by Kim Kelly
‘Miss.’ Buckley tips his hat as he passes on his way across the front garden with a barrow full of tools to move onto the dray at the gate. He still won’t look me in the eye. I suppose he maintains that I should have let him hang for us. Or perhaps he sees the monster in me. But every time he avoids meeting my gaze, a dread falls over me: I can’t continue with Ben: I can’t allow him to love this monster.
Prince begins to bark, bounding around manically from the stables, and leaping back and forth either side of the path, as if all four legs are being pulled hither and thither by rubber bands. I can’t help smiling at that: Prince hasn’t so much as growled since the master left the premises. He is such a happy hound today. Wonderfully silly, bouncing hound.
Greta yells up the east hallway, yelling at the top of her lungs because she can: ‘Well, that’ll be Ben now!’ And I can’t help laughing to myself, and a little out aloud, at the fact of that. Perhaps this bush fairytale won’t end precisely as Greta planned it for me; but maybe, given time, it will come close.
I see the afternoon light in his hair first, sunshine spilling out from under his Huckleberry hat, his loping strides taking the rise of the hill as if he owns it, because he rightfully should, and darkness is blasted from me. A thankfulness that sparks and soars. In every practical sense, he has been invaluable to us over these past few weeks, accompanying us to the solicitors’ office to attend to the probate application and all the necessities of the circumstances, using the Wilberry name to expedite things; using his own cash to provide generous payments to Mary and Lucy, to send them off with equally generous references, for I cannot bear to have others too near. Shielding me in every public situation, and there haven’t been too many of those, as I have preferred to scrub boards alone. And now here he is walking up to the house, on his way to take Jack, on his way to Manildra to look for another flower, his mother’s flower at Mandagery Creek, after which he will return to Melbourne, because he must return to his work.
And I don’t want him to go. I want to run to him, across this field between us and into his arms. But still I can’t. My knees are locked. I am not yet ready, not yet so unchained. I am not far enough away from here; I am not yet truly home.
‘You look a bit lost,’ he says, smiling up the path at me, smiling at the washerwoman splotches on my skirt, my rolled sleeves, my headscarf. I’m sure I’ve never looked more an actual gypsy.
‘I am,’ I admit to him. ‘But not for too much longer, I hope.’
I stand on the top step of the verandah, to meet him eye to eye. I hold his necessary, sunshine face in my hands, to invite him to kiss me, for the first time since we came together rushing with strange fever in a stable loft, and when his lips touch mine now, his gentleness, his fearlessness breathes new faith into me. The quiet power held in his shoulders, the salt taste of his cheek, the softness of his beard on my skin; we kiss for the first time all over again. I love him. He replenishes me. He heals me. But I have so much healing yet to do. A life I must spend restoring life, every moment, for the one I took.
Can I dare to believe that this life begins for me, for us, here inside this kiss?
Ben
This will not be the last time I kiss Berylda Jones at her door; nor the last time we say farewell.
‘Will you stay with me when you bring Jack back to Echo Point?’ she asks me, whispering against my ear. ‘Will you love me then?’
‘Yes.’ And I will ask her to marry me then, too, when I have worked out how I might move to Sydney, and when. As much as I would grab at any chance of getting out from under Dubois, I owe Professor Jepson the completion of my main work, with the Board of Agriculture, and the expansion of the department into that field. Perhaps a year; might take as long to pack up my potting shed of a house. And a few excuses contrived to come up to explore the New South Wales botanical record in the interim. The curator at the Gardens must be due for retirement, elderly fellow – perhaps I’ll drop in and have a word to him. I tell Berylda: ‘I will love you every second until then and forever beyond it.’
‘How long do you think you’ll be at Manildra?’ she asks me, although I’ve already told her. She asks everything two or three times as though testing the veracity of this weird place we move through.
