The Olive Sisters

by Amanda Hampson

  It’s not quite dawn when I wake. Lauren snores softly in the other bed. I used to love to watch her sleep when I came home late at night. She still sleeps like a ten-year-old – limbs flung about, mouth softly open.

  I make myself tea, take it out onto the verandah and curl up on the sofa. I’m not in the habit of getting up this early. Anything to escape the sense of dark foreboding that has become my soul mate. The garden is quiet and still, apart from the occasional bird trilling in anticipation of dawn. The teacup warms my hands and there is a moment when I feel comforted, a moment when I feel calm and certain. But it’s only another moment before I feel it all weighing down on me again.

  I see my father’s boots, still there by the door, awaiting his return. I called him Dad until my mother died. After that I thought of him as Jack, if I thought of him at all. I get up off the sofa and slip my feet into the boots. I stand for a moment, waiting for what I don’t know. Direction? They’re too big and ten times heavier than my usual heels but there is a safety in that. They are like small life rafts that will take me through the sea of grass. I clump down the steps and wade across the back lawn to the scene of last night’s howling episode.

  Standing on the barred gate I get a better sense of the land, now a dull monochrome in the half-light of dawn. Thick grass is growing up around the trees that are dotted through the paddock. Fine fragments of mist drift like wispy veils. The land rises towards rounded hills. Beyond them, I can see the first blush of the rising sun. As it creeps a little higher it suddenly shoots fingers of gold down the valley. Each moment they stretch closer towards me, illuminating tree after tree as the kookaburras set up their cry of ‘Looka-kookalookalook!’

  I open the gate and walk into the field. Behind the hedge an old truck sits quietly rusting. I hoist myself into the back and then onto the roof of the cab. From this higher vantage point I can now see that the trees are planted in strict rows. As the sun tips over the hills and pours a river of light down the valley, I realise there are hundreds and hundreds of trees and I’ve seen those silver leaves before, shimmering in the groves that grace the terraced hillsides of Tuscany. It’s like discovering an orchard of silver clouds floating in perfect symmetry in your own backyard. Caught unawares by its beauty, I feel a rush of emotion and find myself blinking back tears.

  I climb down off the truck and make my way through the grass to the nearest tree. I have to look closely to see the tiny green baubles, the promise of fruit to come. Encircling the trunk beneath the grass is a lacy skirt of olive stones, the flesh a feast for birds.

  In the kitchen Lauren opens cupboards and bangs them closed, barely glancing in each one.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ I ask, coming in the back door.

  ‘Food,’ she says without stopping. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  ‘You expect it to jump out at you?’

  ‘Yes! There’s nothing to eat!’ She stares hard at me. ‘Jeez, you look a dag in those boots. You’ll be chomping on a bit of straw and linedancing next. Moving here is such a stupid idea. Believe me.’ She gives me a patronising smirk.

  I feel a sudden rush of red-hot fury. I’m angry. Really fucking angry.

  ‘How the hell do you think food gets in cupboards, you selfish spoilt brat! You just don’t get it! Sometimes life turns bad and there is no food to put in the cupboards. How dare you sneer, sneer, at me when I’m trying to get my bloody life back together?’ The only weapon in sight is a tea towel – she’s lucky – I pick it up and flick it as hard as I can across her bare calves.

  ‘Shit! You don’t have to throw a hissy fit about every little thing!’ she squeals. Her face is pink and twisted up with anger. She grabs another tea towel off the bench. ‘Hah!’ She darts forward and I give a yelp as the tip connects with my left ear. We stand two metres apart, glaring at each other.

  ‘Having a bit of a ding-dong, girls? Tea towels at forty paces?’ Mrs Oldfield suddenly appears, unbuttoning her ‘all-weather’. I’ve got to keep that front door closed, though that would probably only slow her down. She takes a coat hanger out of her basket and hangs her jacket behind the door. My ear throbs.

  ‘Coffee, Mrs O?’ Lauren looks as if she’s suddenly started to have a good time.

  ‘Why not?’ replies Mrs O as she lifts a large plastic container from her basket and places it on the kitchen table. ‘I made you a nice banana cake for morning tea.’ She pulls out a chair and plumps herself down, takes in my night attire and adds, ‘Brunch, perhaps?’

