The Olive Sisters

by Amanda Hampson

  ‘Brown, you mean?’ I say, irritated all over again. ‘What about a frog for the bathtub? I’ve got them up the drainpipes – I could bring you one next time. What colour would you like? Small, medium or large?’

  She smiles but I know I’ve bruised her feelings.

  All the way home on the train I fret that my only attraction to DGS is as a Trojan horse to take them into the boardrooms of my old clients. I’m not sure whether to be hurt or flattered. I know it’s a business decision for them. No point being a girl about it.

  The train journey is depressing. I see some of the same people, heads slumped on chests, trying to find their way back into the dreams they had this morning. One by one the phones come out. ‘I’m on the train’ ripples through the carriage like a Mexican wave. Who cares? Well, obviously someone does. I don’t have anyone to call. I’m suddenly filled with foreboding at the thought of the empty house that awaits me.

  The man next to me looks as though he’s come from a building site in grimy steel-capped boots. He stares angrily out the window, occasionally taking a swig from a bottle in a brown paper bag. High-school kids sit in the aisles on enormous backpacks. Shaggy-haired boys, and girls with hooped earrings chew gum and munch chips at the same time. They can hardly take their eyes off each other: even when they’re not looking, they’re looking. It’s tiring to watch. I feel old and fragile as if the rhythm of the train is rocking me apart.

  I had forgotten Dog was waiting for me in the ute at the station. He’s delighted to see me. I’ve never had someone hopelessly devoted to me before. It’s rather nice. I let him sit in the cab on the way home. He sits right beside me and gets hair down one side of my suit.

  The house is somehow welcoming – peaceful – and the garden is cool and shady in the late afternoon; the smooth green lawn a welcome-home gift. I make tea and toast and fall into bed before eight.

  I wake feeling very flat. I have played my last card; if it doesn’t come good I’ve nowhere else to go. Gloomy, trapped and restless is the theme for the day.

  On the front verandah I discover I have another welcome-home gift, a pair of sturdy elastic-sided boots. Mysteriously, they fit perfectly. A note taped to the left sole invites me to dinner and includes a detailed map and instructions. It’s from Joe Oldfield, Mr Don’t Assume himself. Perhaps a chiko roll washed down with a tinny? I assume nothing. Nevertheless I’m suddenly feeling a little more cheerful. I have a bit of a romp on the lawn with Dog; he’s clearly relieved by my girlish high spirits.

  What on earth does one wear with a pair of elastic-sided boots? In the end I decide on a pair of black pure-wool pants teamed with a cream suede jacket that has just a whiff of Western in its styling. I am getting a little tired of being hopelessly overdressed everywhere I go.

  The map takes me to the other side of Duffy’s Creek and along a winding road around the perimeter of a steep hill. It’s like a different land, almost mystical, with quite incredible views across the deep valley to more steep hills. The further I get from town, the more dilapidated houses, the more falling-down fences and off-the-hinge gates I see. Finally, I reach Joe’s gate.

  Inside the gate is an open barn where his truck is parked. I park the ute beside it as instructed in the note and give him a toot. His property is on the high side of the road with a steep path, no wider than a track, heading up the hill. Within moments I hear the throaty sounds of a motorbike.

  It hardly needs saying that motorbikes are not my thing, but I soon find myself sitting high on the back of this rasping piece of machinery, my arms clamped around a man I barely know, as the bike hares up an almost vertical track like a frisky mountain goat. The track takes us through dense bushland, rainforest I suppose, which clears gradually as we go higher, then just as it seems we are heading skyward we leap over a ridge onto the plateau at the top and emerge into the late afternoon sun.

  The hilltop has been mostly cleared of trees and there is a cabin – God knows how he got that up here, there must be another track – and some rather primitive-looking shelters; poles supporting a corrugated-iron roof. It’s like having several pavilions: one is an eating area with a gas stove, mismatched chairs and a big old table. It’s set with a white cloth, plates, cutlery, wineglasses and even candles. Another pavilion has some bits of furniture, chairs and a hammock. The shower is a bag hanging from a tree. I don’t even want to know about the toilet but he insists on showing me – self-composting, apparently. Clearly it’s a source of great pride for him.

