The Olive Sisters

by Amanda Hampson

  ‘Why does Rosanna do these things for you? Did she really “offer”?’ Jack asked in a low voice.

  Her eyes narrowed as she met his stare. ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she replied stonily.

  Jack felt like shaking her till her teeth rattled. Although it was Saturday he left the house, got into his car and drove to work. He sat at his desk – a makeshift affair in the site office that was little more than a shed – and smoked one cigarette after another. He thought about Rosanna being pregnant. He couldn’t picture it. He couldn’t quite imagine this part of him growing within her. Hourly, he resisted the urge to go to her.

  ‘World on yer shoulders, mate?’ Wally, the site foreman, flopped into his swivel chair with a crash and banged his clay-clagged boots on the floor. ‘Something up?’

  Jack turned to look at him. Almost bald, with chubby cheeks, flushed and pink, he looked as innocent as a cherub. Jack thought of telling him he was going to be a father. But it was too complicated. He’d find out sooner or later. ‘Nothing, mate. Just a bit tired. Fancy a beer?’

  Isabelle began to make preparations for when she would go down to the farm and he had the feeling that she couldn’t wait to get away. They were courteous to each other as they had always been but Isabelle was always asleep by the time he came to bed. It seemed that was the best thing for both of them.

  Rosanna, almost five months pregnant, wrote to say that the matron at the hospital where she worked had commented that she was putting on weight. Isabelle needed to come down before tongues started to wag. Jack was hungry to see Rosanna and offered to drive Isabelle down the next weekend.

  Rosanna greeted them with hugs and kissed both Jack’s cheeks but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. She and Isabelle gloated over her round stomach and cooed through the box of baby clothes Isabelle had brought with her. Jack sat around feeling uncomfortable. He was waiting for his moment.

  When Rosanna went out to collect some vegetables for dinner he offered to help. Even with her extra weight she had a manly stride and he fell into step beside her. She gave him the bucket to hold and pulled some carrots and dropped them in the bucket. He’d waited weeks for this moment and couldn’t think how to start.

  ‘Rosanna. I need you.’ His voice betrayed his longing.

  She looked up briefly from her search among the zucchini vines. ‘Jack, don’t. You don’t need me. The deed is done and over.’

  ‘Not for me. I —’

  ‘Don’t, Jack. Don’t say any more.’ Rosanna took a pair of scissors out of her apron pocket and snipped a handful of chives, some stems of rosemary and a bunch of basil. ‘Jack, I love Bella. I want her to be happy. I am going to give the two of you a gift, the greatest gift possible. I want you both to be happy. Please, I beg of you, don’t ruin it all.’ She dug into her pocket, pulled out a piece of string that she used to wind around the herbs and dropped them in the bucket. She stood in front of him, looking up into his face. She put her hand on his cheek. ‘I’m sorry I hit you that day.’ There was a softness in her eyes he hadn’t seen before. She took the bucket from him and turned and walked back to the house.

  Thirteen

  I WASN’T WITH my mother, Isabelle, when she died, though I hardly left her side in the last days. She had me sit silently beside her bed in that darkened room, the curtains drawn against each new dawn. Life was just one long night except for the daylight probing the curtains and the occasional laughter of the living. I spent my nineteenth birthday in that room.

  To my eternal shame, I was impatient for her to go. It wasn’t as though there was an alternative. When she did go it was unexpected, and I was shocked. I had left the room for a few minutes on some domestic errand and she slipped away while I was gone.

  I sat beside her all that night and when morning came I opened the curtains. Bathed in light, I saw how changed she was. The fretwork of tiny lines on her face now soft, there was a sweet relief in her smile, as though she had just consumed a deeply satisfying morsel of life. Even then, I couldn’t leave. She was all I had. Now she was safe, I was terrified for myself. Terrified that my life would end up in that same place. I was afraid to leave that room.

  I’ve spent a good part of my life running from that night. I have to keep moving, for if I stop the fear and loneliness settle on me like an insidious dust that seeps into my pores.

  Despite all we’d been through together, I wouldn’t ever say we were close. It’s not as though each of us could anticipate what the other was thinking, let alone feeling.

