The Olive Sisters Read online

  Isabella pulled her father towards the door. As they stepped out into the white heat of the yard the man called, ‘Fertiliser won’t help youse, mate. Yer can’t grow that fucking dago-food in this country.’

  Isabella and Franco sat side-by-side in the front seat of the old truck. Knuckles white on the steering wheel, Franco stared straight ahead, murmuring a stream of invective, like a spell, under his breath: ‘Figlio di puttana, stronzo…’ Gutter talk, her mother called it. Isabella picked a rag up off the floor of the truck and carefully wiped the dust off her shoes. It wasn’t what the man said. It was the way he said it. The disgust.

  When Rosanna was strapped by the nuns for speaking in her native tongue it confirmed Isabella’s belief that her origins, her language and, daily, her school-lunch, conspired to shame her. It strengthened her resolve to quietly divest herself of everything that marked her as different.

  Everywhere she looked she noticed details that didn’t fit. She and Rosanna were like a couple of walnut trees trying to blend into an apple orchard. The feasts their mother prepared for lunch were a smorgasbord of smells that invited snorts of disgust, whispered remarks and explosions of laughter from the other girls. She longed for flat white sandwiches containing nothing more offensive than a beige slice of devon. She just didn’t have the heart to tell her mother.

  Mrs Martino took the high ground on these matters; her standard response to her daughters’ humiliations was to quote an old proverb ‘L’ignoranza fa rima con l’intolleranza’ – ignorance rhymes with intolerance. Isabella nodded her head in agreement but wondered privately what to do with this piece of information. She didn’t want to become ignorant or intolerant, but more pressing was how to avoid the attentions of those who were.

  Isabella severely angered her father only once. She was fourteen years old and he discovered she was calling herself Isabelle Martin at school.

  ‘Do you really believe this little “o” at the end of your name is the villain?’ he shouted, striking her with the full force of his anger and frustration. For days he could barely meet Isabelle’s eye for shame. She lay on her bed and thought about those ‘little o’s and how they turned up in ugly words like wog, wop and dago and was determined not to take hers back.

  The most cutting punishment for Isabelle, however, was to witness her sister’s relentless efforts to be accepted. It wasn’t that she tried hard to fit in – it was that she was stubbornly oblivious to the fact she didn’t. Rosanna continued to invite girls home from school, who, despite their promises, very rarely came. And Isabelle hated it when they did come, because they gathered evidence that, sooner or later, would be used against them.

  ‘Charlotte Furnell has only invited six girls to her birthday party and I’m one of them,’ Rosanna announced proudly over dinner one night. ‘Mr Furnell is going to collect us in his car – it’s a Chevrolet.’

  Charlotte was the most popular girl in school; everyone knew that she owned a horse named Bunty and had once flown in a plane to Queensland.

  ‘I don’t think you should go, Rosa,’ said Isabelle anxiously.

  ‘I am going and all the girls are getting new frocks, Mamma. We’re going to have afternoon tea at Charlotte’s house and then go to the pictures in Tindall and Mr Furnell has arranged to have a special birthday message for Charlotte up on the screen before the movie. She’ll be famous!’

  Franco laughed. ‘Famous for turning twelve?’

  ‘I can go, can’t I, Babbo? They’re very high-class people.’

  ‘What’s so special? We are very high-class people, child,’ said Adriana. ‘And we can’t make a new dress every time you get a party invitation. You can wear the white one you had for the school formal.’

  Rosanna leapt up from the table. ‘I want a party dress, Mamma. Please. Blue with little white polka dots and a wide belt.’ She spun around, her hands clasping her waist. ‘And a swirling skirt. Just buy me the material – Bella will make it for me, won’t you, Bella darling?’

  ‘Sit down, girl, you’ll ruin your digestion. Bella can cut down my dress with the pink roses for you.’

  Rosanna scowled.

  ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t go,’ repeated Isabelle quietly. Rosanna pretended not to hear.

  On the day of the party, Rosanna was up at dawn to complete her chores and boil up the copper for a bath so she could wash her hair and be ready for Mr Furnell’s arrival.

  ‘Ah, roses for my Rosa. What clever and beautiful daughters I have,’ said Franco when he saw Rosanna in her cut-down frock, hair smoothed into a ponytail. ‘And what time is the famous Charlotte arriving?’

