by Averil Kenny
‘Peacocks live here?’ Fable asked. But no one paid her any heed.
Kids dived out in a tangle of tubes and limbs. Arms reached to help the younger girls and Fable took a hand, leaping into the press. She stumbled on landing, and the assisting hand slipped to her swimmer-clad bottom, delving in deeply. Fable yelped, jumping clear. Eamon Hull moved away from her, smirking.
Fable faltered, looking for someone to share her outrage. The group, however, was already peeling off towards a stone staircase. Eamon, at the lead, was surrounded by laughter.
She must have imagined it.
He didn’t. Did he?
Tubes were flung down and the grand cast-off began. Fable sidled up to Kate Hardy. As the oldest girl among them – practically a grown-up – surely she wouldn’t regard Fable’s ignorance with contempt?
‘There aren’t any more waterfalls after this?’
Kate grinned. ‘Nope, next one is ours at the Glade and we get out before that!’
‘What should I . . . do? I’ve never tubed.’
‘It’s pretty self-explanatory hey, just hop on and float! Paddle away from branches or rocks. If you get stuck, wait, one of the older kids will give you a heave-ho. But if you fall off, hold on to the tube because it’s a pain in the bum trying to catch a runaway.’
Fable nodded, drawing herself together in readiness. She followed Kate into the water and their tubes were quickly taken up by the current. Across the pool they sailed, a flotilla of black doughnuts. The banks narrowed, funnelling them into the creek flow. Tubes jostled for position.
Fable felt a bubble of cheer rising in her chest, though she dared not release it.
Look at me, Mama, I’m tubing!
The creek coursed on and the armada began to separate. For now, Fable was sticking doggedly close to Kate, who was oblivious to everything else but the slow kicking of her toes in water.
Overreaching trees sheltered them from the sun and riverbanks offered boundless wonder, changing at every turn: here, a sandy shore; there, choked with buttress tree roots; now a steep cliff, covered in ferns. Turtles fled logs at their approach and eels rippled beneath. An iridescent dragonfly descended upon Fable’s tyre like a tiny, glittering helicopter. Oh, she could paint a whole book of Serpentine Creek imagery!
Maybe one day, she would – for Mama.
Fable squinted at a logodile basking on the bank, waiting for it to slide into the water with sly ease. Were there crocodiles in the creek? She hadn’t even thought to ask – stupid! She drew her legs up, scanning through Gav’s tales for waterway safety tips.
That’s right; Uncle Gav said freshwater creeks were home to the small, harmless crocs called freshies. Only estuarine creeks contained the gargantuan salties. The first would give a nip at best; the latter would, after some underwater stalking, take her whole, thrash her in a monstrous death roll, then store her rotting remains underwater like a refrigerated delicacy. Serpentine Creek was home to neither species.
Kate was drifting ahead. Impulsively, Fable reached for a nearby rock. She clung for a minute, allowing Kate to bump out of sight. Alone now, Fable sank more comfortably into the tube. How was it she felt more herself floating in Serpentine Creek than she had for years? Her heart was as light as the air upon which she sailed. She flowed.
It occurred to Fable, at idle length, that she hadn’t asked where or how to disembark. She’d been sailing for ages now without sighting another tuber. She imagined herself floating right on out to sea, cast adrift on the Great Barrier Reef, and thought with perverse pleasure how that would frustrate Sonnet’s back-to-school agenda.
Fable sensed they were nearing Heartwood, flashes of farmland glimpsed through the forest wall. She sagged, loath for her journey to end.
As if a prayer’s answer, Fable hit her first snag of the day, marooning on a midstream island of rocks and branches. Water rippled brashly past her on either side, but she was stuck fast. And so what? There were other tubers trailing behind. One would arrive eventually – all she could do was wait.
How are you going to make me come home now, Sonnet?
Fable luxuriated in her predicament. Raising arms, she threw back her face to the canopy and released a cry of long-restrained euphoria – swept away, even as she floundered upon the rocks.
‘Well, I’m glad you’re getting your money’s worth,’ came a laughing voice.
Fable whipped her head forward, spinning wildly.
It was Raff, sailing towards her. His tube thunked into hers, a hand shooting out to dock.
