by Kim Kelly
‘What?’ Greta looks at me in the mirror, wide-eyed, as if I have lost my mind.
Perhaps I have. I am still holding the stranger’s daisies; alien things; why do I have them? I have quite forgotten. I toss them on the chest at the foot of my bed as I repeat to Gret: ‘Don’t wear the corset. Don’t wear one any more.’
‘Why?’ She is wary at my bizarre demand.
‘I want you to be free in this way, if we can be in no other, that’s all. Now. From this moment. Please.’ That’s all? I am demanding that my wounded sister provoke her tormentor more?
‘Ryldy, I’m not as brave as you are.’ She shakes her head and looks down with such defeat, such sadness, my anger only rises up again and higher.
‘Yes you are,’ I demand now. ‘You are braver than I am, Greta. Every single day.’ Every single day that you spend alone with him, when I am not here. I cannot leave you alone with him again.
‘Ryl …’ She remains wary. ‘Uncle Alec will not like this …’ But I have begun unfastening her, and with the pop of each stud down the busk, I promise her silently: He will not touch you again. I don’t know how I will achieve this, but he will not touch you ever again.
‘A woman ought to be able to be both beautiful and unshackled, oughtn’t she?’ I twitter on outwardly, pulling the obscenity from her, and she groans, knowing her protest is useless, as I button her into her gown. ‘A woman ought to be able to go about in the world undeformed by the apparatus of torture. She ought to be deemed right as she is made. You are excellent just as you are made, my sister. Now here.’ I fluff the tulle cloud of her mantel about her shoulders and then take a pink chiffon sash from the drawer of my dressing table, to match the camellia in her hair. I tie it loosely around her waist and deem it: ‘Grecian chic – direct from Paris. You heard it first in the Sunday Times, direct from Mullumbimby. You are lovely, you are perfect – you are slim enough, my darling.’ She is so slim, so small, we both are, the absence of corsetry is more noticeable for what it doesn’t pretend to plump; how can it not be more right, more modest to go without? I kiss her on the cheek: ‘You are excellent. See?’
‘Hm.’ She smiles slowly, swishing one way and then the other. The bodice of the gown drapes softly down to her waist without all the boning and banding beneath; there are few women who could say they make such a fitted piece look more beautiful without help. Of course my sister is excellent, in every way.
I stand beside her in the mirror, and we grin together for a moment with the scandal. And then I shudder at myself, at my own absurdity. What am I doing? Both of us corsetless at dinner: Uncle Alec will most definitely be furious, disinclined to grant me the favour of any excursion to Hill End. But some switch has been thrown today. I will match him for fury. If he attempts some retribution, if he lays so much as a whisker on my sister again, I will fly at him. Be in no doubt. I will scream this whole town down. I will scream until we are free. Or until I am locked up.
‘I’m not sure.’ Gret brushes a hand across her abdomen, still wary, but playing along with me now. ‘I might be a little bit too free here – I feel as if I might float off.’
‘You won’t float off,’ I quip, convincing us both we can pull this off. ‘You are no longer duck-shaped.’
‘Oh!’ Gret laughs, really laughs. ‘You are too funny.’ Tossing her chin up with that sudden burst of who she really is. ‘Quack.’ She flaps her elbows. The loveliest duckling that ever there was.
‘Quack quack.’ I put on my eminent physician voice to make her laugh more: ‘And I’ll have you know that it has been scientifically established as a fact that you’ll enjoy your meal a whole lot more without your belly being pushed back to where your bum should be.’
‘Oh!’ She pretends dismay at my coarse language, hand to brow. ‘You do learn awful things at that university.’
‘I do.’ I can only agree.
‘And oh again but what are these?’ Gret says suddenly, not laughing now. She has seen the flowers on the chest by the bed. I stare at them with her and for a second I wonder, too.
She picks them up, and as she does I remember: our stranger. ‘Oh them.’ I pretend indifference. ‘Yes. Well. Guess who’s joining us for dinner.’
‘No – really?’ She has guessed.
‘Yes. Our stranger. That’s right. That was him at the door just now. His name is Ben Wilberry. Botanist and bringer of bedraggled daisies from our dam.’
