Those Hamilton Sisters

by Averil Kenny

  The highlight of his lecture was the Stinging Tree, bearing large heart-shaped leaves covered with tiny, toxic hairs which caused excruciating pain once embedded in human skin. Gav’s tale included a graphic description of early European explorers in the valley who’d wiped their arses with those conveniently large leaves and suffered such agony, they’d leapt off a cliff trying to escape it.

  Fable must have been convinced, even if she’d remained stone-faced, for there had been no night vanishing incidents since. Days were another matter, though. Whenever Sonnet’s back was turned, Fable still slipped away to the ‘Green Woman’s Grove’, which didn’t seem healthy, frankly, but instinct told Sonnet not to interfere. She couldn’t fathom what Fable actually did all day in that grove, since she still hadn’t picked up, much less used, her sketchbooks. Perhaps she dreamed away the hours there, and maybe that was enough, for now.

  Thoughts having turned once more to her responsibilities waiting at the cottage, Sonnet thrust harder on the pedals towards Heartwood. She couldn’t wait to show her new bike to her sisters – they had begged to come along when Gav had dropped Sonnet into town for the daunting purchase.

  Never before had Sonnet spent so much money on herself. It was her first official purchase using their inheritance funds, and although some transport was justifiable, guilt at using Mama’s money had nearly outweighed the pleasure. It was money Mama had never dreamed she’d see from her parents. And even when Esther had received the windfall from her father, big-hearted only after death, using a cent of it had apparently proved too much for her Hamilton pride.

  If Mama couldn’t bear to spend Malcolm’s money, how could Sonnet? It had taken persuasion on the part of Olive and Gav, for starters, followed by some hard soul-searching. Mama had expressly willed the money to the girls, placing no restrictions on its immediate use. Esther might have shunned the money herself, but she’d wanted the girls to use it when the time came. And the time had definitely come. Sonnet refused to rely on Olive constantly for transport; the less time spent captive in her car the better.

  Even then, it had taken serious haggling over the counter of Ryan’s Wheel Lot, until Sonnet was satisfied she’d spent Mama’s money well. She resisted the eponymous Ryan’s suggestion that a dainty pink bike with floral basket was more appropriate for her ‘feminine needs’. Sonnet, noting the predominance of tractors and trailers in the yard, decided Ryan wasn’t as well acquainted with ‘feminine needs’ as he insisted.

  Besides, she’d fallen head over heels for this sunny bike the moment she spotted it shining in the lot. It was bold and brave and tenacious – everything she wanted in a bike, and herself. She’d named her bike Freya.

  On a wave of euphoria now, Sonnet soared, legs splayed, down the last hill to the cottage. Hair flew about her face. She arrived at the gate in a skidding, exultant rush.

  Gav and Fable were hard at work in a garden which had changed dramatically in the few short hours Sonnet had been in town. Giant tropical butterflies flitted around the flowers emancipated from choking weeds. Fable’s pleas about redeeming the garden had apparently been taken up this morning.

  Her uncle and sister scrambled up as she clattered in, their beaming faces mirroring hers. Fable admired the new wheels as Gav ambled over with an appreciative whistle. ‘What a beauty! How does she ride?’

  Sonnet patted the bike. ‘Like a dream. Haggled Ryan right down, too. Want a ride?’

  Gav took the handles from her, chuffed grin on his weathered face as he circled out into the paddock. His oversized bulk was ridiculous on the yellow frame. Fable clapped with a girlish cheer, and then clutched Sonnet’s arm.

  ‘Sonny, you have to see what Uncle Gav and I unearthed in the garden – it’s all so magical!’ She led Sonnet along an uncovered pathway. ‘Look, our own wishing well and it still works! All this time it was hidden here. Uncle Gav says our grandpa built it!’

  Sonnet grimaced at ‘grandpa’, peering into the dark well.

  Gav came up behind them, puffed and smelling of the strange maleness the girls were still adjusting to. ‘Now don’t have a hissy fit, Sonnet,’ he said. ‘It’s fake. Doesn’t go deep.’

  ‘Am I so transparent?’

  He slapped her back. ‘You’re a worrier, pet.’

  Fable was already pulling her away along another pathway. ‘And it gets even better, look what else I found!’