‘A week at the most,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve really got to get back to Melbourne.’ And I’m not sure why I’m going out to Mandagery Creek now. A week is not nearly long enough for a decent exploration, by the time I get there, et cetera – I don’t expect to find anything. I suppose I’m only going to honour that promise to Mama. If I move to Sydney, there’ll be plenty of other opportunities to come out here to look for mythical red daisies, though I suspect with all manner of confidence that Mama might have decided I’ve already found what she wanted me to look for. I tell Berylda: ‘I’ll try to stay two nights in the mountains with you. At least.’
She kisses me again, and I’d better go, or I might be compelled to love her right now. Just the feel of her hands on my face is a reawakening I don’t know that I can step away from. But I have to; it’s too soon for that, today. And not here. There is no love of this kind to be found in this house.
‘Enjoy your going home,’ I say as I step down from her.
She smiles: ‘Oh I think I will. I will make every effort to.’
And I leave her for the stables, to go and saddle up Jack. I take him out across Glynarthen, stretch him out to the distant candlebarks, and he’d be happy to keep on going but I’ve got to get my swag from the hotel. I’m not setting out until the morning, either – it’ll be a full day’s ride tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be good to get out of the fishbowl of Bathurst. For all that it is a pretty town, even the parks, with their tightly set conifers and their iron lace fences, are claustrophobic here. Brass dirges play in every bandstand of every town for the old queen.
The publican of the Royal catches me round at the stables at the back of the hotel: ‘Some mail turned up for you. Something from Melbourne. Just put it under your door.’
‘Righteo – thank you.’ I go up to the room, thinking it will be a note from Professor Jepson – a happy receipt of the beryldii specimen I sent him a fortnight ago, along with a firm assurance of my impending return and much improved spirits.
But it’s not from Jepson. It’s mail originally addressed to me at the university, sent on, possibly by Gregham, and I recognise the hand as soon as I open it: Pater’s blunt, thick strokes of the pen. I imagine it will inform me that he has commenced the fight over Mama’s estate, to attempt to disinherit me, but it doesn’t say that at all. He tells me:
Dear Son,
It is no good to either of us that we remain on such bad terms.
I was too harsh in what I said to you before you left Brisbane last. I am a harsh man but I do not want to drive you away. Your Mother would not want that. You are no coward. You have a different streak of stubbornness from mine but you are no less an unyielding bastard.
I hope to see you at Jericho on your winter break, if you were thinking of coming home then as you usually do. If not, you know where to find me. I would like to know you better.
Your Father
John Wilberry
Now that’s extraordinary. I wonder first if there is some ulterior motive: does he need something from me? Something from Mama’s estate? No, possibly not. As difficult as the new Commonwealth arrangements might make things for Queensland cattle and cane farmers with the price of labour increasing and the protection of tariffs decreasing, Pater, like the Thompsons, only stands to win: buying up cheaply the land of those battlers who’ll be forced to the wall. He’ll make a killing. And one day it will all be mine, it only occurs to me now as I stand here. I don’t even know how much land we have as it is. I don’t know what to do with that thought, or with Pater’s olive branch. What would I do with fifteen thousand shorthorn? Turn them loose? It’s not a conversation I c
an ever have with him: cattle just don’t belong on that land, and somehow I don’t quite belong to John Wilberry, either. Then again, grief does work some baffling wonders on us, doesn’t it?
I fold the letter away into my satchel, in the front pocket, something to think about later, and as I do I see the one I received from Cos last week, sticking out of the top of my notebook, reread a few times now to test its own revelation of wonder. He tells me of his gladness at re-ensconcement at the Swamp, and that it appears his balls were in fine working order all along as Susie is pregnant again. He’s thinking of moving them to the West Indies, to Barbados, where his grandfather has some cane investments that need the occasional Thompson signature, and where he and Susie can be themselves in a shack on the beach, where it’s not so out of the ordinary to have brown-skinned babies, and where they also have cricket – all year round. Could be the most sensible thing that Cos has ever done. I hope he gets off his lazy arse and does it. I’d like to get drunk with him in Barbados one day.
But now, the brass funeral march starts moving along the street outside the pub, and I have to get out of here, I realise. I can’t wait until tomorrow. I have to get out, into the air. I grab my swag from my luggage and Jack from the stable and I am gone. I’ll find somewhere to camp along the way. It’s a beautiful afternoon. The sky is blue, huge, still, warm.
