Paper Daisies

by Kim Kelly

  I do not raise my eyes from the task of setting out the picnic: blanket, crockery, basket …

  ‘Let me help you with that,’ Mr Wilberry offers, stepping near.

  ‘No need, thank you. Our guest.’ I wave him off, and I sound like some sort of strangulated harpy.

  Buckley has the fire going and Greta sets to slicing the tomatoes, while I attack the bread and the cheese with all of my attention. She is chatting merrily, and I am sure she is enjoying my discomfort now more than anything, asking Mr Wilberry lightly: ‘So, have you always been a vegetarian?’

  ‘No,’ he replies, and I see his knees across the blanket by hers, as I feel his voice travelling through my own. ‘There was a drought, through ’85 and ’86. It was a pretty awful time, the cattle began to starve at our station and I began to wonder. You know, that they would endure such pain only to be served at our tables.’

  ‘And unceremoniously massacred at school,’ Mr Thompson adds as he lounges by him, legs stretched out towards me, boots almost at my skirt, I am sure symbolically: Keep your distance, woman. As if he sees how I might use his friend. ‘Remember that steak and kidney pie we got on Monday nights? That was enough to put anyone off – I almost might have gone the same way as our Wilb.’

  ‘Where did you go to school?’ Greta asks them both, passing Mr Thompson the bottle of wine to open. I glance up at him, and he is more than happily at that task.

  ‘King’s School,’ Mr Wilberry answers and I look up at him now across the cutting board; I can’t stop myself. ‘You?’ he asks, and he is addressing me.

  ‘St Cat’s,’ I say, by rote. Meaningless.

  ‘Ha. We are of the same tribe then.’ He laughs softly. It takes me a moment to find my way back to the conversation to understand what he’s referring to. Same tribe. Ah yes: King’s, St Cat’s, we are the daughters and sons of privilege, sent to Sydney for school. He keeps smiling, into some memory of his own, plucking a grape. ‘On one of our few civilising excursions we went to a so-called dance instruction afternoon with the ladies of St Cat’s – and I’m pretty sure I’d never seen a girl before. The poor young lady I had to stand hopelessly with – Miss Pentridge was her name – told me I stank.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ Greta exclaims. ‘What a nasty girl.’

  ‘Not entirely,’ says Mr Thompson with a plunking of the cork. ‘He did smell pretty bad, as I recall it.’

  Greta laughs so much at that she keels over onto her elbow, waving the knife in the air. She makes a little sobbing sound of delighted hysteria, and it makes me laugh too. I simply can’t stop myself. But as I join in the laughter my hand slips into my pocket for my wishbone half, right down to the bottom of my pocket, and I grasp it tight: Please, as I beg that this laughter might come from my sister every day from this day forward, I beg too that whatever might be occurring here with Mr Wilberry will not distract me from all that I must do to see my sister safe. Safe from the monster who hurts and perverts her. To see myself safe from him too, the pinch of his fingers, the wrenching of my arm: You will stop this resistance, Berylda – you ungrateful little slut. I am somewhat and bizarrely calmed by this more urgent, more desperate need; calm enough to assemble the logic here, at least: I am clearly attracted to Mr Wilberry; I have never been attracted to a man before; it was going to happen one day, doubtless, and Mr Wilberry is an attractive man. Attractive to me specifically. There is nothing wrong with that. It’s merely inappropriate. Ill-timed. And all very amusing for my sister. Breathe.

  I do, and the air is sweet. We eat, and we talk about how nicely sharp this Dunkeld cheddar is, how crisp the Mount Olivet Chablis, and how well aged the jam; I watch the ducks playing on the water and Buckley watches us all from under a tree, further up the bank. He rolls a cigarette as Greta decides: ‘I’d like to get on with colouring my picture now, please. Forgive me then for abandoning you all for a time, won’t you?’

  ‘Now that’s an idea,’ Mr Thompson says. ‘I think I’d like to sketch you, painting your picture, then. What about it?’

  ‘Oh!’ Greta couldn’t be more pleased at the suggestion. ‘No one has ever made a sketch of me, Mr Thompson, I’d love that. Thank you.’ And she grins at me, with a dismissive princess wave: ‘You and Mr Wilberry will just have to do without us – I want to get as much done as I can in this magical light.’

