Paper Daisies

by Kim Kelly

  That brings me to some decision now. Some defiance at all I cannot do. I shall go out to Hill End, and I’ll take my sister with me. We shall make an excursion of it, just me and Gret, into the hills and not so very far away. Buckley can take us. We will picnic by the Turon in that pretty spot where it crosses the Bridle Track, and we’ll stay over at Wheeler’s Hotel, that one with the mermaid calliope whirling out all those funfair tunes, those songs that made Mother laugh, so long ago … Songs I can’t remember now except for the rhythm of Papa’s riding heels dancing me round by the hearth, that precious last time we were all together there … I kiss the top of Gret’s head with the secret surprise. An excursion for us. For her and her box of paints; she lives happiest and brightest there, in her watercolours. She will paint the river, the mermaids, the poppies. I will demand it of Uncle Alec tonight. Somehow I will make him say yes to me. Somehow. Beg; bluff; smash a vase. Find the right appeal to his vanity. And I will indeed then visit Ah Ling while we are there, and I will ask him for a potion all right – one for Gret, something to expel the child safely, quietly, now, before we even have to whisper a word to each other about it. Before we must decide there is a child there at all.

  She is still looking out of the window, watching the stranger. I watch him now too. He looks up into the tree above his drab daisies, looking into it for an age. Prince still by him, tail wagging.

  ‘What’s he doing, do you think?’ Gret asks me.

  ‘I don’t know. He said he was a botanist – I suppose that’s what a botanist does. Looks at trees.’

  ‘And flowers,’ she says.

  ‘And flowers.’ I begin to pin up her hair. I take my prettiest silk camellia and hold it by her face, seaweed pink against the raven sweep, and ask her opinion: ‘Hm?’

  But she doesn’t see it. She will not be distracted from the man in the garden. ‘He would need to look at the grass, too, wouldn’t he?’ she says, from some other elsewhere. ‘There are lots of different types of grasses. A botanist would look at all of them.’

  ‘I’m sure he would,’ I say, struck by a deeper memory at her words, her abiding perceptivity, the quiet intelligence that once was loud as mine, in her own way. Visions of the days my big sister led me, and not I her. I am chasing her through the foggy edges of our garden at Echo Point, cold, damp mist licking up from the valley through the fat pine trunks, and I am small and scared, but her strides are bold, her laughter bolder: Come along, Ryldy. Fleet fingers at the piano: Come along, Ryldy. So quick at any rhythm or rhyme: Come along, Ryldy. And ever insisting I hurry up the vast mountain of Katoomba Street in the blazing sun, for the sweetshop near the station, hands on her hips, tapping her toe: Come along, Ryldy. Aunt Libby consoling me, puffing too: Big sisters – ha! Always such bossy boots. What would my sister be beyond this prison, given the chance? Bossy? I wish for that. I wish she will become the bossiest sister that ever lived. I wish that I will find a way for us to leave before her spirit is extinguished altogether and forever.

  I follow her gaze back to the stranger and I watch him again with her. Daisies in hand, he starts making his way back up the hill. Perhaps Gret sees some like kind in him: there is certainly something distracted about this fellow too. He appears to be chatting with Prince as they walk; then he stops in the midst of the orchard and we can just see him pilfering the cherries, deftly cropping a branch-load into his haversack.

  ‘A thief!’ Gret is thoroughly delighted by him now.

  ‘A thief he is.’

  He buckles his haversack and sets off again, past the verandah’s edge, past our view, and away.

  Ben

  Two steps back down the front path, I am embarrassed at my greed: denuding almost half that shrub of its blooms. For what purpose? To place in a jar on the counter of a random bush cockies’ pub before moving on? Mama would not look approvingly on such waste. And so I turn back towards the house. I shall give most of these elatum to the young lady there; surely she would want everlastings for her table.

  I ring the bell at the door and wait, my face already hot with the effort of wondering which foot I might place in my mouth first this time. I wait several moments, staring into the brass plaque by the door, mind tracing round the B of BELLEVUE, before deciding that the belle inside has had a good look at me through the glass and chosen not to answer, and so I divide the stems, leaving myself just the one, just a sample for the herbarium, a hand of three blooms and a bud, which I thread through the straps of my satchel, before I bend down to place the rest on the step.

