The Sisters' Song

by Louise Allan

  She took her glasses off and wiped her eyes with her hanky. ‘There’s no one who remembers your father anymore,’ she said.

  ‘I do. I was only young when he died, but I remember him. How tall he was and his beautiful singing.’

  ‘That’s not the same,’ she continued. ‘It was something your grandmother and I did a lot—talked about your father. I don’t think a day went by we didn’t mention him. She told me stories from when he was a boy and I never grew tired of hearing them, even the same ones over again. She loved him as much as I did and now there’s no one to talk about him anymore.’ She wept again. ‘It was the reason I never left your grandmother’s. I couldn’t leave the only other person on this earth who’d loved him as much as me.’

  These words of Mum’s moved me more than anything else she’d ever said to me before.

  One job I never minded was washing Mum’s hair. Each Saturday morning, I’d undo the pins and let the honey-brown skeins tumble down her back. Her hair was long, nearly to her waist, and, even though she was in her mid-forties, it wasn’t grey. She’d lean back over the bowl and her hair would swirl about in the water. I’d rub flakes of Lux soap, which I’d grated, into her scalp until they frothed white. I’d massage it in with my fingers, around and around her scalp, and she’d close her eyes. Then I’d pour jugs of warm water over it all until the lather was all rinsed out.

  Afterwards, we’d sit outside on the verandah while I towelled her hair dry and brushed it smooth, one long stroke after another. I kept brushing it, sliding the bristles through her hair longer than necessary, and then I’d reluctantly coil it back in its bun. I didn’t like tucking it away again, hiding all that beauty.

  Nora and the boys still visited with the truck every month, and Mum looked forward to their visits as much as I did. She painted on her lipstick and donned one of her bed jackets, then tinkled the brass bell she kept at her bedside to let me know she was ready. I carried her outside to the front verandah, and we both waited for the truck to appear at the top of the street.

  Nora was reserved around Mum. She always sat with her body tilted slightly away from her and they never kissed. Mum would try and make conversation with Nora, and Nora would answer politely but in a closed kind of way that didn’t invite further questions.

  ‘How’s Alf?’

  ‘He’s good. I’ll pass on your regards.’

  ‘And the mill?’

  ‘The mill’s doing well, thank you.’

  ‘When will Ted be starting school?’

  ‘Next year.’

  At least there were the boys. Mum’s face lit up when she saw them alight from the truck. She chatted with Ted, asking if he’d been good for his mother and father, and praising him for eating his slice of cake without dropping a crumb. She kept her eye on Ben as he waddled about, tapping my hand if he got too close to the edge of the verandah or into the garden. ‘Catch him, Ida. Watch he doesn’t put a snail in his mouth.’

  After they’d gone, Mum and I would sit in the quiet. She’d giggle and shake her head and say, ‘He’s a scallywag that Ben.’ We’d catch each other’s eyes and laugh together, both of us with a flush to our cheeks and a sorrow to our voices because we knew it would be another month until we saw them again.

  She seemed to enjoy them in a way she never did Nora and me when we were children.

  At the end of January, 1947, Nora and Alf and the boys moved to Milaythina, south of Tarney’s Creek, a mile or two closer to Tinsdale. Alf and Rex’s business was booming with all the post-war building, and they’d bought the licences for fresh plots of thick forest in the area. They set up a couple of mills, and hired more loggers and a manager.

  Then Nora announced she was pregnant again and I realised that watching her belly grow would never get any easier.

  The baby was due in September, and because Ben had come early and quickly, Nora needed to be in town a few weeks before her due date so she was near the hospital. Nora and I talked at length about what to do. She thought about bringing the boys and staying at our house, but we didn’t have a lot of space and Ted would miss school. In the end, we decided the best option was for Nora to come to our house on her own so at least she could care for Mum until she went to hospital, while I went out to Milaythina and and looked after the boys and Alf.

  I put off telling Len and kept waiting for a good time but none came. A couple of days before Nora was arriving, I told him over dinner.

  ‘What?’ He looked up from his plate, his eyes wide.

