by Kim Kelly
‘Even though I am lying,’ the man says now, and the table holds its collective breath at what dreadful thing he might say next. I blaze a glare at him: Don’t you dare embarrass my sister. But he doesn’t take his eyes from Greta’s card; he declares: ‘It’s not a very pretty card at all, Miss Jones. It’s very clever, is what it really is.’ And he is not as drunk as he seems; he is sincere, assuring her, respectfully: ‘It is no easy thing to do, effectively – fireworks. Making light from dark from nothing on the page. And in watercolour. Bonzer stuff.’ He raises his glass: ‘To Miss Jones’s exceedingly clever cards.’
And her face colours exceedingly beautifully as everyone else toasts her too: ‘Clever Greta!’ and ‘Magnificent menu cards!’ She is the centrepiece, a rare moment for her, and she shimmers with it even as her wounds would rather send her into the sideboard to hide. At least, from where she sits, she can’t see Uncle Alec using his card to blot the bottom of the decanter, having poured J.C. Dunning another drink, ignoring this small celebration of her altogether – and there’s nothing unusual in that. He would never praise Greta. Not if his position in the Liberal League depended on it. Never.
Fury threatens, more urgently still, and I stand abruptly: ‘Speaking of menus, I should go and horrify the housekeeper with our brainless vegetarian changes to it.’
I sound rude and horrible and leave as abruptly, my own face flushing through one hundred degrees of rage and shame. I am appalled at myself. I am appalled at what this house does to me, shrivelling my own spirit, making me mean, not just this evening, not just for this new low Alec Howell brings us to, but always, and I promise Mary silently as I make my way to the kitchen that I will not be rude and horrible to her too. I will not be like him. She will be upset enough as it is at our surprise culinary problem. There’s nothing on the menu apart from dessert that isn’t full of brained things, even the soup – beef.
But still my tone is jagged, clipped and rushed as I descend upon the kitchen: ‘Mary. We have a problem. Mr Wilberry eats no meat.’
She gasps: ‘What? No meat?’
‘Yes. Have you spare rounds for the canapés?’ I ask as gently and helpfully as I can, but she whimpers in response.
‘Rounds?’ She looks over at her hors d’oeuvres, her regiments of anchovy rosettes, identical sprigs of dill topping each. Lucy, about to carry a tray of them out to the table, stops statue still with dread panic. Mary cries: ‘There’s no meat in there, it’s only anchovies, and Mr Howell said –’
‘It’s all meat to a vegetarian,’ I snap. Impatience takes over me at her dithering, her terrible need to please her master. She adores him and I hate her so very much for it. I’ll make the wretched canapé myself. I find the little pile of Mary’s discarded, not quite perfectly circular toasted rounds by the piping bag on the table between us. I slice a tomato from the bowl at the window end. Sprinkle it with salt and pepper. Garnish it with a sprig of parsley from the jug by the cutting board. Not quite as elegant as Mary’s own efforts but: ‘There’s your vegetarian canapé.’ I push the plate across the table at her. ‘Make a mushroom soup au lait for Mr Wilberry, and a potato gratin for entree. It’s not hard, Mary. I’m sure he won’t mistake the lamb for pumpkin with the main, and I’ll warn him there’s tongue in your croquets.’
‘But –’
‘Just do it, or Mr Howell will be most displeased.’ I wipe the knife and stab it back into the block.
‘Yes, Miss Jones.’ She is duly cowed.
And cruelty’s chain drags as I return to the dining room. Mary is an exemplary servant, really, when even a tolerable one is not easy to come by, even in Sydney, and she is an extremely fine cook. I have never acknowledged it. The best I can give her is this contempt. Cruelty passed down the chain from her beloved master and through me. Or it is simply me? Am I the one who is wrong here after all? Am I the cold, ungrateful jade he says I am? Does he in fact have a right to behave as he does? Is there a right order to things that I am resisting because I am – Oh God, no, stop – not that wrong thought. No. I am not wrong. I can’t be. Can I? My questions, my confusions, run round and round.
