by Averil Kenny
Not that Sonnet had any intention of Olive knowing it.
‘I don’t want that bookshelf there,’ Sonnet would snap, ignoring how it now gleamed with polish. ‘Leave it, I can handle it,’ she might bark, meaning: Thanks, good job, how would I have managed this without you?
Fable was only a capricious help, flitting between exuberant cleaning efforts and dreamy amblings over the farmland, murmuring under her breath. Home she came at dinner time, with pink snakeweed flowers in her waistband, purple princess blooms behind her ears, Singapore daisies crowned around her forehead and sun-warmed exotic fruit in her pockets. Oh sure, when it was Fable’s room getting a facelift, her bookshelf stacked with much-loved novels, she was willingness personified. Any other task, though, and Fable was a speck roaming in the distance; uncontainable.
‘Solivagant!’ Sonnet hissed after Fable’s fleeing figure each day, like a witch’s curse. It was impossible not to resent her sister when Sonnet was up to her neck in decades of grime.
Plum was a shadow at Sonnet’s side: eager to help, incapable of offering real assistance. Occasionally, she sidled up to Olive – skittering away when addressed directly. To Sonnet, Olive said nothing of the increasing attention, accurately perceiving her possessiveness. Nevertheless, there was an ever-growing confidence in Olive’s stride.
Their new uncle, Gavin Emerson, ever redolent of pine and diesel, had requested on their first meeting that they only call him Gav. He was proving a stumbling block for Sonnet, who struggled to command an avuncular figure. Gav was a keen jack-of-all-trades, the perfect asset, yet Sonnet refused to hand anything over. Too often he caught her in compromising positions, popping the veins in her neck to push heavy furniture, or teetering off the edge of a ladder to clean cornices and exposed beams, and he would dive right in – after a muttered comment about ‘Hamilton pride’. It was maddening, but Sonnet was also immensely grateful. Gav’s manner was refreshing. He suffered no fools, offered no platitudes.
The younger girls watched Gav with such wide eyes it made Olive chuckle, and Sonnet chase them away to spite Olive’s enjoyment. Never before had they seen a male relative in such an intimate setting. Look, an uncle sweeping a floor! Look – an uncle playing with a dog, tinkering with a tractor, hammering a nail. Look: an uncle changing a light bulb! No wonder their eyes boggled out of their heads.
‘Flat out like a lizard drinking,’ Gav exhaled whenever he chugged back a glass of water – first, to the girls’ bewilderment; later, to Fable’s mimed impersonation and silent fits of laugher.
Work began with the rooster’s crow at daybreak and ended with the arrival of the bats. On the first evening, that dark legion swarming across the purpling vale had sent a shudder up the nape of Sonnet’s neck. She loathed things with feathers, or wings.
‘What are they?’
‘Bats,’ Olive explained, with nary a gaze to the sky. ‘They come from the colony in Cairns at sundown, and spend the night fertilising and pollinating the rainforest.’
Fable snorted. ‘They what?’
‘Poop, dear. They eat all the rainforest fruits, then poop everywhere. They’re called spectacled flying fox. Noisy, disease-ridden things, and they’re always after my orchard, but the rainforest surely needs them.’
‘Flying foxes in glasses with diarrhoea!’ Fable whispered, eyes glazing over with wonderment.
Sonnet did not share her sister’s marvelling at every weird facet of tropical life – for starters, the size of the blasted huntsman spiders she was chasing out of this cottage! Things, people, places all had to grow on Sonnet – especially wishful aunts.
Midway through the week, Sonnet spied her sisters out beyond the garden gate, twirling with arms and faces lifted to the sky, and Zephyr barking at their heels. Their excitement brought Sonnet down from her ladder, duster in hand, to investigate. They were catching large curls of dark ash floating from the heavens. Sonnet stretched out a hand to catch a flake, and was turning the disintegrating whorl over in fascination when she heard Olive’s shout from behind the cottage.
Sonnet tore around the back to find Olive at the clothesline pulling washing into the trolley.
‘Oh, Sonnet, help me, quickly! We’re about to lose an entire day’s washing!’
‘What is this ash?’ Sonnet asked, working rapidly.
