PRODIGAL DAUGHTER
Late October 1964
For the first time in her life, for over seven wondrous months, Sonnet lived the life of an unfettered woman. She had expected to miss Fable exceedingly, and stress every second she was out of her reach. To her surprise, however, Sonnet mellowed out. Freedom was having the cottage all to herself, and only the demands of her own work to consume her. Cutting the apron strings turned out to be as liberating as a haircut – another invigorating experience she’d had lately.
Shoulder-length locks swished, loose and glossy, around her face now. Most people said the haircut suited her – though they meant ‘softened’ – and Sonnet was inclined to agree. The loss of her high bun was akin to dropping years. Sonnet didn’t feel almost-thirty anymore, more like the fancy-free young woman she’d never got to be.
She knew folks in Noah said Sonnet Hamilton had a ‘big head’ now her sister was gallivanting about Australia calling herself an ‘author-illustrator’ – and the new city haircut, new bookstore furniture and new spring in her step were proof of her increasing pretentiousness. Not to mention her scandalous Brave New World-themed window book display!
But this time? Sonnet didn’t even care. Freedom was its own reward.
When Fable had rung Heartwood from Brisbane after her book tour ended to confirm she would be staying close to her publisher for another six months to collaborate on several children’s books, Sonnet nearly leapt in the air to click her heels together. She wasn’t even envious of her sister’s exodus from the valley. Though by all rights, she should have been. Fable, living in a flourishing city, an author-illustrator already earning real dosh and creating her own reputation, while Sonnet was stuck in a tropical backwater – in years gone by, it would have been enough to make her scream!
But Fable’s triumph felt like her own. Almost the moment Fable steamed out of town, Sonnet noticed the effect on her own disposition. She just . . . stopped thrashing. It was like the expectant lull between the agitation of a wash cycle and the rattling spin dry. Suddenly, she found inconsequential all manner of small-town idiosyncrasies and injustices, which might once have nettled. She even seemed to detach from matters closer to her heart.
Take, for instance, the Marco Lagorio rumours arising after the book launch. Sonnet had weathered the incessant blabber-mouthing down the street about Marco and Fable with uncharacteristic restraint. She could easily have flown into a corrective rage at every busybody to bring it up: They’re only mates! Never been a spark of attraction between them! Instead, she simply shook her head. What did it matter? There was no way Fable would be coming home to this staid old existence after her taste of glamorous city life.
Marco seemed to know it, too. He’d frequented the cottage for weeks after Fable’s departure, hunting news of his friend. Sonnet had been gently fobbing him off, until the day he asked for Fable’s book-tour itinerary, or an address to write her. No way she’d let anyone in Noah have contact with Fable at such a pivotal time. Sterner words of advice had been necessary then.
Marco had left Noah in recent months too, apparently after non-farming work. It looked like he went as far abroad as London, based on the fat airmail letter that had arrived at the cottage not long afterwards. Fable never even had to know about that. Sonnet had unceremoniously trashed it, unopened.
And that was that: small town rumour forestalled, and successful, independent author-illustrator none the wiser!
*
The most surprising example of Sonnet’s new-found serenity was during the Hull family dramas, which first erupted with a week-long disappearance of Eamon Hull the night of Fable’s launch party. They had volunteers out dragging dams, walking the canefields in long lines; even put divers in the creek, before he finally washed up in town at the end of a wild bender. He would have looked better as a bloated water carcass, actually.
Two or three weeks after Fable left, William Hull died and then the whole town seemed to fall into a fit of depressive, nostalgic pandering, promptly followed by opportunistic scandal-raking.
First, there was the grand funeral cortege down Main Street with an informal public holiday declared for all, whether or not shop owners gave two hoots about attending the Hull funeral. Strangely, even that didn’t seem to faze Sonnet. She just went home and enjoyed some therapeutic cleaning.
Following that, the CWA windbags organised an enormous shindig for the Hulls over at Summerlinn. Olive and Gav insisted the Emerson–Hamilton clan should be in attendance. Sonnet squirmed successfully out of that one (she was mellow, not stupid), but for the rest of the day, she had such an unsettling feeling of something strangely like . . . guilt?
Then there was all the salacious speculation about conflict over the Summerlinn distribution of property, which had preoccupied the town for months on end. Normally, Sonnet would have gloated over the Hull discord, at Delia’s perfect world torn asunder. Or, at least revealed for the fallible family it was. Instead, Sonnet moved right on by the Main Street broadcasters and bank-line rumourmongers.
