by Averil Kenny
*
Dr Fairley waited until Fable had come to the end of her grunting contraction – rearing up on her knees. ‘Fable,’ he said soothingly, ‘I can’t catch your baby in this bath, it’s too narrow. Sonnet and I are going to wrap you in towels, and help you back to your bed – okay?’
Sonnet stepped forward, arms open in plush, towelling invitation.
Along the hallway Fable staggered, stopping twice to grunt against the wall.
‘I’m just going to check to make sure you’re fully dilated,’ Dr Fairley said, pulling on gloves as Sonnet steadied her onto the bed. ‘Then you can get in any position that feels comfortable—’
Sonnet’s almost boyfriend or not, he was the only medical professional for miles; so what? Fable still really wanted to kick him in the teeth right then.
‘All right,’ Dr Fairley said, withdrawing. ‘With the next one, you can go for your life.’
Fable turned on all fours, braced herself against the wrought-iron bedhead, and stuck her bottom in the air.
‘Nearly there!’ Sonnet said as her sister’s knuckles went white, and the grunting began anew.
Nearly where? Fable was stuck at a chasm she could not cross on her own strength. Again and again and again the toil brought her back to this vast crevasse, and each time she fell feebly away.
Sweat poured from her body, soaking her hair. Her eyes struggled to stay open between contractions. All she wanted was for Raff to walk through that door right now, pick her up as easily as a doll, and carry her away from the pain, and effort. She didn’t want a baby anymore.
Another expulsive urge took hold. Fable locked on Raff’s face across the chasm – why did he just stand there looking at her? Why did he not reach for her hand?
Save me, Raff!
She collapsed against the iron curlicue as the surge drained away. If he didn’t come soon, she would throw herself into that black hole.
‘Oh, Jake, is she . . . okay?’ Sonnet’s voice – tiny, far away.
‘Maternal exhaustion,’ he answered. ‘It’s been over two and a half hours. If we were in hospital—’ The sentence wasn’t finished aloud. The looks flew fast and furious over Fable’s swimming head.
She understood them, anyway: Fable Hamilton isn’t fit to be a mother – exhausted by motherhood before she’s even attained it.
‘Fable, how about we try lying on your side, to give you a rest. We’ll hold your legs for you.’
Fable shook her head, pushing their hands away. She gritted her teeth and bore down again.
*
Sonnet tore her eyes away from the unease now becoming perceptible on Jake’s face, fixing instead on the painting above, of a three-tiered waterfall. The image swam hotly. She blinked hard, tethering her breath.
‘Good girl,’ Jake was saying on the other side of the bed. ‘That was a great one. Next time, let’s have another push like that!’
Sonnet stayed locked on the waterfall, avoiding the despair of her sister’s eyes. In the glimmering candlelight, her father’s name, a whirl in an eddy of water, leapt out. In paintings all over the room, his signatures – hidden in cracks and whorls and crevices – blazed now into recognition.
How had she ever failed to see it before? And who the hell hides their signature? What a pretentious, cursed man he was. When this was over, she was going to take an axe to every painting in the sunroom.
*
‘That’s it! Yes! Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going – oh!’
Fable collapsed into Sonnet’s arms. Raff’s hand fell uselessly away, his eyes soft with pity; this chasm as wide as an ocean between them.
He turned to leave. Fable was never going to make it, and he knew it, too. He was going on now without her.
Sonnet murmured something fast and pleading to Dr Fairley, her lips moving against Fable’s sodden head.
‘She can do it,’ Fable heard him reply. ‘She has to.’
*
Sonnet raised the straw once more to her sister’s lips, trying not to scream when Fable shook her hand away. Had there ever been a time in all her life when she’d wanted so desperately to bear another’s struggle?
Fable groaned, clutching for Sonnet again, her head shake intensifying.
‘Yes you can – you’re doing it right now!’ Sonnet said, watching in astonishment as the wet head pushed once more to a wide straining orb between Fable’s legs. ‘There it is! Keep going, keep going, keep going!’
Fable reared up, a hand flung out towards an unseen figure.
‘Raff!’ she cried, ‘Raff, please – wait!’
