Those Hamilton Sisters

by Averil Kenny

  The parcel, containing a forged letter of introduction, was heavy in her hands but had weighed heavier on her heart for many fraught weeks now.

  With no one else to bounce ideas off now her best friend had married and, moreover, escaped Noah Vale, Sonnet had been left alone with this decision.

  Well, except for the author-illustrator, if one wanted to quibble with details. But Fable had negated involvement of her own free will. Sonnet had tried every imaginable tactic to induce Fable into confessing the manuscript’s existence or admitting she secretly dreamed of an artistic career outside the mountainous borders of Noah. But Fable continued to act for all the world as though the journal didn’t exist, and she had never painted a damn thing in her life.

  This much was now obvious: Fable had either forgotten about, or given up on her book.

  Sonnet had even gone so far as to set a snare in Fable’s window seat to ascertain how often, if at all, Fable looked at the journal. She didn’t. Not even once in eight weeks! How much more proof did one need of artistic dreams rotting away?

  Sonnet was confident then she could carry this off without detection.

  Before sealing the parcel that morning, Sonnet had made one last executive decision. From the book, Sonnet had torn the most amatory pages: the copulating couple among those improbable rainbow trees; the frangipani faerie astride the man in the leafy gondola, her spine arching, his head buried; and that final, toe-curlingly erotic page. Sonnet was just being a shrewd editor. She might be a dilettante when it came to art, but she was an expert on small-town minds. No need to scandalise Noah unnecessarily. The book worked as well without the dirty pictures.

  Sonnet smoothed the sticky-taped seal again, and turned the parcel over to check the address once last time: Margaret Mathers at Golden Apple Press, Brisbane, Queensland. Her contact was at an independent publishing house, with a keen interest in Queensland fiction featuring an evocative, environmental flair. They were currently scouting, albeit quietly. Sonnet had been given the tip-off only after hounding every publishing connection she’d forged over the last few years. Securing this editor’s contact details was a hard-won prize.

  No way Fable would have had the temerity to do so herself. This would be Sonnet’s all-important contribution to the success of Faerie Falls.

  Her sidewalk reverie was disturbed by the shudder of sixth sense which always preceded Delia Hull’s presence.

  Sonnet cast a glance up Main Street through the side of her sunnies. Sure enough, there was Delia, as proudly straight-backed as ever, leaving Dr Herbert’s surgery with her husband. William Hull was a hunched figure at her side, walking slowly, with a gripping reliance on her thin arm as they moved towards their gleaming Chrysler Royal.

  Sonnet turned her back against them, clenching her parcel tighter.

  Some of us get stuck here in this valley thinking we’re the Queen Almighty of the Universe, but some of us are going to get the hell out of here!

  Aloud, she said: ‘You’re too good for this town, and for all of them, Fabes.’

  With that, she pushed her parcel into the mouth of the pillar box, and let it tip from her trembling hand into the darkness below.

  Away from the Hulls Sonnet skedaddled, balling her hands to stop their tremor.

  Summer 1962

  Sonnet’s bookshop was crackling with excitement this steamy Friday afternoon – the last before Christmas. All her family was crowded into Hamilton’s Books, perched on stools and benches, egging her on impatiently as she rang up the till and tidied her accounts. The pressure of their enthusiasm was too much – she kept making mistakes, shushing them sternly.

  Tonight, as soon as Sonnet was finished, they were heading up to the brand-new drive-in at Cairns, for a Christmas double feature. For weeks they’d been planning it, and Sonnet didn’t know who was more thrilled. Plum, whom Olive claimed hadn’t slept in a week, what with visions of Fantales dancing in her head, or herself, after Fable had actually acquiesced to a family outing. The biggest child this evening had to be her big uncle, though. She looked at Gav bouncing up and down on his bar stool, hiding coins in Plum’s ears, tapping Olive’s shoulders when she wasn’t looking, and wanted to laugh herself.

  ‘Oh, go make yourself useful, Gav,’ she said. ‘See if you can sort my mail pile for me. I haven’t had a chance.’

  ‘Righty-oh,’ he said. ‘Let’s see, then . . . well, this one can wait till tomorra, this one, too, this one can definitely wait, another one here is going to have to wait . . .’

