Those Hamilton Sisters

by Averil Kenny

  Joie de vivre, Sonnet sighed, followed by a sucker punch of realisation: These are the waning moments of girlhood.

  CHAPTER 9

  PERSUASION

  Christmas 1955

  T

  heir first tropical Christmas was, even by Sonnet’s exacting standards, a success. The sun blazed; their only Christmas record played ceaselessly on the old gramophone from the hall cupboard; and each of the stockings Sonnet had managed to fill on Mama’s behalf, with much thoughtfulness and creativity, had been gleefully received by her younger sisters.

  Even Sonnet’s contribution to Christmas lunch had turned out perfectly. It was with a proud heart that she ushered the girls up to Heartwood, arms laden with brown paper-wrapped gifts and Pyrex dishes, warmly filled with roast lamb and vegetables, and caramel dumplings.

  As the day roasted on into afternoon, the new Hamilton–Emerson clan gathered in the lounge room, nursing full bellies, to exchange gifts. Sonnet suppressed a smirk as Olive and Gav traded a nose-rubbing kiss with their presents. It was all so conventional.

  The Mateus Rosé, served graciously with lunch by her teetotal aunt and uncle, had loosened Sonnet’s shoulders. She basked in the two-glass afterglow. A year ago, alone in their tiny Canberra flat, they could never have imagined such a Christmas.

  On her wrapping-strewn lap, Sonnet held a hardcover edition of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, given to her earlier by Olive. Seeing Sonnet’s shock, Olive had rushed to explain, ‘It was your mother’s favourite book.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’ve never wanted to read it, though. But this is a beautiful edition, thank you.’

  ‘I tried to get you a special book. I’m not into fiction myself, but Alfred said this one was perfect for you.’

  ‘Who?’ Sonnet asked, glancing up sharply.

  ‘Alfred Shearer, he has Shearer’s Books on Main Street, opposite Raintree Park.’

  Sonnet tried and failed to visualise the store. ‘And how would Alfred Shearer know my reading tastes?’

  ‘Not yours. Esther’s. Alfred knew your bookish mother very well. He’s been the town’s only link to literature for years. Had that bookshop as long as I can remember, and he was the school’s librarian for decades.’

  ‘I’m surprised he remembers what she borrowed twenty years ago.’

  Olive seemed to choose her next words cautiously, and as was their customary dance, Sonnet felt her temper rising in expectation.

  ‘Alfred was a great champion of your mother’s. He would love it if you popped into his shop one day. I think you would both benefit from a chat.’

  Sonnet snapped the book closed. ‘I’m sure I’ll get into the bookstore – eventually.’

  Though Sonnet had quashed further talk of Alfred Shearer, the thought of him weighed heavily. She had watched the girls unwrapping their remaining presents unseeingly. Only Fable’s delighted gasp – a rare sound indeed – wrenched Sonnet back now. Fable had received an extensive set of watercolours, boasting every imaginable hue. Olive beamed in Fable’s embrace.

  Sonnet smiled too. She had been overjoyed to discover Fable buried under a torchlit blanket fort on Christmas Eve, sketching again after months of dispiritedness. When Sonnet snuck in, much later, to place the stocking, she found Fable asleep, clutching the book to her heart. Sonnet dallied for a moment to stroke Fable’s forehead, comforted that, in slumber, she still looked like a slip of a girl. Sonnet paused then, trying to make out the picture under her splayed fingers. Ever so gently, she shifted Fable’s hand, admiring the blue eyes beneath. The intricate detail was splendid. If it were possible, Fable’s talent had only improved in the interlude.

  Olive drew back from Fable to pat the watercolour tin. ‘Perhaps you can test out some of the colours tonight and paint the fireworks for us!’

  ‘What fireworks?’ Fable asked, wide-eyed.

  ‘The Hulls put on a firework show for Christmas. You’ll see them from our deck.’

  Plum scaled Olive’s waist. ‘I want fireworks, Aunnie Ov! Fireworks, Aunnie Ov!’

  Olive laughed, enfolding Plum in her arms. ‘Darling girl, you have to wait until it’s dark to see the fireworks.’

  ‘Sounds a bit flash for Christmas,’ Sonnet said. ‘Pun intended.’

