by Kim Kelly
Lost again amidst Mrs Wheeler’s shrill cawing now, at the door that leads back to the saloon: ‘I wish those Frenchman would have shot it to bitses long ago.’
‘Frenchmen?’ I have quite lost the conversation altogether. ‘Shot what?’
‘The calliope, Miss Berylda.’ She squeezes the inside of my arm. ‘The night after Mr Wheeler had this awful thing dragged up the Track there was a big fight in the yard. Frenchman and the German miners that were staying here – they started fighting. Bang, bang, bang. They wanted to kill each other over Alsace. They bring all of Europa into my house. Three of my chairs were broken. But the calliope kept on going waaaa waaaa waaaa all the whole time – it has the devil on its side. It must.’
‘Oh?’ That does sound like a funny tale, a Wild Wheeler’s legend no doubt, but I have no sense of humour left to me even to smile at it. I am so tired, so overrun myself, I am little more enlivened than a corpse. I doubt I can even blink my eyes.
‘Yes. Terrible business,’ Mrs Wheeler continues with a click of her tongue, pulling me through to her small rear parlour, patting my hand, in this overly fond and familiar way of hers. ‘But enough of that. I was wanting to look for you – what would you and your sister like to be eating? I have roast beef from only yesterday and potatoes and chicken soup and –’
I force my mouth to move, to respond: ‘Soup and bread will be fine. We’re very tired. Might we have it served in the room?’
‘In the room? You want to eat in the room?’ Poor Mrs Wheeler, waited an age for guests and they don’t want to eat in her saloon.
But my patience slides off the mantelpiece and shatters on the hearth stone right here: ‘Yes. Please.’
‘Oh. If you are sure. All right then. I have Katie bring supper on a tray, yes?’ Mrs Wheeler acquiesces, and within half a breath she begins prattling again: ‘You are not unwell, are you? It is a very long way, if you are not used to it. I thought your sister looked a little bit pale. She’s not sickening, is she?’
The black night swoops through the window and envelopes me. ‘Sickening? No, I hope not. Only tired.’ My sister is only tired. Only pregnant. Only ruined.
My nerves are ruined too; thoroughly. I prattle back at her: ‘Mr Wilberry is a vegetarian, I must tell you, please make good provision for him in that regard. And. Hm.’ Petty spite adds: ‘He and Mr Thompson must have the best of whatever is in your pantry and your best wine too – my uncle, Mr Howell, will pay the account by telegraph when we return to Bathurst, if that is all right with you?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Mrs Wheeler beams, eyes disappearing into plump cheeks, and off she goes again – about how wonderful Mr Howell is, et cetera, et cetera. She’s a Free Trade party fan through and through: who else will save us from miners wrecking the whole country with their unions and their punch-ups? Astonishing. This would almost be hilarious on any other night.
On this one, I shudder now where I stand: Alec Howell won’t be alive for long enough to arrange payment of the bill if I can help it. I shall be paying it. With my money. Our money. Speaking to the accountant. Oh please, yes – I shiver with dread and yearning both.
While Mrs Wheeler has moved on again, pointing out the bookshelves and the magazines here in the little parlour room that we must help ourselves to, pointing out again that the ladies’ bath and convenience is outside at the far end of the verandah, but not really outside because it’s under the awning all the way, call for Katie at any time for hot water, nothing will be too much trouble for us, babble, babble, babble, and then asking me a question about something else I fail to listen to.
‘I beg your pardon, Mrs Wheeler?’
‘I asked you, what are your plans for tomorrow? What are you going to do on your visit? Tell me all about your plans.’