  Under the dappled shade of a frangipani tree, where flowers lay scattered on the red earth, Fable presented a neat circle of river stones, set around the trunk. Each stone was unique; some polished painstakingly, others coarsely shaped by nature itself.

  ‘It’s a faerie ring!’

  Sonnet crouched to examine the stones. There were a dozen or more, spaced evenly and purposefully apart. ‘You’re too old for believing in faeries, Fabes,’ she said absently, tracing a barely distinguishable name and date carved into one stone.

  Fable snorted. ‘Oh, come on. I’m saying, imagine! This could be our faerie garden. Plummy will love it. She can bring Mama’s baby dolls out here and I’ll make signs and pebbled paths, and paint the stones to look like houses.’

  Sonnet felt Gav’s shadow fall across the stones in the same moment she comprehended exactly what she was looking at. She paused, sickened. ‘I don’t think this is a play area, is it, Gav?’

  Something not-quite forgotten flared in his eyes. His face slackened. ‘They were . . . something Olive lost, when we lived here.’

  Fable looked at her uncle in confusion. ‘Doesn’t she remember she left them here?’

  Gav grimaced.

  ‘But there are so many,’ Sonnet said, quite staggered.

  ‘Yep. There were – so many.’ Gav shrugged. ‘Look, you girls can do whatever you want with the garden, it’s yours now. I’ve neglected this place far too long. If you keep it neatly trimmed back from now on, you can do as you like.’

  Sonnet stood, brushing earth off her capri pants. ‘Fable, these are Olive’s stones. I don’t want you to disturb this circle, and I certainly don’t want you painting anything here.’

  *

  Inside the cottage, Sonnet came upon Olive and Plum in silent repose. Olive was pinned to the couch by the sleeping girl, and surrounded by hardcover Enid Blyton books. A hand drifted slowly over burnished auburn curls, as Olive stared through the window. Sonnet stopped for the uncomfortable ache striking up in her heart.

  Unutterable questions beset her. How could you bear it, Olive, when children came so carelessly to Mama? Was this why you stood aside and allowed your own sister to be driven out of town? When did you finally rise from your bed of perpetual miscarriage to admit your stubborn God had never intended to answer your prayers?

  Olive’s face turned and the sorrow exposed there, in the instant before dignified veneer re-formed, revealed more than Sonnet could ever have wanted to know.

  Olive moved to shift Plum off her lap, and Sonnet quickly bade her to stay. ‘She’ll be awake soon enough.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Olive whispered, settling back uneasily. ‘It was the only way she’d nap. She refused to stay in bed, wanted me to read her all these books, and when she finally fell asleep I didn’t dare move her.’

  ‘She doesn’t like to sleep alone. You did the right thing.’

  Embarrassed by Olive’s relief, Sonnet busied herself in the kitchen. The bench was buried under fine bone china.

  Sonnet turned, mystified. ‘Is this your collection?’

  ‘No, it was your grandmother’s. I thought you might be interested in it. She collected Shelley china. I’m not into crockery and such. But Essie had been asking for it ever since she was a girl. She’d sneak into Mother’s cabinets, take her favourites and set up these elaborate tea parties for her book characters. She’d get such a whipping – but it never stopped her. She loved that china more than Mother herself. When Mother finally passed on, she left the whole collection to me. She knew I’d never liked it. Always troubled me that she did that. I’d been k
eeping it stored here, waiting for Es.’

  Sonnet rotated a delicate teacup in her hand. ‘I’m sure Mama would be glad to know her own daughters will have them now.’

  Olive was chuffed – way too chuffed. Sonnet looked away.

  Her next words, then, amazed even herself. ‘And listen, about your offer a while back: helping you out with some alterations in the shop? I might be willing to give it a trial.’ She busied herself stacking plates, rushing on lightly, ‘And if you wanted to watch Plum for me, maybe I can have a go at minding your shop. Could be a way for me to get to know some of the local ladies . . .’

  CHAPTER 8

  CHRISTMAS COMES TO NOAH VALE

  W

  arm winter rolled into scorching dry spring. Yellow and pink Tabebuias burst into vibrant bloom against grass baked brown and air hazy with smoke from back-burning. As the sunshine intensified, the heat at Noah Vale School began to simmer down. Cold, calculated indifference took its place, after the steeliness of Fable’s quiet self-possession proved, ultimately, dissatisfying. She was still a loner at school, but, more importantly, was now left alone. Fable clung to this small victory.

