by Kim Kelly
‘My ap –’ I begin.
‘Oh, have another drink yourself, Alec,’ Dunning cuts me off, and Cos’s opening insult to our host is in every way complete.
I look behind me again. If the girl has not joined the party within the next five minutes, we shall be leaving, too.
Berylda
‘You right there, Miss Berylda?’ Buckley’s voice rolls under the cicada hum, rough as brick dust, scouring through the confusion in my mind. Buckley is a good man. A true man. Such things do exist. ‘Miss Berylda?’ he asks again, my name gentle on his gravel rasp. He calls me Miss Berylda still, for the child I was when we first met, a girl just turned fifteen. He is a kind man. A kind of comrade in this awful dream.
‘I’m all right,’ I reply. ‘Only taking some air.’ My voice is like some ragged wraith of a thing dragged up from a dungeon. ‘Stuffy in there.’
‘Take your word for it,’ he says. I can hear his crooked smile of sympathy.
And that’s all he has, my word, as he’s not allowed past the kitchen. Wouldn’t want a manservant sniffing round your chattels indoors now, would you. Alec Howell says in hushed tones and often that Roo Buckley is not to be trusted, the gardener has ‘a past’. Some kind of felon once upon a time, is the suggestion. Does old Buckley a favour keeping him on, so thoroughly modern is Alec Howell, so liberal, so Christian. What a saint. As if he doesn’t keep Buckley on because he’s cheap. As if Alec Howell is not the real criminal here.
Buckley says: ‘You’ve been out here a while, miss – sure you’re right?’
‘I’m sure. Thank you.’ With my forehead pressed to the verandah post for who knows how long, I’m sure he presumes that I am ill. I am, I suppose. I see him now as I raise my head from the post: he’s at the edge of the garden bed a few feet below me, here at the back of the house. He is the colour of brick dust too, in the day; in the night he is near invisible.
‘Where the devil has she got to?’ We hear Alec Howell now, harassing Mary in the kitchen, looking for me. His demand, carrying through the window behind me, is a full brick hurled into my back.
‘I don’t know, sir – she hasn’t been in here.’ Mary’s sigh contains a little whimper, the exasperation of too many pots on the stove.
‘Ten minutes for service,’ he warns her, and taunts her as he leaves: ‘Those tarts – hm, very pretty indeed.’
‘Oh, Mr Howell – sir!’ Set your clock by that too.
My senses snap back into me. I can do nothing against him here, now. I can do nothing for justice for my sister tonight. But I can play him. At some point this evening there will be a toast to me, for my success this year at university. It’s unavoidable. Alec Howell will be forced to raise his glass to me, because it will be unseemly not to. He won’t be able to resist the opportunity to congratulate himself for my results; his vanity will break him at some point. And when it does, I will make my appeal to him to let Greta and I take that excursion to the Hill. This small escape will be ours. It must be. I begin to make my plans for it now as if this might ensure my success.
‘Buckley?’ I ask.
‘Aye, Miss Berylda?’
‘Could I ask you a terribly big favour?’
‘Course, miss – whatever you wish.’
‘Would you forgo your holiday tomorrow to take my sister and me for an excursion?’
‘Nothin’ I’d rather do, miss,’ he chuckles. He’s an old man and alone in the world: there’s possibly nothing else he has to do apart from weeding the beans. And he is our friend, however distant he is from our lives, our predicament. ‘Where you thinking of going?’
I smile. ‘Out to Hill End,’ I say to him. ‘Stopping at Wheeler’s Hotel. Perhaps over two nights?’
‘Now that’s an excursion.’ Buckley chuckles again. ‘Wild Wheeler’s at the Hill – you sure about that?’
Uncle Alec will say no to it, is what Buckley is sure of. I am too. He will find every reasonable objection to the idea. Hill End is too rough a town now the big money is gone and the rest ever ebbs away, now that the gold gets scarcer there, too expensive to extract. Too many strangers; drifters. Desperate escapees. Not a place for ladies, or corsetless sluts, as we are. But I will make him say yes. Somehow. I will find my moment, my ploy, just as I did to be allowed to attend university in the first place: But it will be such a reflection of all your good care of me – I will work so very hard, Uncle Alec. I will make you so very proud. I’m going to make him say yes. In front of his audience. I will accept no rebuff or compromise; I will shame him into it, and I will enjoy it. Poor Greta hasn’t been anywhere interesting for months, I shall say. Not even out for an afternoon’s drive in the buggy, you’ve been so very busy, Uncle, haven’t you?
