The Sisters' Song

by Louise Allan

  We drove straight into town and to the hospital. Alf parked the truck outside and ran in while I waited with Nora and the baby. He came back out with a doctor and two nurses, one pushing a wheelchair. I slipped onto the footpath and watched while a nurse took the baby, still wrapped in my cardigan. She passed him to another nurse, who carried him through the doors. They helped Nora down from the truck and into the wheelchair, and pushed her inside.

  I lingered on the footpath after they’d gone, just until I’d cleared the tears from inside me. Just until all those memories were back in their private place inside my heart.

  Chapter 16

  Ted stayed with Len and me while Nora was in hospital. On the first night, we invited our next-door neighbours, Stan and Doreen, and Len’s brother Fred and his family over for dinner. I made a savoury casserole, using some of our ration coupons for the beef, and I pulled some parsnips and carrots I’d planted over the winter. We had to sit on apple crates because we ran out of chairs. Ted sat on my knee and Len took a photo of us all.

  After breakfast the next morning, Ted and I watched Len ride off on his bike, one trouser leg in his sock, whistling as he pedalled up the street towards the wharf. We shrugged into our coats and set off down the street. The world appeared more colourful than usual—the sky more blue, the sun more yellow, even the green of the grass and the pinks of the roses were more vibrant. As I pushed Ted along the street in the pram, snug and tight, everything in the world seemed right.

  On the first day, we caught the tram to the City Park and fed the ducks and watched the monkeys. The next day, we walked over King’s Bridge and along the Cataract Gorge, and sat in the tea rooms while the peacocks strutted about. The day after that, Mum and Grandma came in on their way to the hospital, and the following day, Ted and I went to town and borrowed some books from the library. Each day there was something different to do, and on the way home Ted would fall asleep in the pram. I’d lift him out and sit on a fireside chair in the lounge, while he slumbered on my lap. We’d stay like that for a couple of hours, just the two us in the quiet with the mantel clock ticking beside us.

  Len kept asking when I was going to visit Nora in the hospital and I kept saying I was busy. Finally, on the fifth day, when I couldn’t put it off any longer, I dressed Ted in his new check shirt and a jumper I’d knitted, and we set off. It was still brisk, and the cold darted up my nose and through my coat. I wasn’t nervous as the tram rumbled past the Albert Hall and the City Park, but as soon as we rounded that bend and I saw that white building, the panic started rising in my chest. I grasped Ted’s hand as we stepped down, and we made it across the road, but my legs slowed as I headed towards the driveway. I stopped.

  ‘Let’s sit,’ I said to Ted.

  We sat on the bluestone fence by the driveway and I pulled Ted onto my knee. I broke off some of the scone I’d brought with me and rested my chin against the softness of his curls as he ate.

  ‘I used to live along there—’ I pointed up High Street, past the hospital—‘with the Godfrey-Smiths. Oh, they had a beautiful house, with an upstairs balcony. I used to stand on it and gaze out towards the river and the mountains. I could see almost to the forests where you live. Except when there was a fog.’

  I kept talking and each time a tram passed, we caught the eye of a passenger and waved at them as if we knew them. After a while we turned around, away from the road. We watched the sparrows and twits in the bushes, the branches shivering as they flitted in and out. I told Ted to close his eyes and I closed mine, and we tuned out the other noises—the cars, the trucks, the passers-by—so only the birdsong could come to our ears.

  When I opened my eyes again, Ted was asleep. I sat for a while, wondering if I should wake him. His dark lashes curled against his cheeks and his breaths were soft and regular. He was peaceful, oblivious to the traffic and the passers-by. I couldn’t move him. I stayed there all afternoon, watching him slumber and enjoying his perfection. I just sat and listened to the birds and tried to forget there was a big, white hospital looming behind me.

  The next day, Len minded Ted and I set off on my own. I walked all the way up to the hospital, keeping my eyes on the footpath, especially as I rounded the bend. When I reached the driveway I still didn’t raise my eyes but kept them down as I walked straight on through the doors.

  Nora was propped up on pillows, as pale as the sheets on which she lay. Dark crescents ringed her eyes and her curls were flattened on one side. I walked over to the bed and kissed her.