  ‘Of course you do.’ I squint at her in pretend reproach; let her have her game with me. Her fun. It is magical enough for me to feel that I am claiming her back; moment by moment, here, my sister returns. Her strengths returns; perhaps, I dare to hope, there is no child in her at all. Only my fear.

  I am not so thrilled at the idea of Mr Thompson sidling up too close to her, though. Don’t trust him any more than I suppose he trusts me. And he’s had his wine, swilled down a full tumbler of Dubbo’s finest, now reaching for another …

  ‘Yes. Ah.’ Mr Wilberry clears his throat. ‘I’d like to walk back down along the river, Miss Jones.’ Mr Wilberry is addressing me again: ‘There’s a marshy patch I saw earlier and I’d like to – I mean, what an invitation that must sound. But would you care to –?’

  Leave my sister completely alone with Mr Thompson? No, I would not. But then she will not be alone, will she. I look to Buckley: he is watching still, sipping his mug of tea. He will let no bad thing happen to her; not that he could ever help. I look to Mr Wilberry and he nods as if he hears my worry too: ‘We won’t go far; we won’t stray from sight.’

  ‘Yes, Ryldy, please go away,’ Greta pushes again. ‘I don’t want you hovering.’

  ‘All right,’ I bend, but I should not go anywhere with Mr Wilberry at all. I must not encourage him.

  And yet, I do. The sip of wine I took with lunch has gone straight up to my head.

  ‘Your servant has moved down the bank a way, I see,’ Mr Wilberry notes with that rich, soft laugh in his voice as we begin to walk, and I am distracted, not only by my company but by the searing blast of heat as we step into the sun – real heat. It must be well over one hundred degrees now, beating through my blouse, across my back.

  ‘Servant?’ I reply, annoyed with myself: I left my stupid parasol back in the buggy.

  ‘Your man Buckley – he’s keeping a watchful eye.’

  ‘Yes.’ I glance back at him. ‘He will. He is more than a servant.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He’s very loyal, to my sister and I.’ I glance at Mr Thompson now too, a warning: if you are not who you seem, don’t you try anything untoward: our man Buckley will kill you. There is a pistol concealed beneath the tent roll in the buggy, for our safety. He will not hesitate.

  ‘Clearly,’ Mr Wilberry replies and I feel the gentling smile in it, not that it stops me from glancing up this same warning at him too, prompting him to say: ‘I didn’t mean to cause offence. He seems an interesting man, Buckley, the sort who’s seen his share of life.’

  ‘Yes.’ I soften, or attempt to: Mr Wilberry is only trying to make conversation. If it weren’t for him, my sister and I would not have got away from Bellevue this morning at all. ‘Yes, he’s a good man. And I’m sure he’s seen a share of life, little that I know of his. He came to us through one of our father’s business partners, after –’

  After the accident, after the black curtain fell. Memory sears: Buckley simply appeared one day, just as the grounds at Bellevue were completed, just as Uncle Alec decided he would need a man for the garden and the stables. A letter of recommendation came with him, from old Mr Gabriel, of Hartley Shale. Uncle Alec made a deal of taking him on as a favour, since he and Mr Gabriel, it seemed, were to be partners now themselves, since Uncle Alec would have to represent Aunt Libby in all such business and financial matters. Never mind, darling Libby – don’t worry about a thing. I remember Alec Howell smiling. It was as if he couldn’t see Libby’s tears. Her distress meant nothing to him. Not one word of consolation to Greta or me, either. Not one
word to acknowledge our devastation.

  ‘After what?’ Mr Wilberry asks.

  I can’t answer; I can’t speak of it. Talk over it with something else now – what were we speaking of? Buckley. That’s right. ‘I think he might have been a convict,’ I blabber like some empty-headed gossip. ‘He spent twenty years in West Australia, I know that much, building the road from Albany to Perth, and when he’s grumpy he always complains, “All for a pound of butter and a sack of beans.” Somehow he ended up on the goldfields somewhere around here, one of the mines at Tambaroora, I think, and then working on the shale in the mountains. I don’t know, precisely.’

  ‘Ah, mines,’ Mr Wilberry replies, chuckling uncertainly, nervously. ‘They provide hiding holes for many a villain to disappear into, don’t they?’

