Those Hamilton Sisters

by Averil Kenny

  They stared at each other.

  ‘Wait for me, Raff.’

  ‘Write your book, Fable of the Glade.’

  She glowered, and in a bitter, white whirl was gone.

  *

  The man left alone in the tiny boat dipped his head between his hands. His long groan was swallowed by the roar of the falls, and the flood of Noah Vale’s latest graduates into the balmy night.

  CHAPTER 29

  UNBOUND

  March 1962

  S

  onnet had been in a stare-off with her cassowary when the idea, nay the compulsion, seized her. Afterwards, when the manic urge had been fulfilled, Sonnet would wonder if the cassowary had planted the idea there himself.

  It didn’t seem so far-fetched a thing for that cassowary to do. He and Sonnet were always getting into eye-wateringly intense staring competitions over the Story Bar when shop traffic lulled. She was convinced he’d have tried anything to win. And this particular tactic had worked extraordinarily well . . .

  With the glazed eyes of one under a hypnotic spell, Sonnet departed the Story Bar, spun round her WELCOME sign, ascended the staircase, and flung wide the door to Alfred Shearer’s private office.

  It was exactly as he’d left it, five years ago. Great half-bombed skyscrapers of books, papers, boxes and files rose in the unbreathed air – scale model of a crumbling city. His disorder; her: secret hoarder.

  Sonnet clenched her hands into fists and squeezed hard: once, twice, a third time. Only on their release was she ready, at long last, to begin her excavation.

  She proceeded to gut the room entirely. But first, every box of books and leaf of paper and sheaf of files was meticulously combed through, and consigned either to her shop below, or the skip she’d hired before she lost her nerve. Then, the dark drapes were flung out, Alfred’s heavy furniture and pictures were sold to the local antiques dealer, the fusty rugs were rolled up for good, and even the walls were repainted.

  All the while she harangued herself: she should never have let her morbid memorial go this long! It was so unlike her to cling on like this. And how had entombing her guilt in this room, ever served that lovely man?

  Sonnet did not return to her counter for another seven days. Hamilton’s Books remained resolutely shut until the last sunlit dust mote was sent scurrying, and the enchantment wore off.

  Alfred’s office was purged clean.

  Sonnet smiled now at the room gleaming white in the sunshine splashing through uncurtained windows. Her Shrine of Unworthiness had been dismantled.

  What to do, however, with the last three boxes left in the middle of her newly minimalist office? One box was chock-full with Alfred’s favourite books – those she could not bear to toss or sell. They would go home to her personal bookshelves.

  The second box was crammed with local memorabilia she had gathered together, certain it would be of interest to the Noah Vale Historical Society, conducted out of the CWA tea rooms. This box she intended to dump on their doorstep in a late-night drive-by, with headlights dimmed.

  The final box was an enigma. Already opened and missing its original addressee, Sonnet’s name had been appended to the top in Alfred’s spidery handwriting: ‘For Sonnet, from Vera’.

  But who was Vera?

  She wasn’t a contact, and the box hadn’t come from one of their regular suppliers. No familiar publisher’s logo adorned the side. Based on the post stamp, the box had been mailed only days before Alfred’s death. Alfred must have received and opened it at some point himself, but had, unaccountably, not got around to mentioning it.

  The box contained a strange hodgepodge of items: faded show tickets, black feathers (disgusting!), a jar of earth, fountain pen, silver barrette, a cone shell, fabric scraps, violet pebbles, tarnished letter opener, and a pile of hardcover books from antiquated authors: Keats, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Lord Byron, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Coleridge, Blake, Shelley, Hardy – even an Austen or two.

  What on earth had Alfred been doing sourcing these books? No one read the romantics in these parts anymore. Sonnet couldn’t even remember the last time she’d waved a bag of stuffy Victorian literature out her front door, much less pre-loved, musty stuff like this.

  She turned a fine, grey-spined edition of Persuasion over in her hands, holding it against her forehead. What had Alfred expected her to do with this order? Well, she hadn’t come this far, with such ruthless, purging pleasure, to go soft now. She’d give these books a chance; make a decent effort to sell them. Maybe a vintage-themed display in the window would draw in some old literate types. Perhaps a markdown table, or a two-for-one deal, would do the trick.