And stop suddenly at the dining room door, at the sight of Mr Wilberry’s back, filling the space before me, suspending the bedlam inside me, and eclipsing Uncle Alec altogether. In fact, Mr Wilberry eclipses almost the entire party from this view, for me. I am used to being quite a bit smaller than others but Mr Wilberry is quite a bit larger than most – as tall as I am when he’s seated. I move around to my place between him, at the foot of the table, and Dr Weston on my right, and as I do I see Mr Wilberry is speaking to Reverend Liversidge, up from Mrs Dunning at his left. ‘Ah no, I’m not a professor, no, nothing like that as yet. Merely a lecturer, in structural and physiological botany, mostly, with a research interest in native classification. But really I earn my keep with the study of the various suitabilities and unsuitabilities of cropping for stock feed, across various terrain. There’s a push on at Melbourne now to bring agriculture into the School of Natural Sciences as a –’
Mr Thompson leans across the table from the other side of the Reverend. ‘He teaches the hothoused youth of the shallow south that apples do in reality grow on trees. Gets them out in the field with gumboots, secateurs and all that. Extraordinary stuff. They grow beans on the campus too, apparently.’
‘Thank you, Cos, yes we do.’ Mr Wilberry indulges him, in that way of being both fond and irritated. A mismatched pair, Mr Thompson as darkly chaotic as Mr Wilberry appears fair and mild; they must be old friends. ‘Thank you,’ Mr Wilberry says to Lucy as she offers him the tomato rounds. ‘That looks delicious.’ And back to Reverend Liversidge: ‘I am presently on a … somewhat of a break, undertaking a study of a particular species of –’
‘Oh don’t go on about plants, Wilber. Save us.’ Mr Thompson is wonderfully awful, a crude and bearded Oscar Wilde exhumed for a tour of the Antipodes.
Reverend Liversidge is certainly not interested in botany, asking Mr Wilberry now: ‘You did your undergraduate study at Oxford or Cambridge?’
‘Neither – no,’ says Mr Wilberry, with that nervous clearing of the throat. ‘I went straight down to Melbourne. Biology and –’
‘Melbourne?’ Reverend Liversidge is shocked, as if Mr Wilberry said he’d gone straight down to hell; shocked in that way so many of the previous generation are: How is it possible one might be entirely educated in Australia? He’s a Cambridge man himself; don’t we all here know his wife died after a diabetic coma rather than be subject to another lecture upon his St John’s College glory days.
Dr Weston, opposite, is Oxford, but rather broader of mind; body too. He takes four canapés onto his plate and says to Mr Wilberry: ‘You home-grown brains, it’s you who will change this ragbag of colonies into a nation once the ink is dry.’ Through a mouthful of anchovy paste he says to me: ‘That’s you too, Berylda. Haven’t congratulated you on your results yet, have I?’
Mr Wilberry turns to me and Dr Weston, his eyes asking over his own mouthful of tomato: ‘Hm? Congratulated?’
‘This young lady is for the School of Medicine in the New Year, at Sydney.’ Dr Weston tilts his glass in my direction and then swigs to the novelty, merrily remaining deaf, dumb and blind to the injustice that he and every other DMO in this rag bag of colonies will conspire against me should I dare to apply for a job on the wards once I qualify. ‘Came top in Biology, too – name in the Bathurst Free Press this morning, and a prize to come from the board. Perhaps a scholarship.’ A wink across the table to Uncle Alex: ‘Such a credit to you.’
And here, thank you, Dr Weston, is my chance, my turn in the light, to strike for the one thing I might achieve tonight: to make Alec Howell agree to allow us to take that excursion to the Hill. I glance over at Gret, who’s pretending fascination at whatever Mrs Gebhardt is pronouncing upon now, and my anticipation gleams: she will so love this surprise. Please, fate be kind and
give it to us.
But before I open my mouth, Mr Wilberry, it appears, is clearing his throat again to speak, and by habit I hesitate. To find that, no, he’s not clearing his throat at all. He’s coughing. No – now he gulps. A strangled sound.
What in heaven’s name?
The man is choking on his tomato canapé.
Ben
Even as I am dying I am a great blunder of the world, my destiny to leave it in this way, slamming fist to tablecloth, knocking fork onto floor. Choking. Medicine? Sydney University. Biology prize? What kind of hoax is this? Here is a girl I might bloody well come to admire. In fact, I think I do so now already. And I must die. In pandemonium: chairs scraping, ladies gasping. A fish thrashing about for –
Awfff.