Fable’s arms buckled. She bowed and buried her face, shuddering, in Sonnet’s chest.
Across Fable’s head, Sonnet saw Jake’s answering grimace as white-hot, silent rage warped her own features.
‘Fable,’ Sonnet hissed against her cheek, ‘you are the daughter of Esther Hamilton. You wait for no man. You wait not one minute more! Do you hear me? No more waiting! Never again!’
For a moment, nothing; only the trembling pant against her neck.
Then, a tiny nod.
Tears sprang to Sonnet’s eyes.
‘It’s time,’ she said fiercely. ‘Bring your baby into your arms, Fable!’
*
‘Plum! What are you doing?’ Olive cried. She pushed Plum aside to slam the front door shut against the gale.
Plum seized at her aunt. ‘I have to get the nest! I can’t leave her there. It’s going to fall. She needs our help—’
‘She’s safe,’ Olive said, pulling Plum against her. ‘She’s going to be ok.’
*
A gust of wind swept up the hallway, shaking the sunroom door, guttering at the candles.
Fable felt the draught, robed in shimmering green, enter the room. Upon her forehead the cool hand laid itself. In her ear, she heard the whisper.
I’m here, I’m here.
‘Mama,’ Fable sighed.
‘Yes,’ said Sonnet, ‘Mama wants to meet her grandbaby. Show Mama your baby, Fable.’
Fable gathered, and rose again.
For nine months, Fable had held his roaring release inside her. Nine months she had hidden that reverberating secret at her deepest centre.
It was time for her to let it go.
Now, Fable roared.
And in a cool, fluid burst, her baby slipped into the world.
*
‘It’s a baby,’ Sonnet heard herself say in wonder, as the pale, blood-streaked shape was lifted onto Fable’s chest.
‘A big, healthy baby,’ Jake said, towelling off that unfathomable creature with vigorous strokes.
A bleating cry lit the charge in the air. Sonnet and Fable broke into a shared sob.
*
Olive, Gav and Plum, transfixed by the primal birthing roar, held their collective breath. Seconds passed interminably. Plum pressed her knuckles into her eyes.
The lusty bawl of a newborn baby filled the cottage.
Olive and Gav turned to one another, already weeping.
‘Oh, that sound – I never knew it!’ Olive cried.
‘My love,’ Gav said, big arms absorbing her. ‘Now you do.’
*
A quiet dawn was seeping into the world when Olive and Gav filed into the sunroom, with Plum trailing behind. Jake sat on the window seat, making notes in the grey light just beginning to dampen the candle gold. Sonnet was perched on the bed, Fable reclined against her shoulder. The new mother’s face was pale with exhaustion, and resplendent with love. In her arms, with all eyes on it, lay a swaddled babe; mouth gaping frantically for the nipple.
‘Our Fable,’ Olive cried, going forward. ‘You’ve brought life into a cottage that only ever knew death.’
Sonnet winced.
Fable, having attached that mouth to her breast, looked up. In her dazed smile, there was a fulfilment never glimpsed there before.
‘This,’ Fable said, stroking a pearlescent ear, ‘is Rune.’
Sonnet
added, with queenly pride: ‘Rune, son of Fable.’
Olive’s face split with joy. ‘A boy?! We haven’t had a Hamilton boy in three generations!’
Plum shuffled to the bed, eyes locked on her nephew. The room fell silent as she leaned close to study the suckling babe. When she drew back, it was with relief. ‘I like him.’
‘Phew,’ Sonnet said, and the room erupted into laughter.
Only Plum stayed serious. She spoke, earnestly, to Fable. ‘He’s blue.’
‘No, he’s pink and healthy,’ Sonnet interrupted.
Plum sighed. Fable tipped her head, patiently.
‘Rune has blue eyes,’ Plum said again.
Fable’s lashes swept back tears. ‘Yes, Plummy, yes he has.’
CHAPTER 42
LET ME COUNT THE WAYS
‘Would you look at all this damage,’ Sonnet groused from the porch. She surveyed a vale dishevelled and weeping after a late-night’s revelling: fleeced of accoutrements, doused in confetti; her cape of green ruptured by landslides. The garden had been excoriated. Branches littered the ground, fence palings lay asunder; the faerie garden stones sat exposed, dark with moss.
