Paper Daisies (7 page)

Berylda

‘I
wish for that stranger you found to carry us away.' Gret smiles at last, closing her eyes for the silly game as we snap the bone.

‘Ha!' She has the greater half too: ‘You win.'

‘I did.' She regards it, still clenched in the crook of her little finger. ‘What did you wish for, Ryl?'

‘The same.' I smile with her as I lie beside her on my bed. You don't want to know what I just wished for. I can't clear the violence from my mind. I want to take out his eyes with a fork and feed them to the chickens.

‘Really?' says Gret. ‘Well, that'll make it a powerful wish then. Hopefully. Both of us wishing for exactly the same thing, that will double our chances of it coming true, don't you think?'

‘Yes.' She snaps my heart to pieces. She is so very hurt but she will not scream it. She can't. And I play along: ‘Why don't you sit up then now, darling, and you might see him at the window.' I want to see how physically injured she might be, too; see if she winces with it again. I press her a little: ‘We should get you dressed for dinner anyway. Are you up to it?'

She nods and sits easily now, perching on the edge of the bed; no flicker of pain now, but … God, I can't believe what he has done to her; but I believe it more and more.

‘Are you sure you are up to this?' I press her again. The consequences of disobedience will be harsh and unpredictable, but she is not going to suffer this dinner if she can't sit without discomfort. I shall forbid it with all that I am. I shall announce it to the guests: Greta sends her apologies and hopes you all understand that our dearly devoted Uncle Alec raped her this afternoon. And I shall do no such thing. I am too sick with this myself; sick with not knowing what I should do. What can I do?

She stands and assures me: ‘I feel quite a bit better. Really. I'm all right. And Mrs Weston is coming – I couldn't miss seeing Mrs Weston. She's always so lovely to me.' Mrs Augusta Weston, wife of the District Medical Officer, inveterate bush nurse and general force to be reckoned with, and in fact always lovely to Gret.

‘Yes.' I assure her: ‘And she wouldn't ever want to miss seeing you either.' Could I dare to tell Mrs Weston? Would she help us? What could she do? I can't even get Gret to admit to me what he has done.
Are you sure he didn't hurt you anywhere down here?
I gently pressed her tenderness.
No, of course not.
She made a face. I can't ask her more; I can't ask her what I must: what was he doing to you on the bed? I can't force that shame on her.

She smiles again at me over her shoulder as she steps towards the window. ‘You are lovely, Ryldy.'

I rage inwardly at every terror my sister has endured and every terror yet to come. I pray this silent scream might shoot into him and through him and shatter all his bones.

‘Oh – is that him?' She points out the window, to the edge of the orchard, where the dam meets the fence. ‘The man there. He's making a bouquet – look.'

I stand beside her and see the strange man is in fact cutting himself a bunch of those daisies. Drab things; no perfume to them. Natives of some sort. Buckley would get rid of them but that ducklings hide in amongst the stems each spring. The flowers look like wet feathers to me – flung around the plant as if the fox has had some fun in there. I say to Gret: ‘He's an odd one.'

‘He looks strong enough to carry us away, doesn't he?' she says, as if she might actually be calculating the matter. ‘And look at Prince sitting by him – he loves that man.'

I slip my arm around her waist. ‘Yes, he seems to, doesn't he.' The dog loves the man. Love. If I were one to shed tears, I would surely shed them now, for all that most basic of commodities is denied us.

She turns to me: ‘Invite him to dinner. Can't we?'

Just like that.

‘Gret.' I don't say no, but my tone says
D
on't be dense
. There is fantasy and there is foolishness. Uncle Alec wouldn't even hear the question – invite a vagabond to dinner? – never mind such a sudden alteration to his plans. The table is full, and it is his table. I say: ‘Look at the time,' not looking at it at all. ‘I should fix your hair.'

She sits down at my dressing table, but she continues to watch the stranger past the mirror, wishing onwards. ‘Wouldn't it be good to gad about that way? Go wherever you want to – into the hills and far away?'