‘Sugarcane fire at the Hulls’,’ Olive said. ‘You’re going to get ash falling in crushing season. Best to keep an eye on the skies when you’ve got washing out.’
‘So, it doesn’t snow in the tropics during winter, it rains ash, instead?’
Olive laughed.
Now Sonnet could see the black plume of smoke rising beyond the wall of rainforest.
‘They set fire to their own crop?’
‘Surely do,’ Gav answered, arriving to help. ‘Burns off pests and readies the cane for harvesting. ’Tis a beautiful sight to see a canefield aflame on a dark night. Nothin’ like it when we were still farming. Got ash on your forehead, love!’ Gav added, chuckling at Sonnet as together they carried the linen over the back stoop.
Sonnet wiped the ash away with a scowl.
*
It took six days to restore the cottage. On the final day, as had quickly become their evening habit, they gathered around the table on Heartwood’s wide veranda to enjoy the spoils of small-town life: casseroles arriving daily from Olive’s church friends; home delivered, in Sonnet’s opinion, simply for the thrill of eyeballing Esther’s lookalikes. These charities were endurable for their limited scope: soon she’d be in her very own kitchen, and she’d never have to accept the handouts of nosy strangers again.
A full moon had risen over the valley and a breeze came softly over the canefields to tease tendrils from behind Sonnet’s ears. The younger girls were asleep in a four-poster bed draped with mosquito nets.
Gazing over the shimmering sea of cane, Sonnet took stock of all they had achieved in a week: a trailer-load of junk bound for the dump; and a home de-roached, de-webbed and de-cluttered, ready for the Hamilton girls to claim as their own.
She sank back against her rattan chair, pleasantly full. Olive had gathered up the bowls as quickly as they were emptied, sweeping off to the kitchen. Gav and Sonnet were left in silence.
‘Why did you call the place Heartwood?’
‘The Hamilton property has been called Heartwood as long as I can remember,’ he told her. ‘But this was Aboriginal country first. Always will be, if you ask the heartbroken people Sergeant Windsor regularly hounds out of Raintree Park. Used to be a Heartwood sign on your front gate, before the original cottage was wiped out in 1918 by a Cat-five monster called the Great Northern Cyclone. You can’t wipe out a name, though.’
Gav leaned back to consider Sonnet as she fixed on the rattling approach of a large vehicle or small train through the canefield. A haunting blast confirmed it was the latter. Sonnet strained forward in her seat, peering.
A tiny steam locomotive hurtled out of the darkness, hauling a long line of bins loaded high with vegetation.
‘What is it?’ Sonnet asked, standing for a better look over the balustrade.
‘Cane train,’ Gav said, joining her.
‘Didn’t even know there was a rail line on the property!’
‘Well, you’ve hardly stepped foot outside the cottage. Now you have time, you’ll find plenty to impress. During the crushing season, cane trains come across the creek, over yonder, where a bridge joins our land to the Hulls’. Then she goes through these fields, once proud Hamilton land, but now the Lagorios’ cane, down to the sugar mill near Cairns.’
The train puffed out of sight, leaving the scent of smoked molasses in its wake.
Sonnet smirked at the inanity of it all.
‘Do you want to taste some fresh cane juice?’
‘I don’t have much of a sweet tooth.’
Gav grabbed a machete and thumped into the cane. Olive wandered onto the veranda, wiping sudsy hands on her apron. ‘Getting you some liquid sugar to s
ample, is he?’
‘With his big scythe, apparently.’
Gav was boyishly proud as he sprang back onto the veranda, holding a section of cane. He twisted the fibrous innards of the stalk into Sonnet’s glass, thick, sun-darkened muscles rippling as he worked. A stream of pale juice trickled into her cup.
‘Give that a try!’
Sonnet sipped cautiously. It tasted as she might have anticipated: brown sugar top notes, grassy finish on the palate.
‘Refreshing,’ she said, placing her glass down, barely touched. ‘You’d better watch Fable round these parts, she has an insatiable sweet tooth – your neighbours will lose half their fields.’
‘Wait till she tries my chocolate fruit, then,’ Olive said. ‘Or better yet, my miracle fruit; can turn the bitterest dish sweet!’