  Sonnet slammed her till closed, gathered her cash tin and headed for the stairs.

  ‘And this one’s gonna have to wait, nope not opening this one until tomorrow . . . Oh look, here’s one for you, Beauty.’

  ‘For me?’ Fable said in surprise.

  ‘Got your name on it, my girl.’

  ‘That’s bizarre. May I?’

  ‘Here you go, don’t forget it’s gotta wait till tomorra, though.’

  Fable was laughing as she began tearing the large envelope open. ‘What could be more important than Christmas flicks?’

  Sonnet was nine steps up and already at the turn, when comprehension finally crashed in on her amusement. She lurched to a stop, hand gripping the railing.

  In the same instant, behind her, she heard Fable’s voice – inflection rising more steeply than the stairs themselves. ‘Sonnet? Son? Sonny? What is this?!’

  Silence dropped over the group.

  Sonnet turned, slowly, to face her sister.

  Fable, however, was focused on the thick sleeve of papers, lips murmuring quickly, her index finger on a shaking journey across the page.

  ‘Fable, please,’ Sonnet said, rushing down the staircase, crossing the floor, reaching for the papers.

  Fable spoke again, no longer with incredulity, rather revulsion. ‘No! You stop right there!’ She threw a hand up, halting Sonnet in her tracks. Fable skirted away, placing a row of bookshelves between them. She scanned frenziedly on.

  ‘Fabes, let me explain.’

  ‘Just shut up! Shut up right now!’

  ‘Girls?’ Olive said, stepping between them, face stricken. ‘Sonnet? Fable! What’s going on?’

  Sonnet could only shake her head. ‘Stay out of this, Olive.’

  ‘Stay out of what?’

  Fable was still flipping pages, mouthing words, her countenance paling. When she looked up, it was with so cold and callous a fury, both Sonnet and Olive recoiled. Sonnet’s hands flew up, as if to cover herself.

  ‘I didn’t want you to find out like this, Fabes. I was only trying—’

  ‘You’re a thief!’

  ‘—to help you.’

  ‘No! You helped yourself – to my private possessions, for your own fame.’

  ‘Not my fame, yours.’

  ‘I don’t want fame! I want my privacy. It’s all I’ve ever wanted! Give me my book back – you lying, interfering, controlling bitch.’

  ‘Hey now!’ Gav said, jumping up. ‘That’s enough.’

  But Fable was out of the door in a furious jangle before anyone could intercede. They watched her disappear down the road, running at full pelt, before Olive turned, wilting, to Sonnet.

  ‘What have you done?!’

  *

  It was with sheer relief that Sonnet slipped from the taut silence of the Holden at Heartwood, and fanged it for the cottage. Fable would surely be there, and already beginning to see sense. Sonnet would explain to her all the ways in which this was a good thing, a silver lining, the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

  ‘Come and get us straightaway if she’s not there,’ Olive called after her, as Gav steered a weeping Plum inside. ‘We’ll drive around all night, if we have to. Poor, dear girl . . .’

  The cottage was ablaze with light, doors and windows and cupboards flung open. The place had been ransacked. And Fable wasn’t there. Her room had been torn apart, as if she’d hastily packed. There was food pilfered from the kitchen, too. />
  Fable had run away.

  Sonnet collapsed on the couch, buried her face in a pillow and let loose an almighty scream.

  Tomorrow she’d sort it out. Fable needed to sweat on it a little, before she came to her senses.

  *

  Fable stayed sweating it, not coming to her senses, for more than five days. Olive was a mess. Sergeant Windsor was almost called, but for Olive’s dread of making another spectacle of the Emerson–Hamilton clan. In the end, it was the pile of dirty clothes left on Olive’s back stoop for laundering – like a cat’s mordant offering – which had convinced Olive not to call in the cavalry.

  Fable had also presented for her Saturday-morning and Monday-afternoon shifts in town. Thanks be to Smithy, for keeping them in the loop. The glaring fact was Fable hadn’t fled her whole life – only Sonnet. And soon enough, Sonnet told a distraught Olive, Fable was going to run out of purloined food.

  ‘Unless she’s learned any bush tucker skills?’ Sonnet mused, eyes on the distant creek line. ‘Perhaps she’s living off sugarcane juice?’

