Paper Daisies

by Kim Kelly

  There is no air. I cannot breathe.

  Of course, I cannot breathe. For I am drowned.

  Let go. Drift. Free.

  Is this death? Is this freedom?

  ‘Ryldy?’ Greta’s arms are around my waist. ‘Ryl? Wake up.’

  I am breathing? Yes. And I am rousing. I open my eyes and turn in her arms. ‘What is it?’ I ask her through the darkness.

  ‘You were having a dream, a bad dream, yelping like a puppy.’

  ‘I know.’ Just a dream. The dream of our life. A gold tassel swishing through the black like a fistful of silken keys.

  My sister’s arms tight around me. We are still here.

  ‘That noise – listen,’ she whispers. ‘What is it?’

  I listen. A distant thudding has begun: bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang … a metronome set to prestissimo. Where are we precisely? The Hill, yes? Wheeler’s Hotel. I can just make out the shape of the ginger beer bottle on the night stand, from our meal. Two sips and we were both blessedly cataleptic – that brew is medicinal strength. Mr Wilberry’s golden bottlebrush remains there too, by our glasses. A board creaks; someone coughs softly in the next room: a woman. Some woman. And I am no longer dreaming. I sit up and open the curtain. Not bricks but sky: the grey before the dawn, the painting out of the stars. I blink up into it, as another metronome begins – bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang – syncopated against the first, and closer.

  ‘Some sort of mine workings?’ I suppose.

  ‘The birds don’t like it; they’ve stopped singing.’ Gret pulls me back under the covers. ‘Whatever it is, that noise frightens the birds away.’

  ‘I’m sure it does.’

  We listen to the birdless banging as the dawn creeps up the pane, and my sister begins to weep, silently. She shakes in silence as she weeps. Our dreams as one. She is trapped in the house that has never been our home and he is growing more and more savage the more she weeps, the more she yelps for him to stop.

  She whispers: ‘I know it’s a terrible sin, but sometimes I don’t like waking up. Remembering.’

  ‘I know.’ I hold her now. ‘Sometimes I can’t believe I’m awake at all.’ She flinches in my arms; I feel her clench down the urge to wail. I ask her: ‘Is the pain still bad?’ The pain in her belly, I mean.

  ‘Not too bad, no,’ she whispers. ‘It’s much better now.’

  She clenches again: she is lying. She doesn’t want to ruin our little trip away. She couldn’t ruin anything if she tried. But I know that she has guessed there is something wrong with her inside, even if she doesn’t know what it might be.

  I hold her tight to me and promise her: ‘I’m going to get you something, for this pain. I want you to rest here while I’m gone today. Paint me a postcard of a tumbledown dungaree town from this window and finish that ginger beer, will you? I expect you to be in a ginger beer coma until I return. In fact, I insist.’

  She breathes out a laugh that’s barely there: ‘You’re lovely, Ryldy, honestly you are. What would I do without you?’

  That question is too terrible. But I am lovely, yes, if loveliness includes the worst of humanity. I will be the devil’s for all time, once I have done what I must do. No better path has come to me in the night, nor will it this new day. There is no other escape for us, just as there is no one who might answer any prayer. God is deaf to justice. Deaf to me. I have no choice but to seek to kill Alec Howell. Say it into my soul, should I even possess one: murder. I shall murder him, as I shall murder his child.

  Ben

  ‘No, I am not getting up.’ Cos declines my offer of a stretch and stroll before breakfast. ‘I can’t – because I am paralysed.’

  ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘It’ll do you good – it’ll only get worse if you lie there. Better to get moving.’

  ‘I would if I could.’ He reaches for his pipe, looking at me as if I am the one who might be a bit detestable.

  Look at him, here in his most natural state: lying down. I’m sure he really is suffering from yesterday’s ride; so am I. But he hasn’t moved since we arrived just before six p.m. last night. A gut-scrubbing two and a third bottles of Californian angelico went into him, because he’d decided he craved only dessert from the extensive cellar of the world’s worst wines on offer here, and a whole piss pot’s worth has come out of him, the full-bodied aroma of which fills this room from where it sits beside his bed, on the floor between us. While Zarathustra has not moved from where it lies either – open on his chest – and from which he sermonised me into oblivion at some time during the night on the evils of sentimentality and the inherently manipulative nature of love. Thanks for that.