  When I was about six, my parents sold our little house in Elenora and my mother and I moved to a flat in Elizabeth Bay. One of her clients, Mrs Armstrong, had opened a bridal salon and invited her to come and work there as a dressmaker. Our flat was within walking distance of the shop.

  The word separation was never mentioned. The fact that my father wasn’t coming with us hardly registered; he had always been away more than he was home. That was the nature of his work, I had often heard my mother tell her clients.

  Lately I have given some thought to the question of why she ever agreed to move to Sydney. She was not a city person, and she loathed noise and crowds. I assume that even then money was tight so the prospect of steady work must have been attractive. But I think the real reason was the possibility of anonymity it gave her. I wonder if my father asked for a divorce, and she couldn’t bear our town to know. She wouldn’t risk the ladies of the guild finding out.

  My father still turned up from time to time. It was usually weeks after he said he would and then only for as long as it took to go up the street and have an ice-cream. We would sit awkwardly on a bench in the park and talk about school. He would study my face as though I was a stranger to him – which, of course, I was. He was always restless and on edge. He would sometimes have a cup of tea with my mother, but they were like strangers too. Once I caught him going through her mail on the table beside the telephone. I could see from his guilty start that it was wrong.

  I was about twelve when my mother first became ill and her small world seemed to shrink just as mine was expanding. She had no friends apart from Mrs Armstrong, who occasionally delivered work to her at the flat, so she rarely ventured out. I was not allowed to have friends home and never allowed to stay away overnight. I realised later that it wasn’t because she missed me, or even that she was lonely. It was that without me the clocks would stop, the power would be disconnected and the fridge would remain stubbornly empty; ditto the bottle of Gordon’s Dry. Without me there she would lie in bed all day, the sewing machine eerily silent, swathes of abandoned satin spilling off the dining table onto the floor. She needed me to keep her connected with the world.

  There are so many things I would ask her now, in addition to the obvious one – why? Why the elaborate hoax? Why didn’t she tell me? But there is also a deep sense of relief in knowing the truth. It’s as though I have a diagnosis for my mysterious illness. It answers a thousand questions I haven’t yet articulated for myself and presents me with a thousand more. It explains the emotional chasm that existed between us – we simply weren’t bonded by that primal glue. I did love her, but why didn’t she love me? Perhaps she did in her own way. Perhaps she gave it her best. I should grant her that at least. And Jack? What did he see in me? A little girl who idolised her absent dad? Or a nagging reminder of his own lost hopes, and lost love?

  There’s been a growing sense of freedom unfurling inside me since I heard Joy’s revelation, just days ago. If I’m not who I thought I was, who am I? Am I already defined as someone else? Or, freed from the constraints of ‘not being like Isabelle’, can I now be anyone I want to be? I feel something is opening up in me. It’s not a solid feeling. It’s as though I’m entering the space between who I was and who I could be. It comes and goes, tiny tremors of something that feels like courage are liberating other emotions in me – a sense of anticipation, of possibility, nibbling at the edges of my fearfulness. I’m nervous about going back to see Rosanna, now I know the trut
h. I almost can’t bear feeling so emotional all the time.

  Usually this house is cool until late in the afternoon, but not today. Outside the air crackles with heat; it gradually seems to be leaking into the house. I close the doors and windows and pull down a couple of blinds on the north side. I need to pack up my stuff. It’s only three days until I leave to take up my new role and I haven’t done anything about trying to rent this place out yet. It’s hard to get motivated when it’s so stifling. With the air a hot thick soup, to move is to wade.

  Suddenly Dog starts barking and I go outside to see who’s there. It’s just a car accelerating down the road. But then I smell the smoke. In a moment I see wisps drifting from near the road, and there’s a distant crackling like thousands of tiny explosions. I run across the garden and down the path through the trees to the orchard. Thick smoke pours off the long grass and flames lick hungrily at the dry tips. It flows towards me with a divine and dangerous grace.