  Olive clucked her disapproval at the droll undertone Sonnet was taking throughout the whole affair.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ Sonnet snapped. ‘You’ve got to admit; this is like a seven-year-old running away. She’s a grown-up now! If she doesn’t want her book published, she can come back here and say so, instead of sooking out there in the forest like a bloody child.’

  ‘Language!’

  *

  It was Gav who ended the impasse. Tired of Sonnet’s heckling and Olive’s huffing, he strode out one afternoon and brought Fable home. As it turned out, he knew exactly where to find her. And when Gav’s hulking silhouette had appeared at her feeble encampment in the Green Woman’s Grove, Fable had seemed neither dismayed nor surprised to see him. What Gav actually said to Fable between the rippling roots of that tree, though, no one else would ever know. Clearly, it had been just the right combination of gentle empathy and subtle empowerment (a mix Sonnet admitted she hadn’t yet perfected) to induce Fable not only to return to the fold, but even to be reconciled, grudgingly, to her older sister.

  It was with quiet pride Fable stood before Sonnet at the Heartwood dinner table, to propose the terms of their reconciliation.

  Fable protruded her chin, Sonnet had to admit, with as much majestic stubbornness as she’d ever hoped to inspire in her sister and began thus so: ‘I can’t undo your green-eyed thievery . . .’

  Sonnet stayed her laughter.

  ‘. . . but since you’ve already set in motion this train, I am taking over the reins before you derail my dreams.’

  ‘Wheel,’ said Sonnet.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re mixing your metaphors. You started with trains but then you went to horses and back again.’

  Rage glittered in Fable’s eyes.

  Sonnet quieted, sitting back. Fable’s hands went to her hips. Up she rose; poised to strike.

  ‘As,’ Fable hissed, ‘has been wisely pointed out to me, this book, and the book deal itself, is mine and not in fact, nor ever was yours, Sonnet Hamilton. It has only been pitifully covetous thinking on your part.’

  Sonnet’s mouth twitched.

  ‘So, you should stop playing pretend now and go back to your day job. I am the author and artist. This is my book and my . . . message to Noah Vale.’

  Sonnet finally released the smile clenched between her lips – it spread widely, wildly across her face. ‘Heck yes, my little authoress!’

  CHAPTER 31

  LIT

  Late March 1964

  ‘N

  ight of all nights,’ Fable sighed, watching the scurrying hubbub of garden-party preparation from her sunroom window. On this night, she would be launched into the world as authoress and artist! Well, launched into the small sphere of Noah Vale – the only world that had ever mattered to her. And tomorrow afternoon, Fable would board the Sunday train for a six-month adventure: first, a round-the-country tour of media interviews, bookstore signings, library appearances and writers’ festivals, followed by a three-month stint working with her publisher, a thousand miles away in Brisbane, on her next book.

  Next book, at only twenty-one!

  It was unfathomable, yet coming true before her eyes. No matter how steadfastly Fable clung to the familiarity of Noah, and her unrequited romantic dream, the great tide was sweeping her out, anyway.

  And it was all thanks to Sonnet – or all her fault, depending on Fable’s mood. She watched her older sister rushing around the garden commanding her league of helpers – her new bookseller assistant, Hayley; ever alacritous Olive and Gav; even heavily pregnant Kate, who’d driven twelve hours north, all by herself, to support the Hamilton girls – as they converted the cottage gardens into Fable’s unofficial book launch. Or rather: her ‘Enchanted Garden Soiree’.

  Her publisher’s official book launch was still slated for a week’s time, in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens. But no one Fable knew or cared about would be there – by then, she’d be entirely in the hands of her new publicist, Sarah Timmons. Sarah herself was in attendance at tonight’s party. She’d arrived yesterday, accompanying a large box of first editions for Fable to share with her friends and family, and for Sonnet to proudly display in her bay window; the first bookseller in the country to stock Faerie Falls – by special arrangement.

  It was the least Fable could do for her sister-agent. Ultimately, Fable was only at this preposterous juncture in her young life because of her sister riding roughshod over all her plans, or lack thereof. In ways Fable had never expressed to another living soul, Faerie Falls was more the realisation of Sonnet’s greatest dreams than her own. Some days, it felt like she was merely going through the motions, for her sister’s sake.

