The Grass Sister, page 7
Ann-Clare’s favourite fairytale was The Juniper Tree. According to my memory, in this story two children are looking in the oak chest for windfall apples to eat. They’re very hungry because the wicked lady her father has remarried will not feed them. As the little sister leans in to reach for a small, shrivelled apple, the stepmother slams the oaken lid of the chest down onto her neck. The sister turns into a bird in a juniper tree which sings a song of the sad thing that has happened. I pictured the bird would be an eastern yellow robin, with a fine, dark beak.
Ann-Clare would mention this story to me when we were nearly out of chaff which meant we were leaning deep into the horse-feed bins. She was always seeing disasters. She told Rosemary Kincaid she could see our heads lying in the oaten chaff and the looks on the face of our mother and father when they found us; the darkness of our blood; the sad sweetening sounds we’d make in the native trees outside our parents’ bedroom.
Other books in the library, although as poorly covered as the fairytales, were surprisingly distinctive, reflecting the eclectic tastes of librarians before Mrs Watts who is still the librarian there today. It was a mutual agreement between Ann-Clare and myself, that to borrow certain books long out of print, without leaving behind a record of our borrowing, was the only way we could own such books for ourselves.
This we did with great success until the afternoon Rosemary accompanied us. Because of Rosemary’s sickness, and because of our father’s memories of how wholeheartedly Douglas’ large family had embraced him as an only child into its company, Fairy and Douglas Kincaid had prevailed upon our parents to look after their daughter during the three weeks they would be away. When our mother expressed surprise that they would spend Christmas apart from their only daughter, Fairy said that Rosemary was used to that. They were going further north to look at the farms of ex-Rhodesians who’d settled in Queensland. It was not only the carsickness to which the Kincaids were referring. Since the age of ten Rosemary had been in and out of South African mental hospitals, with nervous complaints the doctors found impossible to track. She greatly disconcerted our father, standing in front of the pictures of Michaelhouse School and saying that yes, the uniform was really still quite similar.
‘Oh,’ said our father, walking into her trap. ‘Are some of your cousins there?’
‘No,’ said Rosemary. ‘But my father remembered the nuthouse next door and arranged a visit for me.’
Her symptoms had included semi-ferocious attacks, usually using her teeth, upon her parents. It was after she’d nicked her mother Fairy’s wrist with Douglas’ hunting knife that she was first sent south into hospital care.
We had seen the scar, when Fairy Kincaid, during talk of the troubled times looming for Rhodesia, had put her wrist into the air and said: ‘I am a Rhodesian. I’ll fight to the death!’ in a way that so repelled Alana she had had to go for a walk. Until then, although Fairy Kincaid had told our parents of Rosemary’s attack, she was careful to keep the scar partially obscured either by wearing long-sleeved blouses or by holding the scarred wrist in her other hand. The scar did not look like a nick but as though Rosemary had tried her best to lop off her mother’s hand. Rather than query the safety of leaving Rosemary in our company, our father seemed convinced the normal behaviour of his girls could only have a positive bearing on Rosemary’s. He told us we must on no account ostracise Rosemary from any of our activities. Reluctantly therefore, but obediently, on the very next Friday, I allowed Rosemary to accompany us on our rare book acquisitions scheme, even persuading myself that her presence might be an asset.
Mrs Watts might’ve been younger then than I am now. Although her perm was greying, under her arms grew great clumps of red hair. Ann-Clare and I always made sure that we worked our acquisitions scheme on pensioner afternoon when the library could be expected to be busy. At four o’clock, when Mrs Watts would sit down to eat a half-slab of butter cake with banana icing with her tea, Miss Philpots, a younger woman, with vaguer ways, would stamp out the books. On the odd occasion when Mrs Watts left her afternoon tea to survey the behaviour of borrowers, the strength of her perspiration would alert us to her presence long before she reached the bookshelf where we were standing. I felt dubious about bringing Rosemary into the library but Ann-Clare, who’d taken such a shine to Rosemary, assured me that the girl’s presence in the library could only assist in our removal of old books from the shelves. Rosemary was to keep guard near the bookshelves near the small office that doubled as the library’s kitchen and if Mrs Watts looked like being nosey, immediately come to warn us.
