‘Leonard,’ I called. ‘His name is Leonard, after his father.’

  They cleaned me up and wheeled me back to my room, and I waited for them to bring him to me for his feed. I heard the other babies crying as they were taken to their mothers, and towards evening, as tight and sore as I was, I pulled myself out of bed, slid into my dressing gown and walked down the corridor to find him.

  As I passed the matron’s office, I overheard her saying, ‘…and Baby Bushell has just died.’ I stopped in the doorway. She clicked the phone back on its cradle, then looked up and saw me.

  She startled and her face blanched before she pulled herself together and smiled. ‘Mrs Bushell, I didn’t see you there.’

  I lifted my chin and stared at her from my full height. ‘I want to see him.’

  She rose from behind her desk. She was pale, almost transparent. Her face, her long veil, her dress all blended into one and melded into the cream wall behind her. I could barely see her as she glided towards me, as translucent as ice.

  Then she cleared her throat. ‘Come back to bed now, Mrs Bushell.’ Her voice came from the air, and a cool hand reached out and caught my elbow. ‘It’s late. Doctor will see you in the morning.’

  ‘No,’ I said, and pulled my arm away. I raised my head higher and pressed my slippers into the floor as if to cement myself there. My mouth felt dry and my breath came faster. ‘I want to see my baby.’

  My other babies had been whisked away as soon as they took their lifeless bodies from me. I never saw them, not a glimpse. Never saw the colour of their hair or who they resembled. In the back of my mind I’d always wondered if maybe they’d got it wrong. Maybe they’d mixed up my baby with somebody else’s. Maybe my baby was still alive and out there somewhere, in another mother’s arms.

  I stayed where I was. ‘Take me to him.’

  She reached for my arm again, but I shook it off. I spun around and took off down the hallway towards the nursery as fast as my soreness would let me. My dressing gown splayed open and my slippers swished against the linoleum of the corridor.

  Matron’s heels stuttered behind me and her voice echoed around the empty space. ‘Mrs Bushell…Mrs Bushell…’

  I kept striding down the hall.

  ‘Mrs Bushell…Come now…Don’t do anything rash…’

  I reached the nursery and glanced through the window. Nurses with veils like yacht sails leant over the rows of babies in their cribs.

  I threw the door open.

  They turned towards me and their veils lifted as if caught by the wind. One headed towards me, shaking her head, her arm outstretched. ‘You can’t come in here…’

  ‘Where is he?’ I said, and stepped in further. ‘Where is he?’

  They didn’t answer.

  I moved closer to the lines of cribs. ‘I want to see him…Where’ve you put him?’

  ‘Call the doctor!’ Matron cried from the doorway. ‘I think she’s hysterical.’

  I began to dash up the row of cribs, reading each label and peering into each baby’s face. Some were sleeping, some were howling. None were him. I moved further along the row, searching for the one who could be mine, the one named ‘Leonard’.

  ‘Where is he? Where’ve you put him?’

  The nurses were still now, and I could feel them watching me as I passed along the rows, inspecting each baby, willing one of them to be him. When I reached the last crib, I stopped and looked around.

  The nurses stared back at me.

  My breath came fast. ‘What’ve you done with him?’

  Their eyes darted about under their lashes, glancing at each other and at Matron.

  ‘Where’ve you put him?’ My voice was high and harsh. ‘I’m not going anywhere ’til I’ve seen him.’

  Matron held out an arm and stepped towards me. ‘Calm down, Mrs Bushell. This is not good, upsetting yourself like this.’

  ‘I will not calm down until I’ve seen him. He’s mine.’

  There was silence, then Matron said, ‘I’ll take you.’

  I strode towards her and when I reached the door, she said, ‘Really Mrs Bushell, I don’t think this is wise.’

  ‘I don’t give two bloody hoots what you think. He’s my baby and I want to see him.’ My chin trembled, but I didn’t break her gaze. I didn’t move.

  She led me, heels tapping, down the corridor to the doctor’s office at the end.

  I followed, slower, muted.

  Matron entered the unlit room and pulled the cord to the electric light. It clicked on and a circle of light fell on the doctor’s desk.

