Those Hamilton Sisters

by Averil Kenny

  It was an urge so long missing; Fable had been afraid she’d misplaced it forever. Convinced, even, that Mama had taken it with her. After all, no one in the world had loved and praised Fable’s art as Mama had. Mama could sit for hours just watching Fable draw, tears streaming, unchecked, down her face. Always such a lovely hurt, being able to make Mama cry like that. The memory of her mother’s stricken face now, however, made Fable cover her own. It took thirteen breaths to quell the emotional uprising.

  Why hadn’t she come here sooner? The tremor in her fingers grew insistent. She longed for her sketch pad and ribbon-bound pencils, hidden beneath the loose board she’d found in her new window seat. But no way was she going back home to ‘make herself useful’ in Sonnet’s eyes.

  What would she give for a new tin of watercolours to do justice to this scene of light and shadow and ancient, breathing stillness? Her soul, she’d sell her very soul!

  Fable groaned with the knowledge she’d have to approach Sonnet directly for better art materials. In Sonnet’s current frame of mind, that would inevitably entail ‘establishing chores’ and ‘being a help’ and ‘earning pocket money’. These precious last days before school started were Fable’s alone to squander. She would not waste them trying to earn her keep, or being kept!

  Fable considered the eastward direction of the creek. Olive said the creek meandered all the way through Noah Vale, meaning if Fable followed it, she had access to any place she desired.

  Continuing over the cane bridge and through the opposite tree break, she discovered another sprawling cane farm. Atop the rise was an elegant plantation house, surrounded by mango trees. The Hulls’ property was even grander than Heartwood!

  Whistling appreciatively, she drew back into the forest to contemplate the winding path on the Hulls’ side. It was still part of the creek – surely she wouldn’t be roused on for trespassing by some slack-jawed, dull-witted, rifle-toting farmer? Well, the Hulls would have to get used to Fable Hamilton’s daily incursions.

  Fable drifted on. The creek’s curving course alternated between stretches of rapids and languid pools of glassy perfection. Fable began to catalogue in her mind’s scrapbook. She bent to heart-shaped leaves, soft as velveteen, smiling as raindrops skittered off like marbles. Softly, she pressed the image onto the imagined page. She lifted her eyes to a waxy globe of leaves dangling like a forest lantern. Nasty green ants swarmed from the sphere when she poked it, but Fable dashed away with a mental duplicate stored. She rescued glossy fallen leaves in commingled hues of crimson, saffron and teal, holding them against flaring sunlight to reveal their complex inner veins. She needed a fine black ink, and pronto!

  Soon, the rush of a waterfall could be heard and, over it, voices raised in youthful abandon. Fable slowed, wary of revealing herself before she’d had a chance to spy. At the next corner, the creek narrowed into a rocky gorge, the path winding steeply out of sight to the source of the commotion. With hammering heart, she descended a natural staircase formed of stone.

  She came upon a swimming hole, surrounded by steep, mossy walls, fed by a waterfall rushing into a deep amber-lit pool. Mirrored light danced on the cliff faces. A young boy hurtled across the water on a rope swing. On a wooden cubby-house deck jutting out of the rainforest was an elfin-faced, raven-haired girl of her own age, hollering shamelessly. Two dark-haired boys, twins, bobbed out under the waterfall from a cave hidden behind the curtain. At positions around the pool, jumping from rocks or boulders, were children of varying ages. They might have been water nymphs at play. It was an otherworldly scene, more idyllic than any vista she had ever dreamed up.

  Delight was quickly eclipsed by covetous sorrow. How unbearable that this place had already been discovered, and claimed. Fable was about to slink away when she was spotted. Silence descended on the pool, all eyes trained on the strange, strawberry-blonde girl unexpectedly in their midst.

  The elfin-faced girl stepped forward on the high platform, face exultant as though espying a great prize. She executed a pert dive and leapt out to stand before Fable, dripping prettily.

  ‘Who are you?’ she cried, blue eyes devouring Fable. Everything about this ravenous girl made Fable want to back away.

  ‘My name’s . . . Fae.’

  ‘I’m Adriana Hull. Are you here on holidays?’

  ‘I’m just up from Canberra.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Thirteen next month.’

  ‘I’m turning thirteen in October,’ Adriana said. ‘Having a huge party. Huge.’

  Fable found herself surrounded by young people now.