  But the rest of this box?

  Sorry, Vera.

  Without further thought, Sonnet tipped the bric-a-brac into her garbage bag, and stamped the box down beneath her feet.

  That Sonnet had just completed the last task Alfred had ever given her did not, for a moment, twig consciously.

  It was her office now, and it was good.

  *

  The spirit of mercilessness that had driven Sonnet to discharge years of physical and emotional weight could not, yet, seem to find rest. Home she charged to do more!

  She’d only intended to reorganise her lounge-room bookshelf – making room for Alfred’s favourites. Then it occurred to her that she could take out all Plummy’s Blytons and schlepp them up to Heartwood, where her youngest sister seemed to hang out near-constantly these days. If Olive wanted to hog Plum so much, she should have the kiddy clutter, too.

  While she was hauling out dusty childhood classics, Sonnet decided to free her lounge-room shelves of all Fable’s L. M. Montgomery books, too. All those Annes and Emilys and Pats had never been to Sonnet’s taste; too dreamy and fanciful. At nearly twenty, Fable was surely beyond them now. Not to mention the saccharine Heyers, melodramatic Brontës. They all must go!

  ‘A job worth doing is worth doing well!’ Sonnet said, rolling up her sleeves. She was about to attribute the idiom to her mother, but realised Mama would never have said it.

  ‘Sneaking into my head, aren’t you, Olive?’ Sonnet chuckled, as she pushed Fable’s door open with a hip, balancing a high book stack.

  She had free rein to poke around the sunroom today. Saturday was Fable’s longest and busiest shift at the newsagency.

  Not that Fable and Sonnet seemed to cross paths much these days. What with Sonnet’s workaholic tendencies and Fable’s . . . well, who knew what she did on her time off? Roamed the forest, wasting her talents away.

  These days, Sonnet and Fable were no more than flatmates – one of whom didn’t cook, clean or pay her own way, if it must be said. (It must.) They all but lived separately.

  It wasn’t for lack of trying on Sonnet’s part. She set the table for two each evening, clanged the breakfast dishes with sufficient invitation each morning. But late-wandering and even later-sleeping Fable was impervious to sighs, suggestions and passive-aggressive digs. In Fable’s defence, Sonnet knew she sucked at the passive part. All her notes blew off mirrors, benches and doors.

  Even Olive’s gentle attempts failed spectacularly. Secretly, Sonnet was gratified – imagine the alternative! Fable had stopped going to church altogether with the Emersons, and shied away from Sunday family dinners. The girl couldn’t even walk in a front door like a normal person – she still insisted on sneaking in through her window like a fifteen-year-old.

  Under such circumstances, who could blame Sonnet for having to snoop like this, now and then? It was for Fable’s own good. Thanks to such spying, Sonnet was confident Fable didn’t have a penchant for drugs, didn’t seem afflicted by Mama’s writing demons, and wasn’t keeping a menagerie of cats. Even a secret boyfriend couldn’t be blamed, since the only boy who called persistently for Fable was so proper as to be nauseating. Sweet a friend as Marco was – who could stand those puppy-dog eyes?

  Fable certainly wasn’t painting her way out of this damned valley, though.
>
  For a while there, Sonnet had been excited. She’d spied the magnificent leather-bound journal Fable had purchased during her first few weeks at the newsagency, even dared to hope Fable had a serious plan in mind! But the journal had disappeared too. Sonnet had stopped nagging Fable to pursue her creative dreams after the first year, and had taken up less direct persuasion. But the art-course pamphlets she left lying out were binned. Prearranged conversations with Olive about correspondence courses, or a distant relative in Brisbane with a room to spare, or a job going in a Cairns art gallery: all were frozen out. If Sonnet pushed, Fable recoiled. It had always been this way. But now was Fable’s best chance to make something of her life – to escape small-town obscurity and rural mentality. They couldn’t afford to play this childish, circular game anymore! They still did though.

  *

  Sonnet discovered the loose board almost immediately after emptying Fable’s window seat. It fairly popped up into her hand – almost as though it wanted to be discovered; yearned for Fable to be found out, after all these years.