And should he threaten us in return, I will threaten him back. I will threaten to tell Mrs Weston. And I will tell Mrs Weston what he has done. I will tell her what he has done to Gret, what he has put in her. I will tell Mrs Weston tonight. I will.
I must.
And I can’t do any such thing. For Gret’s sake, I can’t tell anyone – not when she refuses even to tell me. I can’t entirely trust that Mrs Weston would believe us anyway, or even if she did, that she would back us. Would Mrs Weston put her reputation on the line for ours? No woman can trust another woman to do that. Can she? The whole town will say he does not molest Greta; the whole town will say how difficult it has been for him since his wife died, since he took on the care of two ungrateful orphans. Gret will be called a harlot; and me with her. Sluts. I will lose my place at the university. On a word, his word, my future, our future, will be snatched from us forever. I have been around this circle of reason a thousand times before; that he increases in his degeneracy makes no difference to our situation. I can trust no one with this, not in this town.
But tomorrow, I can take Gret to Hill End, and I will. There I will find the Chinese doctor, Ah Ling, and I will ask him for a purgative, something to expel a child, if one exists in her. Some concoction of oil of pennyroyal or tansy or bitter apple to induce convulsions of the uterus, any of which might be bought from any chemist, any of which I would give to her myself, except that I don’t know what dosage might be safe – they don’t write instructions for abortion on the packets of these pills. A Chinese herbalist will know, though, and when the convulsions come, I want my sister to lose this pain in a whirl of merry-go-round calliope tunes, remembering Mother and Papa, too, and fizzing with too much ginger beer, merely her whatsits come and gone. And, brief though our journey will be, it will afford me precious time, precious clarity, away from him, to think. To plan more and thoroughly: to move our future forward. Quickly. Perhaps a telegraphed message to Flo, some kind of SOS to compel her to come to us straightaway. And then what? What would Flo make of all this? Would she understand? I love Flo so dearly, I so want to tell her everything, but I cannot be sure. It’s one thing to trumpet for justice, another to take a personal risk to see it done. I’m not sure that she has seen anything of darkness but her own bright and happy sleep. With Flo or without her, I must find a way to make Gret safe from him.
However I manage it, Uncle Alec will say yes.
‘Yes,’ I reply to Buckley. ‘Yes, I’m quite sure. We’ll set out at dawn and along the way we’ll picnic, at that place where the Turon meets the Track. You know it?’
‘Aye, miss. Aye, I do.’
Ben
‘Here she is!’ the German shouts, pointing as though he might win a prize by finding her. ‘Miss Berylda! Alec, here she is.’
Berylda. I turn to see her. Yes. Here she is. Slipped in through the side door behind me. A piece of sky slipped into the room. A porcelain face making off with my mind. I am staring at her but I can’t help it, and she doesn’t notice anyway, doesn’t notice me at all as she moves through the party. I notice everything about her. The tremor along the boards beneath her feet meeting mine. Her frown twitching as she speaks with her
uncle, stepping away from him hurriedly as though they might have had a disagreement earlier. Perhaps that’s why she charged out as we arrived. She glances away, back towards me, but still she doesn’t seem to see me. Her eyes are cast downwards, frowning into the carpet as she walks through the room, and that line between her brows is an entire country I wish to explore. Why does she frown so severely? This beautiful country of porcelain sky.
A gong sounds from the dining room beyond, shaking me from my stupor a little, and more fully with the shout of, ‘Dinner, my friends!’ that follows. Howell. That’s quite a voice he has in him. The man is expansive now, arms stretched wide in invitation; he appears to have recovered his pride with his control of the house.
So that Cos must shout in return: ‘Bonzer!’ Rubbing his hands together: ‘Lead us forth to the trough!’