‘Count your blessings we didn’t have a direct hit, pet,’ said Gav, scooting up the hill after Olive. ‘We’ll see you up there, Doc!’
‘Geez, we came close, didn’t we?’ Jake said, watching the river surge alongside the cottage, lapping at the gate.
Sonnet smiled. ‘I used to think so in the Wet. I’ve learned, grudgingly, to trust the man who planted us here.’ She followed Jake down the stairs, remaining on the final step as he laced his boots. ‘Thank you,’ she said, voice run through with feeling. ‘For everything, Jake. You were incredible.’
‘No,’ he said, standing to full height, stepping close. ‘I just did my job. Fable was incredible – to pull that off, under those circumstances, after more than four hours of pushing. She’s a strong woman.’
‘And she did it alone.’
‘She wasn’t alone. She had one hell of a sister at her back, every step of the way.’
Her heartbeat stumbled over itself for a moment. Had Sonnet lost her roof to the storm last night, or should she, in any storm to come, she had the distinct impression Jake Fairley would carry it back to her in his own two hands. She fiddled with the messy bun at the nape of her neck, shaking her red locks free.
‘So, I’m going to get cleaned up at the Emersons’ now,’ he said. ‘Make some phone calls, and catch some sleep. Then see if I can make the crossing later today. Gav tells me it’ll recede soon; they’ve hauled down the red pennant. But I want you to get some rest. Doctor’s orders!’
Sonnet thought of the placenta left to bury, bathroom to sanitise, floors to mop, the linen still to wash. ‘Definitely,’ she lied. ‘When will you come back?’ She couldn’t seem to remember how to affect a neutral air.
‘I’ll visit Fable in a couple of days for a postnatal check. I’m also going to send my nurse each day to see how Fable is getting on with the feeding and healing.’
‘I don’t want some gossipy old windbag coming here!’
‘Rachael’s a professional and will do her job in the strictest confidence.’
‘But Rune is healthy – even though he’s early?’
Jake chose his words judiciously. ‘At that whopping size, without a skerrick of vernix, and as alert as that boy is, I think we might have some miscalculated dates.’
‘Yeah . . . miscalculated,’ Sonnet said, with air quotes.
‘Rest. No hounding would-be fathers!’
‘Hound? I want to bloody strangle that Hull.’
‘Try not to. Nearest correctional centre is too far way, and I’d want to visit you at least twice daily.’
Sonnet had no retort. She wiped sweat beads from her upper lip, a little tremble in her hand. Jake’s expression was one of incalculable admiration.
Warmth flooded her gut. Sonnet stepped off the last stair, and into an embrace already waiting. Jake’s arms were an extra set of lungs. Even in that tight constriction, even with her nose buried in his neck, she could breathe better. Why had she never realised how hard breathing on her own was before now?
I can’t wait to fire you, Sonnet thought with muffled longing.
*
Plum had been left behind to sleep on the window seat – her feet were just visible beneath the curtain.
Poor thing, usurped as the baby.
Sonnet reached to tuck a burnished magenta curl behind an ear, marvelling at how lovely Plummy had grown, or rather, always stayed.
Do you see her, Mama?
Sometimes, Sonnet was convinced when she held Plum in her eyes like this, she was giving Mama a glimpse of her baby, from the other side.
Sonnet started as Plum’s eyes snapped open, her first blush of the day just beginning.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you!’ Sonnet said, about to withdraw when the tear-mottled condition of her sister’s complexion struck her. ‘Plum, are you OK?’
Plum motioned at the window. ‘Uncle Gav told me to watch the sunbirds to make sure nothing happened to them.’
Sonnet looked with distaste at the nest hanging by, ostensibly empty. ‘Oh, right. Well, try not to take it personally. That’s just life in the tropics.’
One less filthy bird to worry about.
‘No, look!’
Sonnet cringed as a yellow-breasted bird fluttered to the nest, food in its slender bill. Tiny chicks appeared, eager to receive.
‘That’s their dad,’ Plum said. ‘The nest and the chicks all survived the cyclone, and they have a mum and a dad.’