The blow between my shoulders dislodges the bread in my throat and the air rushes in, and out again; croaking, ‘S-sorry, I do beg …’ as I turn to see who has saved me.
‘Don’t apologise.’ She frowns. ‘My fault, I’m sure. I sliced the tomato too thickly.’
She sliced a tomato for me. It is difficult to say which is more astounding: the tomato slicing or that belting she just gave me. I don’t admire this girl, Berylda. No. I have fallen irretrievably into her frown.
Berylda
‘Oh, well done!’ his messy friend declares, sloshing claret across the table, deep red bleeding into the white cloth. ‘The entertainments here this evening are topnotch – what!’
‘Berylda.’ Mrs Weston is on her feet too. ‘Indeed that was well done. Are you quite all right, Mr Wilberry?’
He nods, cheeks flushed, tucking that long hair behind his ears, eyes downcast, clearly embarrassed. ‘Thank you. Quite all right,’ he rasps painfully. How unpleasant for him. It was exciting for me, though, for the discovery I have just made: I am stronger than I thought. Far stronger. The force of my fists on his back …
‘Three cheers for Berylda!’
‘Little Miss Dr Jones!’
‘Hip hip hooray!’
Glasses are raised around the table, around my scalpel smile, and I glance the blade up the centre of it at Uncle Alec as all resume their seats. I am exhilarated by this power in me. If I could find the impulse, the passion that was in me just now to drive a blade …
God, arrest this thought and keep it from me. I have just saved a man’s life; I am not about to do away with another, no matter how much I’d like to. Need to. Must. Hush. Keep my resolve wrapped tight around the things that might be achieved. I have a demand to make of dearly beloved uncle, don’t I, and how can he deny my request for a few days away with my sister now? I have saved his party from ruination. I sit poised in my seat, to watch and wait for another moment, the best moment, to play my card for it.
‘As I was saying, there will be some competition over the selection of a Free Trade candidate amongst the Liberals – fierce. But we will be in it.’ He has resumed lecturing Mr Thompson on his political aspirations, lecturing over my feat as if it never occurred, still punishing me for my undergarment recalcitrance, of course. I am not to be forgiven for my insolence. I watch him, waiting for my opportunity to interrupt, and as I do I drill my own resolve into his face: I will succeed in making you say yes to me. He is seeking his own assurances from Justice Wardell at his right: ‘We are shoring up the numbers amongst our League. We are the ones to protect the colony – excuse me, nation – from the socialists. It begins in New South Wales. We’ll break the trade unions here, won’t we, Victor. Break them before they take hold, and I am the man to lead the charge.’
As if empty slogans lead anywhere. Why does Uncle Alec despise the trade unions so? What is the workingman to a surgeon but largely irrelevant unless the company offers to pay his bill or he volunteers for unrestrained medical trial and error? Mystifying.
I am certain I see a flicker of unease cross Justice Wardell’s face. ‘We’ve a federal election to get through yet. Much can happen in these coming months, Alec. The Protectionists are strong and might yet throw their hat in with the Laborites – the worker and the farmer have more in common against the industrialist than not, and might make a new party of themselves. All is in flux. No counting of any sort of chickens for a while, I’m afraid.’
Yes. That was a rebuke, if a subtle one. Smashing the workingmen’s co-operatives of Bathurst is rather a grandiose ambition in itself. Miners, shearers, timber cutters, a rabble of labourers five thousand strong in this town alone. And Uncle Alec does not have his selection as a state candidate guaranteed. That’s almost worth remaining here for indefinitely. To see him thwarted. I see a great hobnail boot grinding his head into the dust of William Street, and a ploughshare dragging over the rest of him.
Lapdog Gebhardt springs to his master’s side: ‘Months?’ The chemist shakes his jowly chops. ‘But we must be working always against the socialists – now. Immediately. They are the plague of the federation in Germany. Constantly disrupting unity. Constantly disrupting industry. These labour parties in the colonies here are already too strong. Imagine what federation will do for this workers party? They will take over totally. They are tyrannical madmen waiting for this chance. They grow stronger and stronger every day we delay.’
‘Shoot them. Shoot them now,’ Mr Thompson insists with a theatrical wave of his hand. ‘Chain ’em up with the blacks and the Kanakas and shoot ’em all. Ingrates! I’ll cut the blasted cane myself, see if I don’t. Australia for the White Man! Australia for the Fat White Man!’