  ‘She’ll be here at two; I’ll be the last one to be collected.’ She showed him the embroidered silk purse Isabelle had made from scraps of fabric as a present for Charlotte.

  Isabelle sat on the front step with her sister as she waited. ‘You could still change your mind,’ she whispered. ‘I could meet them at the gate and tell them you’re not well.’

  ‘Silly goose – stop worrying.’ Rosanna gave her sister a kiss on the cheek.

  At two-thirty Rosanna announced, ‘They’re just running late. I’ll go to the gate and wait there. You stay here.’ Isabelle watched her walk down the drive. She seemed smaller, as though she had lost her adolescent bravado and slipped back into childhood.

  Isabelle continued to wait on the step, listening for the rumble of an approaching car. At four o’clock Rosanna came back up the driveway, chin held high. She was silent as she passed her sister. She went to her bedroom, took off the dress, rolled it into a ball and put it in the bottom of the chest of drawers they shared.

  ‘Mr Furnell’s car probably broke down,’ said Rosanna when she returned, sitting down on the step in her old work clothes. Isabelle nodded. She tried to put a comforting arm around Rosa’s shoulders but was blocked by a black look and a raised elbow. Rosanna sprang up and ran – towards the river or the fields – as fast as she could.

  On Monday morning, as soon as they got on the bus, Marcia Simmonds slipped into the seat in front of them. She twisted around to look at Rosanna. ‘What a shame you couldn’t come on Saturday, Rosanna,’ she smiled. ‘We were just turning into your road when Mr Furnell said, “She’s not one of those Eyetalians, is she?” Of course, Charlotte said you were, and I hate to say that he was quite horrified. He turned the car around. Charlotte stuck up for you but he got really cross and said that everyone knew Italians were thieves and he wasn’t having their kids spying in his house. So unfair.’ The sisters said nothing, their faces impassive. Marcia flushed a little. ‘I thought you should know, anyway.’

  Rosanna lifted the lid of her school case and feigned absorption in its contents. Isabelle looked out the window. Perhaps now Rosanna would understand that in order to survive they needed to blend, to become as bland as devon on thin white bread.

  The first time Jack Bennett saw Isabelle Martino was in the Duffy’s Creek council offices. He had gone there to research some land titles for a new mining operation to be set up near Bateman’s Lake, some 40 miles west of the town. He happened to be standing in the foyer when Isabelle materialised out of the shimmering heat of the day. A beauty in her late twenties, she wore white and carried a parcel wrapped in brown paper; she held it aloft, intriguingly large and soft, draped across both arms. The heels of her shoes clicked an even rhythm on the tiles as she passed him and headed down to see Nobby, the town clerk. Jack usually avoided Nobby but today, he decided, he would make an exception.

  In Isabelle’s presence Nobby was transformed. He radiated charm and allowed Jack to lean in the doorway without his usual caustic remarks. She laid the package across the clerk’s desk. For a moment they both stood looking at the parcel as if in the presence of something sacred.

  ‘Please, sit down.’ Nobby gestured towards the visitor’s chair. Isabelle sat. Nobby’s secretary, Mrs Moss, and three of the typists crowded into the doorway, forcing Jack to stand inside the office.

  ‘Well, it’s a big moment.�
�� Nobby rubbed his hands together. Isabelle smiled at him; her fingers formed a steeple in her lap. He undid the string and opened up the paper to reveal a gown in vivid red, trimmed in black velvet and – Jack leaned forward for a better look – ‘Rabbit!’ Jack said with surprise.

  ‘Traditionally the robe is trimmed in sable, but I thought —’ Isabelle began, sounding uncertain. Jack noticed her hair. Swept up in a rather old-fashioned French roll, it was the rich dark gold of bush honey. Little tendrils swirled at her nape; she fingered these nervously, smoothing them into submission.

  Nobby lifted the mayor’s robe carefully off his desk as though it was alive and might be dangerous. The typists whispered and giggled among themselves. Silly bunnies, thought Jack.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ said Mrs Moss, who understood what was required in this moment. ‘Just perfect. No one would ever even know it was rabbit. Our new mayor will look quite splendid!’