She looks down into them, her face a picture of pure delight, of this small wish made true. ‘Oh but they look gorgeous cut, don’t they?’
I want a photograph of her holding them, gazing into them just as she is now. A bunch of these plain things made gorgeous in her arms. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘And I must report that Mr Wilberry has fearfully big strong hands, too. He might just cart us off yet.’
I am only jollying her along, of course, and she knows it, but she says, wistful, all her sadness returned: ‘I feel so light without my corset, I think I might be very easy to carry.’
I hold her around the waist, tight to me, tight around the wrongness of what that monster has forced inside her, and I promise her and all that hurts her as I kiss her cheek once more: ‘My Gret, you will always be easy to carry. You are a thistle wisp.’
Please, God, fate, whoever, if anyone is listening yet, give me the strength. I close my eyes with this one endless wish: Give me the strength to carry both of us. Carry us away.
The Festivities
Disobedience—that is the nobility of slaves.
Thus Spake Zarathustra
`
Ben
‘No.’ Cos is not amenable to the idea, glancing back towards the house. ‘Forced march up that hill again? For what? Some dead-boring dinner with some farmer you’ve just met? So I can spend the evening listening to you go on ad infinitum about your shrubbery? No.’
‘He’s a doctor, not a farmer. And you didn’t go all the way up this hill the first time,’ I reply. ‘Hardly a hill at all, and in any event, I’m sure we can arrange a cab.’ Though it’s barely three miles back to the Royal from here; or not much more, at any rate.
‘I’m not so sure about that, Wilber,’ he grumbles, trudging sullenly on. ‘Oh look – another hill.’ He points ahead to, indeed, another small round knoll, but one the road winds around, and as it does the town begins to re-emerge from windswept bushland with the appearance of the hospital: monumental building that speaks of monumental aspirations – ones that tumble into a sports oval down the other side of the rise.
‘Oh look,’ I say to josh him as much as to laugh at where we find ourselves. ‘And now here’s the ubiquitous cricket pitch. I could just leave you here for the night, couldn’t I? Leave you to graze the wicket?’
But the only response I receive is an emphatic, scornful snort and a continued dragging of heels. I’ll have to work harder at this. Could I be bothered? Wonderful, the girl smiles at me again and again, and I am bothered more than is reasonable. I beg a little: ‘Come on, Cos. Please. What’s the difference between a pub full of people you have no interest in and a house full of people you have no interest in? Come on, it’s New Year’s Eve.’ As though I care for that.
Just as I say this a gang of oiled-up young louts swagger out from a lane and onto the street over the other side of the oval, pushing and shoving each other along towards town, possibly shearers or miners or similarly enthusiastic groggers, possibly on their way to the Royal for the dance they’re putting on. I try again: ‘Look – not only will there be cabs tonight, there’ll possibly be an ambulance or two.’
Cos grunts, still dragging his feet. ‘But I don’t want to trim my beard,’ he whinges, determinedly churlish.
And that annoys me: ‘Since when has an untrimmed beard stopped you from partaking of free feed and water?’ Never. I look over at him as we cross the road into the main street, an enigma to me as ever. We’ve known each oth
er fifteen years, since our first journey from Brisbane to Sydney, to school at Kings, at Parramatta. We were both thirteen; he complained the whole way on the steamer even then; and every single time. If he’s not being entertained as he wishes to be entertained, he’s not happy. Misanthropic. Mercurial. Spoiled. Never challenged to be anything else. But he’s not entirely his own creation. If the Wilberrys command a sizeable tract of Central Queensland, the Thompsons have great swathes of the coast, under cane, purchased dirt cheap in the 1860s, and two elder sons to squabble over its skyrocketing profit. He doesn’t need a challenge, a gainful occupation, so he doesn’t have one, despite his not inconsiderable talents. He shares none of my restlessness. For all the years I’ve been away in Melbourne, in the Shallow South or the Bog Smoke, as he calls what, in a few hours’ time, will be our national capital, he’s never bothered to visit me: too much trouble. And yet, here he is, troubling with me now …
Looking sideways at me now, through his scowl: ‘Do you reckon they’ll have a decent Scotch at this place?’