  ‘Buckley is not a villain.’ I bristle instantly again, for him and for all my family who’ve made their lives in this quartz country, from gold, from coal, from shale. I snap: ‘Australia might well be a place where villains come to disappear, but Buckley is not one of them.’

  ‘I do apologise.’ Mr Wilberry is quick to it and embarrassed once more. ‘That was clumsily said. I’m good at managing to be clumsy …’

  ‘Yes, you are. And I am good at bristling.’ I force a smile, and I’m sure it appears as such. Must I always be so quick to snap, to judge, to think the worst? ‘This heat is …’

  ‘Fairly hot. Here –’ He bends at the water’s edge and soaks a handkerchief; rings it out and passes it to me. ‘It’s clean …’

  I don’t care much if it isn’t: I sling it round my neck. ‘Thank you.’

  As I do, he says, looking at my right hand on my shoulder: ‘That’s a beauty of a bruise you’ve got there.’

  ‘What?’ I am disoriented again and scramble to talk over it as well, looking at the ugly, darkening thing. ‘Oh this? Bashed it into a door, silly accident – the door between my bedroom and my sister’s – she was opening it as I was reaching for the handle and –’

  ‘Ouch.’ He finishes my lie with a sympathetic flinch.

  ‘Yes. Ouch.’ My smile is genuine now, and I am relieved as sincerely, not only at his easy sympathy, but for the small square of bliss that is his handkerchief, dripping down the back of my blouse now – while he persists with his wretched conversation: ‘Your uncle seems a … an interesting man too. How did he come to New South Wales? He’s not a native, is he? His accent is –’

  ‘No, not a native, and I don’t know how he came to be here.’ This more than bristles: for all that I wish I were able to tell Mr Wilberry the truth, tell the whole world the truth, on first reflex I resent his prying into it. A thousand pricks of the scalpel up my spine. But he is not prying, is he. Merely making conversation, and more than that: there is something in Mr Wilberry’s expression, some depth to the question. He really wants to know; he is waiting to know, and so I dare to reveal a bush-smoke trace of our circumstances, if not the flame itself. ‘I barely know a thing about Alec Howell,’ I say; let Mr Wilberry know by my tone that I am not fond of my so-called uncle. ‘Son of a clergyman, native of Devon, but we’ve never met any of his family. They live in Barnstaple, and I don’t even know exactly where that is, nor do I care to know.’

  Bile churns through the bread in my stomach with terror coming after it. It only now comes to me, here on this riverbank, after all these years, that I know of no one who might vouch for Alec Howell’s bona fides. No old acquaintance from the Home country who might really know him. Reverend Liversidge, Dr Weston, Mr Gabriel – do any of these men know him? Are they his friends? Somehow I don’t think so. They are all recent acquaintances, professional and political connections, made since he moved to Bathurst, not very long before we were forced to remain there ourselves. Where are his acquaintances from Mudgee, where he was the resident surgeon when he and Aunt Libby first met? No one knows who he really is, do they? Just as no one knows what he really does.

  ‘Where did he study?’ Mr Wilberry asks now, a simple and mundane question of who’s who, but still with that look of concern on his face, his open face, forehead creased with it.

  I don’t conceal my contempt as I answer: ‘Bristol, he boasts about it often enough – such a big fish he was, in such a small pond. He says such things to deflect from his shame at not being Oxford or Cambridge educated. But I’ve never seen a certificate from any institution at all – he’s far too modest to display his credentials, of course. His degree might be in engineering, for all I know.’

  That’s as close as I have ever come to accusing Alec Howell of anything and my heart is beating so fast, my knees begin to tremble again. I fix my sight on Mr Wilberry’s face. This man. This good man. Breathe.

  Breathe.

  This man will not hurt me.

  ‘Yes. No. Well.’ He winces over the longest pause, before responding, carefully: ‘People disappear into this land for many reasons, don’t they? Then fashion themselves into all sorts of things. My own father has made quite an art of it himself.’ Mr Wilberry smiles as carefully, but I can only breathe; earth myself by the crunch of leather on twig and stone, and nod for him to continue. ‘Yes,’ he does, ‘as a young man my father was sent away in some disgrace from the family business, in Sheffield, under voluntary transportation to avoid the possibility of a prison sentence. Umbrella factory, it was – still is – left in charge at the age of twenty-one. When his father was away on business, he beat the bookkeeper to within an inch of his life for making an error with the price of the turned handles, and look at him now? No one would ever suspect he wasn’t born an outback cattleman, one that holds the parliament of Queensland under his fist – or would if it weren’t for all you thieving southern Federationists wrecking his plans for world domination. Thing about him, though, is he’s proud of it all – unashamedly proud of this consistency of character. Makes no attempt whatsoever to hide it.’

