The Convent (8 page)

Indeed, each novice had to humbly beg the community every few weeks to use the simple trifles that she needed to survive, such as crockery and prayer books, the shoes on her feet. If a sister broke anything out of carelessness, then she had to wear it about her person for a whole day as a reminder to be more careful with property that didn't belong to her. Only the week before, little Sister Paula had had to walk about all day with four broken cups hanging from her belt. The week before that, Cecilia herself had had to carry around a chipped tray that she'd dropped when she was taking one of the old infirm Sisters her breakfast.

So what could Breda be thinking?

Cecilia tried with everything in her to hold back the laughter. But when she gave in to it, Breda joined her, and suddenly they were clinging to each other, doubled over and helpless, barely able to stand up.

‘You can't keep it,' Cecilia gasped. Their lockers were open for inspection all the time by anyone who cared to inspect them.

‘Watch me!'

‘But
how
… I mean?'

‘I'll hide it.'

‘But what if she finds it?'

Oh but it was good to laugh, to feel the knots loosening inside, to feel herself just nineteen years old, with all that energy spluttering to life again.

‘So how …?'

‘Today. Dad slipped it into my pocket.'

‘Breda!'

‘I know, I know.'

‘But it's so … neat,' Cecilia whispered.

Breda pushed it up against Cecilia's ear. ‘Listen to this,' she commanded.

Love me do.

The simple cheekiness of the tune bounced along Cecilia's raw nerves like a tennis ball, making her weak suddenly with a dull longing for all that she didn't know
.

‘The Beatles,' Breda breathed excitedly, ‘from Liverpool in England. They're coming to Australia. Dad's going to take my two younger sisters.'

Cecilia nodded. The yearning in her friend's voice made her want to weep all over again.

‘Where will the concert be?'

‘Festival Hall.'

‘They'll tell you all about it at the next visit,' Cecilia whispered encouragingly. ‘It will be the same as being there.'

They stared at each other in the light coming through the window, and Cecilia saw then that Breda had been crying too. They both knew that hearing about the Beatles concert from her sisters a month after the event would not be the same as being there.

‘It's so hard sometimes, isn't it?' Breda whispered and Cecilia took her hand.

‘It is,' she murmured.

It was after eleven and very cold, but the two newly received, nineteen-year-old brides of Christ were on their wedding night and there was a Beatles special on 3UZ. They stood side by side at the open window, taking turns with the radio, dressed in long plain flannelette nightgowns, their shorn heads turning occasionally, smiling at each other in the darkness, their fingers thrumming along in time with the music on the heavy wood of the window frame.

Peach

Fuck!
This can't be. But … yes, it is. I'm awake now. Well and truly awake, and I know what I'm hearing. It's the creak of the cutlery drawer followed by the fridge's soft slam, then the slow shuffle of my sixteen-year-old sister's slippers along the kitchen floor.
Oh
God, here goes.

Yep. Now it's the low but definitely discernable sound of the television, some strung-out seventies rock band of course, interspersed with bursts of manic applause.
Oh please,
not the Sex Pistols
again
! I can't stand it. They'd have to be grandfathers by now.

It is three a.m. for Christ's sake! I have an interview in the morning for a job I want. What to do now? What
can
I do, short of going down and throwing a fit, slamming a few doors, and screeching at the top of my voice for her to shut the hell up?

In normal weather the creaks, rattles and groans of this old terrace shuts out whatever is happening downstairs, but tonight is so completely still, and so hot, that nothing is moving. When I hit the sack around midnight I left my door wide open hoping to get some air.
So why don't I just get up and close the door?

For some reason I can't move. I lie here as rigid as a dead sailor, hammered to the deck by the weird kind of inertia that disappointment creates. That last plan took us both the best part of a day to work out. All those solutions, strategies and promises written down so meticulously and pinned to the back of her bedroom door. The
DOs
on the left-hand side and the
DON'Ts
on the right. They'd looked so damned
convincing
spread across two large white pages. Mum and Dad were going to be so proud of her,
of us
, when they got back. It's only two days later and she's cut loose again, hurtling along that infamous paved pathway, stepping on all the good intentions in the world!