  I don’t know what to do. I don’t have time to call for help, and don’t know where the hose is and doubt it is long enough. Dog barks and barks. I’m paralysed by panic. Suddenly, it comes to me. I run back to the shed and grab an armful of old sacks, see my purple sarong on the clothesline and stop to rip a wide strip of fabric off the bottom. Wrapping it around my face to cover my mouth and nose, I run to the back door and pull on my boots.

  As I emerge from the trees into the orchard I can hear a rushing sound. The fire is now a curtain of flame – maybe a metre high and 10 metres wide – coming up the orchard. It has conjured up a rush of air to feed its hungry flames.

  There is a trough at the top of the paddock – I dunk the sacks into it, pull them out and run towards the fire. I whip the flames from the edge with my wet sacks the way I’ve seen them do it on the television news. I’ve never worked so hard in my life. I’ve never been so focused. I use every muscle in my body to beat, beat, beat the flames. I run back and forth along the rim of the fire, pushing it back only to have it edge past me somewhere else. The smoke is choking and makes it impossible to see how far the fire has spread. I don’t know whether I’m winning or losing. There’s no time to think about it, I just keep going. I’ve started to work out the best way to smother the flames – too much flapping simply fuels them. I need to watch my back and not be surrounded.

  The wind picks up – the promised southerly – and the hot gusts make it even more difficult to breathe. Through the haze I can see dark clouds scudding into view, like street gangs attracted to trouble. The smoke turns towards the hills. Rain, please rain.

  For a time my whole world is reduced to this tiny patch of earth. My face burns radiant with heat, my body is drenched in sweat and black with soot. Just keep going. The thought occurs that someone deliberately started this fire. Bastards. Fucking bastards. Anger on top of adrenaline fuels me.

  It seems hours before I hear a siren coming up the road. The fire truck drives straight through the closed gate into the orchard. People run everywhere, Keystone Cops in yellow jackets. Water, blessed water. Finally, there’s just drifting smoke and black charred grass.

  One of the firefighters comes over to me. ‘Lucky you got to it when you did, lady. Once it hit those trees it’d just gobble up your little house there. Sorry about your gate. Gwen got a bit overexcited.’ He takes off his helmet and wipes his face with his hands, smearing sweat and grime. ‘Gwen! Yer stupid cow. What if that’d been the new truck?’ he shouts.

  Gwen’s a chunky, well-built girl. She takes off her helmet to reveal a dazzling head of cropped, bleached hair. She grins at him and shows him her middle finger. ‘Damsel in distress, mate – no time to worry about a fucking gate.’

  I feel my legs start to give way. ‘I think I need to sit down.’ I lean against the truck and slide gracefully onto the ground.

  ‘Yer right?’ he says, managing to sound not at all solicitous. He looks relieved when Gwen gives him a hoy and he sprints off in her direction. A few minutes later he’s back with her and the other two firies in tow.

  ‘Got on the wrong side of anyone lately, love?’ He sounds marginally more concerned. ‘Bit of petrol along yer fence line there, someone’s put a match to it. You didn’t see anyone hanging around?’

  I shake my head. My arm hurts.

  ‘I’ll put it in the report, so don’t be surprised if you hear from the cops.’

  ‘Well, yer don’t need to be a flamin’ genius to work out who it might be, do yer?’ says Gwen. ‘Come on, we’re all done here.’ She nods in my direction. ‘You better go and have a cup a tea and a lie down, I reckon.’

  I stagger off and lean against the fencepost as they lift the gate up off the ground and prop it against the fence. As I limp back to the house the truck heads off, the firefighters waving and tooting as though we’ve had a fun day out together.

  I lie on the bed, covered in soot. My body has an electric current running through it. I can feel the artery in my neck thudding. My heart sounds like a rubber ball bouncing in an empty auditorium. When I wake Dog is lying on the end of the bed. He’s pleased to see me alive and covers my face with wet kisses.

  It’s raining now; steady falling rain. Outside the sour, lingering odour of smoke is stronger than ever. I go down to the orchard to inspect the damage. The apple and the almond are untouched. A few of the orange or mandarin trees are blackened, though; their foliage was dense and green. Even now the rain is washing away the ash and soot.