Sonnet snorted. ‘It’s like another world out here. The girls are particularly going to love the miniature trains.’
‘Mind them in those fields, though,’ Olive said, ‘particularly Fable, with the way she swans about. Cane tracks are no place for children during the crush. And big taipan snakes live in those fields – they’re quick as lightning, and deadlier still.’
‘Fable’s not stupid,’ Sonnet snapped, the cane juice suddenly sour on her tongue.
‘So,’ Olive said, glossing over this remark, ‘you’re all ready for a brand-new life in Noah Vale?’
‘Ready as we’ll ever be.’
‘And how are you feeling about Fable starting school next week?’
‘Looking forward to it. It’ll keep her mind off Mama, and the structure and routine will offset her dreamy ways.’
Olive cleared her throat, flicking glances at Gav. ‘Sonnet, it could be . . . daunting for Fable, to begin with. Might take her some time to . . . find her place.’
‘No, Fable is well accustomed to being the new girl in class. We spent our childhood moving. She is reserved, but also desperate for friends.’
‘But Noah Vale isn’t like the big cities you’ve lived in. Here, people talk. Memories go back a long way.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘For a start, there’s how much Fable looks like her mother. It’ll be like the spirit of Esther Hamilton walking back into school.’
‘Fable is her own person.’
Olive nodded, though the worry did not abate in her eyes. ‘I only mention it in case you want to prepare Fable for people being initially . . . standoffish. Your mother did have . . . a reputation . . .’
There it was.
‘Fable doesn’t!’
‘And there were circumstances.’
‘By which you mean me.’ Sonnet felt her face grow ugly.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean any insult; just don’t know how to broach . . . what happened with your mother.’
Gav interjected then: ‘Esther was seen as the town trollop.’
Olive raised an arm, too late, to shush her husband. Tears burned behind Sonnet’s eyes. She rose from the table, seeking escape. Gav’s big hand took her much smaller wrist. ‘Don’t run off on account of my boorishness. We only want you to know how the town saw Esther, not what we think.’
Sonnet sat. Wrist released, she crossed her arms, fixing on the couple with a frown. ‘Well? What?’
Olive’s reply came with a quaver. ‘I loved your mother dearly, and nothing in my life has ever hurt more than our estrangement. She made . . . mistakes.’ A consolatory grimace at Sonnet here. ‘But she deserved to be forgiven. It’s just – she could never have come home to Noah again, not with her . . . reputation.’
‘Her “reputation” as a single mother?’
‘That’s part of it. And her reputation for being . . . unstable.’
‘Folks said she had a problem holding on to both men and mood,’ Gav threw in, still chewing at his cane.
Sonnet sat pinch-lipped, refusing to let agreement show.
‘Essie was wildly poetic and irresistible,’ Olive said. ‘But stubborn, contrary, and just too much for most people – felt too much and wanted too much and said too much. You had to live every emotion with her, and she wore us all out with her mighty swings, from big passions to big tragedies. She got snagged on things, too, couldn’t let go of a feeling, once she had it. Yearned for love—’
‘Craved it,’ cut in Gav.
‘Oh hush, you,’ Olive said. ‘She needed love – and there wasn’t much of it from Mother and Father. As she got older, she seemed better able to manage her intensity . . . but in the end, perhaps not?’
Silence sprang up between them.
The first to break it was Sonnet – startling herself. ‘Mama used to say: “My heart goes in and out of season, and I have borne the fruit of those transgressions.” I knew she meant us girls, as much as the bleak episodes which plagued her.’
Olive had no difficulty making her segue. ‘Did you have many stepfathers, Sonnet?’
‘Stepfathers? There were never any fathers at all. I suppose you have this idea of us enduring a carousel of lovers. Well, you’re wrong. You don’t know anything. Mama was fanatical about keeping us apart from her beaus. Never saw them! As I grew older, I could tell when she was in love. Those were her shining highs. And I always knew when her latest affair had ended. She’d come spiralling down, sometimes for months.’
Olive was struggling with something yet unsaid. Sonnet wasn’t waiting for it, though; it was like her brakes had failed. ‘But paternity was a lost art with Mama. None of us have a father listed on our birth certificate. We might have been sired by ghosts.’
Gav clucked.