And I groan again. He will have Howell for his sport tonight – effortlessly, teasing the cat with string. Dunning, whom I’ve gathered is some kind of industrialist, some kind of parochial big hat, is still wheezing and wiping tears from his eyes at Cos’s call for a celebratory black-shoot. Cos will have this fat man for the first course, and that may well be worth waiting for too. But we can’t possibly stay for dinner. What excuse might I make for our exit, though?
Howell attempts to counter: ‘Well, if you eat the way you drink, Mr Thomp –’
Cos doesn’t give him a fraction of a moment: ‘Never mind, Mr Howell – or Doctor, what are you? In any event, never mind. Wilber will make it up for me. He eats nothing – bloody vegetarians.’
This silence is a dreadful one. The directness of Cos’s assault on Howell is too much. Howell has stopped in midstride, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth. The hand forming a fist. I must remove Cos. Remove him before Howell does suggest some violence and Cos then takes out the man’s front teeth with one lazy jab. Don’t push this wallaby to it. He’s not grogged up enough yet to miss.
My hand is an inch from grasping the back of his coat. ‘Cos. Enough.’ And I mean it: he may well be immune to embarrassment but I am not.
‘What?’ He turns to me, eyes huge with cherubic malevolence. ‘But you are a vegetarian.’
Yes, I am. And laughter again fills this room, this awkward void, but there is another sound inside it now. Some melody, or the sound that a star might make in shining; a shower of such stars. It is her; I know it is the girl who is laughing. I turn to her and she is leaning against her sister; they must be sisters, they are so alike. ‘Oh Gret.’ She can barely stop her laughter to speak, bent over it, holding her middle as though she might burst. ‘Vegetarian. Oh dear, won’t Mary be appalled.’ And I hear now it is not one sound, but two. The sisters laughing: what a sound. Chimes entwining. Enchanting.
‘Doctor Howell.’ Even Cos appears to be tamed a bit by it. He holds out his hand to our host. ‘I sincerely apologise. I go right over the line when it comes to a joke, spirits too high – enough is enough. I shall be a lamb for the rest of the evening. My word.’ He holds left hand to heart: ‘I promise.’
He promises nothing of course, sniffing the air, already composing lamb jibes in his head, and Howell is still bristling. But he accepts the handshake, and with it he says: ‘It’s Mr – Mr Howell. I am a surgeon.’
‘Are you really?’ Cos will let him have his pride and his party back, for now. ‘I’m doubly sorry then. I had no idea you were a medical man, such a noble profession.’ Such a liar, such a master at it, and the party moves off again towards the dining room.
‘Yes, a wonderful surgeon, Mr Howell is.’ One of the matrons is certainly impressed by him. ‘A saver of so many lives and limbs.’
‘And he will be greatly missed at the hospital when he’s called upon to take up a seat in the new state parliament next year, as he should be – our man for the New Age,’ the Reverend fellow enlightens us, with that arch air of one who believes he owns some territory on the ear of God.
‘Oh is that right? And what party will you be running for?’ Cos asks the entire room, because he’s just put together why we’ve been invited – and tolerated. So have I. These sort of people are looking for the support of the biggest hats in the land, such as Pater; they’re after a national union of conservatives, and possibly financial assistance as well. Of course. And not a chance on this earth. I almost laugh. As Pater might say: I will eat my own next steaming turd before I’ll put my hand in my pocket for some wet-head from Melbourne – the next two if the bastard is from Sydney. He’s only slightly less averse to those in Brisbane who dare to exercise their parliamentary rights to speak in his presence. Howell must be naïve – or mad.
‘Free Traders, of course,’ Howell replies, pride fully restored, fully on the tips of his toes, and he is bang out of the solar system mad. Even if we were on speaking terms, Pater is a Protectionist, a farmer before he is even Minister of Agriculture, with a natural inclination to want to protect the price of his beef from grasping little tax-thieving nonentities such as this. Federation for him will be just another set of laws to be circumvented. ‘We’ll be making a stand against the labour movement in this district, keep them well out, before they ruin the place,’ Howell adds, as though that shared political aim might make a blind bit of difference to the pastoralists of Queensland. ‘We’re all with the Liberal Reform League here.’