No. Enough. Be quiet. I want to return to my sister; I must. And before I fall over. I am swaying in my boots. But I have just enough wit left to me to see an opportunity here, to set tomorrow’s plans in train, to find out exactly where Dr Ah Ling’s thatched hut might be, how far away. I say: ‘This visit is partly for study, Mrs Wheeler. I shall commence my degree in Medicine at the Sydney University in a few weeks’ time and –’
‘You are saying what to me – oh?’ Mrs Wheeler holds the back of the chair near her to steady herself. ‘Miss Berylda Jones! You are a wonder. Oh not only beautiful! You look at my words – I said to Mr Wheeler all that time ago, I said that girl is so intelligent. I said she is a clever one to watch –’
‘Yes,’ I interrupt her before she can set off around the world again. ‘Yes, and so I am hoping I might make a visit to the famous Dr Ah Ling tomorrow – to ask him about that case, where he cured the miner, the one with the cancer in his arm. I am sure you would know of it. The story was in the papers, in Sydney. My uncle is most interested in the case too – he’d heard about it when he was last here, a few weeks ago, but didn’t have time to quiz the man himself. Does the doctor live in town, or far from …?’
Mrs Wheeler pulls her chin into her neck, grimacing as one might at an open drain. ‘You want to visit that ching chong witch doctor?’
‘Yes, I –’
Must listen to a diatribe on Celestial slipperiness first. ‘But you don’t want to visit him, Miss Berylda. You cannot trust a Chinaman. I know more about medical business than him – I can tell you! You cannot trust anything a Chinaman says or does. Oh but the way they come and go; only to make their money, not their home. They take from the mouths of our little children, and then they go back home and fatten their own. All thieves. All the ching chong coolies that were here when we first came to the Hill – I thought we came to China! They are nearly all gone now.’ She nods as if she might be personally responsible for that achievement. ‘And they took all of the gold with them!’
‘Yes,’ there is never any room in that open drain for argument, is there, ‘but Dr Ah Ling is a doctor, a herbalist, reportedly a successful one, and I would like to ask him how he cured the tumour.’ And that’s entirely truthful. I do want to know about it, even now; tell Flo all about it, too, this Chinese medical miracle, even though the picture of her scrunching the newspaper at me over her cocoa seems so long ago. Has it really been only a fortnight since I left Sydney? So long ago since yesterday, since Greta was ruined and I was betrothed – to the devil real and plain. And I must know: ‘Where does Dr Ah Ling live?’
‘Ah Ling, you talking about in here?’ Mr Wheeler appears at the door from the saloon.
‘Yes,’ I reply and exhaustion begs, please: ‘Where does he live?’
‘He’s out at Tiger Sam’s, Miss Jones, past Tambaroora towards Hargraves. Tobacco farm, but it’s off the road a bit. What you wanting to know –?’
‘I don’t know that we’ll want to be going out there, Miss Berylda,’ Buckley’s voice follows in from the gloom; I can just glimpse him by the hearth, throwing the remains of his cigarette into the coals. ‘I’ll go out there for you, whatever you might need from him.’
No. You will not forbid me, Buckley.
‘If you’re going out there, Roo, pick us up a sack, will you?’ Mr Wheeler says over his shoulder.
‘A sack?’ Buckley replies, sharp, surprised.
‘Man’s got to eat.’ Mr Wheeler laughs; a wheeze like a broken accordion. ‘How else do you reckon we’re making ends meet then? You have to do what you can, don’t you. You have to go round through Golden Gully way, though, too, for Tambaroora, if you’re going – Mudgee Road’s got a tree come down on it, waiting on a bullocky to move it.’
I could scream it out of my way: you will not forbid me. Rage scalds through me so that I cannot grasp at any response. I place my hand on the side table by me, grasping only the edge of the crocheted doily upon it.
‘I will accompany Miss Jones to wherever she needs to go.’ Mr Wilberry has come in from the verandah now too. The long slow strides spin the parlour around me as he s
teps towards the door. I must fix my mind to the threads under my palm. Be still. Be calm. Breathe in. Breathe out.
‘It’s a sly tobacco place,’ Buckley explains to him. ‘That Tiger Sam is not a licensed grower – and they have the ope going out of there too. It’s not place for a lady to be, in any company.’
I am no lady. I am wretched and desperate. I am condemned to be Alec Howell’s wife if I do not succeed in this. My sister is condemned to submit to God knows what new hell – and the devil’s child into the bargain if I do not see to it first. If I return to Bellevue with nothing, we return to a life sentence of misery. Or I might just find the strength to plunge a knife into his back and take my last dance at the end of a rope to get away.