  ‘It’s the only option,’ I said, pleading with my eyes. ‘They can’t all stay here, not now Mum’s here, too.’

  He shook his head. ‘What about Rex’s wife? Or your Aunty Lorna? Why can’t they look after the boys?’

  ‘Beryl has her hands full with her own kids and Aunty Lorna’s too old.’

  He looked back at his dinner, then scratched his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can’t do it.’

  I sighed and wrung my hands. ‘All right. If it’s too much, I’ll just tell them Nora can come, but Alf will have to manage with the boys on his own.’

  ‘Ide…’ His face was pinched.

  I pushed out my chair and went to the sink.

  It didn’t take him long. ‘If you want to go out and help, Ida, go. I’ll stay here with your mother…and Nora.’

  I turned around. ‘Oh, Len, it would help everyone. Mum knows to be on her best behaviour. And I know you and Nora aren’t each other’s favourite people, but at least you’ll be at work during the day, and you can come out to Milaythina at the weekend.’

  He closed his eyes for a second and inhaled deeply. ‘I’m only doing it for you, you know.’

  A few days later, Alf brought Nora into town. As Len loaded my suitcase into the boot of the Ford, he asked, ‘When will you be back?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m not sure.’ I kissed him, letting my lips linger on his rough skin. ‘I do appreciate it, you know. I appreciate all that you do.’

  ‘I hope so,’ he said, and tried to smile.

  As we took off up the street, I watched him through the back window. He stood on the verandah by the geraniums, gave us a wave, then turned and went inside.

  Chapter 18

  We drove over the Sideling Range and through the forest, between the hills and rolling paddocks, past Tinsdale and onwards to the tiny town of Milaythina.

  ‘You can see her peak today,’ said Alf when Ben Craeg came into view, her soft blues rising from the hills.

  We drove along a sealed road and then a short dirt road before we pulled up at a house—a proper house, not a hut. Ted, who was now five and a half, and Ben, who’d turned two the month before, came hurtling out the door. They tripped down the steps, calling out to us. This was the first time I’d visited since they’d moved. Before my shoes had even hit the soil, they were jumping up and down around me, their little hands in mine. Then their legs were carrying me back towards the house. Their tongues were rattling, telling me about their books, their toys, giggling and laughing as their legs churned, running us up the steps and inside.

  After dinner I watched from the back step as they played football in the back paddock with their father—they were all rubbery arms and legs. As the last of the sun’s rays melted away and the air chilled, they came inside, cheeks red and noses running. They changed into their pyjamas by the fire in the lounge and then skittered along the hall to their bedroom.

  I stood at the door, gazing at them cocooned in their beds, and I felt it. The pull of lives unlived. Little ghosts inside these two little boys.

  Then I flicked out the light.

  I slept on the couch in the lounge, and next morning the room was filled with a pearly light and the trills of waking birds. The floorboards creaked and the pipes clunked and clunked again as water gurgled down a drain. I peeled off the quilt, slid into my slippers and dressing gown, and opened the curtains to the unfolding dawn. The mountains were silhouetted against a pinking sky and, overhead, the flickers of the sta
rs were disappearing into daylight. Everything was still, as if holding its breath.

  The kitchen was cold and in shadow, but by the time Alf entered I had the fire crackling and the eggs frying. He ate quickly, before Rex arrived in the truck. Through the window I watched them walk over the frosted grass, their voices a low growl as they talked into their chests. They were both as solid as chimneys, their shoulders as broad as bridges and, from behind with their hats on, you could barely tell the two brothers apart. They climbed into the truck, reversed out along the dirt track and were gone.

  The boys woke soon after and Ted readied for school, then Ben and I walked him up to the main road to catch the bus. We took our time walking home. Ben stomped in a mud puddle and poked it with a stick. Then he climbed a tree and sat in the crook of a low branch. Back at the house, I cleared a space at one end of the table and we sat to draw. I wrapped Ben’s fingers around the pencil and held his hand while we drew a cat sitting on its curly tail, and a house with smoke puffing from its chimney. Then he wanted jungle animals—tigers with fangs and lions with manes—as well as ships and cars and trains and trucks.