  ‘That’s nice,’ I say weakly. There is a part of me that wonders what she thinks of us but there is almost a sense that she doesn’t think anything. It’s as though she pops in and out of people’s houses as a matter of course, sees all sorts of strange behaviour and thinks nothing of it.

  ‘So, Mrs Oldfield, you’re from around here originally?’ I pull up a chair, still nursing my ear.

  ‘Oh, no, I’m a Melbourne girl. I didn’t come to these parts until I was married in ’51. So that’s fifty-odd years, fairly long time I suppose.’

  ‘What do you know about the olive trees?’

  ‘The olives? They were planted before my time. The old Italian, Frank, put them in – that’d be just before the war, I’d say. They reckon there’s exactly one thousand olives there. Probably what killed him in the end, planting all those trees.’

  Lauren pours the coffee, passes the mugs around and cuts three large slices of cake for us. It’s delicious.

  ‘They say he planted them for the girls, like a dowry in the old days I guess,’ says Mrs Oldfield.

  ‘So you knew them well, Isabelle and Rosanna?’ asks Lauren, sipping her coffee.

  ‘Different as chalk and cheese, those two. Now Isabelle, she’d already married Jack and moved up the north coast to Elenora when I came to live here. I met her a couple of times, beautiful girl back then. Rosanna was a different sort, bit more rough and ready as they say. Good heart. We both worked at the local hospital, since pulled down, I might add.

  ‘My Bill, God rest him, grew up here and he reckoned the first time he met Rosanna was up at Deakin’s waterhole, swinging out on the rope in her underwear. That’s convent girls for you. Very strict parents, I believe – wouldn’t allow the girls to wear bathing suits or swim at the waterhole. They’d have been horrified if they found out what Rosanna got up to.’ She chuckles. ‘The family kept pretty much to themselves. Rosanna and the mother went back to Italy after Frank died. Someone told me the mother died too – I don’t know when, probably twenty years ago at least.’

  ‘What about Rosanna?’ I ask.

  ‘She came back from Italy for a while but then boarded up the house and went away for good. Like so many others around here.’ She sighs heavily, as if missing all of them at once. ‘Then Jack moved here when he retired.’

  ‘Mrs O, you’re something of a cook I gather?’ I say, changing the subject.

  ‘I can cook,’ she replies cautiously. ‘Can’t everyone? It’s a matter of having to, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m more along the lines of a food arranger,’ I say. ‘I can arrange for food to be available and I can arrange for it to look appetising. But without deliveries and delis, we risk starvation.’

  ‘Or living on toast,’ says Lauren.

  ‘The beauty of toast is its availability and predictability,’ I say seriously. ‘I’m not completely hopeless, I did cook things from time to time – years ago – just not with much success.’

  Mrs Oldfield bursts out laughing. ‘You’ll never starve here. Come with me.’ She hoists herself from the table and we follow her out the back door, around to the far side of the house. A path made of flat stones takes us through a small gate flanked on either side by a low hedge. Inside the enclosed area there are raised gardens and several small sheds, one of which has a fenced pen attached.

  ‘Meredith up the hill has goats; you’ll probably find the dratted things in your garden at some point. She’s been looking after Jack’s chooks, but I’m sure she’d be
more than happy to drop them home – if you want them.’ With the air of a prize-proud game-show hostess she takes in the scope of the garden with elegant sweeps of her hand. ‘There’s every kind of herb here in the garden. That’s mint, sage, and the spiky one is rosemary. The freedom has gone to their heads, somewhat – just need reining in. Bit like kids, eh?’ She gives me a wink. ‘There are still lots of vegies; see this one in the corner with the fluffy leaves? That’s asparagus, beautiful. Leeks, parsnips —’ She bends over and pulls out a carrot. ‘Ta-da! Look at that beauty.’

  She hands it to Lauren, who hastily sidesteps, putting her hands up to protect herself from the threatening vegetable.

  ‘It’s filthy,’ she says in her own defence.