  I climb the fence through to the olive grove, untouched by the fire. I lift myself up into the sheltering branches of a tree and sit inside the green and silver canopy. My fingers explore the twisting limbs; I can see the points at which it was pruned long ago, forcing the tree to grow against its natural inclination. I climb down and move from one to the next, holding this limb and that one, a slow dance in the rain. Dog wanders along behind, thinking his own private thoughts. All at once something wells up in me; a lightness, a feeling of intense exhilaration – pure, pure joy. I am so proud of myself. I saved the olives. I saved the house. I saved my grandfather’s apple tree. As thunder rolls down the hills I can hear someone singing. It’s me.

  I take the curtain off the bathroom door so I can watch the rain from the bath. I’ve never been so happy to see rain. It clatters on the roof and gurgles down the drainpipes. I can hear the water tank filling, it must have been low. I never thought to check.

  Tomorrow’s Friday, and on Sunday I leave for Sydney. On Monday I start work. Next Friday night I’ll be at the Summit bar with the old crowd, regaling them with the fire story and loving every minute of it.

  Joe hasn’t been around for two days. Perhaps he’s not coming to say goodbye, though he has to come and collect Dog. I don’t want to put myself through all these difficult partings. It’s not as if I ever said I would stay.

  I dry myself and get dressed. My shoulders ache now from my fire-fighting efforts. My arm has several angry welts on it. I flop from room to room, lie on my bed, gaze out the window.

  Suddenly, I hear Joe’s truck coming up the drive. I leap from the bed, fluff my hair, fling off my T-shirt and pull on a pale pink shirt I know he likes. Running down the hallway, the cool boards slap under my bare feet. His familiar lean shape and battered old hat is silhouetted through the screen door. He pulls it open and I practically leap into his arms. I’ve missed his slow smile, the musky smell of his skin, the strength I feel in his arms now wrapped around me. I’ve missed every bit of him. Damn!

  Over the next day I get calls from a dozen locals. Margaret Simmonds calls to offer me a room in her beautiful house if I need to get away for a few days. Jenny from the takeaway phones to say if I don’t feel like cooking I should drop by and she’ll whip me up some fish and chips, whatever I like, on the house. Leonie promises to sort out any frazzled hair problems with a free conditioning treatment and would I mind if she got a photographer from the local paper along – it could be a good angle for some free PR. Stain queen Deirdre rings and offers to come over an
d keep me company. Walter sends his best regards. Annabelle calls to say that she has received information from her archangel about the perpetrator of the fire; he looks like a cherub but has the hooves of a devil. I think I know who we’re talking about here. Joy comes and brings food, carrot cake with tangy cream-cheese icing, steak and kidney pie and homemade bread rolls. They are all dismayed to hear I’m leaving. They find it incomprehensible that anyone would choose to live in Sydney.

  ‘We were just getting to know you,’ sighs Margaret.

  ‘What a shame! We need more bods like you,’ says Jenny.

  Joy doesn’t remonstrate. She just has a bit of a tidy-up in the kitchen, puts the kettle on and makes a cup of tea. While we drink it she looks around the room as though she’s going to miss it, although I can almost imagine that she will come and go as usual whether I’m here or not. After a while she says, ‘You know, with a lick of paint you and me could transform this room, gal.’

  My throat feels tight. We smile sadly at each other and I feel the tears pushing their way out. ‘You’ve been so kind to me, Joy. I will keep in touch, I promise.’

  ‘Of course you will – gosh, you’re only a couple of hours away.’ She smiles unconvincingly. We both know how far it really is.

  A car pulls up outside. There’s the sound of a CB radio and the slam of a door. A fresh-faced twenty-something policeman enters, looking ill at ease. Joy makes him tea. He takes notes in a tiny notebook.

  ‘The whole town knows who did it, Toddy,’ says Joy. ‘So let’s not beat around the bush.’

  Constable Thompson makes a note. ‘I’m calling myself Todman these days, Mrs Oldfield. I think it gives me more credibility; better for my image. Commands respect.’

  ‘Todman Thompson,’ says Joy without irony.