  I say: ‘Righteo.’ And turn to leave him to it.

  But he says, lighting up: ‘As much as it pains me to miss out on watching you follow that girl around like some starving stray begging scraps from her high table. You can have that pleasure all to yourself today.’

  ‘That girl? Just who are you to judge her? There’s more to her story, you know –’

  ‘I have no doubt,’ he cuts me off. ‘And whatever it is, you’d be well advised to remain in ignorance of it, Wilb. Trust me.’

  The dashed-off scribble of a portrait he sketched of her yesterday by the river lies between us, too, propped against the empty bottles on the night stand: her face stark, all her fine features made almost invisible by the ferocity of the eyes that stare out of the page. That is not her. That is not what I see. What’s she looking at? he slobbered at me last night in the midst of his lecture on the perils of affection. Not you, old matey. Not you or me. Something wicked in the hills …

  Go to bloody sleep, for Christ’s sake, I said to him then; I say to him now: ‘Why would I ever trust you with advice on women?’ I am past fed up with him today already, and I let him have it: ‘All you know about is faithless, indiscriminate rogering – you’re a joke. And Susan knows it, too.’

  He stares at me for a moment. Eyes hooded with some threat, before he picks up his book and waves me away: ‘Don’t listen to me then. I don’t know anything about women. I don’t know anything about life. There is no more to my story, is there. I don’t know what it is to have a difficult time of it loving someone I’m not supposed to have – one that I can’t even step out with into the street, for if I did my family would have me cut off, and unlike you, I would have no recourse. I would be on the street. And so would Susan and the children. Do you know what it’s like to pretend that your children are not your own? I don’t know what it is to suffer at all. I don’t know what it’s like to work at ideas and at art that no one – not one single arsehole in this entire continent of a shitter – is interested in. So run along, Wilby Wilber. Run along and have a wonderful frolic of a day with your freakish little kitty cat sweetheart. I’ll be here when you return. I always am. So off you go.’

  And so I bloody well shall. Get into the day, and get away from him. If only he could hear his own hypocrisy and idiocy, his head would explode off his shoulders. But he won’t; can’t: why would you when you can spend the day in bed, indulging yourself with the fictional ramblings of a mad, dead German, imagining that you might be Nietzsche’s own Super Man – an elaborate excuse for all that is indolent and selfish feathered up today as twentieth century enlightenment, as though I’d know anything more about it than the scathing review in the Age. But I do know that you can’t possibly know anything about anything without living it, being in it. Not truly. Nietzsche probably observed that too – from an apartment window. If Cos loved Susan truly, he’d bloody well take her to Berlin, wouldn’t he? Take her to Rio de Janeiro. Take her as well as himself and the twins from this shitter. He’d find a way. He’d do something about it. Get a job – make some actual attempt to sell a painting to someone who might be interested. Let’s be frank, he hasn’t mentioned his children by name the entire time we’ve been away: because Tildy and Ted are little more than inconveniences
to him. They get in the way of Susan’s undivided attention. They are possibly at least part of the reason he’s here with me now, if we’re going to be especially frank.

  ‘Work at ideas?’ I mutter at him. ‘Art? Suffering? You’re just lazy.’

  ‘Arsehole,’ he mutters back.

  And despite the note of genuine disappointment and hurt in his voice, I retort: ‘Super arsehole.’

  ‘Mirror.’ He raises his palm to me. He snorts and I leave.

  Berylda

  ‘Miss Jones? Good morning?’ I hear him across the saloon, closing his door behind him, precisely as I do mine. Click. Unavoidable, as I am sure he will be all day, unless I miraculously find the courage to throw myself across Jack’s saddle and make my way to Ah Ling’s farm alone, wherever it is along the road from here to Tambaroora. Could I do that? Go alone? No. I hardly possess the courage to return Mr Wilberry’s good morning.

  But I must. Consider this a test of will, of nerve. Turn around. Look at him.

  I look at his stockinged feet, finding his boots outside the bedroom door, and my heart both sinks and flies at the sweep of sunlight that is his hair falling across his face as he bends to pick them up by their laces. He hasn’t made himself somehow less attractive during the night. Bright, expectant eyes looking up at me across this room, asking as if he’s just found the words with fresh uncertainty: ‘Early bird?’