‘Sorry!’ she said, sitting up straight.
‘Don’t apologise for enjoying yourself. I can’t stand it when I bring these kids up here and they think they’re too cool to crack a smile all day.’
Fable tried to remember how many smiles she’d cracked.
‘Geez, you’ve really washed up here,’ he said, tugging at her tube. ‘How’d you manage this?’
‘I got one of your bodgy tubes. Didn’t even come with a steering wheel, much less brakes.’
He laughed. Fable sat back, overawed by this nearness; the nudging press of his tyre, fair-haired arms barely missing hers as he worked to dislodge her. Seen up close, Raff was even more handsome – eyes bluer, face larger, lips fuller, brow darker. Probably best if she stopped breathing altogether now.
He had her freed within moments. Next time, she’d have to get stuck better. Maybe bring a pin.
‘There you go!’ he said, as their conjoined tubes entered a channel of rapids. ‘Now you can go back to your yodelling.’
A vivid blue kingfisher swept low across their course.
‘Might even crack a smile,’ she said; amber eyes caught, wide and limpid, in a net of dappled light.
He looked at her as one might a puppy. For a second, she thought he might even ruffle her hair.
‘Your bridge is just ahead. Want me to wait?’
‘No, I’ve got the hang of it now. Got to watch out for icebergs . . .’
They both laughed.
‘Righto then!’ he said, tube spinning away in a gliding circle. ‘See you next year, kiddo!’
Fable watched Raff’s back unblinkingly as he sailed off into the distance. A tight bulge ached in her throat. A whole long year until she saw him again – might as well be an eternity. And he thought she was a kid.
Raff disappeared around the bend. Fable closed her eyes and let the foolish tears roll hot and large over her cheeks.
CHAPTER 12
AN UNPERFECT ACTOR
December 1956
S
onnet could not comprehend how they were marking their second Christmas in the valley. Where was time going? Down the gurgler, with the best of her hopes and ambitions.
It was Sunday morning, which for Sonnet meant a few rare hours of solitude while the girls were at church with their aunt and uncle. Sonnet sat on the cottage stoop, perspiring profusely, lacing her sandshoes to go running.
Running, Olive had intimated recently, was a man’s sport, and there could be no benefit to it over the much more ladylike option of walking.
Sonnet had tallied an extra benefit there and then: shocking Olive.
But today’s run was going to hurt – it didn’t get any easier to move in the insufferable tropics. The saturated air was a thick blanket under which she moved in a torpid haze. Sweat stuck her heavy ponytail against her neck, moustached her lip, pooled in her cleavage, and ran in great rivulets down her back and limbs. The previous summer, everyone swore she’d be ‘acclimatised’ by the next, but she was in the same seething mood as last summer. Gav said she’d ‘gone troppo’. Sonnet suspected she was just born that way.
Sure, the tropics were stunning in summer: indecent exposure of green; rumbling cumulonimbus cloud formations piling up; mango trees hung in baubled glory; festive flame-tree blooms floating on the creek; red and pink and yellow poinciana trees blinking on like beacons across the vale. Yet who could enjoy any of it with the humidity-induced rage?
But today, even if it made her spontaneously combust, Sonnet would run! She watched Fable tramp off into the rainforest daily, while she was left holding the fort. Now it was Sonnet’s turn.
Sonnet began to run – with vexation hot on her heels. Ahead, the rainforest was an electric fence, humming.
Nineteen fifty-six had been a humbling year for this sister-mother. Full-time guardianship was so much harder than she had anticipated. After the child-rearing and housekeeping responsibilities she’d borne from such a young age, Sonnet had assumed she, of all people, had been equipped for the job.
Oh sweet hubris!
What was the grimmest testament to her incompetence? The sister with the cordoned-off heart and unnerving passivity; or the one with more issues than you could poke a stick at?
The obvious answer was Plum, what with her pants soiling, screaming nightmares, sporadic periods of muteness, and that humiliating fiasco with kindergarten at the beginning of the year. Honestly, who gets expelled from kindergarten?