  She was shaking.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

  She opened her mouth but couldn’t speak.

  ‘It’s all right, Nor. I’m here now.’

  ‘I can’t stop it.’ Her eyes filled and she breathed faster, then wiped her mouth with her hand. ‘I can’t stop fretting.’ She picked at the sheet and began to twist it in her hands.

  ‘I should’ve brought Ted,’ I said. ‘You’re probably fretting for him.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, no. Ida…Ida…’ She started crying. ‘Don’t bring him. I don’t want him to see me like this.’ I took her hand and she squeezed it. ‘I can’t do it, Ida.’

  ‘What can’t you do? ‘

  ‘I can’t go back out there. I can’t keep living like this…’

  I patted her hand and rubbed her arm. ‘It’s just the baby blues, Nor. You’ll feel better soon.’

  Her eyes didn’t lift and she kept wringing and kneading my hand. I sat with her for an hour, until the nurse came and announced visiting time had ended. I went to leave, but Nora caught my arm. I sat down again and kept patting Nora’s hand as her fingers gripped and twisted mine.

  Outside, the day was dimming and night time was on its way. A nurse walked past and pulled up when she saw me. ‘Oh, I didn’t realise you were still here. Visiting hours finished ages ago.’

  ‘I didn’t want to leave her while she was so fretful,’ I said.

  ‘I’m afraid visiting time is up.’ Her voice was clipped and efficient.

  I went to move but Nora’s hand clutched mine.

  ‘Can’t I stay a bit longer?’ I said to the nurse.

  She shook her head. ‘She needs her rest.’

  ‘I have to go now, Nor.’ I prised her fingers from my arms, but she kept reaching for me.

  The nurse came over and took her hand. ‘Come, come, Mrs Hill, what’s all this nonsense? You can’t get upset or you’ll upset your baby, too.’

  I stooped and picked up my bag, then stood. When I reached the door, I glanced back at her, alone and fretting in that sterile place.

  I walked along the corridor. Past nurses carrying trays and pushing trolleys, and past dimly lit rooms whose occupants were preparing for the night. As I passed the nursery, I glanced through the window at the rows of babies in the light-filled room. But I didn’t stop—I needed to get home to Ted.

  Meanwhile at home, Len was enjoying Ted as much as me. He took him outside and snapped away with the camera. Each night after dinner, he poured some froth from his beer into a glass and made a cigarette out of a match rolled up in a Tally-Ho paper. He burnt the end so it looked like a real cigarette, and the two of them sat at the table with their beers and smokes. Len showed Ted how to tie fishing flies, and Ted’s eyes never moved from Len’s fingers as they worked.

  The Saturday after my visit to the hospital, Alf came into town—Nora and Benedict, their new son, were ready to go home.

  ‘She’s better?’ I said when he arrived to collect Ted.

  ‘Better? Was she sick?’ he said, his forehead creased.

  I hesitated. ‘She must be better now.’

  I carried Ted to the gate, and when Alf leant down and held out his arms, I clasped Ted a little tighter. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to keep him while you settle in with the new baby?’

  ‘We’ll be all right,’ he said. His arms stayed outstretched. ‘Come here, son.’

  I held him out to his father and he didn’t make a whimper
as I let him go. My arms felt light and cold.

  Alf hoisted him onto his hip and turned towards the street. He pointed at a shiny green Ford parked on the verge.

  ‘I bought a new car,’ he said. ‘D’you reckon Nora’ll like it?’ His face beamed like a child’s.

  All I could feel were my empty arms at my sides. But I nodded. ‘Yes, yes. Of course she will.’

  ‘I reckon she will, too.’

  Ted watched me over Alf’s shoulder as they walked to the car. Alf opened the door and slid him onto the front seat beside him. Ted gazed out the window, twisting around so he could still see me as they took off up the street. I waved and kept a smile on my face as they drove off. I stayed outside by the gate long after they’d gone, staring out at the empty street. Then I turned and went inside.