  ‘Hm? What? Yes,’ is the greeting I give him, as incoherent as it is graceless. ‘Morning. It is.’

  ‘Hm. Yes, apparently. Well …’ he replies, and I am caught up in the warmth of his early bird embarrassed smile, the warmth of that voice, saying: ‘I was just about to take a wander, a stroll, before breakfast – you wouldn’t care to join?’

  ‘No.’ I hurl this word at the boots in his hand. ‘Thank you. I am not yet prepared for the day, I’m afraid. I am on my way to the kitchen, for warm water, for my sister. She is unwell.’

  My mouth is dry with a strange fear, that truths will slip from me if I allow too many words to pass from my lips, that all will be undone. How am I ever going to find the face, the words, the firmness to do what I must do? Today. Tomorrow. To be this murderess I must be.

  ‘Oh. No. Unwell?’ he asks me, his concern so very quick, so real. This man is no wolf; he is like no other man. I know this; he is just what Greta says he is: a prince. ‘I hope it’s nothing serious,’ he says.

  ‘Nothing serious? No. I hope not, too,’ I reply and I wish that he could be my friend, a friend like no other, so that I might tell him everything. How I hate that time has set the rhythms of our lives one against the other, like the rock crushers that pound out over this town, dissonant, incongruous – impossible for us to be in any way together. But the sadness of this thought is a shroud thrown across my fear, at least, and I regain a firmer grasp on my senses. I find a steadier rhythm for my heart as I allow myself to look into his gentleness, and I say to him: ‘Greta will be unable to join us today, however. Forgive me my preoccupation, please –’

  ‘Not at all,’ he says. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

  ‘No.’ How I wish and wish and wish there were; how I wish his very gentleness would cause all wolves to disappear. Vanish. All turned to rock and crushed to dust by the fact of his existence. But in this I suddenly see there is something he can help me with, and immediately: I am safe to test myself with this man and his kindness. I might try my face, my words on him. Practice deception. Now. Find a lie. What lie? I’m quite good at lying when I need to be, but this is hardly pinching books I shouldn’t have, is it. Why should it be any different, though?

  ‘Oh dear,’ I say pinching my forehead, snatching at the first thing that comes. ‘I’ve just now realised I have done something very silly, Mr Wilberry, and left Bathurst with my purse full of nothing but handkerchief, and I need to obtain some headache powder, for my sister.’ I have loose change enough in my purse for that, and more than enough ability to obtain credit, I’m sure, anywhere in this district for anything, just as I am sure Mrs Wheeler has half a cupboard of headache powder somewhere in this house, but I ask him, ‘I couldn’t possibly borrow a few coins from you, could I?’

  ‘Borrow?’ He is appalled at the idea; already has his hand in his pocket, stepping across the room towards me in his stockinged feet. This manipulation is so easy, too easy, it shames me so that I don’t think I can keep my nerve a moment longer. ‘For your sister? Oh no, please don’t consider it a loan. It’s the very least I –’ He holds out his hand to me: a crumpled pound note and several coins.

  I will fail this test; I will fail every test: I can’t deceive this man. I can’t deceive anyone. And yet I have to. I must try. I must succeed.

  ‘How awful of me to ask.’ I pluck two coins from his hand, whatever they are I don’t know, and shards of truth rattle out of my lies as I do: ‘I shall repay you. Thank you. Or at least my uncle shall have to repay you, when we return to Bellevue. I don’t have any money anyway, I must admit, only allowed five pounds per month and resentment causes me to spend it all on fripperies –’ Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, fake gaiety hammers out of me, flinty and crude as shale. ‘Starve myself for silk flowers and perfume. Just as well my roommate at Women’s is a vegetarian – like you, although she doesn’t eat eggs or dairy. Isn’t that funny? I mean that she’s a vegetarian, too? I told you about her yesterday – the one studying Law? We live on shredded air, the pair of us, and I’m still always short two bob.’ What stream of nonsense did I just blabber at him?

