The Alphabet Sisters

by Monica McInerney

  There were cheers, and more applause. Then from the back someone shouted, “Give us a song, Lola.”

  She gave an imperious wave. “Oh no, I’m far too old for that. I’m an observer these days, not a performer.”

  “Oh come on, Lola. We all did it. Now it’s your turn,” General MacArthur called.

  At different spots around the room, Anna, Bett, and Carrie started smiling. Anna wished Ellen was here to see this, but her daughter, so tired she had been drooping, had just been taken back to the motel by Geraldine and Jim.

  “Yes, come on now, Lola. You can’t let everyone down,” Carrie called out, egged on by Matthew beside her.

  “You’re only as old as you feel, remember,” Anna added.

  “She taught us everything we know, you know,” Bett said to Rebecca.

  “Really? In that case you can be her backing singers.”

  Someone overheard. “Yes, bring on the Alphabet Sisters as well!”

  This time there was no hesitation. There was a tumble of movement and laughter, as Lola was lured into the middle of the room, and the three girls made to line up behind her, like an old-fashioned backing group, standing sideways. Everyone was laughing.

  “So what do we sing?” Bett said. She wished again that Daniel was there. She knew he would have enjoyed this.

  “It has to be Lola’s choice,” Anna said.

  “One of your favorites, Lola,” Carrie added.

  Lola was thinking hard. Then she beckoned the girls in, told them her choice. There was more laughter, and a huddle of heads as they all checked that they knew at least some of the words. Then Lola stepped forward and bowed dramatically. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. It gives me great pleasure to introduce myself, and my three granddaughters, for your listening pleasure tonight.”

  And in a voice that threatened to shatter every piece of glass in the building, Lola—backed very badly by a laughing Anna, Bett, and Carrie—warbled her way through her own unique, high-kicking version of “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”

  In bed that night Lola stretched one leg, then the other, did her facial exercises, then gave up. She didn’t want to do exercises. She wanted to just lie there and grin all night long. She wanted to savor every minute, rewind it all, relive it second by second, from Bett’s music, to Anna’s direction, to Carrie’s singing and dancing. Had she ever felt as proud in the Alphabet Sisters days as she had that evening, standing there onstage with her three girls, her son, Jim, and great-granddaughter, Ellen, smiling up from the audience at her? Even Geraldine had been smiling, had actually hugged her afterward.

  And had she ever felt as good as she had at the party afterward? All those people coming up, showering her with praise, firing questions. Were they going to stage it again? What about a tour? Had she thought about sending the script to a professional company? What about next year’s project? She had laughed them all away, insisting tonight was no night for future plans, it was for savoring a triumph.

  But lying there, she did have a thought. Richard had put it in her mind, with all his research into English convicts and Irish servant girls coming to the Clare Valley in the 1850s. What a marvelous storyline that would make. She could follow just one of them, or no, perhaps two, even three sisters, on their journey from Ireland to South Australia. It could involve one or two scenes on a ship. After Len’s triumph with General MacArthur’s train, surely building a ship would be no bother to him. And all those lively Irish jigs and reels. Such scope for a plot, too. One of the servant girls could fall in love with her cruel, handsome master.…

  Lola sat up and reached for the notebook she kept on her bedside table.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Forty-eight hours later Bett was sitting beside a campfire near a clutch of gum trees, watching the flickering fire, experiencing firsthand the Drover’s Experience. This would be the final article for the tourism supplement. This time next week she’d be back on court reports and police articles.

  She had a notebook filled with quotes from the drover himself, craggy-faced, brown-skinned, laconic. The perfect face for a man with his job. “Straight out of Central Casting,” Daniel had whispered earlier as he set up shots of Fergie with his sheep and the blue sky behind him.