  The blue of Mr Wilberry’s eyes is bright with this suite of irony, and I might laugh at his self-deprecating revelation, I might even appreciate this exchange of intimacies, except for what it means to me: Alec Howell came here to disappear, didn’t he? A criminal who came to fashion himself into another form. Terror or instinct, I cannot know how this comes to me but that it comes with a blistering clarity: what he has done to me, to Gret, he has somehow done before. Of course he has. This is hardly a revelation. It is some creeping knowledge. Knowledge of a particular animal. I want to speak of it with Mr Wilberry. I wish I could, I wish it would all pour from me and away. But there remains nothing I can speak of here. Nothing I can say without betraying myself; betraying my sister.

  ‘How did you come to live with him?’ Mr Wilberry wants to know. ‘Your uncle, I mean.’

  And I want to tell him; how I do. I begin: ‘He married my aunt, just before our parents … and … then …’ I can’t say any more.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Miss Jones. I don’t mean to press you – I …’ He can see my loss plainly enough.

  I try again; force it out staccato: ‘He married my aunt, whirlwind romance as they say. Swept her off her feet in the ballroom at the Star Hotel in Gulgong; fundraising dinner, for the little hospital there – he was visiting from Mudgee, where he worked at the time. My aunt told us every detail of that night, that whirlwind dance, but she is no longer here for me to ask her any more about it. Him. Not long after our parents were gone, she left us too. Typhoid.’

  ‘Harsh,’ he says to the twigs and the stones, that one word so full of concern it does somehow cool off the top of the pain. He asks me now: ‘Is this why you have chosen Medicine? A need to heal, perhaps?’ A funny grimace scrunches his face, as if I might snap at him again or whack him with a stick.

  It forces a laugh from me, or this strange familiarity we seem to have with each other does; it’s a barely-there wisp of a laugh but a laugh nevertheless, as I say to him: ‘I don’t know that either.’ But I wonder at it aloud: ‘I choos
e Medicine, I suppose, because I am good at hard facts, hard work, and I must have some career, one that might provide an income to keep my sister and me, independently. There’s Medicine or utter penury as a school teacher, and that’s about it for the professions, and neither of them easy on a girl. My best friend at Women’s College is doing Law, and although her family is stacked with esteemed wigs, there’s no guarantee that she will be able to practise – who would go to a lady lawyer anyway?’

  The law that allows Alec Howell’s theft of our parents’ estate slices into me, again and again; this law that says he’s the one who collects the rent on our homes, in Gulgong, in Katoomba, the places of the love that made us. Hatred and heat and loss drive a fever in me, all prickling warmth of attraction smashed away by a stinging skinlessness, and I am certain I will never heal. As I could not make Libby heal by wishing it. Oh how she suffered as she left us, Libby. I dived into the few general medical texts in the study, I kept looking for the telltale rose spots of the infection on her lovely skin, hoping that their absence meant the diagnosis was wrong. It wasn’t of course: any fool could see. The bacteria clawing its way through her so fast it didn’t bother with the rash. Yet I was so desperate for her to heal that – that Mr Wilberry is quite possibly right. I say: ‘But perhaps yes, perhaps I make my choice to heal, as futile as that may too often be.’

  ‘Not futile, Miss Jones,’ he says, and I wish I had a fraction of the compassion that this man can transmit by merely glancing at me. ‘You are admirable in every way,’ he adds.

  I wish he hadn’t.

  He says: ‘I have brought you down.’

  ‘No. You haven’t,’ I assure him. ‘Stop apologising, please – it’s irritating.’ I suck in my cheeks facetiously, at my own brittleness. ‘It’s a touchy subject – you must know, there is no guarantee that I will ever be able to practise medicine, either, in any meaningful or profitable way – no great stampede beating a path to any lady doctor’s door, whether I get my degree or not. I’ll probably be relegated to weighing babies and treating dizzy spells and other such earth-shattering feminine issues – in Duramana – for two bob and an old tin of jam per week.’