We were apprehended by Mrs Watts at a point of true concentration as Ann-Clare, less vigilant than usual, tried to push a big volume of Australian Women’s Showjumping underneath the back of my bra strap. Rosemary Kincaid, we noted as we were marched into the office, seemed to be masturbating unnoticed where she stood. Our downfall had come about due to a stroke of bad luck. Instead of keeping guard as ordered, it was apparent what had happened. Rose had moved to stare wild-eyed at some books from the small sex bookshelf, which Mrs Watts had arranged to be in sight of where she sat having her afternoon tea.
Even though the records clearly showed that Lesley May’s Showjumping hadn’t been borrowed for fifteen years, there was an immediate library ban. Mrs Watts hand wrote the sign that told everyone who passed through the doors what we had done, and as if we were criminals, had cut our photos out of the school magazine and stuck our faces next to the warning. Alana cried and said we had spoilt everything for her too; that she felt unable to face Mrs Watts who would look at her thinking here is the woman who bred two book thieves; that one of our mother’s only town pleasures had finished forever.
Trying to explain to Alana that we only ever took books about to be cancelled, that had been so long neglected we were doing the books a true favour, was useless. Or that it was not me but Ann-Clare who had dreamt up our daring method of smuggling out the books.
‘You’re overreacting, darling,’ our father said to Alana. He reassured us with stories of his own childhood loneliness which had also driven him to do dangerous things. As an only child he’d read Rudyard Kipling and Rider Haggard to his dogs and to the black mamba he imagined lived in the furtherest corners of Black Rat Hollow, his cubbyhouse under the earth.
Sometimes, in the ensuing, libraryless years, we’d give our father complicated instructions about books we would like him to borrow on our behalf. We’d draw maps of the upstairs children’s sections. We thought we remembered our favourites’ covers, and their whereabouts on the shelves and that even if we couldn’t remember their exact titles or the names of the people who wrote them, this should be enough information for our father. But it soon became clear he wasn’t very good at following our instructions or that our instructions were hopelessly awry. Although he was responsible for bringing home reading delights previously unencountered, he never seemed able to locate the books we pined in our hearts to read again. Whenever I’ve come across these in second-hand bookshops, or in reprinted versions minus their original and whimsical covers, I am terribly disappointed. The span of grownup years has lamed the power those particular words telling that particular story once held. In the process of a moral lesson, Mrs Watts stole something from us now irretrievable.
Mrs Watts’ sign stayed up on the library door for two years. Our library cards soon fell sideways off the door and were thrown out, but even after the sun had completely faded the words of the warning against us, that piece of paper stayed stuck to the glass. We would go to look at it sometimes, on Sundays so empty it was possible for us to ride our horses into town and right down the middle of the street. I was always checking my growing shape in the windows whereas Ann-Clare sat shyly on her horse, one shoulder always forward, hiding and protective.
Our horses often seemed to lift their tails as we walked them up the library ramp. I would say to Ann-Clare, just leave it there, leave it, let Mrs Watts step in it! But my sister would hop off her horse in order to carry the still steaming manure off the path in her hands. Ann-Clare liked to leave no traces. She was so self-effacing she’d never check her change in case the shop assistant would think Ann-Clare didn’t trust her appearance.
My sister had an immediate affinity with Iris Michaelhouse, who can still coyly hide her face behind one hand. On trips through strange towns when our father asked Ann-Clare to lean out of the window to ask directions from the side of the road, my sister’s voice came out so softly he had to lean across the car to yell out the direction sought. She said she’d probably choose to die if she got into difficulties on slippery sea-fishing rocks, rather than do something idiotic in front of any stranger. She said she could easily imagine herself disappearing in the last silver curve of a wave. As long as the wave didn’t break, she didn’t die, but soon she watched it crash down onto the high-tide rocks. Even before the wave had turned into a pretty waterfall running towards the sea pool, she’d imagined herself vanished.