  They’d eaten dinner by the campfire—damper bread, billy tea, stew in a pot, exactly as the tourist groups would enjoy it in the months ahead. Their tents would be pitched in a circle around the campfire, too, logs of wood acting as seats, under the huge night sky. Tonight there were just the three tents, one for Fergie, a long way back from the main campsite—“I snore,” he’d explained succinctly—and one each for Bett and Daniel.

  Fergie had told Bett some of the tales he’d be sharing with the tourists. He knew the whole story of the area, from its Aboriginal history to the early pioneer days. He’d spent most of his life working in shearing sheds and had plenty of stories about them as well.

  Bett took down the final details and then put her notebook away. “This isn’t for the article, but tell me, do you ever get sick of sheep?”

  Fergie laughed. “No. If I do, I get a whole fresh bunch every spring, remember. That’s the wonder of nature.”

  Daniel came back to the campfire. He’d been taking photos from a distance as the final light faded around them. “We’ll take a few more in the morning, Fergie, if that’s okay.”

  “I’ll be up at five, Dan, with my best smile on.” He pulled an exaggerated face and they both laughed. “Early to bed for me, anyway. Dan, you’ll sort out the fire, won’t you? Good night to you both.”

  Bett stretched out her legs toward the fire, alone for a moment while Daniel went to his tent to put away the camera equipment. Her mobile rang, the noise incongruous in the surroundings. She read the name on the display. “Lola? Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine, darling. Your parents are in the bar with a couple of guests, swapping stories about train journeys. Carrie is home with Matthew, and little Ellen is staying over with them for the night. Anna is in Adelaide returning the costumes. Richard’s gone with her for the trip. Do you suppose they’ll be staying in separate rooms tonight?”

  “You’re too old to be thinking things like that.”

  “What is the tent situation like there, darling?”

  “We have one each, Lola.”

  “Really?” A pause. “You know that if it gets cold, the best way to warm up is through body heat?”

  “I’ll tell Fergie that, shall I?” She had discovered earlier that Lola and Fergie knew each other from some years back. “That will be a surprise for him in the middle of the night. A little visit from me.”

  Lola laughed. “Good night, darling. Have a nice night.”

  Bett glanced up as Daniel came back to the fire. He nodded to the phone. “Everything all right at home?”

  “Everything’s fine. And you?” She had seen him talking on his mobile phone, too.

  He took a seat on the other log next to her and stretched out his legs. “Not so bad.”

  Bett hesitated. “Rebecca told me about your mother, Daniel. I’m sorry. It must be very hard on you and your sister.”

  “It has been. But worse for Mum, of course.” He picked up a long stick and broke it in pieces, throwing the bits into the fire. “I’m sorry about the night of the musical, Bett. One of the songs distressed her. That’s the sad thing about it; it’s so unpredictable. It could have been a voice that sparked a memory, as easily as a song. But we don’t want her never to go out. She’s very healthy apart from that. It’s her mind not her body that’s been affected.”

  “You and Christine have been very good to give up your lives for her like that.”

  “We don’t see it like that. You just do it for family. You’d do it for Lola, wouldn’t you?”

  “In a shot.”

  “You just need her to slow down enough so you can look after her, I guess?”

  She smiled, then was serious again. “If there’s e
ver anything I can do for you or for your mother, just ask, Daniel, won’t you?”

  “Thanks, Bett.”

  There was a long pause before he spoke again. “So are you going to stay on in the Valley, now that the musical is over?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll see what happens.” She took up a stick, too, and poked at the embers, watching sparks fly into the air. “So did you get some good shots today?”

  “I think so. A good subject always helps.”

  “It’s not just that. You’re a very good photographer.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So is that what you always wanted to do? When you were growing up?”

  “Always. I had a box brownie as a teenager. Before that one of those homemade ones from cardboard.” He grinned. “I had to draw my own photographs, but it was a start.” He threw another bit of wood into the fire. “And what about you? Did you always want to be a journalist?”

  “Not always. It was a choice between something to do with music and something to do with writing, and writing won. And now I really love being a journalist.”