One day, Sonnet happened to spot Delia and her golden boy outside the General Store. Delia was standing uselessly by their car, staring off into the distance with what, if Sonnet didn’t know better, might have been construed as normal human vulnerability, while her son packed bags into the car for her. After slamming the boot, Rafferty moved to take her in his arms – and stood there holding her for the longest time, while cars streamed slowly past, faces peering. It looked like Delia was crying, genuinely shaking with grief, and for a moment Sonnet wanted to cross the road and extend condolences to her worst enemy. It was only the fact that Mr Bloody Perfect himself, sighting Sonnet, looked to be coming over to try to speak to her that sent her streaking away on the pretence of anything else than converse with a Hull.
Dodged a bullet there.
The Hulls finally were pulling themselves back together again, anyway. Rafferty went back overseas after the harvest, Eamon’s transgressions were neatly forgiven and forgotten, and Adriana continued to think she was Lady Muck. Delia had even brushed past Sonnet in the post office the other day with a magisterial sneer, which was a great relief. Imagine if Delia had known how close they’d come to rapprochement?
Sonnet would never forgive the way those Hulls had treated Fable, so soon after Mama’s passing. Sonnet had many reasons to relish this calm new phase of life, but paramount among them was Fable having transcended the bitter friends and strictures of her childhood.
Never would Sonnet forget, but thankfully never again would she have to bear the sight of that stooped and tragic strawberry-gold figure trudging down the hill, towards home.
*
Until, one ordinary October afternoon, she was.
At first sight and from afar, Sonnet thought it was a traveller having lost their way to Moria Falls. The young woman descending the hill was heavily laden with bags. Her face was obscured by a baseball hat as she seemed to watch her every footfall home.
Reality crashed in like a tree through the roof in a cyclone. Sonnet had to grab a wall against collapse. That was her lost, laden sister limping home.
Sonnet flew across the paddock to meet Fable.
They’d never spent so much time apart in all their lives, and Sonnet imagined they might fall upon each other now in tearful reunion. But Fable stopped at her approach, keeping a stiff distance. Sonnet, for her part, felt an intense desire to slap Fable.
‘What are you doing here? You’ve got another six months in Brisbane still! How the hell did you get home? What happened to your new books?’
Fable hoisted a bag higher on her shoulder, grimacing. ‘Well, nice to see you, too. Mind if I put these down first before we start with the Sonnet Inquisition?’
Once inside, Sonnet sat, stupefied, across the table from her travel-worn sister, watching her throw back another glass of ice-water. Sonnet’s body twanged with curiosity.
Would Fable ever open her mouth?
And she looked terrible. (Sorry, but that was the truth.) If freedom from guardianship had loosened Sonnet’s hair and temperament, liberation clearly had the opposite effect on Fable. Her mane, lank and oily, was tightly coiled beneath that bizarre hat. She was ashen and rumpled; bloom of youth replaced by a weary strain only another adult could empathise with. A bath was the first thing Fable needed, squeeze her out of those awful pants and flannel shirt; spray her down with deodorant . . .
‘Would you stop staring at me like that?’
Sonnet choked down a sigh. How quickly it came flooding back, the barely tempered rage at Fable’s smooth evasiveness. Well, she wasn’t going to beg for info this time. She sat back, crossing her arms.
‘I like your hair,’ Fable said.
‘Thanks.’
‘Can see you’ve been changing things up in the cottage, too.’
‘Yep.’ Sonnet refused to make small talk. Refused!
Fable resumed an ice-cube-swirling contemplation of her empty glass.
Sonnet checked an offer to refill the cup.
‘Hope you left my room the same.’
A retort here was inevitable. ‘Oh, is it your room again? No one let the concierge know.’
The flash of hurt – dorsal fin quickly submerging – was not missed by Sonnet. Fable’s reply, however, was petulant. ‘Didn’t know you needed a personal copy of my itinerary.’
‘A simple phone call would have been enough.’
‘I wanted to come home, Sonny. That’s all. I needed to.’
Sonnet swallowed the lump of empathy which had risen unbidden. ‘Zephyr’s gone,’ she blurted. ‘We think snakebite. Plum hasn’t stopped sooking about it.’
Fable just stared at her – whether in disbelief or dismay, Sonnet couldn’t discern.
‘I have to go to the toilet,’ Fable said, rising abruptly.
Sonnet remained at the table, stewing, as she listened to the toilet flush, faucet squeal, a shower curtain rip closed and, at length, familiar footsteps creaking up the hallway to the sunroom for the first time in more than six months.
Sonnet straightened in her chair.