I head west, out along the Mitchell stock road, and on the edge of this side of the town the great hulking edifice of Bathurst Gaol imposes itself over the road like the last bastion of the law before the wilderness. Not for the first time I wonder if the felons in there are the least of those amongst us. Not for the first time I wonder if I shouldn’t be in there myself for my part in the murder of Alec Howell.
Before I recall that in killing him Berylda did the only thing she could, however wrong the Crimes Act might deem it. She stopped him. Someone had to. In the absence, in the silence of the law, she did the just thing, the courageous and self-sacrificing thing, and she pays, every moment, for having done so. She pays as no hanging judge or executioner ever would.
I feel her sadness as I ride towards the lowering sun, feel the weight of that conscience she carries with her. I will never be able to relieve her of it, as much as I might want to, but one day she might see it as I do: a part of her, no less vital than any other. No one is sinless, spotless. Just as in nature there is always a blemish: a knot, an asymmetry, a fissure, the line of a frown between the brows – the shapes of difficulties overcome, of struggles worth fighting for, and won. All perfections in themselves. Striving to be who you are.
Who is she? She is perfect, in every way, to me.
Berylda
I look up and down the platform of Katoomba Station, my heart racing crazily with every emotion. This is the first time I have been out in the world on my own, since – shush. It’s high holiday season and there are people everywhere – half of Sydney has come up to the mountains to retreat from the humidity; the other half is waiting for the train, for friends to join them – and I am so jangled and raw I imagine they can all hear my thoughts.
The whistle blows and I jump; I see the steam from the engine puffing around the curve of the tracks from Leura, and Flo is nearly here. A screech of the brakes, a surge of summer hats and parasols. And she is here, running up the platform towards me. She is impossible to miss, wearing that great big splashy hat she got from the Grace Brothers sale – which would seem to have happened several lifetimes ago. Has it only been six weeks? Yes. And, massed with extravagantly pink and yellow roses, this hat is even more hideous than I remember. It is marvellous and I am up on my toes, waving. My whole being is a grin – bracing for the impact.
‘Bryl! Happy twentieth century, comrade!’ All ringlets swinging under that ridiculous awning of tulle.
I can barely reply, wiping tears from my eyes – of happiness. Everything is possible and promising in her sparkling green eyes. ‘God, it’s good to see you.’ I squeeze her tight.
‘You too, duckie.’ She just about squeezes the breath out of me back, and barely takes one herself before hoisting me along with her: ‘You’ll never guess what happened to me these holidays – utterly, deliriously shocking. I’ve been dying – just dying – to tell you.’
I can’t stop laughing – with relief. My knees are shaking with this relief. I signal to Buckley, over by the ticket window, to pick up Flo’s bags and call to him through the crowd: ‘We’ll walk through the town – see you at the house.’
He tips his hat over a nod; he smiles at me – at last. What does he smile at? My release? My return to myself? I am returning. I am. Every atom trembles and glistens with the excitement of it.
‘I’ve had a proposal.’ Flo strides on, out of the station. ‘A proposal of the marriage type.’
‘What – from a boy? You have not,’ I say to her, and I am shocked. ‘What sort of brave boy is that?’
‘Not a boy exactly. A man.’ She blushes: Flo McFee is blushing – I don’t believe it. ‘Lawrence Moverley,’ she says. ‘Believe it. Larry – he went to school with Bruce.’ Her eldest brother. ‘He called in on us at Woy Woy. Stockbroker – he’s awfully nice. Not quite as progressive as Old Mac might choose for me. I scandalised him by swimming overarm stroke and beating him in a race across the bay, as if the mixed bathing in broad daylight wasn’t enough to do him in, and then dear old Dad scandalised him some more by insisting I beat him at downing a pint of beer. Poor Larry didn’t know if he was Arthur or Martha by the end of his visit. But I’m thinking about it, Bryl – I’m seriously considering it.’