  “You do, don’t you? What about it, exactly?”

  She realized he was genuinely interested. She thought about it for a moment. “I like watching something happen and turning it into a sentence, or a story. Capturing it, I suppose.”

  “And you don’t miss the music? You can’t do both?”

  “I tried. When I was in London, I wrote about music and bands, but it wasn’t for me in the end.”

  “No? What happened?”

  She told him stories from her time in the record company, encouraged by his laughter. It did seem ridiculous from this distance, coaching teenage pop stars, telling them what they thought. She laughed, too. “You see what a mess the music industry is in? Where were you, Danger Hilder, when we needed you most?”

  He smiled and reached down to the bottle of wine. “More?”

  “Yes, please.”

  The sounds around them became distinct. The slow glug of the wine into her glass. A quiet crackle from the flames in front of them. A bird far off in the trees. Faint rustling noises and low bleats from the sheep in the distance.

  “So was it hard to leave London?”

  She shook her head, remembering the day she’d decided to resign. “Once I’d decided, it was the simplest thing in the world. I knew this was where I wanted to be.”

  “It’s easier for women in lots of ways, don’t you think?”

  “What’s easier?”

  “Life. Decisions, everything.” He waved an arm. “Women seem to know how to do it. You always seem so confident, assured. You know what you want, how to make things happen.”

  “Women generally? Or me? Because I haven’t a clue.”

  “What are you talking about? That was one of the first things I noticed about you, how confident and alive you are, how comfortable you are in your own skin.”

  “No, I’m not.” Bett was astonished. “I’m a walking disaster area.”

  “You are not. I used to see you in Clare, when I was first here. You’d be talking away to people, interviewing them. And I’d see you in pubs and restaurants with Matthew, telling stories, always so confident.”

  “You should have looked closer, then.”

  He gave a soft laugh. “I was probably too busy worrying about my own appearance.”

  “But men don’t think like that, do they? Get worried about what people think of them? I mean, I haven’t got any brothers, but I thought you all knew exactly what you wanted, how to act, how to—”

  “Of course we don’t. I can’t speak for the entire male population, but I get scared and worried about things. That I’ll make a mess of something, choose the wrong moment, misread a situation …”

  She was speechless.

  “I’m scared now, for example.”

  “Of what?”

  “You.”

  “Scared of me?”

  He hesitated. “Of what you’d do if I asked you if I could kiss you.”

  She blinked. “You want to kiss me?”

  “I’ve wanted to kiss you for weeks.”

  “Why haven’t you?”

  “In case you slapped me. Told me to go away. Told me you didn’t like me in that way.”

  “Oh,” she said. A warm glow had started deep inside her. “And how were you planning on going about it?”

  “I was thinking of coming over and sitting beside you, and perhaps putting one hand on your cheek. And then if that went okay, I was probably going to lean down and kiss you. That was when I was worried that you might slap me.”

  “I see.” She thought about it for a moment. “I don’t think I would.”

  “No?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Should I check?”

  She nodded.

  He moved toward her. She sat, her face turned up at him, nervous but also excited. She’d had one glass of wine, not the quantities she’d drunk last time they’d kissed. She’d had a good, busy, interesting day, not weeks of frenzy and turmoil. Her breath caught at the touch of his lips against hers, soft, exploring. She felt the touch of his hand on her face.

  “Aphrodisiac qualities, those campfires, I’ve always found.”

  They both jumped at the voice. It was Fergie, coming out of his tent. They separated, embarrassed, and stared into the fire again until Fergie returned from the tree he was visiting. He gave them a cheery wave from the opening of his tent.

  A moment passed, and then they turned back to each other. This time she met his lips halfway. They kissed, long, slow kisses that tasted like red wine. He kissed her eyelids and the lobes of her ears and the side of her neck. She kissed the side of his face, the corners of his lips. Did she put his hand on her breast or did he do it himself? Bett wondered. She touched the side of his body, his back, their lips soft against each other all the while, the kiss continuing. They both stood up. He pulled her in against his body and she could feel his arousal, feel herself pressing against his body, her breasts full, aching to be touched.