I do believe I might be cracking him. ‘I reckon the grog and tuck will be fairly decent, yes,’ I promise him. ‘The host is eager to impress.’ And I must warn him: ‘Nearly fell over himself at mention of the Wilberry name. A fan of Pater’s, I’d say.’
Another sideways glance: ‘Why do you want to have dinner with him then?’
‘Ah. Well …’
‘What?’ He’s interested now.
‘Well, there will be … hm. Of course there will be others attending the party.’ I’ve already given myself away. ‘There is, ah –’
‘Oh God, man, it’s not, is it? No. Not a lady.’ His laugh, at my expense, is already arseless. I want to see a girl, and like some callow youth, I cannot go alone. ‘That settles it then, doesn’t it, my old matey.’ He sets off now at a potbellied wallaby trot through the town. Ludicrous fellow, my stalwart friend. ‘Reckon that nice bit of barmaid’ll press me tails at this short notice?’
Nice bit of comely redhead at the Royal. ‘I’m sure she will,’ I say, although his question was rhetorical. Cos has little trouble with convincing maids of any kind to do anything at all for him. And I remember only now that there’s a stain on the left knee of my dress-suit trousers. White sauce delivered by a rogue chunk of stewed carrot, three evening ago, back at the club. What am I doing to myself here? I’m sure I won’t even speak to the girl. Berylda. Even her name is daunting. Amazing.
‘Chop chop, Wilber.’ Cos is shoving me along now. ‘We don’t want to be late.’
And I imagine Mama is laughing, too.
Berylda
‘A pair of sluts.’ Uncle Alec flicks his eyes across us with disgust as the doorbell clangs, angry that we are not dressed to his satisfaction, and that we are late to the drawing room. Too late for him to order us back into our own rooms to make ourselves respectable: the Gebhardts are here, a good ten minutes early. Set your clock by them.
As he marches past us, I squeeze Greta’s hand and whisper: ‘We will have some fun tonight.’ Regardless, and despite him. We might as well attempt to. I make a face at his back, sticking out my tongue like a tiki carving, and Greta has to cover her mouth to keep the laugh in, keep her decorum as we stand here, waiting, in our place, by the piano.
He stands in the entrance hall as Lucy heaves the front door open, before she disappears into its shadow, a sliver of a shadow herself, barely there at all.
‘Good evening!’ The master’s arms are open wide to receive his guests. This festival of deceit has begun.
Mrs Gebhardt swooping in towards us, always a slightly threatening rustle of taffeta ahead of her pronouncements; this woman cannot speak in anything but pronouncements: ‘Good evening, girls.’ Her hawk eyes slide over us and then settle on me, her tone almost accusatory. ‘Berylda, I have read in this morning’s newspaper that you have come first in Biology. Congratulations to you. This is a good result.’
‘Thank you,’ I reply with a smile as difficult as her manner. Mrs Gebhardt means well, and I am grateful to be congratulated by someone other than my sister and the distant professorial board. I look over at Uncle Alec: busy shaking Dr Gebhardt’s hand as if he didn’t hear; as if he didn’t see Dr Gebhardt this morning on his rounds. He heard Mrs Gebhardt, I’m sure, and he’s making a point of continuing to refuse to congratulate me, when normally he would be boasting of my academic successes as if they were his own, just as he did last year, with my matriculation results. I drill my hatred into the back of his head with a blunt-toothed and rusting trephine, as Mrs Gebhardt pronounces on: ‘I see you reform your dress also.’ She looks Greta and I up and down again. ‘Both of you. This is unexpected and very good.’
Very good observation, barely thirty seconds in; won’t the master be pleased. Greta looks down into the fawn mist at her breast, unsure for a moment, his words having struck there, staining her. I can feel what she is thinking: Do I look like a slut, really? But when she raises her eyes again, she has found something of a smile, too: ‘Thank you, Mrs Gebhardt.’
A thankyou overrun by Mrs Gebhardt’s next pronouncements: ‘In Bavaria, I must tell you, young women are discouraged from wearing such cages of the lungs nowadays. The corset is detrimental to good posture, good breathing and muscular strength.’ She really could lecture any learned professor under the table, given half a chance. ‘One third of young women, at least, will not wear this garment any longer. Not in Munich. Men will not marry a girl who wears one. The effect of the corset is provocative on the one hand, such a display of form and flesh, and vanity, while on the other it –’
‘Interferes with Fräulein’s capacity for chopping wood,’ Dr Gebhardt adds behind her, chuckling at his own wit, Uncle Alec joining him. In open contempt. Ho ho ho. ‘The woman’s place is in the yard doing all the hard work for us, ja!’