  Taking that as approval, Isabelle stood and bobbed slightly in Nobby’s direction. Jack was interested to see how the town clerk would respond to being curtsied to. Still standing, Nobby laid down the robe and gave a slight bow in return. Without a word Isabelle slipped out the door. Nobby followed her, sending the bunnies scurrying.

  Jack leant over the robe and gently stroked it; the fabric was so soft it seemed to melt beneath his fingers.

  ‘Get yer great mitts off that,’ snapped Nobby, stepping back into the room. ‘Are you here for any particular reason? Go and bother them down in engineering.’

  Jack ran the length of the corridor and skidded into the foyer just in time to see the Italian’s old truck pull away, Isabelle’s face, ethereal as in a Renaissance painting, was framed in the passenger’s window.

  He knew of the local Italian and his daughters but would never have guessed that she was one of them. They had a small acreage and grew some crops, the surplus of which was sold in a roadside stall with an honesty box chained to it. He had bought apples or tomatoes from it occasionally. It took Jack several days to construct an excuse to call on the family and he did so before his nerve failed him.

  It was well known that the mother rarely left the house and did not speak English, so it was unfortunate that she was the first person he encountered. She was sweeping the verandah and looked up with alarm when she saw Jack’s Prefect round the bend in the drive. She stood quite still as he pulled up, then suddenly dropped her broom and scuttled off around the side of the house.

  ‘Franco! Franco!’ she shrilled.

  Jack waited beside his car and finetuned his story as the minutes dragged by. Finally Franco appeared and greeted him warmly, as though he was always ready for an unexpected guest. A stocky man, almost a head shorter than Jack, he wore no hat, his black hair thick and luxuriant for a man in his fifties. He washed the dirt off his hands under the yard tap so that they could shake hands and Jack was struck by the energy and force behind that handshake. He was led around to the back of the house and urged to sit under the shade of the vine-covered pergola while Franco went inside calling to his wife, who had disappeared. Jack waited patiently, fingers idly tracing the vine-leaf design of the wrought-iron table before him.

  ‘Is beautiful, yes?’ Franco joined him at the table.

  ‘Yes, very lovely.’

  ‘My wife a city girl, from Genova. When she come Australia her father send many beautiful furniture with her. They think Australia it’s a wild place and we must bring everything,’ he said with a conspiratorial smile.

  ‘It is a wild place,’ replied Jack.

  Franco nodded thoughtfully. ‘Ah, si, si, she’s wild and generous. Good earth. We grow everything here. Paradiso.’ He gestured grandly towards what Jack knew to be a modest land holding of less than thirty acres. All the time he wondered about Isabelle’s whereabouts. Perhaps she was inside the house, lying down during the heat of the day.

  Franco talked on and on about his farming methods and the success he’d had with different crops. His accent, combined with his rapid English interspersed with Italian words, made it difficult to distinguish one from the other and impossible to follow everything he was saying. Occasionally Jack completely lost track of the topic but continued to nod sagely at what he hoped were appropriate moments until he caught up again. He began to feel like the suitor in a fairytale who comes to woo the princess but cannot get past the lonely king. He had no opportunity to put forward the pretext for his visit; Franco was clearly just delighted he had come.

  Mrs Martino reappeared with a tray laden with coffee, cake and a plate of small crescent-shaped biscuits. Despite the afternoon heat she was dressed from head to foot in black. She didn’t look at Jack, but had an exchange of words with her husband. Jack listened for a moment, thinking some sense might come out of it. It sounded like a spat but it was always hard to tell with foreigners. In the Broken Hill mines he had worked with blokes from Hungary, Yugoslavia, Germany and Italy, and most could barely speak any English. He found smoko more relaxing when they didn’t attempt to make conversation but talked quietly among themselves. He liked to let the sounds wash over him like a song that required nothing of him.

  He sipped his coffee, although he would have preferred a cup of tea or even a beer – it was almost unbearably strong. The sweet offerings, soft, crumbly and flavoured with almond, were delicious and he was embarrassed when he realised that in his distracted state he had eaten the lot.

  Mrs Martino did not sit with them but melted back into the shadowy interior of the house. Franco rubbed his hands together with what appeared to be glee.

  ‘So, Mr Jack. You are a man of the out door like me? A farmer?’

  ‘Engineer.’

  ‘Building?’

  ‘Mining.’