  A huge sneeze from Fergie’s tent resounded in the air. She could feel Daniel laughing, even as she laughed herself.

  “The cry of the wildebeest,” he whispered, kissing her again. He moved his hand down her body. Without realizing it she started to tense.

  He pulled away. “Do you want me to stop?”

  She shook her head. Tell the truth, she heard a voice inside her say. “I’m just a bit nervous.”

  “Of me?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe not nervous. Maybe self-conscious.”

  “But you’re perfect. And I should know. I’ve been staring at every inch of you for weeks. I could draw you from memory, you know. This curve here.” He brushed her thigh. “The curve of your arm.” He touched her arm. “Your breast.” Her breathing faltered as he slowly stroked her breast. “These curves here.”

  He laughed at the expression on her face. She laughed, too, relaxing, feeling his hands on her, not minding at all now. She touched his back, feeling the skin under his shirt. There was another long, luxurious kiss. She pulled back again, needing to say something. “I’m sorry about last time. That time in Melbourne. I don’t know what got into me. I was very drunk.”

  “You needed to be drunk that night?”

  She nodded.

  “Can I get you a glass of wine now? A bottle?”

  She laughed, then it became serious. “I don’t think I need to be drunk tonight.”

  He touched her cheek. “Are you sure?”

  She reached up, kissed his lips, felt his body against hers. Then they stopped talking and started kissing again, different, deeper, sexier kissing. Somehow they moved from the campfire to his tent, to the sleeping bag on the ground, as warm flickering shadows from the fire played against the canvas. She loved the feeling of his hands on her body, her breasts, between her legs. And she loved the feel of his body, lean and silky to touch. Was there touch memory? she wondered. Did her body r
emember what it had felt like to have Daniel against her that night? Because it was responding now as though it couldn’t wait to repeat itself …

  Bett woke up as sunlight was coming into the tent. She felt stirring beside her and turned toward Daniel.

  “Good morning.” His voice was soft.

  She smiled. “Hello.”

  “Did you have a good night’s sleep?”

  He knew full well she hadn’t. Nor had he. They had been making love most of the night. “Not really. To be honest, I’m a bit worried.”

  She felt him tense. “What about?”

  “My article. Do you suppose I can promise this experience for every woman doing this camping trip?”

  He relaxed. “I could have a word with Fergie. It could be a handy sideline if I lose interest in the photography.”

  She laughed, closing her eyes as she felt his fingertips brush her bare skin. His voice was quiet. “So if you were writing an article about what happened last night, what would you write?”

  She thought for a moment. “ ‘Local reporter Bett Quinlan announced today that she was a little bit embarrassed to be waking up naked in a tent with Daniel Hilder but said she didn’t regret a second of the previous evening’s shenanigans.’ ”

  “Shenanigans?”

  “Shenanigans. Your turn.”

  “ ‘Photographer Daniel Hilder today admitted that he had fancied local reporter Bett Quinlan for some time.’ Have I got the tone right?”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s very good.”

  “ ‘When questioned, he said that he had always been a sucker for a shock of brown hair and a pair of cheeky eyes, and Ms. Quinlan fortunately was endowed with both.’ Am I still getting it right?”

  Bett’s head was on his chest, her eyes closed as he stroked her skin. “It’s very good.”

  “ ‘When asked about Ms. Quinlan’s murky past, Mr. Hilder gave an insouciant’—I’d have an asterisk there and at the bottom of the page the translation—relaxed, okay? Anyway, ‘gave an insouciant shrug and said, “The murkier the better, as far as I’m concerned. The more dirt there is the more we have to talk about.” ’ I think I’ve got the hang of this now. Can I go on?”