‘Hm.' I take up her hair and begin to brush it: black, lustrous. Chinese hair, we whisper it between ourselves, and if you look closely, you can see. Our thick dark hair and our noses barely there. We are our grandmother: we are Chinese. But Gret is a whisper more so than me. Her hair a little shinier, straighter; her almond eyes as brown as mine are blue.
You are an unusual thing. Where did you get your loveliness from?
Our beauty is noted regularly, but the question never answered. Uncle Alec knows precisely who we are and where we come from, though. Another of his special barbs for Gret:
Choo Choo Chong, go back to Hong Kong
, muttered privately, of course, as every insult is. You wouldn't want anyone to know you were harbouring dirty Orientals under your roof. I am sure he brings his worst upon Greta because she is this fraction too Chinese. A certain breed, we are, and not so rare in these parts: littered across the Gold Country like black poppies.

And it's as deep in my blood as it is in hers, urging me now to go and visit that Dr Ah Ling, that Chinese herbalist out at Hill End, not for his miracle cures, but for a poison, a fatal opiate to slip into Uncle Alec's tea. Damn that I didn't choose Organic Chemistry over Biology this past year, or I might have learned something useful about herbal potions myself; but I was only allowed to choose the two scientific subjects, and I'll do the chemistry subjects next year anyway. If I'm allowed. Ah Ling. Uncle Alec knows of him. When I arrived home from university, he'd only got back here himself the day before, from Hill End. He'd had to go out to the little hospital there to trephine a broken skull, drain the blood, some fellow who'd come off a horse. Alec Howell described the performance of his surgical miracle to me in every self-congratulatory detail, and added,
Can't do that with herbs or snake oil, can you
–
although there's a Chinaman out there who claims he does all sorts of impossible things
. Dirty, lying Celestial, was the sentiment conveyed.

That brings me to some decision now. Some defiance at all I cannot do. I shall go out to Hill End, and I'll take my sister with me. We shall make an excursion of it, just me and Gret, into the hills and not so very far away. Buckley can take us. We will picnic by the Turon in that pretty spot where it crosses the Bridle Track, and we'll stay over at Wheeler's Hotel, that one with the mermaid calliope whirling out all those funfair tunes, those songs that made Mother laugh, so long ago … Songs I can't remember now except for the rhythm of Papa's riding heels dancing me round by the hearth, that precious last time we were all together there … I kiss the top of Gret's head with the secret surprise. An excursion for us. For her and her box of paints; she lives happiest and brightest there, in her watercolours. She will paint the river, the mermaids, the poppies. I will demand it of Uncle Alec tonight. Somehow I will make him say yes to me. Somehow. Beg; bluff; smash a vase. Find the right appeal to his vanity. And I will indeed then visit Ah Ling while we are there, and I will ask him for a potion all right – one for Gret, something to expel the child safely, quietly, now, before we even have to whisper a word to each other about it. Before we must decide there is a child there at all.

She is still looking out of the window, watching the stranger. I watch him now too. He looks up into the tree above his drab daisies, looking into it for an age. Prince still by him, tail wagging.

‘What's he doing, do you think?' Gret asks me.

‘I don't know. He said he was a botanist – I suppose that's what a botanist does. Looks at trees.'

‘And flowers,' she says.

‘And flowers.' I begin to pin up her hair. I take my prettiest silk camellia and hold it by her face, seaweed pink against the raven sweep, and ask her opinion: ‘Hm?'

But she doesn't see it. She will not be distracted from the man in the garden. ‘He would need to look at the grass, too, wouldn't he?' she says, from some other elsewhere. ‘There are lots of different types of grasses. A botanist would look at all of them.'

‘I'm sure he would,' I say, struck by a deeper memory at her words, her abiding perceptivity, the quiet intelligence that once was loud as mine, in her own way. Visions of the days my big sister led me, and not I her. I am chasing her through the foggy edges of our garden at Echo Point, cold, damp mist licking up from the valley through the fat pine trunks, and I am small and scared, but her strides are bold, her laughter bolder:
Come along, Ryldy
. Fleet fingers at the piano:
Come along, Ryldy.
So quick at any rhythm or rhyme:
Come along, Ryldy.
And ever insisting I hurry up the vast mountain of Katoomba Street in the blazing sun, for the sweetshop near the station, hands on her hips, tapping her toe:
Come along, Ryldy
. Aunt Libby consoling me, puffing too:
Big sisters – ha! Always such bossy boots.
What would my sister be beyond this prison, given the chance? Bossy? I wish for that. I wish she will become the bossiest sister that ever lived. I wish that I will find a way for us to leave before her spirit is extinguished altogether and forever.