  Out of the secret hole, Sonnet pulled something heavy and calico-wrapped. The ivory cloth fell aside to reveal a hardcover book, bound with a leather braid. She recognised it immediately as the journal that had made its brief appearance two years earlier.

  That Fable didn’t want it found wasn’t nearly as outrageous as the realisation that she specifically didn’t want Sonnet to read it. There was no one else to hide it from in this cottage.

  Must be worth seeing, then!

  Urgent hands cast aside the braid and opened the book.

  The title page, in font tangled with vines, read:

  Faerie Falls

  by Fable Hamilton

  The dedication on the following page was baffling: ‘It was and is and will always be – all for you.’

  Mama? She must mean Mama.

  Carefully now, Sonnet turned the first page.

  For several pages, she hardly knew what she was seeing. She sank to the bed, flipping pages slowly. When she reached the end, Sonnet turned the book over and began once more, trying to browbeat her mind into comprehension . . .

  Fable was an illustrator, a writer, and this . . . book was a work of art.

  ‘Oh, Fabes,’ Sonnet breathed, ‘you brilliant girl.’

  For many minutes she sat, trying to come to grips with what she had uncovered. It was a book, but unlike any she had seen or sold before. And boy had she seen some books these last few years!

  Fable had created a sensual, eviscerating fairy tale. A love story between two faeries – Absinthe and Ulysses – set in the enchanted rainforest. Each faerie had been crafted from a tropical bloom, berry or butterfly, in the familiar mode, along with anthropomorphised animal characters – waterfall frogs, sugar gliders, forest dragons, rainbow bee-eaters. Even Sonnet’s cassowary had made an appearance, reimagined.

  However, this was no children’s world of storybook perfection. Fable had taken a scalpel to the underbelly of faerie life, slitting it gullet to groin. Each page of this fractured fairy tale bore intimate vignettes, accompanied by sardonic commentary. Sonnet imagined those clever words narrated in dulcet tones, and shivered.

  All the shame and vulnerability of faerie life – no, human life – had been revealed as ordinary, utter beauty

  It was astounding; disturbing. This was May Gibbs without the gum leaves to protect their privacy, and true motives. Cicely Mary Barker overrun by fungi and faeries screwing.

  Yes, screwing.

  Sonnet had not been able to spend long on those pages at all, before an ache in her groin made her flip by. Even thinking about what she’d seen made her want to . . . straddle something.

  How had Fable understood any of this? Innocent little flower Fable!

  Sonnet went hunting for the most erotic image again now, breath shortening in expectation.

  There it was, on the final page, Absinthe and Ulysses finally consummating the love story that had flamed throughout Fable’s book: a roaring waterfall, and on the jutting ledge above it, peridot-winged Absinthe, with head flung back in ecstasy, hair falling rope-like into the abyss, and bare-chested Ulysses labouring over her in earnest, cerulean wings straining from a furrowed back. Beneath it, the shortest caption in the whole book, only a single line: Come home.

  Sonnet snapped the book shut again. How on earth had Fable managed to create this masterpiece without giving Sonnet the slightest clue that she was working on anything?

  More importantly, what was Sonnet going to do with this book?

  *

  ‘What do you mean, what are you going to do with it?’ Kate demanded across the Story Bar, unable to drag her eyes from the journal in her hands. ‘Put it right back where you found it, obviously.’

  When Sonnet didn’t reply, Kate glanced up, amplifying: ‘I mean obviously, Son. You’re going to put it back – right?’

  Sonnet shrugged, dabbing at spilt sugar.

  ‘Sonny!’

  The front door rattled open to admit Hetty Warren. Kate slammed Fable’s book closed.

  ‘It’s her diary!’ Kate said, between clenched teeth. ‘What on earth are you thinking? You can’t “do” anything with it.’

  Sonnet offered to assist Hetty, though she knew Hetty only ever came in to write down the titles she intended to purchase more cheaply in Cairns.

  Once Hetty was busy scribbling her booklist at the back of the store, Sonnet leaned close to Kate. ‘Well, if I leave it to Fabes, it will languish in her secret window seat until the next once-in-a-century flood washes the whole cottage away.’

