The Sisters' Song

by Louise Allan

  I took the pot and cups over to the table.

  ‘When I got home,’ Mum went on as I poured our tea. ‘I remembered Alf used to be sweet on Nora. So I wrote to him and told him of Nora’s predicament. He replied straightaway, said he loved Nora, that he didn’t care whose child she was carrying and that he’d marry her if she’d have him.’

  I sat. My mouth felt dry. When I spoke my voice was so soft I wasn’t even sure Mum could hear. ‘I would have taken her baby.’

  Mum picked up the cup I’d placed in front of her. ‘Not your sister’s bastard child, Ida.’ She sipped, then shook her head. ‘No, this is for the best. He’s given her a lifeline, that’s for sure. I told you the mainland was dangerous.’

  After Mum left, I circled the house in a daze. I felt the heat of anger and jealousy as sharply as vinegar on raw flesh. I knew she’d carry this child to term. I knew her womb would nourish and nurture. I knew I’d see her with a babe in her arms, while my own ached with emptiness.

  And I knew that, just like after Dad died, I’d have to watch someone else enjoy what I didn’t have: a family. But this time, I was determined to hide my bitterness and not tell a soul.

  I didn’t see Nora until the day of her wedding. The church bells rang as she walked down the aisle on Uncle Vernon’s arm. She wore white lace and looked like a model from a magazine. No one else would have noticed, but I spotted the barely detectable bump under her gown.

  Uncle Vernon gave her to Alf and they promised to love and cherish and honour and obey—Alf standing tall and brimming with pride, and Nora speaking in a soft murmur.

  Mum’s eyes didn’t move from Nora the whole ceremony. She sat bolt upright, as if she was frightened Nora might run away again.

  Grandma didn’t watch any of it. Not once did she raise her eyes to see her granddaughter wed.

  There was a reception tea at the hall after the ceremony. We stood around drinking cups of tea and eating lamingtons and sponge cake.

  Alf’s father and brothers came. They were all built like Alf—sturdy and square. Their suits strained across their backs, and their hands smothered the porcelain plates and dainty cups they held. They laughed a lot and loudly, tilting their heads back as they did.

  ‘Welcome to the family, Ida,’ they said, their faces creased and beaming. As they kissed me, rough bristles of their chins scratched my cheek and they smelt of Old Spice.

  ‘Good to meet you,’ they said to Len and shook his hand, squeezing it tightly before letting it go. ‘Ida’s a good sort. You’ve done well.’

  Len smiled and nodded, but raised his eyebrows at me and shrugged, unsure what to make of these exuberant giants.

  Alf and Nora went around the hall, greeting their guests. When they came over, Alf’s brothers’ grins spread wider. They engulfed their brother in their arms and clapped him on the back. But when they saw Nora, they seemed overcome. I thought they might genuflect, such was their reverence. One by one they silently took her hand in theirs as one might a just-hatched chicken they feared they might harm.

  When Alf and Nora reached me, I kissed them both and said, ‘Congratulations’. Nora nodded and quickly averted her eyes.

  ‘I’ll take good care of her,’ said Alf.

  ‘I know you will,’ I said, and tried to smile.

  After they’d moved off, Len shifted closer and took my hand. ‘He will look after her, Ide. He seems like a good bloke.’

  ‘It’s not that, Len.’ I wanted to tell him everything I was feeling—not just my sorrow at Nora losing her dream, but also the deep wound of once again watching Nora do something I couldn’t. But in the end, I just sighed and said, ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Later I found Grandma and sat down next to her. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘’Twas never meant to be,’ she said.

  ‘But you must be disappointed,’ I said.

  She patted my hand. ‘Don’t worry, my dear, I’ve survived worse.’

  After the wedding, Nora and Alf moved to the northeast, where Alf’s father had a sawmill. I tried to keep myself busy, so I didn’t have to think about Nora and the baby. As it was summer, I spent long days in the garden, deadheading the roses and tying up the gladioli and hollyhocks. I gathered the seeds from the border plants and dried them in the shed. I sowed a few straight away and kept the rest for spring. The apple tree and strawberry runners needed thinning, and I took up the onions and laid them out to dry.