  School days fell into their inevitable rhythm, within which even alienation began to feel humdrum. But weekends held compensatory joy. Away from school and the omnipresent eye of her older sister – now gainfully employed at Emerson’s Fashion and Fabrics on Saturdays and two weekdays – Fable found her bliss in the forest deep.

  The grove of the Green Woman had become her secret hideaway, and although she had not once heard the siren’s call since they’d spread Mama’s ashes there, she was inexorably drawn to that otherworldly coppice. She could not yet muster the prose or pen stroke to capture how she felt in her sacred grove. Nevertheless, each day she trekked faithfully there, sketchbook and pencils tucked under her arm.

  Creativity would find her and flow through her again. She simply had to wait.

  *

  The first time Fable encountered Marco Lagorio at the cane bridge on her way home from the Green Woman’s Grove, she shied regretfully away from his invitation to rejoin the Glade Gang. Though still only spring, it was already as hot in the tropics as any summer she’d known before. She longed for the waterfall’s cooling reprieve, and cursed Adriana’s name.

  Over the following weeks, Marco continued to arrive at the cane bridge simultaneously with Fable; luck inferring both purpose and planning. Each time, his invitation was rebuffed.

  On the Saturday Fable finally caved, she approached the Glade on Marco’s heel with fear rioting in her chest. Hearing Adriana’s strident voice ahead, she stopped, unable to continue. Marco motioned her forward, smiling.

  Fable had looked into that hopeful, open face and felt gratitude laced, disconcertingly, with queasiness. Glimpsing, perhaps in the faint future, a time when she would lament ever having stepped foot in their Glade.

  At her arrival, Adriana and Christy rolled their eyes nearly right out of their heads and beat an elaborately offended exit from the Glade. Kate waved them dryly off. The remaining boys, unperturbed by the female machinations, accepted Fable’s presence without blinking.

  The following weekend, she approached the Glade with an air akin to confidence. Adriana and Christy maintained the silent treatment for a protracted hour before making their disdainful withdrawal.

  On the third Saturday, they didn’t bother appearing at all, but sent a message, delivered with swaggering air through Eamon, elucidating all their reasons for not showing this day. Chiefly: they had better things to do, with better friends, and Fable was to cease and desist from her visits so they might enjoy their Glade Fable-free upon their return.

  Fable took this as encouragement, and when Marco slumped into the Glade alone the following weekend, convinced he’d been forgotten by his strawberry-haired friend, he found Fable already there with the Hardy kids; sailing through the air from the tree-house platform.

  *

  Summer seethed. Fable had never, in all her life, known heat like it: an oppressive humidity that sucked the very breath from her lungs. A clinging python’s skin she could not shed.

  The infamous tropical heat they’d long been warned of, had finally arrived.

  ‘It’s hotter than hell!’ Sonnet was heard constantly to say, as she tried to locate the mythical spot in which a single pedestal fan might cool an entire house. ‘Where’s the blasted monsoon?’ Sonnet raged, as the sun set each day, in fire and charcoal. Olive and Gav had sworn the airless, spiralling heat would soon give way to months of the Wet.

  For Sonnet, who felt heat far more irritably than others, it was promised respite, denied. She wanted to cash in her coupons for their Wet on time, with no delays. For Fable, who simply loved rain, the idea of near-constant precipitation was tantalising. She was finding Sonnet more intolerable than the humidity. It was all that pressure Sonnet was putting on herself to manufacture the ‘perfect’ Christmas for their first year without Mama. Fable evaded Sonnet daily, fleeing into the buzzing shade of the rainforest straight after brekkie – not a minute too soon.

  As Christmas loomed closer, and the air thickened to near liquidity, all eyes were on the skies. The golden chain trees encircling the cottage burst now into bloom; grape-like clusters of pure sunshine dripped from branches, carpeting the garden.

  On Christmas Eve, Fable hurtled outdoors the moment Sonnet started stressing over the last-minute procurement of a gift for Olive, after the cantankerous sewing machine ate her tea-towel set.

