The Endsister Read online

  Other books by Penni Russon

  Only Ever Always

  Dear Swoosie (with Kate Constable)

  Little Bird

  Indigo Girls

  The Undine Trilogy

  Undine

  Breathe

  Drift

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2018

  A version of The Endsister was first serialised on Storybird.com

  Copyright © Penni Russon, 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  Print book ISBN 9 78 174175 065 2

  eBook ISBN 9 78 174176 113 9

  For teaching resources, explore www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers

  Cover and text design by Sandra Nobes

  Cover illustration by Sandra Eterović

  FOR AVERY

  CONTENTS

  SIBBI

  ELSE

  CLANCY

  CLANCY

  ELSE

  SIBBI

  ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE

  ELSE

  CLANCY

  SIBBI

  ELSE

  SIBBI

  CLANCY

  ELSE

  ELSE

  SIBBI

  ELSE

  SIBBI

  ELSE

  ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE

  ELSE

  CLANCY

  ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE

  ELSE

  SIBBI

  ELSE

  ELSE

  CLANCY

  ELSE

  ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE

  ELSE

  CLANCY

  ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE

  ELSE

  SIBBI

  ELSE

  SIBBI

  CLANCY

  ELSE

  SIBBI

  CLANCY

  ELSE

  ELSE

  SIBBI

  CLANCY

  SIBBI

  ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE

  CLANCY

  ELSE

  SIBBI

  ELSE

  CLANCY

  CLANCY

  SIBBI

  CLANCY

  CLANCY

  ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE

  CLANCY

  ELSE

  SIBBI

  ELSE

  CLANCY

  ELSE

  ELSE

  SIBBI

  ELSE

  SIBBI

  ELSE

  ELSE

  SIBBI

  ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE

  CLANCY

  ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE

  SIBBI

  ELSE

  ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE

  ELSE

  ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE

  SIBBI

  BEATRIX ELIZABETH ROSE

  ELSE

  SIBBI

  ELSE

  CLANCY

  I KNOW WHAT AN ENDSISTER IS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  IN THE LOCKED attic of the house on Mortlake Road in south-west London, near a bend in the River Thames, something stirs.

  It shudders, a cobwebbed thing, tattered and dusty, so long forgotten, so long forgetting.

  It is hardly anything, but it is almost something, disturbing the shadows, shrinking from the approaching light.

  SIBBI

  SHADOWS OF GUM trees grow long across the paddocks. Light is low and syrupy. The light of time shifting: day into evening, summer into autumn.

  Here comes Sibbi Outhwaite, four years old, wild as the shadows and the sun, belonging as much to the hills and the valley as the wind in the pale whispery grass. Down she comes. Down the kangaroo track, a rocky narrow path that leads from the wooden house on the rise to Aunty May Wilson’s house by the road that sweeps through the valley. Sibbi clutches a bouquet of wilting wildflowers in her fist.

  Aunty May’s house squats low and silent. Sibbi knocks on the back door and tries the handle. It is locked. She stumps around the veranda, her gumboots thudding on the wooden boards, and knocks on the front door. She calls through the laundry window, always left open.

  ‘Cooee? Cooee, Aunty May?’ Then: ‘Kitty! Kitty-kitty!’ But not even the old brown cat comes out to rub against her leg or push his insistent head up under her hand.

  Sibbi lays the wildflowers she’s picked carefully on the front doorstep and plays, laying out pieces of broken sticks in the dust – Mama Stick, Papa Stick, Sister Stick, Brother Stick and Aunty Stick. Aunty May’s yard and the fields and bushland all around are all an extension of Sibbi’s backyard. This is one big property – the wooden house on the hill that Sibbi’s family rents belongs to Aunty May. Aunty May was born in the hill house, just like Sibbi.

  The emptiness of the valley house unsettles Sibbi now. She feels a creeping sensation at the back of her neck, as if the crouching house, or something in the house, is watching her. She turns to go back up the kangaroo track. She hears the cat’s lonely marraow inside the house. The sound frightens her and she runs up the hill towards home.

  Sibbi’s mama, Olly, is in the yard unpegging clothes from the washing line.

  ‘Aunty May wasn’t home,’ says Sibbi.

  ‘That’s odd. Are you sure?’

  ‘I knocked. Loud louder loudest. But nobody came.’

  ‘That’s very odd. Maybe her nephew came to take her out?’

  It’s funny to Sibbi that everyone calls Aunty May ‘Aunty’ except her nephew and his wife, who call her just May.

  ‘Missus Wilson to youse,’ the nephew’s wife once told the Outhwaite kids. But Aunty May is Aunty May, same as Daddy is Daddy, Mama is Mama and Else, Clancy and the twins are Else, Clancy and the twins. Same as the moon is the moon, same as apples is apples.

  Sibbi forgets about Aunty May until her daddy comes home in the rattling van. Daddy has stopped at the post office to pick up the mail, but he throws the unopened pile of envelopes bound together with a rubber band on the bench. He has a frowning worried face and news of Aunty May.

