Birds of a Feather

by Rhianna King

Genres: Historical Romance

Synopsis

Beth doesn't feel like she belongs in her rambunctious, bohemian family. Apart from the special relationship she shares with her grandma, Elise. When Beth wins the lottery (on a ticket she bought to prove she could be spontaneous), she decides to spend it on treating Elise.

But instead of anything material, Elise wants Beth to help her track down her first love, Gerry. It's a fun and uncomplicated little adventure, Beth thinks, until she discovers that her grandma's great love is actually a woman, and their romance was thwarted by the conservatism of the day. Grappling with her grandma's past spurs Beth to reconsider herself in the present.

Birds of a Feather is a funny, poignant and utterly charming debut novel about questioning who you are and what you might become.

Release date: March 26, 2024

Publisher: Affirm Press

Print pages: 304

Sample

Chapter 1

Beth

I spent much of my childhood fantasising that I was adopted. While other kids were pretending to be princesses and superheroes, I was using my stuffed toys to play out a scenario where I found out there had been a mix-up at the hospital when I was born. It was the only way I could make sense of how I came to be a member of my family.

Now, at thirty years old, I no longer played with my toys, of course. But I was still searching for an explanation for my progeny.

My parents exuded an unbridled magnetism that made people want to be around them. Mum – an artist – had recently been commissioned to paint a mural on a toilet block in a park near their place. So many people stopped by to see her while she was working on it that the council received traffic complaints. They rigged up lights so she could paint at night, but then traffic issues became after-dark noise infringements when her friends and contacts descended for a party in the park. For Dad – a musician – a trip to the local shops to run even the most banal errand usually turned into a roaming street party, which, more often than not, involved an impromptu jam session.

Our surname – Dwyer – was used more as a descriptive noun than a proper one.

‘Jarrah has such charisma; she’s such a Dwyer,’ they’d say.

‘Did you see Elijah perform? He was amazing; he’s such a Dwyer,’ they’d gush.

‘Have you met the other child? She’s not a typical Dwyer at all,’ they’d remark.

To be fair, I didn’t know where ‘they’ ended and my inner dialogue started, but the sentiment rang in my ears like a case of unrelenting tinnitus. Being the filler foliage in a bouquet of blooms meant people who knew my family related to me in one of two ways. They’d either forget me entirely (I’d lost count of how many times people had said ‘I didn’t realise Rosie and Thorn had three children’), or they’d treat me like I was popular by proxy.

Even from a young age, I knew that when classmates asked for a playdate at my house, they were not seeking out my company (playing with ant farms and DIY crosswords has a limited appeal, apparently). They were hoping for a ‘Dwyer experience’. A few times (and most likely out of obligation) my classmates would return the invite, and I got an insight into how their families lived.

I loved that they ate ‘normal’ food for dinner, not cocktail snacks, takeaway or ‘Rosie’s surprise’, which was a bowl of cereal. I loved that when you rang their doorbell, a tinny chime sang through the house to signal a visitor had arrived. Our doorbell was an old bicycle horn covered in spider webs that sounded like it signalled the punchline in a slapstick circus performance. I loved that their parents wore ‘normal’ clothes and had ‘normal’ jobs. And I loved when their parents announced it was time for bed and then read us a story and tucked us in. My parents had raised us with a focus on self-determination and left it to us to choose when we went to sleep. (It wasn’t nearly as much fun as you’d think.)

Fortunately, I had Gran – Elise Evans, nee Simpson. And, on the day that changed the trajectory of my life, I drove to Gran’s house to collect her for Saturday lunch with my family, as I did every week, feeling grateful to have her as an ally. I was also pleased I’d be able to use her bathroom to wash my hands and rid them of the greasy, smelly petrol film that had coated them since I’d filled up my car – a white 1990 hatchback which was older than me.

My car had a few cosmetic blemishes and mechanical quirks but, more often than not, it got me from point A to B and back again without incident. The lock on the driver’s side was broken, which meant I had to climb across the passenger seat to get in and out. Mostly, this was just a mild inconvenience, although, once, I did accidentally disengage the handbrake as I manoeuvred my legs into the footwell. I managed to stop the car before it rolled too far down the hill it was parked on, and perfected the act of scissoring my legs over the centre console so it wouldn’t happen again. A few months earlier, on a particularly wet day – the sort when the ability to see out of one’s windscreen was crucial to safely navigating the road – the windscreen wiper lever snapped off in my hand. Fortunately, I still had a screwdriver in the car from when the rear-view mirror fell off, so I jimmied it into the cavity and developed a technique to manually activate the wipers. It often took a couple of attempts to engage, so it wasn’t ideal for sudden downpours, but it did the job.