  A week or so later, Len came home with a packet of newly developed photos. I picked up the one of Ted and me sitting on the apple crate on the first night he stayed with us. Stan’s in the background pouring a beer and I have my arms around Ted, gazing at his face. Ted’s peering into the camera, but he’s not smiling. His head is tilted and his eyes are black and deep. He looks wiser than his years and, the closer I looked at the photo, sadder, too. I took that photo and stowed it with the others inside my box of keepsakes.

  Chapter 17

  Grandma passed away just over six months later, in March, 1945, at the age of seventy-two. Len and I made the sad pilgrimage out to Tinsdale for her funeral.

  The church looked the same, and still smelt of dust and candle wax. Mum sat in the front pew, wearing a black hat and a dark-grey coat. She turned as we neared. Her eyelids were reddened and weary, her cheeks were no longer pink and round but pale and drawn, and she had deep ruts either side of her chin. As I slid in beside her, I noticed the tears in her eyes.

  Nora slid into the pew opposite, followed by Ted and then Alf, with Ben in his arms.

  Ben was seven months old and big and square like his father. His skin was pale and his eyes were the colour of the sea on a cloudy day. He had a covering of fine, dark hair, which stuck straight up from his scalp. He spent the service squirming on Alf’s lap and sucking on a rattle.

  Ted looked tiny next to Alf. He was nearly four and his features were even finer and more delicate than when I’d last seen him. His skin was tanned and olive, and his hair had thickened and deepened to a honey colour. It curled over his scalp and fell almost to his collar. He was dressed in shorts and a matching jacket and tie. His socks were pulled up and folded over evenly below his knees. He faced the front of the church and sat stock-still, as if he didn’t dare move. His eyes were twitching and, at one point, he seemed to sense me staring and turned. I smiled, but he quickly looked away, glancing up at his mother to see if she’d noticed him gawking about.

  Nora sat at the end furthest away. She kept her head bowed and her hands clasped below her chin. Her hat almost obscured her face, except for the peaks of her chin and nose and the jet-black of the pendant dangling from her ear lobe. The rosary beads Grandma had given her as a child were entwined around her chafed fingers.

  Afterwards, we walked in a straggly procession over to the graveyard. As Grandma’s coffin sank into the plot next to our father, the clouds felt so low I could almost taste them.

  After the priest and the rest of the congregation had left, Nora stepped forward and stood by the grave. She closed her eyes and clasped her hands, the rosary beads wrapped around them, under her chin. She stood a long while in silent prayer. When she’d finished, she turned to Mum. ‘She was the only one—’ her chin trembled and her voice cracked—‘the only one who understood.’

  Mum shook her head and opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again without saying anything.

  Nora began to walk off and Mum called after her, ‘I understood, too.’

  Nora stopped and half-turned so her head was in profile.

  ‘I understood,’ continued Mum, her voice low, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides, ‘but I just…I didn’t want you to get let down.’

  Nora sniffed. ‘It didn’t work.’ Then she continued walking, her head bowed and her shoes scraping the gravel as she headed towards the pines that stood at the entrance to the cemetery.

  Mum watched her leave, then Alf stepped forward and kissed his mother-in-law, before following Nora slowly up the gravel path. Ben sat in the crook of Alf’s arm, still sucking on his rattle, while Ted held his father’s hand. As they reached the pines, Ted glanced back, gazing at us with his dark, bottomless eyes.

  Len, Mum and I waited silently in the heavy air. I went up to Grandma’s grave and stood by the edge. I could smell the fresh earth and feel the rising coldness on my face. I peered down, past the claycoloured sides and the tangle of roots, down to the bottom where, in the darkness, her coffin rested. It seemed tiny and far away. A wreath of roses sat on top along with some earth the priest had scattered.

  ‘Thank you, Grandma,’ I whispered. ‘Thank you.’ She’d been a good person, sometimes the only good person, in our lives. I never once heard her yell or say anything unkind and she never raised a hand to us. And she always, always forgave. She was the only person I knew who could see the good in everyone, even when they were behaving at their worst.

  Mum returned to Grandma’s house, but in the winter she took to her bed and didn’t get up. There was only Len and me to look after her, so she came to stay with us. I prepared the front room overlooking the garden—I set a vase of roses on the dressing table, wound the clock on the mantel and lit a fire in the grate. Len carried her in and helped her slide under the crocheted bed cover. Her back was hunched and she held herself up with trembling hands. She looked small and gaunt, as if she was slowly crumbling.