  Just as she opens the door. I’m sure it is she for I am looking at a pair of dainty shoes, ivory slippers bound with silk ribbons, ivory ankles beneath the pale blue skirt. Strike me, that’s a fine pair of ankles …

  ‘Yes?’ She is demanding an explanation for my presence here now and I needn’t look up to see that severe frown dividing her brow. I can hear it well enough. ‘What is it?’

  I pick up the flowers and offer: ‘I thought, perhaps … these … you might like?’

  She looks at them as though I am offering her a bunch of eels.

  I start to back away. ‘Once again, my apologies. Inappropriate – ah …’

  But now she thrusts out her hand and grasps the flowers from me, saying: ‘Not inappropriate at all. What a thoughtful gesture.’ She smiles at me, but there is some arrested sigh of forbearance in it, the smile one might give an imbecile. Fair enough too. She says: ‘My sister will delight in these, thank you.’

  ‘Oh. Good,’ I say and lose my way again as the frown leaves her face. It is a flawless face. The face of a porcelain doll. Astounding symmetry.

  She thrusts out her other hand. ‘Berylda Jones.’

  ‘Oh?’ I look at her hand. Porcelain hand. Belonging to a girl called Berylda. She doesn’t expect me to take her pretty hand, does she? In my grubby oaf’s hand?

  She does, it seems; still holding it out to me: ‘And you are?’ Greeting an imbecile.

  ‘I am …’ At the touch of her fingers against my palm I’m sure I have not the slightest idea. Her hand is so tiny, petal soft and so white inside mine as I bow over it, we cannot be of the same genus, let alone species. My hand has never appeared so large, and it is a fairly large one.

  ‘A name will do,’ she says impatiently, frown threatening again. ‘Whom shall I tell my sister gave us a present of these flowers?’

  ‘Yes.’ Benjamin, I hear Mama sigh with her perennial disappointment. Give the girl your name – it’s not a hard task. Just a name. Just a girl: they comprise half the human world. ‘Of course. I am Benjamin – Ben Wilberry.’

  ‘Of course?’ She laughs, lightly yet derisively.

  I think she is about to say good day and shut the door when a man appears behind her, an older man, considerably older than me, hair silvering above his sideburns. Unquestionably the master of this house.

  ‘Who is this?’ he says, protective, and well he should be. There is some military straightness about this fellow; the father, I presume.

  ‘Sir.’ I recover my senses enough to afford him the expected and conventional courtesies. ‘Good afternoon. I am Ben Wilberry – botanist. Miss Jones was kind enough to allow me to inspect a shrub of interest to me on your land, just by your dam. I saw it only in passing …’

  The man responds with a blank stare, as though to tell me that my explanation is not satisfactory.

  ‘I’m from Melbourne University,’ I add, searching for some more convincing justification for my being here. ‘I am from Queensland, actually, originally,’ I say, very unhelpfully. ‘Er. Conducting a study of a particular plant. Presently. Here. I apologise for the intrusion. Yes, ah …’

  The girl looks up into the curve of the tin roof above us; and that’s about right – that’s about how quick it usually is before I lose the attention of a girl. But she hasn’t lost mine: there is something curious about the shape of her eyes, an accentu
ation to the curve of the lid, a petal there too. Something curious about the shape of her altogether. Sylphlike. Slip of a girl …

  ‘Not at all.’ The man thrusts out his hand, suddenly, confusingly. ‘Alec Howell, how do you do,’ he introduces himself, and he is Howell not Jones, not her father? And he has one of those overly eager grips I always find disconcerting, for I can’t return it. If I did I’d have left a trail of crushed hands behind me. ‘Now, Wilberry,’ the man says, eager as his handshake, ‘I suppose you must be one of the Wilberrys of Queensland cattle fame, are you?’

  Queensland cattle fame. Must that be my perennial calling card? ‘I suppose so. Yes.’

  ‘Aha!’ he says, pleased at his guess. ‘Eleonora Station, isn’t it?’ He either wants to be sure, or he’s the type who’s sure he might know how much pickle I had with my lunch.

  ‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘Eleonora.’ Whether Mama liked it or not. Fifteen thousand Shorthorn out of Jericho, what woman wouldn’t want her name emblazoned over that? I suppose he must have loved her once. Did he? Ever? Who would have thought Pater’s renown had travelled so far south of the border, though – small country, for all its enormity. I must admit: ‘My father is John Wilberry, famous cattleman.’ Amongst other things. As well as the second most compelling reason for me having wandered onto your property just now to look at a flower – bloody embarrassment – you always have been – and why I’ve spent the better part of this past decade in Melbourne’s School of Natural Sciences, as distant from him as practicable.

  ‘Well, well. What about that.’ This Alec Howell is pleased to make this connection; I’m not sure I’ve ever met one quite so pleased. A small man, he rises up on his toes with his pleasure.

  ‘Oh, but we must invite him to our dinner, Uncle.’ The girl is suddenly animated and insistent, a blush on those porcelain cheeks. Strike me all over again, but she is an extraordinary creature. There is a quick, sharp glance that passes between her and the man, though, some misgiving, something I have indeed interrupted. I open my mouth to decline.

  But he is eager still. ‘Splendid thought, Berylda,’ he says with a quick, sharp licking of lips, muddy grey eyes set again on mine, ready as a needle-grass skink. ‘Unless you have other plans, of course – it is New Year’s Eve, after all.’

  ‘It is, yes, and no,’ I reply, ‘we’ve no other plans this evening. But we wouldn’t want to intru–’

  ‘We?’ The man rises up on his toes again. If he were any more eager he’d spring up and hit the tin above us.

  ‘My friend Cosmo Thompson,’ I tell him, searching for an excuse to extricate myself from this awkward, unsought invitation. I shan’t tell him Cos would most likely get drunk and insult one of his guests, or all of them. I say instead, ‘The artist travelling with me on my study. We’re staying at the Royal Hotel in the town, just for the night. And we have an early morning tomorrow,’ ah, there’s the tidy excuse, ‘taking the train to Manildra, we’re for Mandagery Creek, hoping to find some specimens of interest there.’

  ‘Right,’ Alec Howell says, and he appears not in the least bit interested in my own pursuit. ‘Well, you and your friend Mr Thompson be back here for eight and you’ll be most welcome. Not a terribly large affair,’ he says with a smile of modesty so false it’s carrying a beacon. ‘A few colleagues from the hospital – I am the surgeon there – and a few other good people from our fine town. Let off a few fire crackers at midnight, eh? Nothing overly formal in this house. What do you say?’

  Curiosity puts me in two minds about this now. Alec Howell is a grasping little specimen, I’d say, presumptuous, and nothing sincere about him at all. Those muddy grey eyes want something; the kind of man who always wants something. I’m sure he will very quickly become a bore. I am sure I do not want to share any table with him.

  But the girl, she entreats me with her smile. ‘Oh do say yes, Mr Wilberry.’

  Oh yes, I would like to see the girl once more. Yes, even if it means I must blunder my way through each course for Cos’s amusement. Do I mean to do that to myself? Surely not.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say to her – barely – and look to her uncle, clearing my throat. ‘Thank you, Mr Howell, for the invitation …’ and I only make the decision in this breath: ‘Yes, we would be most happy to accept it.’

  The girl, she seems most happy at the idea, doesn’t she? She suggested it; she entreats me. She nods over the bunch of everlastings in her hands: ‘Wonderful.’

  And I doubt very much I’ve made a wise decision. I can hear Cos laughing himself arseless already.

  Berylda

  ‘Tell Mary,’ Uncle Alec commands me as he closes the door.

  ‘With relish,’ I hiss under my breath as I walk away from him, towards the kitchen. Mary won’t be pleased, she’ll have to bring in a pair of chairs from the drawing room, a tragedy of mismatching woodwork and china to upset the order of her world, but that is of no concern to me. I lean my head around the door and address the colander hanging above her at the basin: ‘The master has invited two more guests – see to it that they are accommodated at the table.’

  She complains: ‘Oh but they’ll have to put up with the tarts what have got the cracked pastry, there’s no other –’ Et cetera. She can complain to the maid, poor Lucy; she will anyway.