  Each morning after we’d waved goodbye to Ted, we’d sit by the kitchen fire and draw. The fire would hiss and crackle and our pencils would scratch across the paper.

  One morning as we were drawing, I started humming and tapping my fingers against the table.

  ‘Sing again,’ he said when I stopped.

  ‘That wasn’t singing,’ I said. ‘That was just noise.’

  ‘No, you was singing,’ he said.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Go on…Sing again.’ His eyes were lively.

  I looked at our drawings of lions and tigers and trains and cars and, remembering Grandma’s made-up songs around the piano, I started singing about a zoo where jungle animals drove trains and cars. Ben put his pencil down and sat straighter, not taking his eyes from mine until I’d finished. When Ted came home, Ben wanted me to sing it for him, too.

  ‘I can’t remember how it went,’ I said.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Ted.

  So I sang it again, a bit differently because I couldn’t remember it exactly.

  Then Ted sang a song about a bird and a lion, and every day after that we sang. On the way to the bus stop and on the way home again. We sang the same song—well, pretty much the same song—and different songs. Songs we made up and songs we knew. We sang anything that came into our heads and we sang it from the bottoms of our bellies. The sounds of us rang through the air, shifting the trees and rustling the leaves. And we laughed.

  Of a night, Alf and I sat by the fire. I knitted while he smoked. We spent much of the time in contemplative silence, but we also talked. Alf told me things I’d never known about him, like that his father and grandfather had been bullockies.

  ‘The last of ’em,’ he said as he leant forward and flicked the ash from his cigarette into the fire. ‘I was afraid of the steers when I was a kid. But they were as patient as Job, all of them. Dad had names for them. He called the lead one Pavlova, after the ballet dancer, ’cos he reckoned she was light on her feet.’ He laughed. ‘She did whatever Dad wanted. She knew, just from the tone of his voice. He didn’t need the whip.’

  I let my knitting rest in my lap while I listened.

  He told me how his father made sleepers for the railways and hewed all the wood himself, carving it with an axe and a gauge.

  ‘In all the years he did it,’ he said, ‘the inspector never found a single mistake in his measurements.’

  Another night he told me about when his father used to take him and his brothers up Ben Craeg. There was a mill about halfway up where Alf’s father used to do business, and when he’d finished they’d walk up to the summit.

  ‘It was bloody cold,’ Alf said. ‘And, by jeez, it could blow. But we didn’t mind. On a clear day, you could see over the whole district, as far as the coast and Bass Strait. Other days, it was just clouds drifting all around.’ He paused to puff on his cigarette. ‘One day I said to Dad, “This is like Heaven.” And Dad said, “There’d be no better place for a soul to go, son.”’

  We sat in silence for a while, and then he looked up. ‘I reckon Dad’s up there right now.’

  I picked up my knitting and started clicking and looping again.

  ‘I’ve never told Nora half of what I’ve told you this past week,’ he said.

  I glanced up. ‘I like hearing your stories.’ I smiled.

  He didn’t smile back but said, ‘It’s nice to have someone to tell them to.’

  I lowered my eyes and kept on with my knitting. I felt my cheeks and the tips of my ears grow hot.

  ‘You were always smiling.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

  ‘At school. That’s what I remember about you. And you and your friend used to ask me to hold the end of your skipping rope.’

  ‘Beth Prosser.’

  ‘Yes, Beth Prosser.’

  I laughed as I remembered and looked up at him. ‘We asked you because you were gentle and didn’t try to trip us.’

  He smiled and shook his head. Then he went quiet while he finished his cigarette. I kept on with my knitting. ‘A lot of water under the bridge since then,’ he said as he threw the butt in the fire.

  I sighed and nodded. ‘If only we’d known…’

  ‘We might have done things a bit differently.’ He held my gaze for a moment and neither of us moved. I felt my face flush again and looked down at my knitting.

  He finished his smoke and stood. ‘Good night, Ida.’

  ‘Good night, Alf.’

  I sat on the chair for a long time afterwards, gazing into the fire and rubbing my cheek, and contemplating a lifetime of what ifs.