  ‘It’s a Hull tradition – every year since their children were young. Christmas is quite the affair at Summerlinn, even more so now their eldest boy lives in Brisbane. Rafferty always comes home for Christmas.’

  ‘So, they roll out the fireworks for him – like your regular low-key family?’

  ‘Oh, you’re not far off the mark – Delia talks of nothing else but that golden boy of hers, from January to November. I’m surprised she hasn’t been in the shop chewing your ear off about him.’

  ‘Ha! Delia hasn’t stepped foot in Emerson’s since I’ve been working there for you.’

  ‘She’ll get over it. Our Delia’s a quilter, so unless she’s willing to drive to Cairns each time she needs fabric, she’ll be back.’

  ‘Grovelling?’

  ‘Bragging!’ Olive laughed. ‘Delia would get over any grudge when it comes to lording it over us with her perfect boy. You can’t blame her, though. He’s a fine, strapping lad, that one. Rafferty’s had every girl in Noah after him at some point or another. He’s got it all – good looks, nice manners, not to mention the property he’ll one day inherit from his father. Has to be the valley’s most eligible bachelor.’

  ‘He’d be a mighty fine match for you, young Sonnet,’ interjected Gav.

  ‘Too right!’ said Olive. ‘And he’s about your age, maybe a year younger. Of course, Delia would see that happen over her dead body. No woman’s good enough for her Rafferty.’

  ‘What a shame, sounds like such a catch, too, with a mother-in-law like that.’

  ‘Oh no, he’s a dear boy. Not cut from the same Hull cloth.’

  ‘Used to work for me at the store when he was a young ’un,’ Gav said. ‘Saturday mornings religiously – much to William Hull’s chagrin. Didn’t want any son of his working in a shop when he should be learning the family business.’

  ‘He’s a reluctant heir,’ Olive added. ‘Got all that prime farming land coming to him one day, yet he doesn’t show any interest in it. William was horrified when Rafferty chose that architecture degree of his. Waste of time for a future canegrower.’

  ‘Heaven forbid some chump might want an education,’ Sonnet snorted. ‘How embarrassing for the bloody Hulls!’

  Olive jerked as the curse slipped out in earshot of the younger girls. ‘Language! Goodness.’

  Sonnet glanced at her sisters. Plum was unpacking her new puzzle, oblivious. But Fable was sitting close by, unnaturally still, lashes kissing her cheeks. Sonnet frowned.

  ‘Well, Rafferty is his mother’s boy,’ said Olive. ‘No reluctance on his part to assume the mantle could ever offset her favouritism.’

  ‘Or,’ Sonnet added, ‘maybe he’ll escape the clutches of this town and his dragon mother, and make something of himself.’

  Sonnet returned her frowning gaze to Fable, thinking they needed to be more careful not to discuss Adriana’s family in front of Fabes. The mere mention of the Hulls seemed to disturb her. ‘Anyway, who cares about the Hulls? Olive, I have something, and I’m sorry it’s not much, that I made for you . . .’

  *

  Beneath the epiphyte-festooned branches of the rain trees sat a tense figure, with sensible navy blouse tucked into her capris, and her mother’s pearls at lobes and clavicle. Freya rested against the massive trunk. Sonnet’s gaze was fixed upon the bookstore opposite Raintree Park, wherein resided the Alfred Shearer she had yet to meet.

  In her gripping hands was Persuasion, the book she’d read, cover to cover, in one late night. Fancy discovering she actually could enjoy an Austen novel – she who didn’t have a romantic bone in her body!

  Sonnet had ignored the novel for a whole week after Christmas; Alfred’s conveyed insistence that Persuasion was perfect for her, servi
ng only to repel. But in some instances, Sonnet could admit she’d been wrong. Discovering that line – ‘facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left’ – had convinced her: this was a man worth becoming acquainted with. So, here she was, braced to meet yet another bearer of her history, with all the revelation that entailed.

  Everywhere she went, Sonnet parried yet more versions of Esther Hamilton: in the General Store, at the back of the baker’s truck, at Heartwood when so-and-so dropped by for a chat about such-and-such, and over the counter at Emerson’s Fashion and Fabrics, where women were determined to reopen more than just seams. Sonnet’s appointment to part-time assistant had drummed up a surfeit of business; local ladies keen to have their gawk, and their say. Most times, the memories of Esther Hamilton were shared with grating pity, assumed intimacy, and such embellishment; it took every modicum of willpower for Sonnet to keep her lips zipped.