‘Are you? Why?’ I am having trouble understanding this turn in any way; the Flo I know is far too blue-stocking for any such thing. She swims at the beach in blithe contempt of anti-sea-bathing decrees, never mind in mixed company; she doesn’t do anything by the book. Except her studies. ‘Will he let you continue at Law?’
‘Oh yes, I should think so.’ She nods assuredly. ‘Most definitely. Bruce and Chas and Hoddy all agree that he’s desperately in love with me – Larry would do anything I told him to. And he’s thoroughly petrified of Old Mac. He’s also got family in San Francisco and mentioned the possibility of one day relocating across the Pacific – something to do with the gold trade. “Would it be attractive to you to travel to California at some time in the future?” he asked me, and I said, “Would it what!” Bryl – don’t you see? Women can practise law in California. They might not have the vote, but they can darn well practise freely at their professions. They can even bathe in the ocean at times of their choosing – wearing bangles and bows, if they wish.’ She winks, all vim and mischief. ‘It could all work out for me fabulously well. Besides, I like Larry – he’s good and kind. A safe pair of hands, I suppose you might say. That’s not very romantic, though, is it?’
‘Oh I don’t know,’ I say, feeling Ben’s hand holding mine, as if he is here with me, because he is. ‘Safe can be a very romantic word,’ I tell Flo. ‘Safety is a very precious thing.’ And I blush, for all that safety means to me, for all that I can never tell Flo.
‘You sound like you know what you’re talking about.’ She leans in conspiratorially. ‘What’s going on? What have you been up to on your break? Come on – out with it.’
‘Oh, this and that.’ I flutter a hand dismissively over the idea that I could possibly have been up to anything whatsoever, and I tell her the only truth I may: ‘I might have met a man myself. A man called Ben. Ben Wilberry – you’ll meet him in a few days.’
‘Wilberry?’ Now Flo is shocked. ‘As in the Wilberrys of Queensland?’
‘Hm.’
‘No!’ She is scandalised.
‘Yes.’
‘Really,’ she says, intrigued and suspicious. ‘But aren’t they Anti-Socialist Protectionists?’
‘Ben’s not.’ I smile with my best secrets. ‘He’s not like anyone. He’s good and kind and just himself. And he’s a vegetarian.�
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‘No!’
‘Yes.’ I laugh, but the sound is too loud. I hear it cut through the bustle of Katoomba Street, clattering along the verandah poles and through the spokes of cartwheels. How dare I pretend that Ben is mine; and yet he is. ‘I’ll tell you all about him when we get to the house,’ I say to Flo, and I look away, down the steep decent towards Echo Point, out across the cracks and crags of the mountaintops that pave forever. Where do I begin?
‘Oh dear,’ Flo sighs beside me, tucking my hand under her arm. ‘But I do go on and on, don’t I? I haven’t even given you the slightest commiseration in respect of your uncle – I’m so sorry to have heard. When you wrote of the circumstances of your change of address –’
‘It’s all right,’ I tell the mountaintops some truth again. ‘We weren’t very close. He didn’t much care for Greta and me.’ My voice is not steady but all the same it’s surprisingly easy to say.
‘Oh.’ She shrugs. ‘Well it’s a strange one that wouldn’t care for you.’
‘Strange. Yes. He was.’
And Flo McFee is not the slightest bit interested in discussing the subject further. As we reach the bottom of the hill, the pines of Katoomba towering above us and all the little miners’ cottages that dot the way to the cliff edge – to home, almost there – Flo resumes her whirl of news and views.
‘You can’t have everything you wish for tied up in a neat bow, can you?’ she muses as we walk on. ‘Or certainly not all at once, as you would want it. I’m beginning to learn something about compromise, I think, comrade. Speaking of such, Old Mac doesn’t think the legislation for the New South Wales Women’s Vote will go through this year at all – they’re going to leave it to occur in conjunction with the Federal Act, and that won’t be until next year in all likelihood. Ooooh, but this makes me itch. Why do the wheels have to turn so slowly for us? Still, we’ll be ahead of Melbourne most probably, and our full enfranchisement must come – it will come. It’s simply inevitable. Even in Melbourne.’