  Adriana motioned grandly. ‘This is our waterhole. We call it the Glade. And this is our Glade Gang. We’re mostly all cousins, except for Christy; she’s my best friend. And the Lagorio boys, they’re identical twins. Can you tell them apart?’

  One Lagorio boy grinned at Fable. ‘I’m Marco, and that mop’s Vince.’ His mirror image nodded, not looking at her.

  A young woman, of Sonnet’s age, grinned from the shallows. ‘Howdy! I’m Kate Hardy, a cousin. This is my kid brother, Eddy.’ A young boy stared beside her. From a cliff ledge, a teenage boy sang out, ‘Hey, I’m Ben! The best-looking Hardy.’

  Kate chortled.

  Two boys at higher jumping positions offered no greetings.

  ‘Oh, the Ravellis are here, too,’ Adriana said, nodding in their direction.

  Flanking Adriana now, a slim girl eyed Fable charily. ‘I’m Christy Logan,’ she announced.

  Fable’s hand lifted weakly.

  Adriana moved closer still. ‘I have two older brothers as well. Rafferty lives in Brisbane, he’s at university! And my other brother is Eamon. He’s fifteen. But he’s working on the harvest today.’

  Fable’s gaze slipped free of Adriana’s. She dipped a toe in the water.

  ‘Got your togs on underneath?’ asked Adriana.

  Fable shook her head, patting her blouse; perfectly pressed by Sonnet.

  ‘Bring them tomorrow then! We’ll be here. But you can stay now, watch us do some dives.’

  With that, the ruckus resumed. A series of dives followed. Fable smiled courteously at each diver, eyes darting away between performances to study their Glade. Adriana saved her dive for last, pulling it off with elaborate flourish, to Christy Logan’s enthusiastic albeit unsmiling applause.

  *

  The next morning, Fable raced out of the cottage straight after breakfast, togs beneath plaid shirtwaist dress, well-worn towel under her arm, and an exasperated Sonnet waving a ladle at her from the stoop: ‘Be home for lunch!’

  For an hour she sat and stewed at the waterhole, ears pricking over the waterfall rush for approaching children, hesitant of shifting a leaf out of place before the Glade’s rightful owners had returned.

  Then, with gust of laughter, the Glade was filled again. Not a person looked surprised to see her there, especially not Adriana.

  ‘Can you swim, Fae?’ she asked, tossing an apple core into the forest deep. ‘Come under the waterfall with me!’

  Together they stroked towards the curtain of water.

  ‘Deep breath on three and follow me under!’

  Heart pounding, Fable copied Adriana’s dolphin dive. She surfaced in a cavernous hollow where Adriana waited, eyes agleam. They scrambled up onto a rock plateau, wider than a bed, and sat blinking wetly at one another behind the sheer, backlit screen of falling water.

  ‘This is our cave. When I was little, I’d bring my baby dolls in here and play mums and dads. Eamon used to hide out here when he was going to get another flogging from Pa. But you can’t get under here in the Wet when the creek floods. Even Raff can’t, and he’s a top-notch swimmer!’

  ‘It’s more magical than anything I’ve ever seen,’ Fable said, hugging her legs.

  Adriana nodded, as though it was exactly what she’d expected to hear. She slid from the rock. ‘Can you high dive? Come and have a turn from the tree house!’

  Fable followed her obed
iently out into the pool. They came to a floating stop beneath the platform.

  ‘Oi! Ladder!’ shouted Adriana.

  A handmade rope ladder fell, uncoiling, for the girls to climb. At the top, Marco Lagorio greeted Fable with puppyish cheer.

  ‘Hullo, newie!’

  She grinned.

  The wooden tree house, cantilevered over the creek from the cliff, had huge windows open to the forest and a tiny veranda, complete with handrails. Fable felt as though she were shrouded in the canopy itself.

  ‘This is gorgeous,’ she breathed. ‘Who made it?’

  ‘My brother, Raff. Designed it all himself,’ Adriana said. ‘Now, watch me jump!’

  She scaled the handrail and took hold of a rope dangling by. Seconds later she was whooping out over the pool, and plummeting down.

  ‘She’s so brave,’ Fable gawped.

  Adriana surfaced on a shout. ‘Come on, Fae! Jump!’