She’d come so close this year to crying defeat over that troubled, stubborn girl. It was only the unspoken tug-of-war with Olive which had spurred her on. She couldn’t deny Plum’s loyalties were transferring evermore quickly to Olive and Gav now. In lieu of kindergarten, she spent several days a week with Olive, and asked nightly to sleep over at Heartwood. Allowing Plum set days with Olive and Gav had been the first, Sonnet suspected, of many grudging concessions. Olive now had a bedroom permanently prepared for Plum, replete with every luxury of her heart’s desire.
That Olive wanted it so badly only made Sonnet more ungenerous.
Olive, for her part, was a model of such persistent charity, Sonnet could hardly stomach it. Take the church thing. Olive got it in her head, months ago, that Plummy wanted to join them at church, and she’d been wearing Sonnet down, drip by persevering drip, ever since. Sonnet wasn’t dead set against the idea; the structure and routine of the Sunday School program Olive described actually sounded good for Plummy. She might have wormed her way out of kindergarten, but she couldn’t evade Olive’s God! Still, Sonnet had made her objections clearly known. She didn’t want any of the girls copping damnation and judgement! The Hamilton girls had never stepped foot in a church – come to think of it, they might burst into flames if they tried.
Olive had listened quietly, but answered with surprising firmness: ‘I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think Plummy would feel loved and accepted there. It’s a different world to what it was twenty years ago, and besides, wasn’t I the one who insisted on pulling Plummy out of kindergarten when she was so unhappy?’
Sonnet finally had agreed, with a rigid caveat: ‘Your church cronies only get one chance. If Plummy comes home talking hellfire, if someone mentions Mama, if anyone as much as looks at her wrong, we’re done!’
Unexpectedly, Fable had volunteered herself for church, too. Olive merely had rattled off a list of neighbours who attended, and Fable had leapt at the opportunity. Sonnet could discern why – Fable, still yearning to fit in, didn’t want to be the only kid in the valley left out of church. And fair enough, the safety of group identification was important for adolescent girls.
The next Sunday morning, Sonnet brought Plum up to Heartwood dressed in the sweetest pink seersucker smock and patent leather Mary Janes – proud as if she’d made the girl herself! Fable, will wonders never cease, readied herself willingly, prettily and on time for once. Then Sonnet knew she’d pegged Fable’s motives correctly.
And any victory over Fable’s barricades, no matter how small, was one to celebrate. Acting as Fable’s guardian was an infuriating exercise in futility. Fable was attached to no one, and unknowable to all. She drifted untethered through the days; if not traipsing through the forest, disappearing into daydreams and scribbles. And the more Sonnet grabbed at her, the further and faster away Fable slipped. Maybe it was just being fourteen, and Sonnet had never experienced a normal adolescence herself, so what would she know? Fable had every excuse to embrace angst, especially in this town with their family background.
In the space of a year, Fable had become a long-limbed, lissom young lady, though she would not reach Sonnet’s statuesque height. The commencement of puberty had only strengthened Fable’s quiet poise. And by poise, Sonnet meant obliviousness. The girl didn’t even seem to care about her changing body. Sonnet rushed out and bought several training bras for Fable once her development became apparent. Looser blouses were hastily sewn up next. Fable had taken both with nary a word, perhaps the faintest smile – then left them in her drawers. Sonnet was flummoxed. Did this constitute rebellion? A sign that Fable didn’t want to leave her childhood behind? Was she grieving for her real mother’s influence?
Sonnet had agonised over how to broach talk of puberty and sexuality with Fable. Enflamed with poetry, giggling confession and graphic themes as Mama had with her? No, that had been an overstep. Esther had teased Sonnet for being the ‘puritan daughter of a floozy’ when Sonnet had demurred from such talk – but it wasn’t that, not at all. Sonnet simply wanted a mother, not a girlfriend. Better to be plain, factual with this Hamilton daughter – including discussion of female agency.
But Fable had closed away, indeed run away, the moment Sonnet began her spiel. Sonnet couldn’t seem to clear that first hurdle. She refused to think of herself as either unqualified, or a novice; though both were true.
Olive disagreed that it was rebellion, reticence or grief. ‘She’s doing fine. She just doesn’t want to talk about it. Maybe you’re coming on too forcefully. I can chat to her.’
Over my dead body, Sonnet thought.