Although Ann-Clare loved to receive letters I had clattered out on the Romance Library’s Remington and although she too could type, she wouldn’t because of the noise. Because Mr Michaelhouse at some other position in the house would know at exactly what point she was pausing and for how long she was pausing and would lift his head to listen and wonder what it was his young wife was writing to some man or woman who wasn’t her husband or mother.
Once, when she was nineteen and already Mrs Michaelhouse, my sister went into a hairdresser’s, wearing a note pinned to her clothes. The note explained that she had been deaf and dumb since childhood and that she’d like her hair cut short. This pretence allowed her to remain impassive as the two hairdressers moved around the otherwise empty salon.
Ann-Clare never forgot the comments one of the hairdressers made. The hairdresser had said that she could have made Ann-Clare’s face look like a pensioner’s. That something old was already laid down in my little sister’s face. Yet also something so childlike it could be the hair of a silent seven year old the hairdresser was cutting.
CHAPTER FIVE
Iris’ feet pop out from a rug crocheted for her years ago by Ann-Clare. I smile when she flutters her long toes at me. I have massaged her feet about half a dozen times and take this bold and friendly display of toe as a sign that I have won her trust.
‘How’s that Lavinia?’ she wants to know, as I unfold a clean washer from my basket and test the temperature of the water in the basin.
‘Oh, she’s fine,’ I say. ‘And how about you? How are you?’
‘Not too bad,’ she lowers her voice. ‘He’s in a bit of a mood today, though,’ she says.
‘Who?’
‘Him,’ she points over to the photo portrait of her dead husband. ‘Let’s turn him round the other way. Let’s.’ She arches her shoulders up into a childlike and plaintive plead. ‘Could you do that for me darling?’
I reach up behind the picture frame and lift her husband off the hook. The place where he has been hanging is a different colour from the rest of the wall.
She ducks her head. ‘Ooah, I don’t think he likes me very much today.’ As she flares her nostrils in a kind of fear and defiance, I see how her autumn cold has plastered the hairs in her nose back onto the skin in a way that looks painful. The skin around her nose is chafed from blowing and I will suggest some Vitamin E oil.
He glares at me as I prop him against the wall.
‘That’s better!’ says Iris triumphantly. ‘Don’t need Gus watching us.’
‘Why keep him hanging up at all Iris?’
‘Oh. You know. History. He’s dead and I’m alive. He was an angry man. Ann-Clare and I used to throw darts at him.’
My visits to Iris make me remember that my sister’s affinity for old people began long before she met Iris. For Ann-Clare, the highlight of any visit to farms of the district with our father was always to sit with the farmer’s wife and the elderly sister if there was one, who always wanted us to talk to the hot budgie in a wire cage or to say hello to the ancient cockatoo tethered to a post. If the farmer’s wife or her shrivelled sister made noises at their birds, a particular kind of tchh, tch, tch with a little suck at the end, I’d laugh across at Ann-Clare who’d frown at me not to hurt their feelings.
When we were too old to go with our father to farms, Ann-Clare began to make volunteer visits to the old people’s home. For at least a week of the summer holidays I’d join her, feeling a fervour of care for the charges assigned to us for conversational entertainment. We didn’t have to talk much, only to listen. Knowing that these were women whose Australian families could no longer be bothered with them used to make our hearts burst with love. It was incredible too, to see how beautiful they had been in the photos next to their bed, and to shift your gaze from photo to old face and back again, trying to find the resemblance. But then the rooms full of beds would heat up unbearably. No air shifted the curtains or the hair of our ladies, fallen asleep in wicker chairs. Little old lady pee seemed to get on our own clothes and as well, the horrible smell of turnip being boiled. It usually took less than a week for my ardour to dim in favour of the delights of the river that, even in summer, ran with freezing coolness over our bare bodies. Ann-Clare’s care was more determined.