  ELSE

  ‘MEI-LING IN THE post office told me Aunty May was taken to hospital in an ambulance last night,’ Dave tells us.

  ‘I saw the ambulance,’ I say, helping myself to a slice of lasagne.

  There is a meat one for the twins, Dave and Sibbi; veggie for Olly, Clancy and me.

  ‘You did not,’ say Oscar.

  ‘I saw the lights, but then I went back to sleep and when I woke up I thought it must have been a dream. I didn’t even remember until now.’

  Not proper remembering, anyway, though the blue light did flash into my mind once or twice during the day, the way a really strong dream revisits you long after you’ve woken up. Of course, I never thought anything was wrong with Aunty May. It was just the light I thought of, blue and ghostly, sliding around the walls, intermit
tently lighting up Sibbi’s face on the other side of our small, shared room.

  ‘She’s getting on a bit,’ says Dave.

  ‘She’s only eighty,’ says Olly. ‘And she’s been so fit and active.’

  ‘Is it serious?’ Clancy asks. ‘Is she going to –’

  ‘It’s a bit of a worry.’ And that’s all Dave will say.

  CLANCY

  AFTER DINNER, MUM and Dad stay together in the kitchen to wash up, which is usually the children’s job. Us kids go out onto the veranda. The twins spread their footy swap cards out, but hardly look at them.

  I hold a breathing knitted bundle – Hester the ringtail possum, wrapped in an old woollen jumper of Mum’s. I found Hester in her mother’s pouch, after the mum got caught in a wire fence on a neighbouring property. Later Hester’ll scuttle up the wooden beam of the veranda and onto the roof and then into the gum tree whose branches swing over the house. She spends every night out of doors, active as any possum, but she still likes to spend days sleeping in the jumper, even though she’s almost old enough to look after herself.

  I see Aunty May’s nephew’s car beetle along the road to Aunt May’s house. We all look down from the veranda as the nephew gets out and goes into the house.

  ‘It’s not just Aunty May they’re worried about,’ Else says. ‘It’s our house. Her nephew will want to sell it. We’ll have to move.’

  ‘He can’t sell it,’ says Finn. ‘We live here.’

  ‘When Aunty May dies, it will belong to him. We’re just renting from Aunty May.’

  ‘What’s renting?’ Oscar asks.

  ‘Where you pay someone money every week to live in their house. Aunty May doesn’t charge us very much, either. Mum and Dad will be worrying about money.’

  ‘Don’t we have money?’ asks Sibbi.

  I guess Sibbi doesn’t know much about money yet. She knows there is money in Mum’s purse, in Dad’s pocket, and in the bank. Sometimes there is money on the floor of the van, and sometimes there is money in the crack behind the cushions of the couch. But sometimes we all scrounge and search, and there’s no money in the cushions or under the van’s seats or anywhere.

  ‘We’re not rich,’ says Else, who knows more about it than even me. ‘We’ve got enough to get by, but not much more. If we had to pay more rent, that would be a struggle.’

  ‘I wish we could afford to buy Aunty May’s house from the nephew,’ says Finn.

  We watch the nephew come out of Aunty May’s house with what looks like a plastic shopping bag full of clothes hooked on his arm and the brown cat wedged firmly under his armpit. With some difficulty he gets both into the hatchback of his car. Briefly, he looks up at us, shielding his eyes against the sun not quite set behind our house. When he sees us, he raises one arm. Sibbi waves back. We watch him drive away.

  CLANCY

  I LIKE THE time I spend in the morning with Mum. We sit together in companionable silence, in the brief lull before the twins are shaken awake and Sibbi is roused and, last of all, Else emerges, somehow completely ready to go, make-up on, hair brushed, furious with everyone else for holding her up.

  The mail Dad collected from the post office yesterday still sits on the kitchen bench. One envelope catches my eye. It’s narrower than the ordinary envelopes with their typewritten addresses behind plastic windows. It’s a creamy colour, addressed by hand, like an invitation or something.

  ‘What’s this?’ I hand it to Mum, noticing the Queen on the stamp in the corner.

  Mum opens the envelope with a butter knife.

  ‘Dave!’ she calls. Dad comes into the kitchen rubbing his hair with a towel. I can see a bit of shaving foam bubbling near his ear.

  ‘Read this.’

  He scans it. Sits down and reads it again.

  ‘Is it real?’ says Mum.

  ‘It looks real.’

  ‘But how can we –?’ says Mum, just as Dad says, ‘It makes sense, who else would there be?’

  I’m used to hearing my parents talking like this, in half sentences, like some kind of code. It’s a small house and there’s so many of us, they don’t get much of a chance to talk without one of us listening. Of all of us, I am the best at disappearing into the woodwork, not jumping to conclusions, not flapping about squawking like Oscar or Else. Usually if I stay quiet and don’t interrupt, Mum and Dad forget I’m here. But today they’re giving nothing away.

  ‘How could we?’ says Mum. ‘What will the children say?’

  ‘We can’t tell them,’ says Dad. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Tell us what?’ I ask, finally.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Mum.