  ‘Ah, Adriana likes to show off,’ Marco said, coming to stand beside her. ‘But tell her to jump off the top of the waterfall – she won’t do it! We call that jump “No Fear”,’ he said, pointing to the name painted on the cliff face.

  Even as they watched, an older boy was scaling the cliff to the No Fear ledge.

  ‘That’s Eamon,’ Marco said as a cocky, dark-haired boy executed a perfect backflip from the towering rock.

  Fable covered her mouth, and Marco chuckled. ‘They’re all show-offs in that family. Eamon’s been known to do it blindfolded before.’

  ‘Fae!’ Adriana hollered, splashing impatiently. ‘Hurry up and jump, you big chicken!’

  Fable backed away from the edge. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Marco said, gesturing at the forest path behind. ‘That way takes you back to the pool. Try one of the baby jumps first.’

  Baby? Fable was affronted. She was on the railing and sailing over the edge, before she’d even processed her intention. The surprise of cool water registered simultaneously with the shock of her impulsivity. She surfaced to rousing cheers and whistles.

  Only Marco, still standing on the platform, witnessed the splash of rage across Adriana Hull’s pretty features.

  *

  Fable returned each day to the Glade, and her new gang. On the last Saturday morning before school, a fractious Sonnet – fed up with the daily disappearing act and the accumulation of rocks, berries and seeds along Fable’s window seat – detained her for a morning of chores.

  Fable was standing on a pile of encyclopaedias in a second-hand school dress with Sonnet kneeling at her ankles, pins in the corners of her mouth, when Adriana announced herself loudly at the screen door. Both Hamilton sisters looked up in startled unison.

  ‘So much for taking a while to fit in, Olive.’ Sonnet smirked, elbowing Fable forward.

  Adriana was their first official visitor and Sonnet sprang immediately into the kind of saccharine hostess-playing Fable thought only little girls disposed to. She bit her tongue, following closely behind Adriana.

  ‘I’ve never been inside the old Hamilton cottage,’ Adriana said, eyes scouring their humble abode.

  Sonnet peppered Adriana with a thousand questions on Noah Vale and Adriana answered it all in her self-aggrandising way. Fable was thrown into toe-curling discomfort by the unexpected meeting of no-longer-secret friend and nosy sister, unease only intensifying when Adriana slipped an arm through hers in a show of alliance. The revelation of her real name by an oblivious Sonnet passed uneventfully, with only the barest flicker from Adriana betraying intrigue.

  But the interview, however cringe-worthy, had the desired effect: liberation!

  CHAPTER 4

  SUMMERLINN

  A

  cloudless bowl of cobalt blue arched overhead as Sonnet walked Fable to the quiet country road along which the Noah Vale school bus trundled each morning. Plum stumbled along beside Fable, pulling at her hand.

  Fable sat on her school port beside the row of barrel mailboxes doubling as bus stop, and fixed her impassive gaze on the bend in the road. With every whimper from clinging Plum, Fable stilled further. Only the quiver of her chin hinted at hidden turbulence.

  Olive had insisted she could drive the girls into school for Fable’s first day, and had been rightly spurned. As if Sonnet was letting her take control of this momentous occasion!

  The school bus rumbled into view and instantly Fable was on her feet, straightening her faded uniform and scanning the windows for Adriana’s face. There she was, on the back row, waving Fable imperiously to a saved seat. Fable darted out of Plum’s crying grasp and in the clatter of a door was gone.

  Sonnet waited until the red dust had settled, before the smile fell from her lips. For the first time since Mama had passed, the Hamilton girls were going their separate ways. Sonnet swallowed a lump, scooped a protesting Plum onto the angular jut of her hip and turned for home.

  *

  The morning dragged, plagued as Sonnet was by a gnawing disquiet. Plum wandered forlornly around the house, asking for her sister.

  Sonnet busied herself getting to know the ancient Singer lugged out of the hall cupboard. By afternoon, she’d mastered the tetchy machine, even running up some skirts for chubby-kneed Plum, who was now engaged with a grand heirloom doll’s house given over, reluctantly, by Olive.

  Mama had purportedly played happy families with the Victorian doll’s house for many years – far longer, Olive had murmured, than most girls were wont to do. Plum had fallen in love with it, too. And each time Sonnet glanced at Plum sitting with the doll’s house in a pool of lacy sunlight, she nursed a glow of smug victory: Olive thwarted yet again.