Nevertheless, Olive arrived home one day with a hardcover book and pressed it into Sonnet’s hands: ‘Essential Facts for Young Women. Written by a doctor, with lots of diagrams.’
Sonnet perused the book judiciously first. Well, Olive wasn’t exactly fibbing. The book was penned by a doctor, and all the relevant facts were certainly there, with beautifully scientific diagrams. Yet, Sonnet’s gut twisted at the book’s prescriptions for female modesty and its stern coaxing against premarital sex, and the ‘monstrous problem’ of babies born out of wedlock. What poppycock! The book had been sponsored by a church – Olive had neglected to mention that, hadn’t she?
Moralising aside, the book did offer solid medical information plus some helpful info on deportment and dating, and might have to do until Sonnet could source another one – the market for puberty books in Australia was thin. She had no intention of passing it on, however, until she’d annotated it thoroughly.
One night, Sonnet sat down with a notepad and did just that, hectoring the doctor, throughout his tome. As Sonnet inserted her modern knowledge in between the pages of the book, she imagined the discussions her efforts might finally open up between the sisters. They could jeer the doctor’s archaic opinions together! They would be united by a common enemy: traditionalists.
Fable, however, immediately tossed the book, and all Sonnet’s accrued wisdom with it, onto her pile of ‘Things I’ll Never Use Because Sonnet Provided Them’. There all hope of discussion had ended. Being a proxy mother stank!
Sonnet doubled over now to catch her breath. She was going to give herself a heart attack at this rate. She drew in a deep mouthful of pungent rainforest rot, lifting her face to a cooling breeze. Psithurism, she told herself, whisper of wind in the trees. A smile, only small, tugged at her cheeks. At least she still had her own aptitudes.
In fact, the only area of Sonnet’s life at which she excelled anymore was her work. She was now doing three days a week with Alfred in his bookstore, and loving every minute. She had, Alfred said, ‘the bookseller’s touch’. She still helped Olive out with a full day in Emerson’s Fashion and Fabrics, leaving the rest of the week for Delia Bloody Hull to pick up her quilting fabrics without the indignity of being served by that Hamilton.
By all accounts, Sonnet’s alterations were the finest in town. A few customers had even suggested Sonnet should branch out into
her own dressmaking business. She was getting a big head with all the feedback, but thank goodness she still had those outlets in her life for success and accolades. It offset the near constant urge to scream.
Speaking of which, right now was as good a time as any. And in the humming forest basilica, lungs burning with the worshipful joy of running, Sonnet raised her arms to the canopied heavens and let an almighty bellow go.
CHAPTER 13
THE CATHEDRAL
January 1957
F
able shifted on her rock perch, allowing herself just one glance at the Glade stairway entrance, before returning to her sketchbook, the pencil’s staccato beat the only hint of her inner turmoil.
The Sunday train, bearing precious cargo, came in before Christmas, though Fable had yet to clap eyes upon him. Raff’s arrival had been trumpeted to the heavens by Adriana, who bragged daily of the board games they’d played, the horse rides he had taken them on, the fashionable families they’d had around for dinner, and the new cubby house he was finishing in a mango tree. The waiting Fable had borne for twelve patient months was now agonising indeed.
Every afternoon she’d been lurking at the Glade and each Sunday at church – hair brushed out in strawberry waves, gaze sliding to the Hulls’ front-row pew despite herself, and his absence. Adriana had been incensed by Fable’s sudden appearance at her church. Fable had almost expected Adriana to chase her back down the aisle; screeching incantations, splashing holy water.
But even that would be no impediment to Fable. Adriana was the sister of her heart’s desire – she must be kept in constant eyesight. To that end, Fable would sit at the Glade all day in Adriana’s peacocking company, pretending not to notice the girl’s every move was a challenge issued to her greatest rising rival.
Fable had coasted aloofly through Grade Eight, an illusion carefully contrived, and posing direct competition to Adriana’s status. Though she made no friend her particular, Fable was sought out by misfits and social-ladder climbers alike. Even Adriana circled slyly near. Given half a chance, or a whit of know-how, Adriana would have wrung out every drop of Fable’s inexplicable haughtiness.