  ‘You don’t need to repay me, Miss Jones, please,’ he says to me, holding out the pound note for me to take as well, his voice deep with affection, reaching deep into me. There is a small crack in his bottom lip; I should like to salve it with some glycerine. ‘Five pounds a month doesn’t amount to many fripperies, or too much of an overabundance of vegetables, I’m sure. At least not in Sydney, I don’t imagine.’

  No, it doesn’t. That is certainly true. I look at the pound note in his hand, its edge trembling at me; its Royal Bank red ink drawn on the Queensland sun. I might have three or four shillings in my purse, in total, I suppose, a farthing or two somewhere in the bottom of my carryall. This pound is something I might need between now and tomorrow. Who knows what for? Take it. Take every opportunity as you must. Take it, I demand of myself.

  And I take it. I grab the note and I cannot look at him again: ‘Thank you.’

  I scuttle from him like the vermin I am. If I can’t keep my resolve with even this small deception, how am I going to achieve what I must do today? How will I speak as I must to Ah Ling? How will I convince Alec Howell to drink from my cup tomorrow?

  Where is my courage?

  I arrive at the kitchen to find Mrs Wheeler and her maid already busy about their day. Bread baking. Pots steaming. Ordinary life bubbling and clanking away in here.

  ‘Miss Berylda – oh, but what is the matter?’ Mrs Wheeler looks up at me over a cup full of oats, perceiving so clearly and so instantly that I am lost.

  I must not be lost. I snap my orders to Mrs Wheeler, snapping at myself: ‘My sister is unwell today, after all. It’s the time of the month,’ I grab at another lie. ‘She takes it badly, and the timing is bad. May I have a bowl of warm water for her, please, to wash, and a headache powder, if you’ve any?’

  ‘Ah, but I knew she was pale, didn’t I.’ Mrs Wheeler appears as delighted at her correct guess as she is diligent about fulfilling my requests, bowl and powder produced in a single heave of her bosom. ‘Wasn’t I saying this to you last night? Yes I was, remember. I know these things – I know.’

  You don’t know anything, Mrs Wheeler, I say to myself. She can’t know anything, not of the devil in her calliope nor of the devil in me. Lithuanian gypsy she might be, but she cannot see what runs through my mind. No one can. I say to her: ‘Thank you so much. See to it that my sister is disturbed by no one but you today.’

 
‘But Miss Berylda, of course!’ Mrs Wheeler assures me; she will bar all the windows and the doors with her own good name. ‘I will care for your sister in all ways.’ Good.

  I return to Gret with the powder and the bowl, my mind ragged already as I set about dampening a flannel for her and pouring a fresh cup of water from the night-stand jug. I am so distracted I don’t even glance at her as I hand her the flannel.

  ‘Ryldy?’ I hear her, though, through the crashing and rushing of my thoughts. ‘Ryl, are you angry? Please don’t be angry. There’s no point; it’s a waste to be angry.’

  ‘Angry?’ If I were any more angry I’d burn this hotel down to the ground with the heat of this emotion alone. I could scream at her: And what do you propose I do instead of being angry? Pretend this isn’t occurring? Pretend that you are not in the condition you are so very obviously in? Ignore it and it will all go away? But I will not so much as whisper any such thing to her. By tonight, there will be no condition to worry about; tomorrow, there will be no monster, either. I have refound my courage here. My sister is my courage; her innocence is my courage, as is her quiet and enduring fortitude. I say to her: ‘Yes, I am angry, darling; you know me too well, don’t you. But I’m not going to be angry in a moment, because I’m going to take myself out into the air right now and let it go from me. All right?’

  She nods. ‘Yes, good. I don’t want you to be angry and always burdened by concern for me. I want you to be happy, Ryl – please. I feel bad enough. Enjoy the day. For me.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ I lie to her, too. I will never be happy; I will never enjoy a day again. But such is our life. I will be courageous instead.

  I find something of a smile for my sister as I step out onto the verandah from our room – to startle another woman making her way to the ladies’ conveniences from the room next to ours. Another guest? I didn’t notice any others here yesterday, but then I’m not sure I’d notice a great gnashing Jabberwock in my path unless it were specifically addressing me. The woman makes some sound of acknowledgement, clutching her toilet bag to her breast, and I suppose I make some similar sound in reply as I step past her.