  Olive had originally shown Plum the doll’s house at Heartwood, knowing full well that Plum would demand to stay and play with it in her newly kitted-out playroom.

  ‘Let her be with us for a few hours,’ Olive had petitioned, as Plum was dragged away, wailing, to the cottage.

  Handing Plum over for any length of time was a step too far. Plum had sobbed for the dollhouse each time Olive had visited the cottage – which was, much to Sonnet’s chagrin, still every day.

  ‘Just checking how you girls are getting on,’ Olive always said, expertly manoeuvring herself in between screen door and frame. After each visit, Sonnet cursed Olive’s name louder still.

  I see you chipping away at Plum, at all of us!

  Eventually, Olive had confronted Sonnet directly about her unwillingness to relinquish Plum. And Sonnet had replied from the heart. ‘I’m scared of anything happening while I’m not there to protect her. I can’t lose anyone else – the girls are all I have left.’

  ‘Oh, Sonnet,’ Olive had cried, reaching for her. ‘You’re not alone anymore, you have us!’

  ‘No, we’re only neighbours,’ Sonnet had retorted, moving safely away. ‘All we Hamilton girls have is each other.’

  Nevertheless, the following day, Gav had helped Olive carry the doll’s house down to the cottage for the girls to keep. Conceding defeat, as far as Sonnet was concerned.

  Sonnet was putting the final row of rickrack on a basic apron when, through the window, a figure in a blue pinafore caught her eye: Fable, plodding slowly down the hill, afternoon sunlight glinting off her strawberry locks. Imperceptible to another, but not Sonnet’s keen eye, was the dejected stoop of Fable’s shoulders. Sonnet stood for a long moment considering this, as Plum swooped out of the door to meet her sister.

  She watched Fable squeeze her baby sister, face contorting against tears. But by the time Fable reached the cottage, and Sonnet, calm had descended over her delicate features.

  Fable was largely non-communicative for the remainder of the evening, and the rest of the week. Her teacher was fine, her class was fine, her lunch was fine, her friends were fine; everything was fine. And yet, each day, that shining head dipped a little lower, her shoulders hunched further over as she traipsed down the hill.

  When Fable slouched through the door on Friday afternoon, head sunk to her chest
, the fist around Sonnet’s heart clenched too tightly to be borne a moment longer. Enough! Outright interrogation might push Fable further into her shell, but it was a risk that must be taken.

  Sonnet forced Fable onto the couch as she tried to slink by. ‘Fable, this can’t go on. I know you’re hurting – and I want to know why. Is it Mama? Or is it something else? Are you not fitting in at school?’

  Silence.

  Masked amber eyes.

  More sisterly pleas.

  Then, with a wail, the dam broke – dignified guardedness crumbling all at once. Fable wept, face buried in the upholstery, shoulders heaving.

  ‘Oh, Fabes.’ Gentle now, stroking her arm. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. I knew you were upset, but I didn’t want to make you cry. Please tell me, Fable.’

  Muffled sobbing continued unabated for several minutes. Plum sat transfixed nearby, mouth lolling open.

  ‘I’ll get you some tissues,’ Sonnet said, watching tears and snot coagulate on the old couch. As she rose, a slim arm flew out to stop her. Sonnet eased back down.

  Fable began on a sob. ‘They say Mama was – oh I can’t!’

  ‘She was what?’

  ‘They’re all saying she was the . . . “town floozy”.’

  Shock slammed Sonnet back against the couch.

  ‘That she seduced a married man. And you, Sonnet, you’re his bastard. We’re all bastards!’

  Guttural sobbing took over.

  ‘Who says this!’

  ‘Everyone.’

  ‘No, be specific. It’s a vicious lie. Who?’

  Big, glittering eyes locked tragically with hers. ‘Christy Logan to begin with – she spread it round the first day of school. Then she and Adriana ganged up on me, and now they’re all saying it about Mama . . . and us. No one wants to talk to me, they all hate me, and Adriana won’t even look at me, except to sneer. The story’s been getting worse every day – we’re homewreckers and Mama was a harlot! I didn’t even know what that meant until I found it in the dictionary . . .’ Her face coloured.

  Rage blew Sonnet physically from the couch. ‘That snake in the grass! How dare she come round here pretending to be a friend then spread such lies! Backstabbing, malevolent little—’ She checked herself. ‘Well, it’s not your problem anymore, Fabes.’