I follow her gaze back to the stranger and I watch him again with her. Daisies in hand, he starts making his way back up the hill. Perhaps Gret sees some like kind in him: there is certainly something distracted about this fellow too. He appears to be chatting with Prince as they walk; then he stops in the midst of the orchard and we can just see him pilfering the cherries, deftly cropping a branch-load into his haversack.

‘A thief!' Gret is thoroughly delighted by him now.

‘A thief he is.'

He buckles his haversack and sets off again, past the verandah's edge, past our view, and away.

Ben

T
wo steps back down the front path, I am embarrassed at my greed: denuding almost half that shrub of its blooms. For what purpose? To place in a jar on the counter of a random bush cockies' pub before moving on? Mama would not look approvingly on such waste. And so I turn back towards the house. I shall give most of these
elatum
to the young lady there; surely she would want everlastings for her table.

I ring the bell at the door and wait, my face already hot with the effort of wondering which foot I might place in my mouth first this time. I wait several moments, staring into the brass plaque by the door, mind tracing round the
B
of
BELLEVUE
, before deciding that the belle inside has had a good look at me through the glass and chosen not to answer, and so I divide the stems, leaving myself just the one, just a sample for the herbarium, a hand of three blooms and a bud, which I thread through the straps of my satchel, before I bend down to place the rest on the step.

Just as she opens the door. I'm sure it is she for I am looking at a pair of dainty shoes, ivory slippers bound with silk ribbons, ivory ankles beneath the pale blue skirt. Strike me, that's a fine pair of ankles …

‘Yes?' She is demanding an explanation for my presence here now and I needn't look up to see that severe frown dividing her brow. I can hear it well enough. ‘What is it?'

I pick up the flowers and offer: ‘I thought, perhaps … these … you might like?'

She looks at them as though I am offering her a bunch of eels.

I start to back away. ‘Once again, my apologies. Inappropriate – ah …'

But now she thrusts out her hand and grasps the flowers from me, saying: ‘Not inappropriate at all. What a thoughtful gesture.' She smiles at me, but there is some arrested sigh of forbearance in it, the smile one might give an imbecile. Fair enough too. She says: ‘My sister will delight in these, thank you.'

‘Oh. Good,' I say and lose my way again as the frown leaves her face. It is a flawless face. The face of a porcelain doll. Astounding symmetry.

She thrusts out her other hand. ‘Berylda Jones.'

‘Oh?' I look at her hand. Porcelain hand. Belonging to a girl called Berylda. She doesn't expect me to take her pretty hand, does she? In my grubby oaf's hand?

She does, it seems; still holding it out to me: ‘And you are?' Greeting an imbecile.

‘I am …' At the touch of her fingers against my palm I'm sure I have not the slightest idea. Her hand is so tiny, petal soft and so white inside mine as I bow over it, we cannot be of the same genus, let alone species. My hand has never appeared so large, and it is a fairly large one.

‘A name will do,' she says impatiently, frown threatening again. ‘Whom shall I tell my sister gave us a present of these flowers?'

‘Yes.'
Benjamin
,
I hear Mama sigh with her perennial disappointment. Give the girl your name – it's not a hard task. Just a name. Just a girl: they comprise half the human world. ‘Of course. I am Benjamin – Ben Wilberry.'

‘Of course?' She laughs, lightly yet derisively.

I think she is about to say good day and shut the door when a man appears behind her, an older man, considerably older than me, hair silvering above his sideburns. Unquestionably the master of this house.

‘Who is this?' he says, protective, and well he should be. There is some military straightness about this fellow; the father, I presume.

‘Sir.' I recover my senses enough to afford him the expected and conventional courtesies. ‘Good afternoon. I am Ben Wilberry – botanist. Miss Jones was kind enough to allow me to inspect a shrub of interest to me on your land, just by your dam. I saw it only in passing …'

The man responds with a blank stare, as though to tell me that my explanation is not satisfactory.