  I lingered at the doorway, in the shadows.

  Matron shifted around the desk and over to a crib which stood alone against the wall on the other side.

  I stepped carefully into the room, as if the floor might give way. It was cold. I walked around the desk and towards the crib.

  I could see him—a tiny mound under the sheet, completely still. I lifted the sheet and uncovered his head. There he lay. Eyes shut. Cheeks smooth. Lips pursed. Small, just like any other sleeping baby.

  My baby.

  I leant down until my cheek touched his mouth. I waited, hoping to feel his breath, hoping to hear him. Hoping it was a mistake.

  But there was nothing. No swish of soft breath. No warm air against my cheek.

  As I lifted my head, my nose brushed his, but he didn’t flicker or twitch. I lifted my lips and kissed his cheek. He was cold and still.

  I raised my head and shivered. ‘He’s cold,’ I said. ‘Can you get him a blanket?’

  Matron nodded and left the room.

  I lifted him into my arms. He felt weightless. I stroked his skin and burrowed my head into him and inhaled. He smelt of soap. And of birth. And of me.

  Matron returned with a blanket, a blue one, and draped it over him. I gathered it around him and tucked it under. We stayed like that and I held him while the clock on the doctor’s desk ticked.

  Matron waited until I looked up and then she took him from my arms. I let him go. She placed him back in the crib, folded the blanket in half and spread it over him.

  I read the label at the head:

  Baby of Mrs L.D. Bushell

  b. and d. 17th September, 1940

  There was no mistake.

  Chapter 11

  At twenty-two years of age, I had to accept the fact I’d never birth a living baby and it was a bitter pill to swallow. For the first time in my life, I understood the meaning of yearning.

  I tried to keep going. Each day, I lifted my body out of bed, and dressed and washed and ate. But the food had no taste, the house had no warmth and the days had no joy. Most of all, my arms held no baby. The days kept blending into night and becoming day again. The spring inched towards summer and I felt nothing except emptiness.

  Nora’s letters dwindled after the last stillbirth and in my grief I didn’t notice. One morning in early November, Mum arrived on my doorstep unannounced.

  ‘I need to speak with you,’ she said, businesslike.

  I took her down to the kitchen. She arranged her handbag on her lap and sat upright on the chair. ‘Nora’s getting married.’

  ‘Oh, that is news!’

  Mum fidgeted with the handles of the bag. ‘To Alf. Al
f Hill.’

  ‘Alf Hill? From school? The sawmiller?’ I shook my head. ‘What about Marco?’

  Mum kept her face as straight as a poker player’s. ‘The wedding’s at Ben Craeg. December 13.’

  ‘But it’s already November.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, and it’s Advent, but it was the only day available. We had to hurry it along.’

  I felt the air rush out of me as it dawned, and I could barely even whisper the words, ‘Is she pregnant?’

  The answer came with Mum’s silence.

  ‘What about her singing?’

  ‘Oh, Ida, you know how I feel about that, how I’ve always felt about that. It was all your grandmother putting ideas into her head.’

  ‘But she was so happy.’

  ‘Evidently not enough.’

  ‘Is it what Nora wants? Does she love Alf?’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ said Mum, and she filled me in on the details. A month ago, when Mum was delivering some of her hats to the store, Mrs Flanagan asked if she’d wait. Nora was going to telephone because she wanted to speak with her. So Mum sat on the chair by the front counter and waited for the phone to ring. She thought maybe Nora had won another competition or had a lead role in an opera. She didn’t think for a minute that she’d be calling to tell her she was pregnant. And worse. That when the director of the conservatorium had discovered the affair with her tutor, he’d called her into his office and told her she was unworthy of the scholarship and it would be withdrawn.

  I couldn’t speak as Mum talked and kept myself busy making the tea. My eyes didn’t leave the kettle until it had boiled. I poured it into the pot and watched it steep.

  ‘She was already four months along,’ Mum continued. ‘So I had no choice but to tell her to just come home. There was nothing else could be done. And everyone in the shop had stopped to listen, so I tried to keep a straight face and pretend that the stuffing hadn’t just been knocked out of me.’