Gran’s house – specifically, her garden – was one of my favourite places in the world. Well before local councils gave cash incentives for people to plant native gardens, or gardening for wildlife was in vogue, Gran had established a spectacular native haven in an otherwise suburban concrete jungle.

At first (and maybe second and third) glance, the front garden looked haphazard and unorganised. Chaotic, even. But Gran had thoughtfully introduced every plant and arranged every log and stone to provide a sanctuary for birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects. Carpets of pigface, with their pretty pink flowers and plump green leaves, sprawled over the ground, while the dainty white flowers of creeping boobialla scented the air in spring and summer. Bronze rambler and other creepers wound up a retaining wall made from quarry stones, which served as a multistorey apartment building for a thriving population of lizards.

The sharp spines and prickly leaves of the grevilleas and hakeas might have looked inhospitable, but they offered birds a refuge from prowling neighbourhood cats. The bottlebrush and banksia shrubs along the fence served as an all-you-can-eat buffet for birds and bees.

The birdbath in the centre of the garden attracted local magpies, willie wagtails and honeyeaters that splashed and ruffled in the water and fed on the insects it lured. After rain, the pond at its base was a stage for motorbike frogs that performed like an unruly orchestra in which every member vied for a lead part.

After dark, when the diurnal creatures had turned in for the evening, a southern boobook owl that my Gran had named Liber (the Latin word for ‘book’) emerged from the shadows. It would quietly announce itself with a ‘boo-book’ call, before assuming its position as nighttime sentinel in the firewood banksia.

The pièce de résistance of Gran’s garden was the three-armed grasstree, or balga, as it’s also known, which she’d salvaged from a development site. It was impossible to know exactly how old it was, but given the species grows as little as two centimetres per year, it could have been up to 600 years old. Its vibrant green spines contrasted with the charred black trunk; an ode to the hundreds of years it stood in its fire-prone environment.

As I made my way along the path, stepping carefully over a trail of ants and spotting a honeyeater overhead, I could feel my shoulders relax. Gran’s house was one of the few places where I felt I could be myself.

My happiest childhood memories were of Wednesday afternoons, when Mum taught art classes and Gran collected us from school. While Jarrah and Elijah lounged on Gran’s mid-century settee watching cartoons and eating her delicious cinnamon twists or the Iced VoVos she bought especially for us, Gran and I could be found in her garden, or with our noses in natural history books.

One year, Gran gave me a flower press for my birthday. I carefully selected suitable specimens, which I gently placed between the cardboard sheets like other girls my age might tuck their dolls into bed. Then I would fit the top and bottom boards, replace the wingnuts and begin the excruciating wait for them to dry. After about ten days, I would open the flower press, and lift off the cardboard to reveal the perfectly preserved specimens. Gran – a botanist with the state’s herbarium – would help me tape the specimen into a flower journal, describe its features, document its origin, and record its scientific and common name. By the time I had finished primary school, I had created an impressive botanical reference library.

Gran continued to collect me from school long after I was old enough to walk home by myself. By then, I had the whole batch of twists or the entire packet of Iced VoVos to myself because Jarrah and Elijah had given up afternoons with Gran in favour of hanging out in the local park or shopping centre with their friends. When I left school, I scheduled my university and work timetables so I could still visit her on Wednesday afternoons. It was the highlight of my week.

I reached Gran’s front porch and called out to her as I opened the front door.

‘Hello, darling.’ She poked her head into the hallway. ‘I won’t be a tick.’

‘No rush, Gran. I’m just going to wash my hands.’