  I deliberately wore myself out, yet there were still nights when I couldn’t sleep. I’d get up and creep into the spare room, tiptoeing in as if it actually held a sleeping baby. I’d stand by the bassinette, running my fingers over the twists in the wicker and over the teddies on the coverlet I’d sewn and embroidered. I knew every thread even though it had never been used.

  Sometimes I’d sit in the rocker in the corner and watch the moonlight dart in around the edges of the blind. It streaked the room and glinted off the white and chrome of the pram.

  There was only one thing I’d ever wanted in this life: a family. It had been taken away from me in childhood, and now it had been taken away again. I felt betrayed by God and by life.

  At times, the hole I carried inside me felt too big, too gaping, its edges too raw. Sometimes it seemed as if it was growing, enlarging and taking me over. I felt as if I was becoming less like a person, and more like an outline around a big, empty hollow. No longer solid but a shell. The remains of a mother.

  I felt them in the room sometimes, as if they were present. The ghosts of my children. The bassinette wasn’t empty—they were just sleeping under the coverlet. And when I rocked the pram, I could feel their weight in it. If I closed my eyes, I could hear them, too. Their gurgles and their cries. As I rocked back and forth, my arms against my chest, I could feel them. I could even smell them. On those nights, I could dream them up, alive again.

  But I’d open my eyes and my arms would be empty. The room would be cold and silent, and I’d be shivering in the darkness, alone. They weren’t there and they never would be.

  One night, the door creaked open and Len’s face appeared.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ he asked, his voice as soft as clean sand.

  I shrugged.

  His bare feet pattered on the boards as he crept over to the bassinette, just as I’d done.

  ‘We’ll keep trying,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ My voice had an edge. ‘You heard the doctors, Len. It’s not going to happen. We’re never going to have a baby of our own.’

  ‘We don’t have to do it straight away…’

  I shook my head. ‘I couldn’t go through it again. I couldn’t face losing another one.’

  There was silence, then his voice came softly. ‘We could adopt?’

  I rocked slowly in the chair, then shook my head. ‘I could never take a child from its mother.’ When I looked up, his face was twisted. ‘Oh, Len…’

  He covered his face with his fingers.

  I went to him and slid my arms around his neck as he cried. I kissed his wet, salty cheeks.

  He pulled his hanky from the pocket of his pyjamas and blew his nose. Then he straightened. ‘We tried and it’s just not meant to be. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right. There’re some things in life you just gotta accept, and this is one of them.’ He tried to smile.

  I kissed his cheeks again.

  ‘At least we have each other,’ he said.

  ‘And that’s more than some,’ I said.

  Every payday, Len went to the pub for a beer or three on his way home. One night when it was raining and I knew he didn’t have his coat, I took it around for him. I didn’t go inside—pubs weren’t for women—but waited outside by his bike, which was leaning against the wall. Eventually the pub door opened and Len emerged in a burst of light and noise, holding a box under his arm.

  ‘What’re you doing out in this weather, Ide?’ he said when he spotted me under the umbrella. His words were a bit slurred. ‘You’ll catch your d
eath.’

  ‘You’ll catch it yourself,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want you walking home in the wet without your coat. Quick, put it on.’ I could smell the beer on his breath as I helped him slide his arms into the sleeves, shifting the box from one arm to the other as he did. ‘What’s in the box?’

  ‘I won a camera in the raffle. I had a choice between a side of beef and a camera, and I chose the camera.’ He held it out as if it was priceless.

  ‘What do we want with a camera?’ I said. ‘We could’ve eaten the beef.’

  ‘Ida!’ He stopped still and looked shocked. The rain ran off the brim of his hat onto the footpath, and his face was wet so it shone in the streetlights. ‘Don’t say that when I’ve just won us a time machine.’

  ‘Give it here or it’ll get wet.’ I unbuttoned my coat and wrangled it inside, then attempted to button myself up over it. We set off, Len pushing his bike as I walked alongside, trying to hold the umbrella over both of us.