  Len caught the bus out the next morning and Alf picked him up from Tinsdale. As the truck pulled in, I flew down the steps and clasped him to me.

  When at last I let him go, he tilted his head and scrutinised me. ‘You all right, Ide?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ I said, and rubbed my hands up and down against his arms. ‘I just missed you.’

  ‘I brought my fishing rods,’ he said, and pointed towards the tray of the truck, where a couple of rods, a tackle box and an ancient tin bucket sat. An hour or so later, we’d loaded a picnic basket and a couple of darned blankets in with the rods and the wood chips. Chocolate-coloured rainwater sprayed out behind us as we lurched and tipped our way down the driveway and up onto the main road. I kept my face to the open window and let the wind whip my cheeks and knot my hair. I turned every now and then to check on the boys. They were sitting in the tray with their backs against the cabin, watching the road stream behind us.

  Alf veered off at the river and drove along the gravel track past the swimming hole. He wound the truck further upstream, where the track narrowed and rutted. We dipped in and out of potholes, and the bush closed in around us. Branches scratched the sides and roof of the cabin and, in the back, the boys laughed as they ducked to avoid them.

  Alf pulled up and we jumped down. The sky was almost hidden by the thick bush around us, and the air felt dull and damp. The path smelt of rotting leaves and mud. As we neared the river, the trilling of the cicadas grew louder until it was almost throbbing. Nearer to the river, the bush opened and the air lightened. A blue sky and fairy floss clouds arched overhead. We skidded down the riverbank, setting stones rolling, and I spread the blanket over the rocks and pebbles by the water.

  I started unpacking the picnic basket while Len hooked up the rods. He handed a rod to Ted, the worm still writhing, and they scrabbled over to where the water lapped at the stones.

  ‘Here, you hold it like this…’ He took Ted’s hand and wrapped it around the rod. ‘And swing it like this…’ He stood behind him and together they swung the rod back and forth. The worm and sinker swayed from the end like a pendulum. ‘Just relax,’ he said, and kept swinging. ‘Then you unclip the reel, swing it back and throw…’

  Whizzzzzz. P
lop.

  ‘And now you wait until you get a bite,’ said Len.

  Ted sat, his eyes not moving from the tip of his rod. ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘You gotta be patient, mate.’

  Len set up a rod for Ben and himself, and sat a few yards upstream from Ted. Ben nestled in his lap, the rod in front of them. Alf lit a fire and put the billy on, and sat on a rock by the blanket. I kept my eyes on the still water and the kids and Len fishing.

  ‘This is good, Ide,’ Alf said.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  We said no more. Around us the bush rustled and the water lapped. When the billy began to hiss, I made the tea and poured it into enamel mugs. I took it to Len and the boys at the water’s edge, along with some egg sandwiches. While they were eating, Len took a photo of Ted with the rod in one hand and a sandwich in the other. I’d learnt how to use the camera by then, so I took a photo of Ben grinning as he sat between Len’s legs holding the fishing rod.

  Suddenly, Ted’s line flipped into an upside-down ‘J’ and twanged back and forth. Len clambered over the rocks towards him, holding out the net and calling, ‘Reel it in! Reel it in!’ Alf and I ran down and joined them at the water’s edge. Len stood behind Ted, his hands covering Ted’s, and together they steadily wound the reel.

  The water was dark and still, the line bobbing as they wound. Then there it was, a flash of silver below the surface. The water broke with a ‘whoomp’, and the fish flipped and flashed on the end of the line. It was as shiny as a newly minted coin, the water streaming from its skin. Ted kept winding, and the fish swung in the air, flipping and somersaulting.

  Len was laughing and saying, ‘Stop, stop!’ as he followed it with the net, to and fro, trying to land the flapping fish. When he’d captured it, they looked up, and I clicked the camera and captured them, flushed and smiling with the sun glinting off the water behind.

  Len unhooked the fish and plopped it in the bucket. The boys gathered around and peered in as it took its final gasps. Their heads lowered closer until they were nearly inside the bucket, then they jumped as the fish flipped again.