  Then there was the cruel candour of older folk down the street who spoke before they thought. Oh, the things they said . . . ‘You’ve got Esther’s dreadful red hair!’ Or, ‘You look so much like poor Archer, my word your mother did a number on that family!’ And, ‘I can see Esther kept her beauty for herself, always was a selfish girl.’

  It was pure Schadenfreude. Never had Sonnet collected a word more apt for this town, and these people. At holding her tongue, Sonnet was becoming uncharacteristically proficient. Such martyrdom didn’t suit her and felt, frankly, appalling, but Olive had promised: if she waited them out, they would tire of the Hamilton story. So long as she didn’t provide fuel for the fire.

  The first fat plop of rain that landed on her book, Sonnet wiped away without a glance. The second and third, she noted distractedly. The following drops, she moved to quickly erase. Then, abruptly, the raindrops were indiscernible one from another. With a roar materialising from thin, or rather, thick air – the sky was rent apart.

  Above her, the rain tree folded up its leaves.

  Sonnet flew for the bookshop with a yelp; book shoved under blouse, bike clattering along at her side. Into the bookstore, on a gust of rain, she swept. A bell clanged as she slammed the door and pressed back against it breathlessly.

  Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the gloom of the overcrowded store. High, dark shelves lined every wall, heavily loaded. Even the leaning book ladders had become makeshift shelves, piled with books. A musty, stagnant odour of books enveloped her.

  Toiling down a spiral staircase at the rear was an elderly man.

  ‘Oh, lass, smell that! You’ve brought in with you the first scent of the Wet hitting dry earth. Might be my favourite smell in the world! “Argillaceous odour” the mineralogists call it, meaning . . .’

  He stopped on the final step, voice trailing off. Sonnet sluiced water from her arms. Slowly, silently, he came towards her, arms outstretched. She stiffened. When he was within a few paces of her, he stopped.

  ‘Esther’s girl.’

  His eyes were spilling over with moisture, whether tears or simply rheuminess, she couldn’t tell.

  ‘Sonnet,’ she supplied. Tears pricked in her own eyes.

  ‘Sonnet.’ He held out his hands, and she placed hers there. For a long, shaking moment, he beheld the flame-tressed girl before him.

  ‘Oh, it’s so good to look at you.’ Alfred said. ‘I’ve been waiting to meet you for twenty years. Watching that door, hoping your mother would walk back through it one day, with you in tow.’

  ‘Yes, I wanted to come and see you because . . .’

  He waited.

  ‘Because I need . . . a book. I was pleased with your suggestion of Persuasion. And I think you might be able to help me find something.’

  Alfred smiled. If he was disappointed she’d resorted to a cover story, he was too gracious to show it.

  ‘I’d be honoured to help you. Come, I’ll make you a cuppa and you can tell me what you’re after.’

  *

  Sonnet’s face burned as the bookstore door rattled closed behind her. That old man had sat with inestimable patience, nodding kindly through her waffling lies about the rainforest trees and birds she wanted to learn about, never once questioning her true motives. Nursing her cuppa, comforted by the smell of old books and torrential rain, Sonnet had felt more at peace than she had in years. And yet, she evaded Alfred’s eyes, focusing instead on his soft-grey knitted vest. She sat in selfish enjoyment of Alfred’s hospitality, silently beseeching him to speak of her mother, without having the gumption to ask a thing.

  Sonnet heaved the tomes of rainforest flora and fauna into her basket and pushed away from the kerb with a sigh.

  ‘You gutless wonder!’ she fumed as her tyres splattered along the rain-slick road. ‘Sonnet Arden Hamilton, you’ll go straight back tomorrow, and you’ll look Alfred in the eyes and ask him to please tell you everything he remembers about Mama.’

  *

  Hope of redemptive return to Shearer’s Books the next day was thwarted, however, by a rain depression which settled over the valley. The Wet had finally arrived.

  ‘Send ’er down, Hughie!’ Gav cried, gleeful as a boy, with both weathered hands outstretched over the veranda, to receive summer’s long-awaited due.

  ‘Who?’ asked Sonnet.

  ‘Hughie!’ Gav shouted, shaking a triumphant fist at the sky.