  ‘It would be something though, wouldn’t it?’ says Dad, his eyes bright, staring intensely at Mum. ‘It would be really something. The next chapter.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mum agrees, though she sounds less sure. ‘It would certainly be something.’

  ELSE

  I LAY MY violin across my lap and reattach my shoulder rest. My limbs feel heavy and stupid. It’s an effort to lift the instrument back up under my chin.

  I place the bow on the A string, knowing what’s coming next.

  ‘Right,’ says Adrian. ‘Now you’ve warmed up, let’s try the Mozart.’

  I begin, holding my breath. I feel Adrian bristling as I labour my way through the first bars.

  ‘No,’ says Adrian. ‘Like this.’ And his bow leaps across the notes.

  He has me play the first sixteen bars again and again, until finally he snaps, ‘Enough! Take a break.’

  ‘I just can’t get it,’ I say, hearing a whine in my voice. ‘It just doesn’t make sense to me. Why can’t I play something easier?’

  ‘This is the perfect piece for you,’ Adrian insists. ‘It’s right in the sweet spot of your ability, with enough challenge to make you work. And you can play it, you know the notes. But there’s no musicality. There’s nothing of you in it.’

  I scowl.

  ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘You’re good and you know it. You could almost be brilliant. But do you know how many almost brilliant sixteen-year-old violinists there are in Australia? Plenty. More than enough to fill every seat in every orchestra, quartet, chamber group, ensemble and alt gypsy folk rock band in every city, town, and backwater across the country. It takes more than talent to be a professional.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t want to be professional,’ I say. Something inside me, some new wound, splits open as I say it, but my voice comes out wooden, with no emotion at all.

  ‘Well, it’s an expensive hobby,’ Adrian snaps back. ‘If you’re not serious, maybe you don’t need a teacher anymore. You already know enough to play for fun.’

  Fun? I can’t remember the last time playing violin was fun! Adrian thinks I haven’t been practising, that I’m lazy. But he’s wrong. I’ve practised and practised the Mozart, working every morning and afternoon in my bedroom. I can’t make it into anything more than a haphazard collection of notes. The harder I work the more broken it is, the more nonsensical it sounds.

  At the end of my lesson, Adrian says, ‘You know, Else. It’s pretty normal for people your age to stop lessons, if they’ve taken the instrument as far as they can. There’s no shame in it. Do you want me to talk to your parents for you?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’ll try harder.’

  Adrian frowns. ‘Well, let’s not waste anyone’s time. I don’t want to keep teaching you if you’re not going to practise. I’d rather put my energy into students who are self-motivated.’ He turns to me and bows. I bow back.

  ‘I’d say thank you for the lesson,’ Adrian says, ‘but I don’t think either of us were feeling it today. We’ll do better next time, okay?’

  I nod. I say, ‘Okay.’

  SIBBI

  SIBBI AND HER father spend an ordinary sort of day together cleaning the windows, sweeping out the kitchen, weeding the vegetable patch, reading stories, making a casserole for tea and dressing up as rather untidy princesses and running around under the pear trees frighte
ning the birds. Daddy makes a magnificent princess because he is so tall.

  They go together to Aunty May’s lonesome cottage and feed the chooks and collect the eggs, then climb the hill back up to their own little house, Sibbi’s hand squeezed tight inside Daddy’s big hand. She doesn’t like to see the little house look so alone-ly.

  Daddy brings down a box of photographs. Some are very, very old, stiff and brittle brownish in colour. They show olden days people, dressed in very formal clothes with serious faces.

  Daddy says, ‘It took so long to take a photograph that it was a very serious business. Cameras were so slow in the old days that people had to stand still for a very long time.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Sibbi asks, pointing to a girl who, despite her old-fashioned clothes and hairstyle, reminds her of Else. It’s in her stubborn, sulking chin, but also the sparkly eyes, as if this girl also knows mischief and silliness and fun.

  ‘An ancestor,’ Daddy says. He is shuffling through coloured photographs now, square prints with white borders. ‘Look,’ he says, showing Sibbi a photo of a smallish, roundish boy and a shadowy smiling lady with heavy rimmed glasses and a dress with a shirt collar sitting on a rumpled green lawn, squinting into the camera. The boy has gingery curly hair like Clancy’s. Whoever is taking the photo has not done a very good job, because the boy and the lady are crowded into one corner, and the rest of the photo is garden and willow tree and sky.

  ‘Is that an ancestor too?’

  Daddy laughs. ‘That’s me! And my Aunt Dorothy. This was taken in Kensington Gardens, I think. In London, anyway.’

  ‘Is London in the city?’

  ‘London is a city. It’s a city in a country called England, a very long way away from here, on the other side of the world.’

  Sibbi’s face lights up with recognition. ‘It’s where the pussycat went.’

  ‘Is it?’ Daddy asks, distracted, still looking at the photo.

  Sibbi gets down from the table and goes to her room to get her book of nursery rhymes. She brings it back to the table and pushes it up in front of Daddy, then climbs up onto his knee. She helps him find the right page and he reads aloud, ‘Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been? I’ve been to London to visit the Queen.’