I sit up and stare out the open window at a dark clear night full of stars, feeling the frustration begin its slow miserable journey down from my brain into my throat and chest. Maybe I should go down there and yank her up by the hair. Smack her around a bit. She deserves it. Fifteen key points. She crossed-her-heart-and-hoped-to-die on every single one of them. Number one on the right was
No secret eating in the middle of the night.

An electric guitar riff strides into my ears as if it has a perfect right, followed by drums, then some screeching angst about purple sunsets. Is this sneering Johnny Rotten telling everyone what a hero he is, or The Clash vomiting over the crowd in some forgotten English club?

Stella's musical tastes are fixed strictly in the seventies. She also loves Neil Diamond, the mature Elvis in his white-studded jump suit, grim-faced Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell with her jutting teeth and early Sting.

‘He lost it after The Police,' she told me recently.

‘Really?' The sarcasm went straight over her head.

‘Yeah,' she sighed, like it cut her up to have to say it. ‘There was only one good album after that.'

I lean across to the bedside table, grab the glass, gulp some water then flop back down. I turn over and look at the fronds of the top of the Jacaranda tree playing along the bottom edge of the window sill and try hard to think about something else.

But it's not working.

This can't go on. It has got to stop …
now.

I feel along the bed for the cotton nightie I threw off earlier. Thick tendrils of hair have escaped from the knot at the top of my head and lie in damp curls around my ears and neck. Sweat runs between my breasts and under my arms.

After I've dealt with my sister, I'll go have another cold shower.

I creep downstairs, past my mother's photo collection and out into the wide front hallway, stopping for a moment at the bottom of the stairs. Moonlight is shining straight through the stained glass panels set into the front door, making flecks of gold, deep-blue squares and patches of ruby red float along the polished wood floor.

I make a mental note to tell Det about this when I see her next. She'll laugh at me, but she'll like it. She is an artist and light is her thing: moonlight, fluorescent light, candlelight, sunlight, old gaslights, and inner light too.

Sure enough, Stella is in the family room at the back of the house. Wrapped in a sheet, propped against one of the heavy chairs in front of the telly – and yep, it's some old bootleg video of the Sex Pistols. She's spooning ice-cream from the tub into her mouth as though someone has switched on the automatic button. I stand in the doorway a moment because I don't want to frighten her.

‘Stella,' I say.

She doesn't turn around, but she stops spooning the ice-cream so I know she has heard me. I take a few steps towards her. ‘Stella, it's after three a.m.'

‘So?'

‘Bedtime.'

‘No need to crack the shits,' she grumbles sourly, still not looking at me. ‘It's not exactly against the law!'

‘I'm not cracking the shits.' I walk over to her and hold my hand out for the ice-cream.

She heaves a deep sigh and gives it up.

I look down at the extraordinary mass of coal-black hair she inherited from Dad. It is springing out in tight curls from her head at virtual right angles, almost blocking a view of her shoulders, and I wish I could play some role other than big-sister-who-knows-best.
She
used to set
me
straight about a whole lot of stuff not so long ago.

I put the tub of ice-cream down on the coffee table and take the thick pink hairband from around her wrist. Using both my hands I drag as much of her hair as I can up into a rough ponytail.

‘Much cooler like this,' I murmur.

‘I know,' she sighs.

‘So why didn't you have it up?'

‘It makes me look ridiculous.'

I have to smile. I twist her shoulders around so I can see her from the front and we grin at each other. It does look ridiculous. The ponytail, I mean. It looks like some weird black plant sticking straight up out of her head.

‘And there are so many people here to see you, Stella, and all of them with cameras. You and your freaky hairdo with be all over the internet before you know it.'