I say to these men who presume to decide my path, as I drive the words into the doily under my hand: ‘In the morning, we will visit Dr Ah Ling. It is important that I speak with him myself, to discuss a matter of medicine – unless, of course, anyone else here has a particular interest in cancer, its causes and cures.’ And you will not deny me this. I look up at Mrs Wheeler beside me, and only Mrs Wheeler: ‘Now. What were we talking about? Supper. May we have ginger beer with the meal, too, please? I remember having a lovely ginger beer when we were here –’
‘Yes, Miss Berylda – the ginger beer.’ Mrs Wheeler is already bustling me past her husband for it. ‘My ginger beer. We are in luck! I made some only on Tuesday – I must have seen you were coming. It will be beautiful tonight!’
She takes me with her back through the saloon and I fix my gaze on hers. ‘I recall it as having been delightfully fizzy, Mrs Wheeler. The best.’
‘Oh! My ginger beer – yes, it’s very, very fizzy.’ She boasts and explains to me how much yeast to lemon is necessary and whatever other things are in it, on and on until I’m closing the bedroom door on her: ‘Thank you, Mrs Wheeler. Thank you so much, you’re too kind.’
Once inside I slide the latch behind me, finding Gret just as I left her, curled around herself and looking up at me: ‘Are they going to play the calliope?’
Some wave of pain closes her eyes and I say: ‘No. Mrs Wheeler put the mockers on that idea, I’m afraid. You don’t look like you’re about to liven up for anything, though. Is it very bad? The pain?’
‘Ooh. Not too bad. Just sore.’ She presses her hands into her stomach. ‘And I feel a little bit queasy again. Whoosh, whoosh it goes inside my head and in my belly, all whooshing out of time.’
And that makes no other sense to me but that this must be pregnancy. A scrambling together of all the knowledge I’ve magpied of female anatomy and function, in this text and that. Something about the settling of the seed, setting off a mystery train of chemical changes, that makes a woman weak and more feeble than usual. And burns a hole in me.
I ask Gret: ‘Please, will you let me feel where it hurts? Let me see?’
In case I am wrong. And it’s something else: an infection, a growth. What else is there to make one ill? I don’t know enough about anything.
‘All right. You can see,’ Gret accedes, moving onto her back, but looking away from me into the wallpaper, looking away from her own shame and humiliation.
I don’t know what I am looking for as I lift her skirt and petticoat back and then her drawers, just enough to find her belly. But I find the marks of his fingers impressed into the side of her hip, like a brand. I don’t have to be a doctor to know that this is where he has seized her. If he were here now, I would stab him in the face.
But I can see or feel nothing else unusual. She does not tense at my touch; there is no redness, no firmness where none should be. There is no blood. She is well in every other way, for all that I might guess. My darling sister. My poor Gret. Her fingernails still streaked seaweed pink from her joyful painting day, still holding that golden bottlebrush from the gorge.
She curls away from me, and I curl behind her now. I pray to every god there is, please let tomorrow bring the solution, and make steel of my resolution, for this act that no god might ever help me with.
For if the One and Almighty God were truly good, or true at all, he would have pushed the seed from her. He would have shaken it from her along the rough track today.
Perhaps He has.
Please.
Please take this need to kill from me.
Show me a way. If I cannot make Alec Howell gone, then show me how Gret and I might go ourselves. Show me how we might disappear … into these hills …
Show me our life.
Free …
Free of all men. Free of God, too, if that is how it must be for me.
Ben
I want to knock on the door and tell her, yes, as a matter of fact, I do have an interest in cancer, its causes and its cures. I want to tell her about Mama. I want to tell her everything that I might say but –
She shuts the door. It seems to be her way: she’ll open it just enough to dazzle me – with a smile, a word, a shower of laughing stars – and then she slams it shut again. She is a closed door.
‘She has her own mind about things, Miss Berylda does,’ the old man Buckley says quietly, staring at the door with me. ‘She’s not much of one to say no to.’