  And look at Sonnet out there, in her element, bossing everyone like some big budget Hollywood director: setting up long trestle tables; wrapping all the trees in faerie lights; overseeing the assemblage of a low stage; assigning places for the jazz band, the wood-hewn bar, the dance floor.

  Tonight was Sonnet’s big night. Fable could see the gloating pride in nearly every step her sister took: Look how Esther Hamilton’s daughter turned out! To such end, Sonnet had fought long and hard to host the book launch in town, specifically at the CWA hall. It had been one of many heated arguments between the sisters which Fable had won by simple virtue of holding the trump card: her talent. As it turned out, being the mother to Sonnet’s vicarious book-baby had subverted a decade-old power struggle more expediently than Fable could ever have hoped. Sonnet’s ulterior motive in submitting so was patently obvious: whatever it takes to appease Fable, do it; just get her the hell out of town, and into the bookish life a Hamilton girl deserves! Correction: Sonnet coveted.

  Fable won the battle of location, but she’d relinquished invitation rights – had to give Sonnet something to stake her revenge on. Goodness knew who’d be turning up tonight, or what Sonnet intended to say in her speech. Fable wouldn’t put it past her to thrust a copy of Faerie Falls in the air with a champion’s cry: ‘Stick that in your judgemental traps, you bloody no-hoper blabbermouths stuck in this godforsaken town!’

  Fable grinned. It didn’t matter who Sonnet had or hadn’t invited. The most important people in Fable’s life would be here.

  All but one.

  Instantly, the haunted longing was back in her eyes. It never went away, but she’d learned to mask it as vigilantly as anything else.

  Fable gave herself a shake. Not tonight, heart. Tonight, she’d be surrounded by people who would distract and console her – though they could never know it – her glory-bathing eldest sister, indefatigable aunt, the uncle who’d embarrass her with paternal pride, and younger sister to whom she’d promised the first signed copy.

  Out in the garden, Sonnet was arranging garden lanterns – in long rows on the tables, hanging from the arching branches, lining the bar. This bewitching evening would be, most fittingly, a faerie-lit celebration under
the stars, and Fable had only a few hours left to become her own faerie godmother!

  First and foremost: get into town and rescue her gown before closing time, from her dressmaker. Dream-maker, Fable thought, smiling.

  *

  The door of Emerson’s Fashion and Fabrics jingled closed behind Fable. On the front step, she hugged the dress bag to her chest, sighing. Joanna Ellis, Olive’s new seamstress, had done a marvellous job with the alterations to the old gown Fable had nabbed from the mildewing cupboard in Sonnet’s room. A peridot gown, colour of both her Green Woman and Birdwing faeries, which had surely waited there all these years, just for her.

  And who cared what Olive had to say about it?

  Well, actually, Fable did. Hence, sneaking behind Olive’s back and getting Joanna to do last-second adjustments. Joanna had practically sewn Fable into the dress this afternoon, so perfect was the fit. And now Fable had just enough time to race home, do her hair and makeup – then let the grandest party of her life begin!

  Draping the bag over her arms to prevent creases, Fable danced up the street to the Holden. It was the ‘Golden Hour’ and autumnal sunshine flared beneath the shop eaves, suffusing her vision. With her hands trapped beneath her gown, Fable was unable to shield her eyes. She bent her head against the light, and continued blindly on.

  The pedestrian striding tall around the corner towards Fable, obfuscated by the glare, was upon her before she had corrected her drifting path. They collided abruptly: Fable, with a yelp; he, with a dazed cry.

  ‘Fable—’

  Her head snapped up to take in the face forming out of the sun. Her hand, free of the dress, flew too late to stifle her shocked utterance.

  ‘Oh, Raff!’ Emotion broke its banks, flooding her eyes.

  ‘I’ve hurt you.’

  ‘No,’ she answered, blinking hard. ‘I wasn’t watching out for you.’

  They stood for a mutually searching moment; stretching long. His face held none of its usual good-naturedness.

  She ventured first to speak. ‘Why are you back in Noah?’

  He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Believe me, I asked myself the same thing for the whole three days it took to get home.’