  Kate shook her head. ‘It’s. Her. Diary! That’s kind of the whole purpose of them. Most people burn or toss their diaries well before her age. I sent mine sailing down Serpentine Creek when I was fourteen.’

  ‘It’s not a diary, I keep telling you. Do you recognise anyone in it? Can you imagine sweet, innocent Fable having seen anything of this?’

  Kate bore the oddest expression.

  ‘It’s not a diary,’ Sonnet said, louder, ignoring Kate’s disturbing look. ‘It’s a story, her first book, and it needs to be published and loved and critiqued and to make her famous.’

  ‘Published? Famous? Critiqued?! I can’t imagine anyone in the world who would want to be critiqued less than Fable.’

  ‘Nonsense, no one’s going to say anything bad about Faerie Falls, other than how amazing she is for creating it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be surprised if some people called it smutty, actually,’ Kate said. ‘Have you looked at page twenty-seven? That’s not two branches getting all twisted together in that grove of trees there!’ She pretended to fan herself. ‘I mean, you know I like my romance, but that got me all hot and bothered!’

  Sonnet harrumphed. ‘It’s art. There’s supposed to be nudity. Otherwise it would be a children’s book.’

  ‘Definitely not a children’s book . . . it’s a girl’s diary.’

  ‘Fable just doesn’t believe in herself,’ Sonnet said. ‘And she’d never have enough courage to launch this herself. She’s such an ingénue—’

  ‘Sonny!’ Kate cried, pausing as Hetty exited the store without a goodbye.

  ‘There goes my best customer,’ Sonnet said in mock lament.

  They laughed, but Kate had not forgotten her indignation.

  ‘What exactly are you planning?’

  ‘Nothing yet, I’m still thinking . . .’

  ‘About the quickest way to return her diary and forget you’ve ever seen it?’

  ‘About how Fable needs a ticket out of Noah Vale, because she’s too talented to be stuck in this festering hellhole like the rest of us.’

  ‘Seems to me, the valley she’s painted here is anything but a hellhole.’

  ‘Seems to me you’re a fraud, given you’ve now got a first-class ticket out of here for yourself, Mrs Willard.’

  ‘Ha! I’m still Hardy for life, though.’

  Sonnet busied herself at her till, her dism
ay hidden. She would forever curse the day Brett Willard had ridden into Noah Vale on his . . . wait, driven into the valley to take a horse-riding tour, and had pounced on the best thing in Sonnet’s life. Rockhampton was too far away, the wedding date was too close, and once Kate was tied down to the family she desperately wanted, let’s face it: Sonnet would never see her again!

  Kate was escaping where Sonnet suspected she never would. For years, they had joked how they’d be dried-up old spinsters left on the shelf together.

  Now Sonnet was the joke.

  As ever reading her mind, Kate added: ‘Son, don’t conflate your ambitions with hers. You don’t have to push her out into the big, wide world first before you get permission to go do that fancy language degree you want.’

  ‘You think this is about me wanting to live vicariously through my sister? You can’t see the stupidity of Fable hiding her talents under a window seat?’

  Kate was unrelenting. ‘I keep telling you, we’ll have a spare room at our home in Rocky – you can stay as long as you like.’

  Tears sprang unexpectedly. Sonnet jutted her chin, reaching for the journal. ‘No way I’m crashing a newlywed couple’s love nest. Especially not when the wife’s as randy as you.’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ Kate said, ‘how’s your business going to survive when your entire local market for breathless romance drives out of town next month with tin cans on her bumper?’

  ‘Ah, you underestimate the sexual boredom and frustration of Noah Vale housewives. But you’ll find out for yourself soon enough.’

  Their shared laughter curtailed the conversation, though not the plans steadily brewing into hot water.

  CHAPTER 30

  EXPOSÉ

  July 1962

  S

  onnet stood before the red pillar box on Main Street, parcel at the ready, shoulders sizzling under the midday sun, summoning up the courage of her convictions. What was the worst that could happen?

  Most likely: a returned parcel with a rejection slip, to tear into a thousand fragments. Fable would never even have to know.