‘No, I’m gathering that.’ She is determined to see this Ah Ling. Who is he? A famous cancer doctor? I’ve never heard of him, and I made a fair few enquires after Mama’s diagnosis, wrote to every advertised medical ‘expert’ up and down the eastern seaboard; investigated all sorts of snake oil garbage, too, as Howell termed it himself. I even contemplated the services of a clairvoyant in St Kilda before accepting that there was nothing to be done. But what is behind Berylda’s urgency now, her rush to see this Ah Ling? What is it that drives this constant charging, charging, charging? I want to grasp her by the hand. Stop her. Ask her. Berylda, please. Open the door.
The word PRIVATE on the next door along stares back at me.
‘If she’s so set on it, we’ll take her out there in the morning,’ Buckley says. ‘And don’t worry too much about it, Mr Wilberry. I’ve got a pistol in the buggy. Always carry it.’
Strike me, don’t worry? ‘What? Would you expect that kind of trouble?’
‘Not from Ah Ling, no,’ the old man says. ‘He’s a decent sort by all accounts, and he did fix that feller, too. George Conroy is his name, lives right here at Kitty’s Flat, just down the road, at least I think he still does, last I heard. The doc in town was going to saw the arm off, but he’s a new feller and not got too good a track record, so George thought he’d try his luck with the Chinaman. And that Ah Ling worked a bit of a miracle on it, so they reckon. It’s that Tiger Sam, his brother, who’s the doubtful character – gibbering bag of loose change, if ever there was one. Sick in the head from all his ope smoking, liable to turn on you with a meat axe and chase you up the road, that one is.’
‘Oh?’ I have to ask: ‘Is there some reason the local constabulary don’t go after him instead of chasing larrikin miners round the hills?’
‘Heh.’ Buckley enlightens me: ‘Coppers like their cheap tobacco too, don’t they. The costs of them growers’ licences pushed the price of smokes right up.’
‘Of course.’ Everyone’s a criminal and we need to get our priorities right. I smile at the double standard, sharing it with Buckley, the gulf between us pinched down to little more than the lines at the corners of his eyes.
He stops smiling and stares at the door again. He says: ‘She’s a very good and hardworking young woman, Miss Berylda is. She doesn’t mean to be impolite. She’s had her troubles.’
‘I’m gathering that too.’
‘Their mum and dad killed in a railway crash, poor mites.’ Buckley glances back towards the hearth to see there’s no one here but ghosts and an old upright piano, before he tells me through lips that barely move: ‘And the uncle – he’s no good. I don’t know what he gets up to. But it’s something no good.’
> ‘Hm.’ I share this wonder at the uncle with the old man too, and the sympathy: A railway accident? Awful. Devastating. I can’t begin to imagine. But I will discover what this uncle does; I will help the Jones sisters be independent of him. I will do all I can.
For Berylda. I want to ease all that troubles her. Perhaps if I wait at her door long enough, one day I will.
Berylda
The mermaids drag me deeper, deeper still; the slimy reeds slip through my hands as I grasp for them, desperate for air.
Hurry, Berylda, hurry, your mother and father are waiting at the station.
No, they’re not. They’re not waiting anywhere. They are dead. Cold and dead as the river pebbles pummelling against my shins, my elbows. My face.
Let me go!
Turn around – look, Berylda. They are here, behind you.
No. I shall drown.
Come down to the caves, Berylda, it isn’t far. Libby is waiting too. She is calling out for you. Listen, listen. Don’t resist. Be a good girl and come with us …
I let go. I am so very, very tired, I can only let go.
I let them drag me over the ruts of the riverbed and down, down, down, over a gravel of shattered bones, down and down.
Drag me and drag me until it doesn’t hurt any more. Drag me until I drown. Until gravel becomes silk. Velvet. Gold velvet.
And Libby is here, she truly is, brushing the rich fabric against my cheeks, either side, so happy to see me. Oh, this is the one, Ryl, this gold is perfect for the drawing room, don’t you think?
It is the same bright yellow gold of grandmother’s fan bracelet. The catch chain glints against the silk, gold on gold.
Where is Mother now? Where is Papa?
Who?
I look up and Libby is gone. I turn around and no one is here. It is dark. I run out into the rear parlour, here at Bellevue, to the windows that look out across the hills, and they are walled up with bricks.