  ‘I can see you’re not wildly impressed,’ he says, amused. ‘But I do have one more rabbit in my hat. Come with me.’ He takes my arm and we walk across the plateau to the other side.

  The view from the top of the mountain is something else. I can see all the way to a silver ribbon of sea in one direction and as I turn towards the hinterland there are valleys and farms, orchards and vineyards until the hills start to rise again and then, as far as the eye can see, undulating blue bush.

  ‘Your place is directly across there to the southwest. Now, have a look down the hill just below us.’

  I do as I’m told, determined not to open my mouth until I work out what the hell it is I’m supposed to see there. Finally, he puts me out of my misery.

  ‘There’re eighteen wild olive trees growing on this hillside alone. Taggiasca olives – progeny of your grove – sown by the birds. They’re growing on quite a few properties around here now and there’s a local guy going around harvesting them. He sends them to a mill down in Victoria somewhere. He’s winning medals with his oil.’

  Olive, olives, olives – is that all this man wants to talk about?

  We sit down at the table and he opens a bottle of not-too-shabby pinot noir. He’s a little older than I first thought, maybe forty-five. It’s hard to tell; his body is lean but the weather has left its mark on his skin. His shirt and jeans are clean, if a little frayed here and there. The hair is boyishly long and fine as a baby’s and appears to have been washed and brushed for the occasion. I can see a sprinkling of grey pushing in at the temples.

  ‘So, is that what you wanted to talk to me about?’ I say. My chest feels tight and my words sound more abrupt than I intended.

  ‘I think we have lots of things we could talk about,’ he says calmly as he pours the wine.

  ‘So you do have an agenda,’ I reply, suddenly feeling thoroughly uncooperative.

  ‘I think you’re looking for something.’

  ‘In all the wrong places?’

  ‘I just thought you seemed a little lost, that’s all.’

  ‘I was lost, but now I’m found. I’m expecting a job offer and I’ll be heading back into the real world.’ I hear how smug and dismissive I sound, all too late.

  ‘Great. Maybe you’re right – maybe we don’t have anything to talk about.’

  His calm resignation has the opposite effect on me. ‘Just because you’ve found peace and harmony mowing lawns and living on a mountaintop doesn’t make you bloody Mohammed,’ I say crossly. ‘This sort of existence would not work for me. I want my old life back.’ The backs of my eyes throb. I can feel my chin quivering. He sits still and quiet. But I can’t stop.

  ‘I never, never in my wildest dreams thought I would hit fifty with nothing but a trail of failures behind me.’ I’m horrified to hear the truth pouring from my mouth. ‘This isn’t the real world, Joe. This is La-La Land. You’re a runaway. Just like Jack.’ There is a sense of satisfaction at having found the source of my anger. Just like Jack.

  He takes a sip of wine and leans back in his chair, seemingly unaware of the gravity of the insult. ‘In my old life I was a builder. I always thought that being a builder was a worthy trade – practical – and I think I was pretty darn good at it.’

  He looks at me as though he thinks I’m going to challenge him on that. ‘I thought my job was to work with materials, timber and steel, terrain, drainage. Things I could handle. People talk about their dream home but actually they think you’re going to
build them a dream life. I can’t tell you how many times I have stood in beautiful homes watching two people tear each other’s hearts out over the choice of tiles. They think a house will make them happy the same way that people think money will make them happy. But the richer they are, the more choices they have and the harder they are to please. They start to believe that nothing is good enough for them. They dedicate themselves to proving it. To themselves? To the world? I don’t know.’

  He gets up and checks inside the oven. The fragrant aroma of rosemary and roasting lamb wafts over me. He pours us both more wine and sits down. ‘I was married, couple of kids, house in the suburbs. My wife had this same expectation that the more stuff you throw in the void the fuller you will feel. Ditto the kids – bloody frantic for the latest toy and gismo. I was killing myself to make everyone happy. I’d wake up in the night and think I was suffocating. My wife despised me. My customers were driving me insane. So, you’re right to a point, I did run away. I had a heart attack at forty-two. I ended up having to come home to Mum.’