  There was no way she could stomach Sonnet’s festering mood on what was shaping up as one of the hottest days of the summer. Fable had been sweating since dawn. Her skin crawled for the Glade waterfall. All the gang would be there this morning – except Adriana and cohort, who had responded to Fable’s persistent presence with a proclamation of being too sophisticated to hang out at the Glade anymore. And besides, there were the St Ronan’s boarding school boys, home for holidays, to chase after at the Noah Vale Public Baths.

  Imagine Fable’s bemusement on this morning, then, to find Adriana, Christy, Megan and Isabella mucking about at the Glade with as much horseplay as any other unsophisticated thirteen-year-old. Descending the rock staircase, Fable was greeted by all the familiar faces, but was surprised to see several new kids.

  She plopped her towel on the ledge, and took a quick, under-lash inventory of the intruders. Eamon was jumping with some boys his own age – St Ronan’s boys, Fable deduced – which accounted for Adriana’s vivacious attendance this morning.

  On the opposite side of the Glade, however, leaning against the moss-covered cliff face, was an older boy, much taller than the rest. A young man, compared to the others.

  He stood quietly, arms crossed, surveying the cliff jumping with a supervisory air. He was strong and golden-fair, with a broadly handsome profile, thick brows, and full, serious lips. Sensing her examination, he turned.

  Cerulean eyes, blue as a Ulysses butterfly, alighted upon her – and the very air went out of Fable. Cicada hum filled her ears, laughter and splashing faded away.

  Their gaze held across the water.

  Beneath a rutted brow, his stare was thoughtful. Fable floundered, unable to breathe or move or think.

  ‘Raff! Watch this one!’ came a shout from the No Fear ledge. He looked away, and Fable sagged to her knees with relief, and a strange new sense of dismay. She fussed with her towel, summoning back her thoughts.

  So this was Rafferty Hull, come home at last for his university summer holidays. Raff: legendary tree-house designer and waterfall kayaker and mountain hiker and cliff jumper, referenced constantly by the younger boys in their daring exploits. The famous brother, of whom Adriana spoke with a smugly possessive air, had finally appeared.

  His figure burned in her peripheral vision.

  Marco splashed her from the water. ‘Coming in, Fabes?’

  She flinched, caught in the act of something she couldn’t quite understand. She looked at Adriana and crew cav
orting in their bright new togs – flashing smiles and neat breasts – and withered. Her sage swimsuit was dowdy and pilled; her slender chest still budding. Fable shrugged off her corduroy pinafore reluctantly. Shame seared. Fleetingly, she thought of Plummy, left sitting before their make-do Christmas potted palm at the cottage, and wished herself desperately back there.

  Marco called for her again, and Fable decided the water offered better cover than this exposed ledge. She plunged long into the water, not surfacing until she was behind the waterfall. Safely hidden by the curtain, she pulled herself onto the wide shelf, ears straining for Raff’s voice over the falls. She could just make out his figure through the silver veil.

  His voice, heard for the first time cautioning rock jumpers to mind the swimming kids below, was gentle and measured. She would scale No Fear just to hear it again.

  Now, what to do with this aching breathlessness? How to act like herself when she’d never felt such a foreigner in her skin before? But she already willed herself daily to survive Adriana’s spite and Eamon’s arrogance with feigned indifference – she would somehow survive their brother’s blue gaze with grace, too.

  *

  It was afternoon before Fable finally drifted home from the Glade. The Hulls had retired to their house for a late lunch, taking the rest of the gang with them. At the cane bridge, Adriana’s invitation purposely excluded Fable, and she alone – earning Raff’s brotherly rebuke. Adriana dutifully rectified her invitation, but garnering Raff’s notice as an object of pity wouldn’t do at all.

  Fable looked straight past Adriana’s dissembling graciousness, ignoring Kate’s wry grin, Jessica’s rigidity and Eamon’s smirking, to meet Raff’s gentle smile.

  ‘I’d rather wash my hair,’ she said, shrugging.

  Fable crossed the bridge to Hamiltons’ then on light feet, with Kate’s chortle resounding in her ears, and curious eyes burning a hole in her back.

  *

  Sonnet, hunting Fable for Christmas Eve preparations, found her sister in the garden; face uplifted and arms outstretched to the golden shower blooms falling like yellow rain on a sultry breeze. The trees hummed with native bee song, as though creation itself were carolling.