  ‘Have you been eating?’ I said to her.

  She didn’t look at me. ‘It’s a bit hard when you’re only cooking for one. And, quite frankly, I don’t care if I live or die anymore.’

  ‘C’mon, Mum, we’ll get you going again.’

  She rested in bed for a week, then two. I attempted to coax her out, but her arms and legs shook so much the bed wobbled. When the doctor came, he said to let her rest a while longer. So I waited and waited, but the weeks rolled on and still she didn’t get out of bed.

  The only things Mum could do for herself were eat and wash. Three times a day, I took her meals into her. Each night I fetched her a washbowl and flannel, and every morning and evening I emptied her chamber pot. Some days, her brass bell didn’t stop tinkling.

  If I was late to change her potty. Tinkle, tinkle. ‘I thought you’d forgotten.’

  And after I’d returned it. Tinkle, tinkle. ‘Did you rinse the potty properly, Ida, because I can still smell it?’

  Tinkle, tinkle. ‘Could you make me a fresh cup of tea, Ida? This one’s a bit tepid.’

  Tinkle, tinkle. ‘I can feel a draught. Would you move the door snake?’

  In the afternoons as the weather warmed, she’d tinkle her bell for me to carry her out to the front verandah for her ‘air’, as she called it. She’d huff and puff as I lifted her, as if she was the one doing the heaving, and tell me off if I wasn’t fast enough.

  One day when we were sitting outside on the wicker seat, she came out with, ‘It was those long, hot baths you took that did it.’

  ‘Pardon?’ I said.

  ‘When you were pregnant,’ she continued, not looking up from the pillowcase she was embroidering. ‘Hot baths can cause a baby to come early. Elsie Green from number twenty-seven was telling me about her daughter-in-law. She miscarried after a bath.’

  I kept knitting, winding the wool over the needles and sliding the loops over each other.

  ‘And all that lifting…’ She held out the pillowcase and examined the long, neat stitches she’d sewn to make the petal of an apple blossom. ‘It causes the cord to wrap around the baby’s neck.’

  I set my knitting in my lap.

  ‘But, really, I think it was the Lord’s doing. You never set foot in a ch
urch…’

  ‘That’s quite enough, Mum.’ I stooped to pick up my knitting bag and stood. I went to leave, then turned about. ‘Don’t you think I haven’t gone over every minute of those pregnancies, examining them for something I did that caused what happened? Don’t you think I would have prevented them if I could have?’

  She kept her eyes on the pink of the apple blossom and pierced the fabric once again with her needle.

  ‘I cooled my baths. I got Len to hang the washing and lift the cast-iron pots. I stopped scrubbing floors. I stopped gardening. I stopped everything but sleeping and eating. And praying. I prayed as hard as a whole bloody convent for my babies to live.’

  She didn’t look up as she pulled the thread through, then dabbed at the fabric with a finger.

  ‘There’s nothing you can tell me, Mum, that I haven’t already berated myself for. I’m going inside and you can get yourself in.’ I headed for the door and as I reached it, her bell tinkled.

  Her head bobbed and her eyes looked wilted. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I sniffed, then nodded.

  ‘And you’re late with the tea,’ she added.

  Mum had her moments, that’s for sure. There were times I rolled my eyes, times I wanted to drop that brass bell in the bin. Times I wanted to drop her in the bin. But then she’d say she was sorry and the heat of my anger would dissolve. She did nice things, too, like made me a tablecloth and linen teatowels and embroidered them with lavender. She didn’t need to say it for me to know she was grateful.

  I also felt grateful to her. I liked that she needed me, and I liked having someone to keep me company during the day. We talked a lot, especially while we knitted and sewed on the verandah in the afternoons. We discussed the weather and the neighbours, and we also talked about things closer to our hearts.

  One day as we were sitting on the verandah, out of the blue Mum started weeping. I shifted closer to her on the wicker seat and put my arm around her shoulders. She took a while to settle, then I asked her what was wrong.