  ‘Well, everything happens for a reason, so I’m told,’ I say, wearily resistant to taking on his stuff when I have so much of my own. But I suddenly realise that it is not as though I really loved my old life – I’m not even sure that I was happy. It’s simply that it was my life. ‘I just feel so disoriented. I feel as though someone has taken away my script, my soundtrack – even the backdrops – to my life. I don’t know what my role is, who I’m supposed to be any more.’

  ‘Isn’t there a freedom in that? You can be anyone you want.’

  ‘People don’t change,’ I say finally. ‘Anyway, I haven’t got the energy or the courage to reinvent myself. It’s too late to start afresh.’

  He looks at me as though he doesn’t believe a word. As though he can foresee everything I will come to know. He looks as though he’s waiting for me to understand, to know what he knows. I’ve never felt further away from it. But he lets me off lightly. We eat lamb roast with baked vegetables from his garden. We talk of other things, of life. We talk until the moon moves from one side of the mountain to the other.

  I don’t like the way he looks after me so tenderly. The way he laughs at my jokes. I don’t like the way, half-asleep on the back of the bike, my hands slide under his shirt of their own accord. I don’t like the way his flesh feels as smooth and warm as summer mango and he smells almost as sweet. I don’t like the way he lifts me from the bike and whispers ‘Stay.’ But I am strong. I get into my ute and drive home slowly. The last thing I need in my life is a dreamer.

  Eight

  THREE MONTHS LATER, Jack stood at the gate to the olive grove once more. This time there was no one in the grove. Franco was dead. Jack thought then that he would give almost anything to have that day back again, to walk the grove with Franco, to have the chance to change his mind and stay. At the time it didn’t even cross his mind.

  Jack had been at work when the telegram came. He had come home to find Isabelle faint with grief and shock. It told them all they needed to know in that odd, faltering language of telegrams: Come home stop father dead stop heart stop Rosanna stop. Jack felt as though he had killed Franco with his own hands. He had stolen the princess and now the king was dead, the kingdom in ruins. He felt nauseous with guilt. They had planned to visit in a month’s time to celebrate Franco’s sixtieth birthday. And now he was gone. There was a tightness in Jack’s chest and a pain in his heart that made it difficult to breathe. He felt the brutal hand of grief crushing him, squeezing the life out of him.

  During the long, almost silent, drive back to the farm he found himself calculating his losses. When he had claimed Isabelle all for himself he only knew he wanted to possess her in body and spirit. He was convinced that making love to her would slake his thirst for her and he would regain the clarity of mind he had lost over the last few months. He had imagined her yielding herself to him, her body melting into his. His fantasies didn’t take into account the awkwardness of an inexperienced lover and her natural modesty – the lack of which he so deplored in Rosanna. His transit to heaven was hampered by earthbound fumbling and embarrassed apologies.

  They never spoke of it. Isabelle understood her role and played her part. She succumbed to him as her husband but there was never a moment when she gave herself to him. She accepted his affections but there was something missing, something he didn’t want to even begin to face. It seemed as though his beautiful butterfly had quietly folded herself back into her chrysalis.

  She was, he realised, a loner just like him in many ways. She never complained about him being away on field trips overnight or even for several days. When he arrived home she would look up from her sewing or tapestry with a smile. ‘Ah – there you are,’ she would say, as if she had just that moment wondered where on earth he had got to. She would tilt her cheek to receive his kiss and it seemed as though she was pleased to see him.

  He bought her an electric Singer sewing machine to replace her treadle. She would sew most afternoons and always cleaned and oiled it before she put it away. As he came up the side path of the cottage he would hear its metallic trembling stop and start and he expected there would be a new cushion or curtain or some other such frippery in the house. Now and then he would catch a glimpse of a tiny gown, decorated with satin ribbons or embroidered rosebuds. Isabelle folded these briskly and put them away in a camphor chest.