I walked down the corridor towards the bathroom and breathed in the smell of the house – of Gran. Her house was perfumed by a subtle hint of dusty books, a whiff of her homemade (and sworn-by) vinegar cleaning solution and a trace of the Pond’s Cold Cream that she’d used since forever. It used to smell like Grandpa’s cigarettes, too, but that smell had faded in the months after he died. The shelves, cabinets and mantles in her house groaned under the weight of the ornaments and trinkets she’d collected from op shops, garage sales and on her travels. And her walls were covered in paintings of flowers, birds, seascapes, landscapes, portraits, still lifes and life studies.

My favourite painting of hers hung at the end of the corridor near the bathroom. The painting depicted two adult Gouldian finches perched on a grass plant. The hues of their resplendent yellow bellies, violet throats and green caps had faded a little over the years, but their colours were still striking. A third bird – a comparatively dull-brown juvenile – was sheltering behind the outstretched wing of one of its parents. When I was younger, I would look to that juvenile and wonder if I, too, would transform into a more colourful version of myself as I matured. A glance down at my black jeans, black Converse runners and black T-shirt indicated that I had not.

I washed my hands, dried them on the stiff, sun-dried handtowel and glanced behind me at the tiny bathtub where Gran had told us fairytales as she gave us our weekly hair wash on Wednesday afternoons. I hunched to inspect my reflection in the mirror, which was positioned at the perfect height for my five-foot-one Gran and no one else. I used my still-damp hands to smooth the stray hairs that had escaped the low ponytail I’d tied at the nape of my neck, and performed an inspection of my chocolate-brown hair for any grey hairs that might have appeared since I plucked two out last week.

After leaving the bathroom, I found Gran waiting by the front door. I leaned down to hug her; her tiny shoulders slipped under my armpits and her short-cropped hair gently tickled underneath my chin. She always seemed tiny; I was taller than her by the time I was twelve. But lately she seemed even smaller, and the hunch she had developed through years of looking down a microscope had become more pronounced.

She had a light-pink silk scarf adorned with flowers draped around her neck and was wearing a pair of silver gumleaf earrings from her extensive collection.

‘You look nice,’ I said. ‘I like the earrings.’

She smiled, and jiggled her head to make her earrings dance below her lobes. ‘You ready?’ she asked.

I shrugged my shoulders defeatedly.

On our way out, we passed by ‘Herrick’, who Gran had rescued from a garage sale the previous month. Herrick was a jackalope – a taxidermied head of a rabbit, fitted with a large pair of forked deer antlers and mounted on a dark timber plate. Apparently, the myth of the jackalope began when American colonists spotted rabbits with warty growths on their heads and then some crafty taxidermists from Wyoming attached a pair of antlers to a rabbit’s head and sold them for a lark. Now they hung in bars and tourist haunts all over Wyoming – and above Gran’s fireplace.

‘Goodbye, Herrick,’ she called merrily.

‘Goodbye, Herrick,’ I echoed.

As silly as it was, I was a little jealous of him. He didn’t have to deal with my family.

Chapter 2

Beth

‘Hola!’ my father bellowed as he threw open the front door.

He was wearing a sombrero and a multicoloured poncho. I recognised the poncho as the one he’d bought when he and Mum travelled to South America for four months when I was in primary school. They’d left my siblings and me with Gran and Grandpa.

‘Como estas? Come ’ere.’ He grabbed for me, pulled me into a big hug and kissed me loudly on the cheek. ‘How’s my girl?’

‘I’m good, Dad,’ I replied breathlessly; most of the air had been squeezed from my chest.

I pulled back to survey him. His sombrero was askew, having been displaced by our embrace. Up close, I could see he had used an eyeliner pencil to draw on a moustache. My first instinct was to call him out for cultural appropriation, but I had enough experience with family lunches to know that they usually went better if conversations like those were saved until after we’d exchanged greetings.

‘Hi, Elise.’ He turned to Gran with a giant smile. They kissed each other’s cheeks.

‘Darling, you look FAB-U-LOUS,’ she gushed. ‘If I’d known it was a Mexican-themed lunch, I would have dressed up too.’

‘Oh, it was a little last-minute. We accidentally drank all the wine in the house last night,’ he chuckled, turning to walk back inside. ‘But we had some tequila and Cointreau. So, I figured, when life gives you lemons … you make margaritas. So, it’s a Mexican fiesta – isn’t it, Rosie?’

‘Ohhhh … they’re here,’ my mother cooed as she appeared from the kitchen. She was wearing a Frida Kahlo-esque floral headdress made from large, brightly coloured flowers. She looked magnificent.