‘I'm from Melbourne University,' I add, searching for some more convincing justification for my being here. ‘I am from Queensland, actually, originally,' I say, very unhelpfully. ‘Er. Conducting a study of a particular plant. Presently. Here. I apologise for the intrusion. Yes, ah …'

The girl looks up into the curve of the tin roof above us; and that's about right – that's about how quick it usually is before I lose the attention of a girl. But she hasn't lost mine: there is something curious about the shape of her eyes, an accentuation to the curve of the lid, a petal there too. Something curious about the shape of her altogether. Sylphlike. Slip of a girl …

‘Not at all.' The man thrusts out his hand, suddenly, confusingly. ‘Alec Howell, how do you do,' he introduces himself, and he is
Howell
not
Jones
, not her father? And he has one of those overly eager grips I always find disconcerting, for I can't return it. If I did I'd have left a trail of crushed hands behind me. ‘Now, Wilberry,' the man says, eager as his handshake, ‘I suppose you must be one of
the
Wilberrys of Queensland cattle fame, are you?'

Queensland cattle fame. Must that be my perennial calling card? ‘I suppose so. Yes.'

‘Aha!' he says, pleased at his guess. ‘Eleonora Station, isn't it?' He either wants to be sure, or he's the type who's sure he might know how much pickle I had with my lunch.

‘Yes,' I reply. ‘Eleonora.' Whether Mama liked it or not. Fifteen thousand Shorthorn out of Jericho, what woman wouldn't want her name emblazoned over that? I suppose he must have loved her once. Did he? Ever? Who would have thought Pater's renown had travelled so far south of the border, though – small country, for all its enormity. I must admit: ‘My father is John Wilberry, famous cattleman.' Amongst other things. As well as the second most compelling reason for me having wandered onto your property just now to look at a flower –
bloody embarrassment – you always have been –
and why I've spent the better part of this past decade in Melbourne's School of Natural Sciences, as distant from him as practicable.

‘Well, well. What about that.' This Alec Howell is pleased to make this connection; I'm not sure I've ever met one quite so pleased. A small man, he rises up on his toes with his pleasure.

‘Oh, but we must invite him to our dinner, Uncle.' The girl is suddenly animated and insistent, a blush on those porcelain cheeks. Strike me all over again, but she is an extraordinary creature. There is a quick, sharp glance that passes between her and the man, though, some misgiving, something I have indeed interrupted. I open my mouth to decline.

But he is eager still. ‘Splendid thought, Berylda,' he says with a quick, sharp licking of lips, muddy grey eyes set again on mine, ready as a needle-grass skink. ‘Unless you have other plans, of course – it is New Year's Eve, after all.'

‘It is, yes, and no,' I reply, ‘we've no other plans this evening. But we wouldn't want to intru–'

‘We?' The man rises up on his toes again. If he were any more eager he'd spring up and hit the tin above us.

‘My friend Cosmo Thompson,' I tell him, searching for an excuse to extricate myself from this awkward, unsought invitation. I shan't tell him Cos would most likely get drunk and insult one of his guests, or all of them. I say instead, ‘The artist travelling with me on my study. We're staying at the Royal Hotel in the town, just for the night. And we have an early morning tomorrow,' ah, there's the tidy excuse, ‘taking the train to Manildra, we're for Mandagery Creek, hoping to find some specimens of interest there.'

‘Right,' Alec Howell says, and he appears not in the least bit interested in my own pursuit. ‘Well, you and your friend Mr Thompson be back here for eight and you'll be most welcome. Not a terribly large affair,' he says with a smile of modesty so false it's carrying a beacon. ‘A few colleagues from the hospital – I am the surgeon there – and a few other good people from our fine town. Let off a few fire crackers at midnight, eh? Nothing overly formal in this house. What do you say?'

Curiosity puts me in two minds about this now. Alec Howell is a grasping little specimen, I'd say, presumptuous, and nothing sincere about him at all. Those muddy grey eyes want something; the kind of man who always wants something. I'm sure he will very quickly become a bore. I am sure I do not want to share any table with him.

But the girl, she entreats me with her smile. ‘Oh do say yes, Mr Wilberry.'

Oh yes, I would like to see the girl once more. Yes, even if it means I must blunder my way through each course for Cos's amusement. Do I mean to do that to myself? Surely not.

‘Thank you,' I say to her – barely – and look to her uncle, clearing my throat. ‘Thank you, Mr Howell, for the invitation …' and I only make the decision in this breath: ‘Yes, we would be most happy to accept it.'

The girl, she seems most happy at the idea, doesn't she? She suggested it; she entreats me. She nods over the bunch of everlastings in her hands: ‘Wonderful.'

And I doubt very much I've made a wise decision. I can hear Cos laughing himself arseless already.