EXPOSÉ
July 1962
Sonnet 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.
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!’