People often described Mum as ‘breathtakingly beautiful’. Her eyes were a striking aqua, and her wild curly hair – once a vibrant strawberry blonde, but now a little lighter – was often decorated with coloured paint that had strayed from the paintbrushes she wielded.

‘Mum,’ she said, wrapping her olive-skinned arms around Gran. ‘How are you doing?’

‘I’m good, darling.’ Gran looked Mum up and down like she was admiring a magnificent piece of art. ‘You all look wonderful.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, through a broad smile, her eyes twinkling. There was no question she was at her most beautiful when she smiled. The lines that had developed around her eyes, down her cheeks and across the bridge of her nose didn’t seem to age her, but endearingly animated her smile and added to its warmth. And her laugh was a raucous, joyous, contagious sound that reverberated around even the densest space.

Growing up, I’d found it mortifying.

Mum launched into a lively description of how some neighbours – ‘the ones from number fourteen that we always thought were a bit odd’ – had seen them in the front yard and suggested they all have a drink. It turned out that they were a bit odd, but they also were a lot of fun. One drink turned into one bottle, which turned into one big night.

‘Can you believe they’ve lived down the road from us for nearly five years, and we’ve only just discovered them?’ Mum mused. ‘Think of all the fun we could have had.’

I hoped the odd couple from number fourteen knew what they were getting into. My parents had a habit of becoming fast friends with other couples. They would share an intense friendship, living in each other’s pockets, until the couple retreated back into their life of suburban normalcy, completely worn out. My parents had an insatiable stamina for life and a vitality that exhausted most others. Few other couples could keep up for the long haul.

‘Who’s for a drink?’ Dad asked, while waving a blender jug in one hand and three upturned cocktail glasses in the other.

‘I’ll have one,’ Jarrah said, materialising from down the hall.

Like Mum, Jarrah moved with an effortless fluidity, which was made even more graceful by the long, flowing skirts she often wore. The bracelets that adorned one of her svelte wrists softly jingled when she moved, creating an ethereal soundtrack for her journey through life. The closest I had to this was a squeak that had developed in the left shoe of my favourite pair.

She gave Gran a hug, me a wave and made her way to one of the armchairs where she tucked her legs underneath her, sat down and rested her head on one of her slender arms.

‘Elise? Beth? You having a drink?’ Dad asked while already pouring them.

Elijah emerged from his dark, cavernous bedroom, grunted in my direction, gave Dad a thumbs up and pecked Gran on the cheek. He sat opposite Jarrah, in front of a vase of peacock feathers Mum had collected when she worked as an artist in residence at a winery in the valley. The feathers looked like they were extending out of the top of his head like a riotous fascinator.

Elijah had followed in Dad’s footsteps and become a musician. He was in a band called One Girl, Three Lovers with one girl – Olivia – and his high school friend, Sam. The trio had decided on the name without realising what it implied about the nature of their off-stage relationship. They were indeed lovers (being in a band had its perks, apparently), just not with each other. But, by the time someone pointed this out, they’d already had posters made up to promote their first gig, so they decided to keep it. Besides, sexual ambiguity was at the heart of many successful bands, they figured.

‘There he is …’ Dad said, handing Elijah a drink. ‘How was your gig last night?’

Elijah explained that the gig, which was at a small suburban pub, was a little dull until a twenty-first birthday pub crawl turned up. A gaggle of drunken girls heckled the band with requests for mainstream pop songs, while the birthday girl’s mother threw up in a pot plant by the stage. A couple of the attending males were caught trying to pull a condom vending machine off the toilet wall, and someone else jumped the bar and took off with a bottle of vodka. The entire party was escorted from the premises as the band played some new material, which went down well among those sober enough to notice it.

Predictably, Elijah’s tale prompted Mum and Dad to recall stories of the good ol’ days, when Dad had played at some of the city’s shadier venues. Like all their stories, we’d heard Mum and Dad tell these ones hundreds of times before, which meant their delivery was well-rehearsed. They finished each other’s sentences, paused at key moments for suspense and even threw in some sound effects while ascending towards a suspenseful climax.