‘And you’re upset because Rune doesn’t have a father bird?’
Plum rolled her eyes. ‘Please. I’m not a baby.’
Right. So we’ve hit that stage again.
‘No, you’re not. But I only know what you tell me.’
‘I’m sad because I’m . . . monstrous.’
Sonnet dropped to the seat beside her. ‘What?!’
‘Never mind, nothing,’ Plum said, turning away.
‘Like hell I’ll never mind! Where on earth did you get that idea from?’
Plum flamed silently for a long moment. When she spoke it was with sad, tired resolve.
‘I found out I’m the “monstrous problem” born of premarital sex.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘It’s true. I mean I’m summarising, but I read it in a science book.’
Sonnet’s ire propelled her from the seat. ‘What the hell! What book?’ She only realised how hard she’d been gripping Plum’s arm when she noted her grimace.
‘Which book was it, Plummy?’ she tried again, with unconvincing lightness.
‘The one Olive gave me.’
‘Not that bloody Essential Facts for Young Women book!’
Plum squinted, recalling the title. ‘I think so, the cover was brown.’
‘That stupid book was the one Olive gave Fable years ago. I purposely left commentary all through it, deconstructing that so-called doctor’s propaganda. Weren’t my notes still there?’
Plum shook her head slowly.
Sonnet gritted her teeth. Bloody Olive. ‘Fable turned her nose up at that book, and you should have too. It was sponsored by a church some years back, and that’s where it should have stayed – in the past. You need something modern. Books written by women, for women. Why didn’t you ask me?’
Plum’s silence was somehow damning.
Sonnet squirmed. ‘I’m sorry, Plummy – I’ve been so focused on the baby coming, I just put you out of mind. I get so caught up with my own worries. And now I’ve failed you, just as I failed Fable years ago.’
Plum shrugged. ‘I don’t think the book was lying – even if it was written years ago. He is a doctor.’
‘Wasn’t lying? Plum, doctor or not, the book had an overt religious agenda. But we don’t believe that stuff anymore.’
Plum chewed the inside of her cheek, watching the moth
er sunbird arrive, beak full. ‘You definitely don’t think I’m a monstrous problem?’
‘Plum, you are the beloved daughter of Esther Hamilton, the most remarkable woman this town has ever seen.’
‘Not really.’
‘Really! She was spirited and brave and clever, and beautiful inside and out – like you. And Mama knew you weren’t a monstrous problem, Plum. She wanted you more than anything in the whole world. She would just lie there for hours, stroking your little face; couldn’t tear her eyes away from you. She loved to put her little finger right there in your dimple, and she called it “the mark of perfection”.’
Sonnet watched one corner of Plum’s lips twitch towards its dimple. Her voice grew thick. ‘Is that why you’ve seemed so sad lately, because of that book frightening you?’
Plum shook her head slowly. ‘No, it’s not just the book. I feel afraid all the time, about everything. I wake up with a churning tummy, and I can’t get to sleep at night for hours and hours – like my brain is broken. When Fable came home pregnant, I was just so sure something bad would happen to her, that she’d get punished for her . . . premarital sex.’
‘Oh, Plummy! You don’t get pregnant as punishment. I thought Olive explained how babies are made?’
‘I know how Fable got her baby!’ Plum cried in affront. ‘I even saw her go to the forest that night—’
He dragged her off to the forest?! I’ll kill him!
Plum drew back at the expression on Sonnet’s face. She continued warily, ‘I understood how she got pregnant. But everyone else was so worked up about it, too. I was convinced Fable would die in childbirth unless I kept her safe . . . It sounds stupid when I say it aloud.’
Plum slumped away. Sonnet reviewed this information.
‘Plum,’ she said gently, ‘was that you closing the cottage windows all the time?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the gate tied up with vines?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the nasty tacks stuck all around my garden?’
‘No.’
Sonnet burst into laughter. Plum blushed.
‘And were those things to protect Fable? Or to try to ease your fears?’
Plum gave a small nod.
Sonnet was careful with her next words. ‘You understand these are irrational fears . . . don’t you?’