Sonnet glared. It was one thing for her to bare something of their lives; it was another thing entirely for this man – a stranger – to punctuate it with his opinion.
‘And what do you know of . . . your father?’ Olive asked, delicately as one picking through a basket of pins.
‘I know enough.’
Olive probed her face. Sonnet thrust forth her chin.
‘Is there something you’d like me to tell you, dear?’
Sonnet struggled against the need to possess, here and now, everything this woman knew about the man who had fathered her. Olive might finally plug every sorry gap in her heritage she had been, at varying times, consumed with, or humiliated by.
But Olive’s fawning pity was too much. In an instant, rankled pride swallowed curiosity whole. Sonnet had been ensnared, unwittingly.
‘I don’t have anything I want to ask you or anyone else in this town about him.’
CHAPTER 3
THE GLADE
‘W
hat snakes?’ Fable griped, slamming the cottage gate behind her. She gazed wistfully at the canefields from which she had been unequivocally banned. In the fortnight they’d been in Noah Vale, her wanderings had led her to a plethora of delights, hours of imaginings. This morning, however, she’d been ordered out of the ‘taipan-filled’ cane by Olive and Sonnet, who’d sat her down in a show of faux solidarity that Fable hadn’t bought for a second.
‘I don’t need two play-acting mothers!’ said Fable, shooting a filthy look at the cottage. Inside, Sonnet was prancing around neatening edges and straightening corners. They’d only just settled back into the cottage, but already Sonnet had crowned herself queen of their new kingdom.
Fable was thankful for small mercies, however. She had a bedroom to abscond to, even if it was an addendum sunroom, hastily constructed on the cottage when baby Esther had arrived. How Fable loved that forest-facing sunroom! The first space she’d ever had to call her own. New lace curtains framed her bay window, a white quilt lay over her stubbornly unmade bed, shelves and dressing table gleamed enticingly, and frosted French doors offered long-wanted privacy. The room was a blank, waiting canvas. She wasn’t ready yet to bring colour and detail – herself – to this new setting.
Fable was convinced the room possessed unearthly power, perhaps even Mama herself. Since arriving here, she had felt closer to
Mama than any time since her passing. Some nights she woke from dreamless sleep to, she swore, a warm, radiating presence beside her. If she lay still, without opening her eyes or moving or even breathing, Fable could smell her mother’s Femme Rochas perfume, and feel her silken touch, sweeping the strawberry wisps from her forehead and nape of her neck, as she’d always done at bedtime.
Fable sighed, turning her amber gaze on the dark ripple of rainforest neatly dividing farm from farm. Never mind the canefields, then, there was a creek to explore. Mama’s Serpentine.
Over the paddock she tramped, careful to make her footsteps plainly felt to both taipans and sisters alike.
Oh, this heavenly winter’s morn! How easily they had been transplanted from a bleak and frigid Canberran July into this halcyon vale. Fable hated the name ‘Noah Vale’, though. Whoever he was, Noah had no right to claim the valley. Fable had decided to call it Rainbow Valley, after both the musty Montgomery novel she’d found in the cottage bookshelves and the sky miracles which materialised so flamboyantly here. Sometimes Fable felt there were not enough elegantly named colours in the world to cater for the abundant hues of the tropics.
Approaching the creek, the rainforest wall became a living body. A thousand permutations of green separated, one from the other, leaves taking their unique shapes. Cool, pungent air emanated forth, river ripple rose up in greeting. Fable charted her course towards a break in the tree line where she supposed the cane bridge must lie.
She found the narrow-gauge track, hidden in volcanic soil, and followed the sleepers to an old train bridge spanning the waters of Serpentine Creek. Without hesitation, she cast off her sandals and stepped carefully onto the bridge slats. Dead centre of the bridge she stopped, legs akimbo, to survey the thickly overhanging trees, spanning to touch across the creek. Sunbeams speared the canopy, as through stained glass windows. The gilded-turquoise creek slid sinuously beneath her feet, curving away around an S-shaped bend.
‘Line of beauty,’ Fable whispered, hearing again her art tutor’s voice. She exhaled, grateful for the sudden creative ache sparking deep in her chest, heart-side. Ah, there you are, little glow.