  I must return to Gret, to tell her about our visitor, share this news that she will love, but as I make a dash across the rear parlour to do just that, I find Uncle Alec there, and by no accident: he is waiting for me. Hands behind his back, he is peering over the mullioned panes in the doors here, as if inspecting them for smudges, as if he’s not in fact checking to see that his own reflection is as agreeable to him as it was the last time he looked.

  ‘Berylda,’ he warns as he turns to me, stepping into the centre of the room, blocking my path. ‘You do not walk away from me as you did just now. That was very rude.’

  I stand before him, staring at the chiselled wedge of his nose. I do this unthinkingly at the beginning of a remonstrance, and his face vanishes around it. Behind him, the day is fading; buttermilk clouds spatter up from the hills: altocumulus, such formations are called, if I remember that lesson in atmospheric physiography correctly.

  ‘Is this how you intend dress for dinner?’ He detests that I have cropped all of my hemlines; he has told me this every day since he collected me from the station.

  I say nothing: obviously I am dressed for dinner. I love this evening dress, its simplicity. It is my Wonderland dress. My prettiest dress, mantel of organdie set over silk marocain, and prettier for the cropping of its train during term, too. I wonder how Clive Gillies-Wright is going; if he’s packed for the Transvaal yet.

  ‘If you must wear such an ugly gown, at least have the decency to wear appropriate undergarments beneath it. Enough of this adolescent rebellion. Put a corset on. Immediately.’

  Rage fills the space before me and I cannot hold back these words, this defiance: ‘I will not wear a corset this evening. I am decently dressed as I am now.’

  ‘What did you say?’ The voice scritches with instant infuriation, shocked by my insolence, as am I.

  And yet I can’t step back from this rage. You have injured my sister; in ways I can barely understand. I inform him: ‘No woman of intellect wears a corset beneath her dress.’ Or not unless she intends to continue in Arts – and no one at Women’s College wears a revolting Gisbon Girl straight-front. No one serious would.

  ‘A woman of intellect?’ He laughs. ‘Is that what you are? You look stupid. You look slovenly. Like a gypsy tramp. Loose. You will only make a fool of yourself.’

  ‘Then there’s no reason not to let me, is there,’ I retort. Blindly. I am not a fool. I have won the Biology prize for First Year, I remind myself; I have been accepted into medical school. I am Bryl: Flo calls me Bryl for brilliant. What would she do, what would she say if she were here, in this moment? I do not know; I have never
confided a hint of any of this in her, or anyone.

  I walk past him. I walk away from him with my heart drumming out thunderclaps of fear. I have never been so bold with him. But I am angry bold now. I have reached my limit this day, for all that he has done to us. His insatiable need to beat and tether everyone and everything to his will. From the moment I wake in this house, his relentless litany of criticisms begins: I butter my bread too thickly; my perfume is too strong; my hair too tightly pulled back from my face; and my skirts are too high above the ground: Your stockings may be glimpsed when you walk, Berylda. It’s unseemly. Well, let the ladies faint with outrage then and the men tremble with desire, but let me get about them freely. What’s unseemly is a man having any opinion whatsoever on women’s undergarments. A man? A rapist. Is that a man?

  ‘Berylda. You do not defy me.’

  I do. God help me, but I do now.

  I close the door on him and his rising ire before he can grasp my arm to brand me with it. Exhale as the latch clicks at my back, keyless and useless against him, but he doesn’t force his way. He will have too many other vastly petty details to attend to at this time. He’ll be needing to petrify little Lucy over the state of the silver next, line up the labels of the wine bottles, pluck his eyebrows.

  ‘Shall I wear this dear old thing again, Ryl?’ Gret is here, in my room. Of course she is, where I expected to find her. She is at my long mirror with her own favourite gown held to her, of delicate fawn voile, tulle-ruched, lovely in every way but for the Chantilly train that trails behind it like Miss Havisham’s regret. I’d like to tear it off and burn it. ‘I think I shall,’ Greta answers herself and asks another question: ‘Cinch me in for it, will you, please?’

  Cinch her into her straight-front? There she is with it already fastened to her frame, waiting for me to pull in the laces. ‘No,’ I snap back into myself and at her. ‘Don’t wear that corset tonight – don’t wear a corset at all.’