  The next day he took the camera out of its box and held it up for me to see. It was black and smaller than I’d expected, with a round lens that jutted out at the front and ‘Leica’ written on the side. When I saw the knobs and lever at the top, I said, ‘Are you sure you know how to work it?’

  ‘’Course I know.’

  He opened up the back and hooked up the reel of film, then took me outside by the veggie garden, where he told me to pose and smile. I felt as if I was the Queen of England as he fiddled and clicked. Then I grew bored and tired of smiling into the sun, so I started mucking around, pulling silly faces and pouting with my hands on my hips, not trusting the camera would even work.

  ‘Stand still,’ he said.

  When he’d finished, he handed the camera to me to take a photo of him, but I didn’t dare. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t know which bit’s which and I might break it.’ So he asked Stan, the plumber who lived next door, to take a photo of us out in the street under the power pole.

  The film took a couple of weeks to develop and cost most of Len’s pay. When he came home with the yellow Kodak envelope, I stood behind him, waiting for him to open it. He pulled out his packet of Drum and started rolling a cigarette.

  ‘Hurry up. Hurry up,’ I said.

  ‘Hold your horses.’ He lit his smoke then shook out his hanky and wiped his hands, including between each finger, before he slid the photos from the envelope. There, on the top of the pile, was me in my pastel dress with the lace-edged collar, standing by the fence and its ragged palings. I was smiling wanly, as if I was afraid of the camera. I laughed and so did Len.

  He slipped the photos out one by one and I gazed at us caught in the moment. We nearly split our sides at the photo of me, hand on my hat, tilting my head like a movie star and pouting at the camera. We marvelled at how it worked. How the light captured the moment somehow, and there it was on the glossy card in front of us, never to be forgotten.

  ‘Don’t bother explaining it,’ I told Len when he started. ‘I’ll never understand.’

  I reached for the photo of Len and me by the power pole—Len in his slate-coloured trousers and white shirt, and me in my pale dress, taller than him but trying to hide it—but Len tapped my hand away.

  ‘Don’t touch them with your dirty fingers.’

  I went back to the sink, humming and smiling as I finished the wiping up, while Len rolled a smoke and looked at the photos all over again.

  Just before Easter 1941, Alf was called up to the Army. He didn’t want to leave Nora, because the baby was due, but he had no choice. After a few weeks of training he was sent to Darwin and the War.

  The day after he left, on 11th April, 1941, Nora gave birth to a boy. She named him Edward, after our father.

  I put off visiting the maternity hospital, but after a week, I knew I could delay no longer. I wrapped the layette and shawl I’d knitted during my first pregnancy and caught the tram up to the Queen Victoria Maternity Hospital.

  As the tram rounded the curve of the hill, I saw the hospital again, set back from the road, all long and sprawling and antiseptic white. The tram stopped and I climbed off. It dinged and rattled and went on its way, but I waited in the middle of the road, too afraid to move. I made myself cross the road, but my feet slowed with each step. I stopped at the bluestone fence, unsure if I could go in there again after all. Then I took a breath, put my head down, and walked down the circular driveway and through the doors.

  Inside, the smell of wax and disinfectant were crushing reminders and the memories came flooding back. The stab of heat in my breasts at the sounds of the babies crying. The searing pain in my womb as they trundled the other babies to their mothers. The never-ending nights when I lay waiting for sleep to swallow me so I was spared a few hours of knowing my baby was dead.

  I wanted to drop to the floor right there in the middle of the foyer, curl up into a ball and disappear. But I held my breath and pressed my hands against my chest, and I kept pressing until I’d tucked it all away again, deep inside where it had to stay.

  I inhaled and stepped forward to the front desk. ‘Nora Hill’s room,’ I said.

  ‘Second floor, room five.’

  I took the stairs and opened the door into a recess. Around the corner, the pastel corridor stretched, broken every now and then by a low light just above the skirting board, its beam shining dully onto the waxed linoleum.