Wait for it . . .
A turning handle, then the gasp: ‘For God’s sake, Sonnet! What have you done to my room?!’
*
‘Fable’s home? You’re joking!’
‘Wish I was. She’s home, and adamant she’s not going back.’
Olive came out from behind her shop counter to stand before Sonnet, lowering her voice so the rotating radar ears over by the large floral prints had to readjust, in vain, their position.
‘But how did she even get home?’
‘Best as I could get out of her over breakfast, she caught the coach to Cairns, then thumbed a lift with perfect strangers in a Kombi.’
‘Fable, hitchhiking? The poor girl. Is she all right?’
‘She’s fine. Everything’s fine. It’s all going to be fine.’
Olive clucked. ‘I don’t believe it. What happened with her work?’
‘She was “homesick”. Brisbane apparently wasn’t for her . . .’
‘Bless her soul.’
‘No blessing her anything!’ Sonnet whispered fiercely. ‘She has to go back, and I won’t rest until she does!’
‘Oh, Sonnet. You haven’t been hounding her again already, have you?’
‘I’m not a monster. She got the first night off. But I’m shutting shop early today so I can get right back into it. I’ll have her packed and on the next train out of here.’
‘Don’t you dare!’
‘I will so.’
‘You’re terrible. I won’t let you.’
‘If Fable didn’t want to be nagged, she shouldn’t have come home.’
‘She wouldn’t have come home if she didn’t feel safe here.’
‘Safe from what – adulthood? Responsibility? Success?’
‘Balderdash. She must have good reason for limping quietly home. I’m going to knock off early myself today. I can’t wait to give our Fable a big cuddle.’
*
Well, Sonnet would just cut her off at the pass. She had a few stern lectures on resilience and never, never giving up to impart before blasted Olive got there oozing grace and welcoming.
Sonnet was home by three, but Fable was not in the cottage, or at Heartwood. A snoop through the already trashed sunroom only elevated Sonnet’s ire – it was like she’d never even left! If Madam Backtrack thought this was going to work, she was sorely mistaken.
Stuck in a time warp and needing to alleviate her Fable-wrought frustration the only way she knew how, Sonnet donned her sandshoes and hurtled off along the creek-side path.
Darkrise was on the move and the forest was steeped in shadow, all the bright gold of the spring day sliding down the riverbank, to gild the creek. The effect was of racing alongside molten lava as it coursed through verdant jungle.
Sonnet ran hard over roots and rocks, ridges and ruts, hard as ever she had, halted only by her stomach’s revolt against her pounding legs, and a stitch in her side; like a reopened wound. She came to a reluctant, heaving rest against a giant blue quandong tree. Sweat flooded from Sonnet’s pores as she stomped the berries underfoot with an inexhaustible fury.
The rush of a nearby waterfall promised hydration, drawing her closer. Someone was already swimming below, Sonnet realised too late, as she came out onto a rotting, cantilevered cubby platform. She panted quietly, waiting for the swimmer to emerge beneath her.
Aha! Found you, Sonnet thought as a strawberry mane fanned out behind the figure stroking across the golden pool. She should have known Fable would be hiding in the creek. And what serendipity! Now Sonnet would block Fable’s exit, and they’d thrash it out here, once and for all. Sonnet melted back into the cubby gloom, heart rate slowing, to wait.
You’ve got no idea what’s coming for you, Fabes.
Her sister was bathed in light, the amber glow seeming to emanate from the depths below. Back still turned, Fable rose out of the pool to squeegee water from her hair. Her white shirt floated about her sylph-like form, refracted light surrounding her like wings. How long Fable’s hair had grown – it tumbled down her back, dissolving into liquefied light. Even Sonnet’s unromantic heart could not help being moved. Fable was a waterborne faerie, straight out of her book.
Sonnet felt a covetous ache – not for Fable’s beauty, but her talent. Oh for the skills to capture such loveliness as this. How could anyone let it go to waste? Sonnet wouldn’t let her!
Her resolution was interrupted by Fable’s submergence. In a single, gleaming streak, she crossed the bottom of the pool in Sonnet’s direction. Propping her elbows on the rocky edge, Fable drew a shuddering breath. Sonnet took one of her own. In another second, Fable would look up, spy her lurking sister, and then the haranguing, from both sides, would begin . . .
But Fable rose from the water with eyes still cast down. Eyes fixed upon her own wet form, explicitly outlined, and revealing all: her full, heavy breasts, and the high, protuberant curvature of her belly.
Fable Hamilton was lush with child.