‘Hooray! Hear, hear!’ We have a chorus, like a mass delusion. A coalition of farmers and industrialist free traders? These people are so much of a New Age they must be out of the millennium.
‘You don’t say,’ Cos drawls with such exaggeration I don’t know how anyone could fail to hear the roguery in it.
The girl is still laughing, arm in arm with her sister. She catches my eye now as she passes ahead of me. She smiles at me, differently, somehow into me, with some faint and cryptic conspiracy, drawing me along. Still smiling, turning away again, she says: ‘We’ll find you something suitable to eat, don’t worry, Mr Wilberry.’ Discarding the words behind her as so many crumbs.
I cannot find a reply. But I know I will wait a thousand years and more to see that smile, to have her smile at me again.
Berylda
Greta winces as she sits at the table. Only slightly, there behind her eyes, but I see it. She chatters over the discomfort, settling next to Mrs Weston. ‘I’m so hungry tonight – I really am going to fly away if I don’t eat something soon.’
‘Dear, I wish I could eat as you do,’ Mrs Weston replies. ‘I only have to look at half a pea to grow this girth half a yard these days.’ They chatter away about nothing; the happy chatter of playing at being featherheaded around a dining table.
As Uncle Alec’s admonishment of me just now replays and replays: You delay dinner for some more attention, do you? Be careful or I will give you the attention you deserve. Pinching his thumb into the back of my hand, digging his nail between my bird bones there.
I glance at him now, ho-ho-hoing over himself, directing guests to chairs, and my reply burns through my glare: Why don’t you just die? This minute. Spontaneous expiration by vanity-induced cerebral haemorrhage. BANG. Give us all a proper thrill tonight.
‘What does a vegetarian eat?’ Dulcie sends her own inquiry up this side of the table. One really wouldn’t guess she’d travelled further afield than Mediocrity Flat, honestly.
I could begin laughing again. Mr Wilberry is to be seated at the foot of the table, the honoured guest. Great lump of gristle in Uncle Alec’s teeth now. An unexpected vegetarian, and his flagrantly misbehaving friend. Most excellent. Greta could not have wished a more perfect stranger into our world.
Mr Wilberry smiles and clears his throat, tucking that unfashionably long hair behind his ears. Oddly nervous manner for such a large man; a strong man, lifting out the chair for Mrs Dunning beside him with one hand. Not so much choosing his words as discovering them and addressing some particular stripe in the wallpaper above the sideboard with his answer: ‘Oh,
I eat anything, really. Just not those things which have a brain.’
‘Why’s that?’ Dulcie persists in her genuinely brainless way and her mother growls across the centrepiece: ‘Dulcie, each to their own.’
‘I’m not offended, please,’ Mr Wilberry assures them both, and then to the wallpaper once more, he says: ‘The experience of farming cattle, I suppose, it can send one either way.’
How neatly put.
He adds, looking down at the table: ‘Very pretty menu card, though.’
It is. Gret made the cards this morning, fourteen of them, and two more no less pretty ones this evening just before the guests arrived; she lingered over those as we kept to my room, making ourselves late for muster. Mr Wilberry holds his menu card in his enormous hands, looking into it as if finding his focus there, and he is sincere in his appreciation of it, as anyone should be. Each one possessing a splash of New Year fireworks, they come from that mysteriously well-fortressed place of joy in my sister’s heart, her paintbox place of refuge.
‘I’ll say it is a pretty card,’ Mr Thompson agrees, brandishing his in the air.
‘My sister’s doing,’ I say. ‘She got all the artistic talent.’ My words are keen, as I always am, to push to the light Greta’s gifts that so few ever have the opportunity to see, but my voice is squashed tight by my myriad conflicting feelings this night. I sound dismissive, superior; I don’t mean to.
‘Miss Jones.’ Mr Thompson overlooks me anyway, just about diving across the table at my sister: ‘I want mine framed. You’ll let me keep it, won’t you?’
‘Oh? But of course you can keep your card.’ Greta is shy and uncertain at his compliment, edging yet a little further behind Mrs Weston’s sleeve, but I see the sweet pleasure in the corners of her smile as she looks away.