The story we’d heard them tell most often was the one of how they’d met. It happened when they were in their early twenties, at an art auction fundraiser at a posh western suburbs private school. The event supported local artists, by exposing them to members of the school community who had deep wallets and a desire to publicly demonstrate their generosity.

Mum was one of the exhibiting artists and Dad had been hired to play the backing track for conversations about overseas ski trips and property portfolios. It wasn’t his usual style of gig, but Dad had hoped it might lead to other bookings for cocktail parties and corporate functions. Unfortunately, the evening’s program contained a typo and incorrectly identified him as Thorn Dwyer, rather than Thom Dwyer.

Having noticed Mum from across the room (his overused cliché, not mine), Dad had tried to make a beeline for her between each of his sets. But she had spent the whole evening shrouded by bougie folk who asked her about the origins of her inspiration and whether she’d considered painting in a more conventional style. She hated these types of people, but she indulged their inane conversation, as she was desperate to make a sale. The original-painting-selling business was slow, and, as a vegetarian pacifist, she was reluctant to work any more hours at her job as a casual counter-hand in a butcher to make that month’s rent.

My mother’s painting was the last lot of the evening. It was an abstract landscape she’d created with bold and textural brushstrokes in rich colours.

Aware he was running out of time to meet her before the end of the evening, Dad decided to bid on Mum’s painting. He planned to invest every cent he had – $227.60, including the $200 he was to be paid for the event – to procure the painting and secure an introduction to the artist.

Armed with a numbered paddle and a keenness to buy whatever my mother was selling, Dad started his bidding out strong, confidently committing $60 – $10 over the starting price. As he lowered his paddle on the first bid, he realised he’d been so transfixed on the bewitching artist that he hadn’t even looked at the painting he was so determined to buy. Fortunately, he thought it was as magnificent as the woman who created it.

A bidding war ensued between Dad, an elderly lady wearing a fur coat and too much perfume, and the father of the school captain. The bidding bounced around between them, increasing by ten- and twenty-dollar increments. Then, just as Dad was about to bid $240 (he felt sure he could procure the shortfall from the coins that occupied the cracks and crevices of his car), the school captain’s father delivered a decisive $20 blow.

Dad was disappointed, but he had no time to lament; he was contracted to play a final set to entertain the masses while they settled their purchases and headed out into the evening and back to their waterfront mansions.

But my father’s efforts had not gone unnoticed. My mother had been impressed by his deep sultry voice as he played pared-back acoustic renditions of some of her favourite songs. She’d noticed that he moved his body towards the microphone when he sang high notes. And she liked the way he closed his eyes when he played instrumental guitar solos. She also appreciated that his valiant involvement in the bidding war had driven up the price of her painting well beyond her expectations. Thanks to him, she would be able to pay that month’s rent and have some money left over for some new paints.

When she’d finalised her sale, my mother wrote her phone number on a piece of paper and had planned to put it in the open guitar case next to Dad. But as she approached the stage, he stopped mid-song and, with childlike enthusiasm, asked: ‘Want to get a drink?’

Startled by the abrupt pause in his stunning rendition of Jackie DeShannon’s ‘What the World Needs Now Is Love’, my mother hesitated for just long enough that the lady in the fur coat called out: ‘If she doesn’t, I will.’

My mother nodded, my father smiled, and the other lady huffed off into the night.

Mum scrunched her phone number into a ball and tossed it into a nearby bin; she had a feeling she wouldn’t need it. She was right. My parents went for a drink that night, and within three months they were engaged; within two months of that my mother was pregnant with Jarrah; and three months later, they were married. They’ve been inseparable as ‘Rosie and Thorn’ ever since.

This story had been told to us like a fairytale over and over again. Jarrah – a hopeless romantic – pored over every detail.

‘How did you know he was the one?’ she’d ask Mum.

‘What did you first notice about her?’ she’d quiz Dad.

‘I wonder if love at first sight happens to everyone?’ she’d pose to no one in particular.

I was far more interested in the practical elements of the story.

‘What would have happened if you’d won the auction and couldn’t pay your rent or afford to eat?’ I’d challenge Dad, judging his fiscal carelessness.

‘What would you have done with the painting if you’d won it and she’d said no to your invitation?’ I’d inquire, appalled that he’d tried to buy her affections.

‘Weren’t you concerned about starting a family without any financial security, assets or conventiona. . .