  I kept my eyes straight and didn’t glance to the sides, walking in a straight line down the middle of the corridor and trying to ignore the smell of starched sheets and hygiene. I reached the doorway to Nora’s room. It was pastel yellow, with matching curtains, and she lay facing the window. I stepped into the room, my heels soft on the lino, and headed towards her slim figure lying motionless under the sheets.

  It took a while before she heard me and looked around. As soon as she saw me, she turned away again. But I’d glimpsed her—her face colourless and grief-stricken, her hair tangled, and her cheeks wet with tears. I sat down on the chair by the bed.

  She wiped her cheeks with the heel of her hands and cleared her throat. Without turning she said, ‘I don’t want to see anyone.’

  ‘Do you want me to come back another time?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t come back,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to see anybody.’

  I seized the chance to escape, then I remembered the parcel in my bag. ‘I’ve brought you a present.’ I delved into my bag and extracted the brown paper package. ‘It’s a shawl and some clothes for the baby.’

  She sniffed but didn’t look.

  ‘I’ll just leave it here.’ I set it on the bedside cabinet beside a jug of water.

  She didn’t move.

  ‘I’ll go then.’ I stood and took a few steps towards the door.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. I waited, but she didn’t say any more, so I left.

  I was managing all right until I passed the nursery and saw them behind the glass, tiny mounds of white lined up in rows like graves, except they were breathing. Some were sleeping, some crying—I could hear their muted cries through the glass. I wrung my hands together and for a moment, a brief moment, I wondered if anyone would stop me if I strode in and took one.

  I moved closer to the window and found him—at the back, a blue card with ‘Baby Hill’ pinned to the bassinette above his head. He was asleep, his tiny fingers curled under his nose. His skin was fair, as was his hair, thick and swept up like a wave on his scalp.

  My empty breasts ached at the sight of him. Edward, I mouthed. I stood with my hand on the glass just staring at him and I didn’t want to leave. I glanced towards Nora’s room and back at her baby. Then I spun around and walked back the way I’d come.

  She was lying as I’d left her—on her side, facing the window.

  ‘Nora…Nora…’ I said as I entered the room and hurried towards her bed.

  She didn’t move. ‘I told you I don’t want to see anyone.’

  ‘I won’t stay. I just wanted to tell you that, if you want, you cou
ld come and stay with Len and me when you leave hospital. You and…Edward. Len wouldn’t mind. At least then you wouldn’t be on your own.’

  Part II

  She dug in the soil, a garden.

  And she saw in the flowers, her children.

  Chapter 12

  They moved in and the milky smell of newborn crept throughout the house. Nora was tired and spent much of the time in bed, but at least I was there to help. I did the washing—boiling, soaking and bleaching the nappies on wash day, and pegging them on the line. Each time I glimpsed them through the kitchen window, strung up and flapping in the wind, my chest fluttered.

  Every morning I filled a small tub with warm water. I set it on the kitchen table, along with a towel, a fresh nappy and singlet, and the baby powder and comb. Then I waited for Nora. She’d drag herself out of bed and down the hall with Ted curled against her shoulder. She bathed him as efficiently as if she was scouring a pot, and then rubbed the drops of water from his skin as if she was polishing Grandma’s silver.

  ‘Gentle,’ I’d say as I hovered by her side, my arms loose with uselessness, watching while she treated him as if he was a rag doll. But it made no difference.

  When she’d finished and shuffled back up the hall, I’d wipe the dots of baby powder from the tabletop. As I pegged the towel out to dry, I could still smell the scent of him in its fibres.

  I couldn’t help but creep in and out of his room when he was sleeping. He lay so still, and my heart would thump until I saw the rise of his chest or felt his milky breath against my cheek. Sometimes I stroked his cheek with my finger, just to make him twitch and reassure myself he was alive.

  One morning he stirred, so I lifted him out. He fitted into my arms as if we were two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. His head turned towards my breast and his mouth jerked open and shut, hoping for milk. He started to cry, so I loosened his swaddling and sat in the chair next to the fireplace and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, as he sucked on his fist and kept crying.