The foot in my hands is ninety-six years old. It is surprisingly weighty and I find that I like to hold it for a moment, neither rubbing cream in or moving my hands. In places the veins have pushed almost beyond the skin and only the finest membranes of the vein wall itself seem to be stopping the perse-coloured blood from flowing into my hands. Over the years of wearing shoes, each sole has flattened, the edges becoming almost square, as if the foot has been poured into a mould too rigid for the delicate nature of a foot.
‘Oh my ugly, ugly feet,’ says Iris and curls her toes up.
‘No, Iris,’ I say. ‘Not at all. These are feet of character. Imagine! If we could work out how many miles they’ve walked for you.’ Her ancient feet carry for me a strange kind of beauty that is a mixture of fragility and strength. ‘Apparently our feet, on average, carry us four times round the world in a lifetime. Yours have probably gone six or seven.’
She gives her laugh. ‘I’ve never left Lindley.’
‘Never? Are you serious, Iris?’
‘No. This town has always been home.’
‘Do you mean you’ve never been to Sydney?’
‘Not once. Grace has. She goes for her eyes.’
‘That’s incredible.’
‘Never been on a bus or a plane. Or over the sea. Olive tried once to get me to go on a cruise but it wasn’t in me to leave Lindley.’
‘What about to see your grandson?’
‘Well the fact of it is Johnny likes to come to Lindley. Didn’t like it so much when he was a boy but once he became interested in the old bottles,’ Iris titters. She shakes her head and I see against the light from the window that the hairs on her chin are like a foal’s beard. ‘Oh dear,’ she says, looking over to the wedding picture of Mr Michaelhouse and Ann-Clare. ‘I’ll never understand.’
Underneath the magazine table a pair of slippers are pushed together. They’re embroidered in cheap, unravelling gold thread that seems to depict in Japanese style a scene of an ornate rooster about to rape a cowering flock of hens. Has Iris ever looked down to notice the poultry crisis being played out on her feet, I wonder, and hope not.
I can imagine from the size of the bunions on Iris’ feet, that at one time she used to wear pointed blue or cream shoes with a sensible heel. I can tell this too from the way the calf muscles of her legs are so contracted. Yet there must also have been times in her life when she wore sandals or no shoes at all for patches of skin on the top of her foot resemble a kind of very fine, speckled leather.
‘You just relax,’ I say. But her eyes, which are the colour of faded leaves, always stay on my face. She likes, she says, to watch my eyes. ‘They’re just like Ann-Clare’s aren’t they?’ Whenever my sister’s name comes up between us there is a slight awkwardness and I concentrate more on the foot in my hands. I move my thumbs fast across the section of big toe that is meant to be the section for memory.
Iris says, ‘Ohhh, I still don’t understand why she had to go to Africa. I tried to find that country she went to on a map but it wasn’t there.’
‘After she was no longer married, Iris, after our mother died. She wanted to do something entirely different.’
‘I miss her so much,’ says Iris. ‘I miss her more than anyone else in the world. She was my daughter and my grand-daughter.’
‘You were a favourite of Ann-Clare’s too, you know.’
‘We kept up with our little letters. Right to the end.’
‘I know. I know that, Iris. When our mother was sick it used to be Ann-Clare’s break. To go and write her letter to you looking over the valley.’ In fact, it was a chore Ann-Clare refused to relinquish.
‘Is that right?’ says Iris.
‘She’d sit writing to you in the late afternoon.’
‘She could write a beautiful description of a sunset,’ says Iris. ‘And then I’d write her one back. The sunset from my back garden. Not that you can see it any more. Those rotten vines. The sun in Africa was bigger apparently. Redder.’
‘The dust,’ I say and change the subject back to feet. ‘Do you know,’ I say, ‘that our heels are the equivalent of a horse’s hock? We run on our hocks. That’s why we don’t run very fast.’
‘Well for goodness sakes,’ says Iris. ‘He,’ she says dismissively to the back of the portrait of her husband, ‘had hammertoe.’
‘Hammertoe?’
‘Kind of a clubfooted condition. It afflicted him all his life. He was the barber.’