  Gradually it seemed that, apart from a battered copy of Peele’s Mining Handbook and several other books about metallurgy propped on the bookshelves, there was almost nothing of Jack’s old life in the house. She had asked him, very reasonably, to remove his boots and clothes in the laundry on the back porch before he entered the house each evening, and he did. She asked him, also reasonably, not to bring the men he worked with, particularly Michael, to the house, so he didn’t. Although she attended church daily she requested only that he attend Sunday mass with her, which he did. Life was quiet but he wasn’t unhappy. It had a predictable rhythm he rather enjoyed. Their solitary ways seemed well suited, although he thought from time to time that they were perhaps too alike; it closed them off to one another somehow.

  Isabelle sat quietly beside him in the car. Although the funeral wasn’t until the next day she was already dressed in black. Her face was pale and tight, eyes red-rimmed. When they stopped in a small town for a cup of tea and a devon sandwich he could sense the curious looks.

  They arrived at the farm late that afternoon. Rocco sat on the verandah, smoking moodily, his face impassive. He hugged Jack, kissed Isabelle on both cheeks and led them into the house. As she stepped over the threshold, Isabelle collapsed, a reedy wail rising from her throat. Jack caught her just in time and lifted her to the couch, taken aback by such an uncharacteristic display of emotion. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness of the room – the curtains were drawn, the only lighting a dozen small candles. He began to make out the figures beside the casket, which was on a low table in the centre of the living room. Signora Martino rose from her knees and came to sit beside Isabelle, the rosary in her hand. She wrapped her arms around her daughter and rocked her as they wept together.

  Erminia knelt beside the coffin, praying and weeping. Rosanna came towards Jack from the kitchen. He could see Rocco and Erminia’s son Joseph leaning against the kitchen bench eating an apple. Rosanna stopped before Jack and looked up into his eyes. Neither of them spoke; he felt quite rigid as she put her arms around him and hugged him. She stayed there for a long time, her head on his chest, listening to his heart. He could feel the warmth of her body. It took all his strength to lift his arms and return her embrace.

  Jack was familiar with death. He’d seen it when he served in Egypt during the war. He’d seen children dead in the street, he’d seen men die who had barely begun their lives. In the mines he’d seen death snatch silently, but more often grotesquely – his memory stored jagged screams as scar tissue. But when he looked at Franco’s face – smooth and peaceful, the fam
iliar rugged lines that mapped his face now faint – it was a loss beyond anything he had ever experienced.

  Jack had not spent a great deal of time in church until he met Isabelle. Now he found himself sitting on a hard pew thinking about God. His mother believed in a God who notated wrongdoings in big black books, a grand man with grand plans in which each and every person played their tiny part. For a moment Jack was so overcome by the sheer pre-posterousness of it all he was tempted to leap to his feet and share his outrage with the congregation. Trapped and restless, he shuffled his feet and twitched the muscles in his back. The sermon offered him no comfort. It annoyed him the way Father O’Hara talked more about God than about Franco.

  The little church with its white picket fence and backyard of headstones sat on a scruffy block, half a mile out of town. The land had been bequeathed to the church by the Simmonds family, who had spawned so many children and grandchildren that their name prevailed on every school roll and committee minutes in the district. The well-to-do faction of the family still owned the farmland surrounding the church and made up much of the congregation.

  The church had a simple functionality Jack approved of, however. The pews and pulpit were built in red cedar, a soft, fragrant timber that was once common in the area but was now all gone. There were several dozen people there, which surprised him. He knew that when the Martinos first attended, several of the congregation had made complaints to the Father. Call themselves Christians, Jack thought bitterly.

  It was an odd congregation that day, almost a reunion for his wedding guests: there was Mr and Mrs Mack; Snow; Rocco, Erminia and Joseph; Alberto and Luigi; but no Lorraine. And some people he wouldn’t have expected were there: Nobby, the town clerk; two nuns from the convent school; and a German who was something of a recluse.