‘That joke is stale,’ Uncle Alec admonishes, disdainful curl of the lip, not turning from Dr Gebhardt and Mr Wardell to address Mr Thompson directly.
‘It’s not entirely a joke, though, is it, Mr Howell?’ Mr Thompson is suddenly sharply sober once more. ‘It’s what you’d really like to do, isn’t it? Get rid of the lot of them that won’t do as you want them to do. Aren’t what you want them to be. Your skivvies, your vassals, your slaves.’
‘What are you then, sir? A libertine? An anarchist? Nihilist? Some other inane fad?’ Uncle Alec’s shoulders shift in discomfort as he is forced to face Mr Thompson. Oh but this is fun now. I am on the edge of my seat; so is Gret, her eyes wide, napkin pressed to her lips to hide her own enjoyment of this turn.
‘No. I am myself.’ Mr Thompson’s smile is open and smug. ‘I am a fat white man.’ Most definitely a handsome man; most comfortable in himself, and most definitely aware of the effect of it, too.
And Uncle Alec is writhing inside with the challenge of it all; rattled and raising the scritch in his voice just enough to betray himself: ‘You think it fair and just that the unions stand over industry demanding their wages at threat of bloodshed? For that is what they do.’
Mr Thompson snorts, dismissively: ‘You think it fair that industry stands over poor men and keeps them poor not at threat of bloodshed but with bloodshed in fact?’ A slow nod over a wry and calculating smile. ‘I’m fascinated by it all. That’s what I am. Fascinated. You do realise that the Labor Party is more for the Fat White Man than anyone in this room, don’t you? Dependent upon you as a lamb. And no one hates a coloured skin the way the worker does. You really should consider going in with them. You can all join fat white hands as the ultimate Super Party. It’s the only way your empires will continue to survive this New Age, the only way you will ever be the kings you think you ought to be – make the workers your friends and go on a big, long black shoot together, Waltzing Matilda all the way. I’m not joking.’
‘You’re not, are you,’ J.C. Dunning says beside him, fascinated himself; Dunning is a fat white bullfrog, and a little keen on Mr Thompson’s wild ideas, it seems. Keen on his flagrant liberty. He says to Mr Thompson: ‘But you have some cheek.’
‘Not as much as you do, sir,’ Mr Thompson retorts, patting his own ample stomach.
‘Ho!’ And Justice Wardell almost chokes on his canapé too, roaring: ‘Jolly good!’
Jolly good, I’ll say. The b
alance of power here is topsy-turvy now all round. Anything might happen tonight.
‘I cannot apologise enough,’ Mr Wilberry rasps at his napkin, pressing his fingers against his forehead, squeezing his eyes closed.
‘Please, please, Mr Wilberry,’ I admonish him, almost gaily, ‘do not apologise again.’
‘I’ll say, we should do it as the Germans do, eh?’ Major Harrington nudges Dr Gebhardt. ‘Make military service compulsory. That’ll sort out the lot. Conscription is the way!’
I wonder if perhaps that’s not a bad idea – universal military service whereby all men would be compelled to go off and shoot each other – and that thought, as well as the wine I’ve just glugged down, makes me laugh.
Mr Wilberry looks across at me. He appears somewhat terrified, before he says: ‘Your laughter is – er. Quite an enchanting sound, Miss Jones. Hm.’
I laugh again: enchanting? How curious; how thoroughly absurd. He smiles, a pleasant and gentle smile. A pleasant and gentle face, even his eyelashes are fair. I return his smile, but I am confused once more, and even more strangely. Is this man whispering sweet nothings to me? I’m not sure; I don’t know men, not young men. I am best known for my avoidance of them. An odd sensation creeps up the back of my neck, warmth and chill at once, and I don’t know this sensation, either. My heart drums wildly. I look down at the table. I look at his hands there, either side of his plate. Such large hands, Mr Wilberry has, they dwarf the plate. He could throttle another man with one firm grasp, and with this thought I see these hands tight around Alec Howell’s neck, shaking him, bashing him into the mantel. What I might make them do, if I could. Oh God. I look away, into Dr Weston’s left cufflink, my eyes blurring around its tiny enamel crest.