  ‘You’ll soon learn how to talk to Hughie,’ Olive said, making eyes at Gav. He came then, with fresh stubble, to nuzzle the Gav Spot behind her neck.

  Sonnet scowled. Their conspiratorial intimacy irked her no end. What kind of madness was this married-for-umpteen-decades business?

  Uxorious, Sonnet mouthed, showing excessive fondness for one’s wife.

  *

  For a fortnight, it rained – though it was not rain as the Hamilton girls had ever known it: thunderous walls of solid white, obliterating all. Serpentine Creek was a distended, all-devouring torrent, severing the narrow gully pass into town, cutting them off from the world. The open field surrounding the cottage became a pulsing brown river, pushing debris the size of telephone poles along with it.

  ‘Looks like we’re waterfront acreage now,’ Sonnet told Gav with a laugh. Humour belied the twist of fear in her belly.

  Gav spoke directly to her hidden dread. ‘Stop fretting, pet. You’re sitting at the hundred-year flood level. Cottage has been there safe and sound, for generations.’

  Sonnet was not appeased. The underworld crept over Noah. Mildew flowered across the ceiling; algae grew in opportunistic frond pails; mosquitoes swarmed forth; long-dead smells leached out of dank fabrics; red devil’s claw rose from the earth; and dark mould grew on everything, even a person, should she stay sitting long enough.

  Not that Sonnet was in danger of that.

  Olive smiled at Sonnet prowling the rain-shrouded deck, swatting at her arms. Sonnet’s face would brighten as each rainbow formed, only to fall into despondency as yet another pounding wave swept across the vale.

  ‘It never ends!’ she cried in disbelief.

  ‘You’ll get used to it. It’s always a shock to newcomers finding themselves flooded out of civilisation.’

  Sonnet slumped at the table.

  ‘Before you know it,’ Olive added, ‘you’ll welcome the rains. It’s good to have an enforced holiday, put your feet up for a bit.’

  Coming from Olive, with her indefatigable work ethic, this was a revelation.

  ‘Why don’t you get stuck into some of those books you brought home from Alfred’s?’

  Sonnet snorted, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder at the girl curled on rattan settee, sketchbook splayed open beside hefty tome, and a long strawberry plait being masticated between murmuring lips.

  ‘Fabes nicked them. She’s been drooling over those dry flora books. And the way she moons by the windows, I think she’s infatuated with the damned rainforest!’

  Olive noted the withering amber s
cowl directed at the back of Sonnet’s head and grinned. ‘Perhaps next time you’ll ask Alfred for something you want, then?’

  The next Hamilton glare thrown was a green one, from Sonnet herself.

  CHAPTER 10

  SHEARER’S TALE

  January 1956

  A

  week passed in sequestered resentment. The first indication that the floodwaters had receded was Fable flapping out of the cottage door with a towel around her neck, and sandals thrown on so hastily they weren’t even buckled.

  Sonnet lobbed a sigh after her, but turned just as hurriedly herself in search of Plummy’s port. Thank goodness Olive was due to mind her today.

  Sonnet’s morning at Emerson’s Fashion and Fabrics crawled by. At the stroke of midday, she locked up and hurried down to Shearer’s Books. Alfred’s SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED sign was no impediment to a woman on a mission such as this.

  At her jangling entrance, Alfred looked up from his newspaper and aromatic steak and kidney pie with a smile so hopeful she wanted to weep.

  He too had been waiting, then.

  ‘I want to know,’ she blurted, ‘why you are the only person in the world anyone has ever called an “ally” of my mother’s. Why you were her friend when she was friendless.’

  Alfred wrapped his pie back in its paper bag. ‘That’s a story I’ve been waiting a long time to tell. Come upstairs, we’ll chat over a cuppa . . .’

  Up the spiral staircase they went, into the overcrowded, odorous heart of an old man’s dwelling. Alfred’s flatlet above the shop overlooked Raintree Park and the green mountains beyond, sharply defined as cardboard cut-outs. The august view and hot cuppa softened the last residues of tension. Sonnet sank back into the overstuffed armchair. Alfred patted her shoulder as he shuffled to the seat beside her.

  ‘I haven’t anything alarming to tell you, Sonnet. You’ll have heard the worst of it from the meddlers round these parts.’