  Mrs Oldfield laughs and puts it in her pocket. ‘If you get your chooks back, you’ll have eggs and fresh chook.’ She turns on her heel and heads down the dirt track through a copse of trees, us scurrying behind. ‘Did she say French chooks?’ whispers Lauren. ‘Très exotique!’

  The track crosses a bridge over the creek and leads us out into a large orchard that slopes gently down towards the road. ‘There’s yer mandarin, oranges, peach, fig, nectarine, pear and even apple – the likes of which no one else has ever managed to grow around here. There was a bit of jealousy among a few of the locals – they’d buy Frank’s apples off the stall and plant the seeds, without success as far as I know. We’re too far north for apples really. Look, there’s nuts, almonds. There’s always something in fruit here. The Italian put all these in. He knew a lot about growing things.’

  She turns to face her audience. ‘It might be a bit more work than you’re used to, ladies, but you won’t starve.’ She strolls off chortling, leaving us standing awkwardly in the orchard.

  ‘So where are these olive trees you’re so excited about?’ asks Lauren. She follows me up the track and past the house to the back gate. The sun is high in the sky now and the drama of my early-morning discovery seems dissipated by the harsh light. She surveys the olive grove from a safe distance. ‘Oh, you’ll be right. You do know how to stuff an olive.’ We giggle like schoolgirls, still a little embarrassed by our chastisement, our general ineptitude. I can’t believe I have actually laughed two days in a row. I can’t remember when I last laughed out loud. It seems unnatural and makes me feel a little light-headed and disoriented. As if I wasn’t already disoriented enough.

  ‘Are these onions burning?’ I lift the frying pan off the stove and tip it back and forth, sending showers of sizzling onions flying. Mrs Oldfield takes the pan from me and replaces it on the heat. I can already see that my cooking style, inspired by television chefs, is rather theatrical compared to Mrs O’s more sober approach. We’re making a shepherd’s pie.

  I’m glad of the distraction today. Lauren left this morning. I felt a profound sense of loss as I watched her disappear down the driveway in my car. It was partly her leaving, but if I’m honest it was just as much saying goodbye to my car – a symbol of my success. It’s as though I needed to have it taken from me to confirm my sense of failure … the clang of the cell door, my freedom gone.

  This cooking thing is quite stressful. I can feel myself growing hot all over. Mrs O brought the meat but we had to dig the potatoes and carrots out of the garden. Very messy and labour-intensive. Then the heat, the spitting oil – it’s all quite dangerous really, not the frolic TV chefs make it out to be. She’s brought me a cookbook she picked up at St Vinnie’s, Cooking for Idiots. I’m not taking it personally.

  Finally it’s done. Covered in a snowy layer of mashed potato, the pie is ready to face the heat. We agree on a temperature and into the oven it goes.

  ‘So where’s Lauren’s dad fit into the picture?’ asks Mrs O out of the blue as she squirts detergent into the sink full of hot water.

  ‘Hmm … he was American. Still is, I suppose.’

  How do I explain Alex, let alone to someone as down to earth as Mrs O? Whenever I’m asked I feel the need to provide some neat explanation that will close the subject. A number of clichéd scenarios present themselves, all of which I’ve used before. I’ve never been able to devise a satisfactory explanation for my attraction to Alex – or at least one suitable for public scrutiny. Mature audiences only.

  He was the only other delegate at a week-long conference who shunned the endless themed dinners and sat alone in the bar each night. I can only say there was an instant frisson between us. We ran away to Lahaina for three days and nights in an old hotel with a slow-moving ceiling fan that did nothing to cool the room. We drank gin slings on our verandah in the late afternoons and looked out across the bay where young Hawaiian maidens once swam out to the whaling boats. It felt so perfect; like a honeymoon. We were united in our audacity. Perhaps it was arrogance. It was short-lived, anyway. Several months later, in quick succession, I discovered that I was pregnant and he was married.

  ‘Ah – American,’ says Joy and, needing no further explanation, reaches for the kettle. ‘Cup of tea, love?’

  ‘Thanks. Did my father have a car?’ I ask.