‘Ho ho ho.’ I fling my own contempt lightly into the space between them, and I am ignored. Still ho-ho-hoing together, Uncle Alec has his hand on Dr Gebhardt’s shoulder now in that way of masculine conviviality, but I know he is pointedly refusing to acknowledge me – us. He is so incensed by our disobedience, he is straining for jollity, too. I can see it in the clench of his jaw; the hint of perspiration on his forehead. Good. But my breath catches. For fear. And for my own disgust. I see them for what they are, these men: mutually repugnant; mutually parasitic, too. Uncle Alec despises Max Gebhardt, hates his foreignness, his German know-all-ness, and he hates his forthright wife most of all, but as dispenser at the hospital, Dr Gebhardt serves a purpose other than keeper of the keys to the medicine cabinet: he’s an oily, sycophantic fool who possibly couldn’t get a job mopping floors in a German hospital but thinks he might be district medical officer one day if he stays in with Alec Howell, for whom he would take strychnine if it would aid his own cause.
‘Aperitif, Max?’
‘Well.’ Mrs Gebhardt rustles away indignantly, back towards the entrance hall, and breath returns to me, with force, at her shrill call: ‘My shawl, girl – where is the girl?’ She swoops off to startle Lucy out of her wits with a demand for the shawl to be redeemed from the closet.
‘It is a little chilly now,’ says Gret. She stares into the ebony gloss of the piano case, her aloneness palpable to me. ‘The sun has gone right down. Hm.’ She is fading with it.
And the evening is already unbearable. Fun? Vain promise, that was. We are lilies on the dustbin of time here, Gret and I. Saying desultory good evenings to our guests as they arrive: Reverend Liversidge next, who is always faintly appalled at seeing us, as if we might have stolen one of his ribs; and then come the Wardells, a mutually torpid howdy-do to and from Dulcie for the year it’s been since we last saw one another; and then the Dunnings arrive, heralded by the commotion of their motor vehicle up the stable drive, which sets off Prince chained in the yard out there and a debate over the contraption in here.
‘I’m not yet convinced of its effici
ency. Seems faddish to me,’ says Uncle Alec.
‘It will be no passing fashion,’ Dr Gebhardt assures as only a supreme know-it-all can. ‘The Kaiser commissions engineers for its adaption as warhorse now.’
‘Did someone mention the war?’ Major Harrington struts in, lately back from his turn in the Transvaal, full of the swagger of winning. ‘I tell you what, them German Mausers are a good gun. I’ll say, they are a topnotch machine. I’ll drink to the Kaiser!’ The major pats Dr Gebhardt on the back, as if these German guns aren’t being used by the Boers and their rabble of mercenary militias to shoot at the New South Wales Corps right now – and as if the British and German Empires aren’t just a little bit suspicious of each other generally. It’s all just a boys’ adventure, a game: shooting at each other.
‘To Mausers then!’ Uncle Alec shoves a glass into the major’s hand and I wish there were a way to force him to go off to this African war. Have the marauding Boer guerillas murder Alec Howell: hang him from a tree and leave him for the crows. He holds the rank of captain in the Corps, after all: he should take his turn and go. But Dr Weston, the District Medical Officer, will not allow it. Alec Howell is too indispensable here, it is said. Alec Howell is too cowardly to go, more likely. He might tear a fingernail. Look at his hands: more meticulously kept than mine.
Where are the Westons? I ask the mantel clock. It is ten past eight. They are late. Several eternities pass. Gret leans into the bow of the piano, slumping a little in her unbound state, the noise of the party rising around her, but she is not here amongst us, and I am racked with a worse fear: she is leaving, without me. The facts are before my eyes: if I don’t find a way to free her from this prison now, soon, she will break loose in her own way. She will simply break. Smash. Wake up. I take a step towards her and whisper: ‘Watch out, duckie, you’re slouching – smudge the polish with an elbow next and there’ll be trouble for you.’