She giggles and gives me one of her gorgeous bright-dark smiles, her enormous eyes twinkling in the low light from the flickering television. I have to wonder (for the millionth time), if her burgeoning weight means she is in the middle of some deep inner crisis, then how come she seems so cheerful most of the time?

‘You never know who might be watching,' she says, mimicking Nana, who tried to teach us about being groomed at all times.
When you least expect it, girls, the man of your dreams will be coming
around the corner of the street!

‘Yeah. Even at three a.m., someone might call,' I say, then take both her hands and pull her up. ‘Come on, switch that off.'

She allows herself to be led until we reach the foot of the stairs, then she stops and pulls her hand away. I turn to see that she is frowning.

‘Come on,' I say sharply, about to turn off the light.

‘So how come?' she whispers, lifting her eyes to my face. ‘How come you don't have them anymore?'

‘What are you talking about?' I snap, pretending I don't know what she means, but of course I do. She knows I do, too, which makes it all the more crazy to be standing here denying it at three a.m. on this hot, airless night. But I know this much about myself, that if I let her embark on one of her big rambling monologues about my dreams now, I'll start screaming.

‘Those dreams were so …
you
, Peach.'

‘Bed,' I say again, sharply.

‘But I won't sleep,' she whines. ‘I won't.'

‘You just tell yourself that.'

‘No, I honestly won't sleep,' she sighs miserably.

‘You will.'

‘Can I sleep with you?' she whines. ‘Please, Peach?'

‘It's too hot.'

‘I swear I won't touch you.'

‘Promise?' I sigh, too hot to fight her.

She nods happily and hurries up the stairs like a little kid. ‘I'll bring the big fan in,' she calls over her shoulder. ‘Okay?'

‘Okay,' I say sourly.

I walk up the stairs behind my sister watching her bum bounce up and down. There are rolls of fat around her neck. She pauses on the stairs and tries to sound offhand.

‘When are Mum and Dad coming back?'

‘Six weeks on Saturday.'

‘Oh, I can't wait,' she sighs. ‘It will be soooo great to see them again, won't it?'

‘Yeah. I guess.' Our parents have only been gone two weeks, but Stella is already missing them. She'll be like a bloody caged cat by the time they get back. She goes straight for the shower, comes out stark naked and goes to her room for the big fan.

‘Wear a nightie,' I yell after her.

‘It's too hot!' she calls back.

‘Stay in your own room then!'

‘Such a prude.'

‘Yeah, well … cop it.'

When she comes back in with the fan she is wearing a cotton nightdress like mine, except hers only just fits her.

I head for the bathroom and stand under the lovely cold water, gasping as the cold enters my bones. I know I won't get much sleep now. It is a double bed, but once she's asleep my sister's legs and arms often fling out in odd directions. She'll grunt and sigh and snore a little. She is actually liable to push me out. But she'll be happy. And I'll be doing the job that I agreed to do and … that's important.

‘Tell me stuff,' Stella murmurs sleepily.

‘Too late.'

‘Just tell me anything.'

‘What?'

‘I like listening to your voice.'

‘Well, I don't want to talk.'

‘Hate it when you go all quiet on me, Peach.'

‘Please shut up, Stella. I have to get up early in the morning.'

‘It's just a stupid old boring cafe job.'

‘But it's a five-minute bike ride and I need money for the trip.'

‘Have you guys bought your tickets yet?'

‘No, we haven't and please … shut up.'

‘Okay.'

The full blast of the fan is good on my freshly showered skin. I watch the way it makes the curtains flutter in the dark and I am lightly and fleetingly happy.

It is too hot for even a sheet and we are both spreadeagled on our backs as far away from each other as we can get. My right arm is above my head and my left dangles over the edge of the bed. Just as well I'm thin or there wouldn't be room for us both. Within a minute I hear my sister's deep, even breathing. I turn over on my side and close my eyes.

Stella and I are so different physically that it is funny. People who don't know the situation just about fall over when I introduce her as my sister.

‘
What?
' Their mouths open in disbelief. ‘But you don't look anything like each other!'