  ‘He certainly did. He had an old blue ute. I’m not sure where it’d be. I suppose, with no family at the funeral, someone might have availed themselves of it.’ She scalds the teapot and puts in several spoons of tea from a jar on the windowsill. ‘Did you know Jack died at the railway station? He was just about to catch the train to Sydney – he used to go a couple of times a week – when he had the stroke right there on the platform. It’s better if they go quickly, dear – with a stroke, you know. Especially now the hospital has closed.’ She gives an exasperated tut as she gets the milk out of the fridge. ‘I’d be checking with Sid at the garage about the car, opposite the station.’

  I have a peek in the oven and am pleased to see the pie is safe, the top turning golden. ‘How would you feel about taking me into town?’

  ‘Sit down and have your tea, love. All in the fullness of time. Let’s do that in the morning.’

  It is late afternoon and the air feels dense, heat trapped under the lid of grey cloud. Mrs O rustles around in her basket and reveals a six-pack of 100-watt bulbs. ‘They were a special on the shopper docket, so I picked some up.’

  She hands me one and I stand on a chair and replace the bulb in the fitting.

  ‘Let there be light!’ she cries, and tugs on the string pull.

  We sit in silence, drinking our tea in a 100-watt halo. I look around the kitchen. I need to get rid of all Jack’s clutter and make this mine. I need a project.

  After a while Mrs Oldfield says, ‘Would you like me to show you how to bake a cake sometime?’

  I didn’t want her to leave but was too proud to say so. Now alone, I sit at the window and watch the light being chased from the sky by fearsome dark clouds while huge gusts of wind shake the trees. Corrugated iron clatters. Distant dogs bark. The garden disappears before my eyes. I’m drowning in blackness. I’m paralysed by fear. It’s as though every fear I have ever had has come to dance and shriek and jeer at my weakness. Childhood terrors twirl and spin with middle-aged ones. Madman with machete; abandonment; getting old; being buried alive; dying alone. I need a drink. My greatest fear is being needy. Needing people, needing help, needing a drink. My greatest, greatest fear is of giving up, giving in to despair. I’m afraid I will give up like my mother did in her last few years and choose to soften life through a half-full glass of gin, her constant companion. Caught in its sweet embrace, she would lie dozing half the day, cry in her sleep and murmur words in a language I didn’t understand.

  I could ring a friend, tell them I have the phone on now. Give them the number. It would be nice to have the phone ring. But who? Who do I feel safe to reveal myself to in my current state? I’ve upsold my move here as a ‘lifestyle choice’: my business went down the gurgler, but I coped brilliantly. I’m just taking a breather – a sabbatical – doing the country thing for a while. I’m totally in control.

  I don’t trust myself to make a call. I might cry.

>   It’s as dark in the house as it is outside. I’m in a void, invisible to the world. I used to feel I was pivotal, the core of many lives. People vied for my attention, craved my approval. People sought my advice and paid highly for it. Now the lines of communication are silent, and so am I.

  Rain hammers on the roof and drizzles down the window. I feel around for the side table, find the lamp and switch it on. Now I see my misery reflected back at me, rain dissolving my features. I don’t even look like me.

  I close the curtains quickly, move about the room switching on lights and the television, which floods the room with voices. I notice my hands are trembling as I fumble to open a bottle of wine and pull up a chair to the screen, basking in the light and sound. A gulp of wine sears my throat. The TV emits a long slow whistle and the glittering images of the outside world suddenly reduce themselves to a single dot in the centre of the screen. The only image I see is that of an anxious middle-aged woman in a state of disarray, clutching a glass of wine. Me again.

  Distraction is my only escape. I run into the kitchen, spilling half my wine on the way. Switch on the radio. Angelic voices fill the room. A hundred voices, I can see them all in white, faces raised to the heavens as they sing of the sweet chariot comin’ for to carry them home. My mother loved this song. She was always happy when she sang along to the radio, especially songs about God, whom she also loved. She did have faith in Him. Suddenly I miss her beyond all reason. I miss her as if she died today instead of thirty years ago. It’s not simply my mother I miss. It’s something else. I miss the things I never got from her. She never shouted at me, slapped me, cried with me or sang with me. She never let loose in a way that told me she truly loved me – loved me passionately, feared for me unreasonably, felt my pain as her pain. It was as though she had given up on me from the beginning.