  ‘Ah, you work under ground, I work the top!’ said Franco, as though they had truly established a commonality. ‘Come, come and see what wonderful gifts this generous woman grows on the top.’

  They made their way through a small gate to an area where the vegetable gardens were as abundant as the ones Jack had seen the Chinese grow but on a smaller scale. Staked tomatoes, lettuces, beans, asparagus, cucumbers, carrots – Franco’s face glowed with pride as he invited Jack to admire the compost he had created to enrich the garden beds. He dug out handfuls, crumbling it through his fingers to demonstrate the friability, colour and texture. Catching a fat worm around his finger, he lifted it to his face and murmured ‘Hello, beautiful,’ before replacing it almost reverently on the heap.

  ‘Do you know these herbs?’ asked Franco. ‘Salvia, rosmarino, basilico, origano,’ he recited as he tore off a leaf of this or that and crumpled it under Jack’s nose. ‘I will give you some for your wife for cooking.’

  ‘Thanks all the same. But I don’t have a wife and my landlady wouldn’t have a bar of herbs, I shouldn’t think,’ said Jack.

  Chickens of every colour and pattern roamed the garden. Franco picked up a speckled marmalade hen, tucked it under his arm and stroked its head absentmindedly. He led Jack down a track that crossed the creek to show him his orchard, introducing him to each and every tree as if they were members of his family. There was still no sign of Isabelle. Franco seemed to sense he was losing his audience and suddenly remembered he hadn’t yet played his trump card. ‘Ah! I know why you come. Come, please, this way.’ He discarded the chicken and set off at a trot back towards the house.

  Veering off past the garden beds, they headed towards a large weatherboard implement shed that stood on the perimeter of the garden. As they stepped inside Jack was surprised to find the interior light and airy. The long wall that faced the hills was made completely of old windows cobbled together like a quilt of glass. It was hot inside but many of the windows had been opened to catch the first hint of the promised southerly.

  Dazzled by the light, it took a moment for Jack to take it all in. The entire surface of the floor was covered in shallow boxes and other containers. Hundreds of cuttings were sprouting in tins and crates of every shape and size. This, he rea
lised, was a propagation shed. And there, at one end of the shed, her hair tied back in a scarf and wearing a faded cotton frock and gumboots, knelt Isabelle. She was intent on her work and hadn’t seen the men enter.

  ‘Isabella, Rosanna! Come to meet Mr Jack.’

  Isabelle sprang to her feet, startled. She glanced around as if looking for an escape route. Now she was standing, Jack could see that there was another figure working behind her. Rosanna also stood; slipping her arm casually through her sister’s, she drew her towards the two men.

  Franco introduced his daughters in a formal manner and, not knowing quite what was expected of him, Jack offered his hand. Rosanna laughed and shook it firmly with a muddy paw. Isabelle blushed and slipped her hands behind her back. Before Jack could say a word, Franco spoke to Rosanna in rapid Italian.

  ‘Scusi, Mr Jack. I ask Rosanna to tell you, tell about the olives,’ said Franco. ‘Her English, it is perfect.’

  ‘You’ve come to see the olives, have you?’ asked Rosanna, looking Jack straight in the eye. He was within a few feet of Isabelle and playing for time. It was all getting rather complicated and difficult. Both women watched him and one at least seemed to see right through him. He was intrigued by how different they were: Isabelle so gentle and fair, so fragile; Rosanna more solid like her father, her long dark hair carelessly tied in a knot. She had pushed her sleeves up as though readying herself for a fight and her feet were bare and dirty. Jack wasn’t sure he had ever met a woman quite like Rosanna and he wasn’t sure he wanted to now. Feeling like a fraud, he assured her that he did, indeed, want to know about the olives.

  Rosanna shot him a look of pure scepticism softened only by a hint of amusement. He had a feeling she was going to provide a dragon for him to slay before the day was over.

  Three

  I DREAM THAT I am standing on a hilltop looking across a wide green valley. In my arms I hold a crumpled sheet, as pale and fine as mist. I try frantically to fold it and make it orderly, clutching it to my chest, but the wind curls around me, teasing and tearing at the fabric. Finally I give up and throw it to the wind. But the wind doesn’t tear it apart as I feared; it lifts it gently and it rises in a plume to the heavens.