Paper Daisies Read online

  That forces my hand. Don’t you touch my chicken. I step through into the kitchen and take the dish from him, announcing as brightly as long practice will allow me: ‘Well, doesn’t all this look and smell wonderful, Mary. We’re in for a feast tonight, aren’t we just.’ I wriggle the breastbone free of the wing it’s caught round and wrap it in my handkerchief, and so quick I am about it, I’ve already turned to leave before Mary can say: ‘A feast indeed, thank you, Miss Jones,’ as Uncle Alec commands: ‘Ah Berylda – see who that is at the gate.’

  Can’t have the master opening his own gate, can you. He’s not that modern. Why do any such thing when you can demean your niece by sending her instead? What am I compared to a kitchen maid?

  Not halfway to the front door along the east hallway, it seems Prince has stopped his barking anyway. I stop to listen. Silence, except for the ticking of the mantel clock in the drawing room. Perhaps it was only someone going along the road on their way down to the river bend with a rod, taking the scenic route. I almost return directly to Gret, to my room, but I decide to take a moment to calm myself down first. I need to take a moment to release the violence in me. This compulsion to fly at him. Kill him. Make him gone. My steps pound out my hatred up the hall.

  How can I make us gone? Now. Not some time in the future but today. Stop this hideous dream. This dream that has been unfolding and unfolding, shock upon shock, since we arrived here. I was almost fifteen; Gret seventeen. One moment we were on summer holiday at Bathurst, with Aunt Libby and Uncle Alec, here at Bellevue; they had just returned from their honeymoon, Aunt Libby still unsure how she would decorate the rooms in the gleaming new home he’d had built for her while they’d been away; it would be a jolly time of choosing fabrics and papers. A time not to be. A black curtain fell. It falls now. It falls and falls and I am breathless. Mother and Papa would not be joining us, we were told. Their carriage had come off the tracks in the mountains, the engine brakes having failed at the zigzag above Lithgow. A tragedy. No. It was preposterous, and remains so. A few months later, a few minutes later it seemed, Aunt Libby became ill and left us too: typhoid fever, we were told; a broken heart we knew. And our lives have been his to play with ever since.

  Five years. How will Greta endure one day more of this? How can I possibly leave her to go back to university? How can I get us out of here now? The questions spin me round and round and round. He will not stop; he will never stop. He will only become more vicious. What an excellent year 1901 will be, Berylda, he clapped his hands at me this morning when my results arrived. Clapped them right at my face. No word of congratulation for me, but something else. A threat. Holding the threat under my nose, tight between his clasped palms. A threat that vibrates through this house; it always has: along the tightrope I dare to tread, to remain his favoured one. The one allowed to return to school when Greta was denied her final year. Allowed to attend university, while Greta is imprisoned here. Allowed to remain unmolested, while Greta is –

  Damn him to the furthest pit. If there is a child growing in her now, this will ruin her, in every way. She doesn’t have my will, my single-minded resolve, my ropeway to the outside world. He has blasted her will, addled her with his brutality, his relentless sneering, his insults, his dismissals – stupid girl; cretinous thing; yellow mongrel; are you listening to me, you vacuous little bitch? Do you have a brain at all in there? So that she is more child than I am, though she is the elder by more than two years. But what can my will do for her now? It seems I am watching a precious ornament fall from a shelf but I am too slow to prevent it smashing. Too slow inside this dream.

  Wake up!

  And then what? Kill him. Kill him tonight. How? Chloroform. Arsenic. Drench him in paraffin and set him alight.

  And have Gret see me hanged. No.

  What alternative is there but to keep to the plan we already have? No matter how bad things get, Greta will insist that I do. That I continue with my studies; that I become a doctor and – You’ll never be employed in a hospital, Berylda. No board will ever permit women to practise on the wards, you know that.

  What do I know? That he will string me along with my studies, only to interfere with my prospects when I qualify? Make sure I will never be employed? I try to close my mind to him, to his threats, to his games, but they are everywhere here in his domain. I don’t know if he will even allow me to return to Sydney. I will have to fight him so hard to get there: charm him, cajole him, perform for him, manipulate with games of my own. And even then, it will be five years, if I commit myself well, before I even complete the degree.

  Five more years. No. Greta cannot be subject to this. Five more years at the barest minimum. Uncle Alec’s interference aside, no woman passes the final in Materia Medica first go – the pharmacy examination – that professor is a notorious misogynist and has not let one woman straight through in the five years we’ve been allowed to sit for it at all. Five more years is impossible.

  Impossible as us ever being able to wrest any of our parents’ estate from Alec Howell, damn the blindness of that law – the one that says it was remiss of Aunt Libby to not die before our parents. I have asked the ‘hypothetical’ of Flo inside half-a-dozen different guises, and the answer has come back from Hoddy and Old Mac the same. Everything that should be ours – Papa’s share in Hartley Shale, our home at Katoomba, Mama and Libby’s small but tidy fortune in old gold from their parents’ prospect at Gulgong – it’s all with Uncle Alec, our legal guardian. And isn’t he doing such a wonderful job of looking after us, all society says; and now look, the younger is even off to medical school, they’ll toast him tonight. What a man. The trap is tight-laced around us. We can’t fight him on this issue, not at all. We will need not only women lawyers and women voters but women legislators to be able to do any such thing. And money: we are essentially penniless but for the scraps he throws us.

  We must be made free now. Gret must be freed. Please. How?

  If anyone will do it, Ryl, you will do it, she said to me when I left for college at the beginning of the year. It will be all right. Don’t worry about me. You’ll be a doctor one day and we will leave. We can return to Echo Point. Simple as that.

  I stop at the front door, touch my forehead to the cool timber. Breathe …

  Prince barks again, just the once, chasing a bird, perhaps. A happy enough sound that returns me to myself somewhat, and turns the handle in my hand. I must find Buckley before I think or do another thing, have him chain Prince at the stables. I don’t particularly like the Gebhardts or Reverend Liversidge or, for that matter, the majority of those invited to the festivities this evening, but neither would I see any of them torn to pieces. I open the front door.

  Prince looks up at me from the gate at the bottom of the garden path. Tail wagging. Tongue lolling. The late sun dancing across his brindle coat, he is as beautiful as he is savage.

  And there’s a man patting his head. How very odd. It’s no man I’ve ever seen before, here or anywhere, though there is something curiously familiar about him. Long flaxen hair like a travelling minstrel, tweed breeches and haversack, he’s travelled off the pages of some great strapping Walter Scott adventure and up to our yard. And he appears to remain in possession of both hands, unmolested by Prince.

  The man straightens and smiles, a heartbeat of déjà vu. ‘I beg your pardon, young miss.’ He points towards the orchard. ‘My apologies for the intrusion, but I was hoping I might take a look at a shrub, ah. The daisies, over by the …’

  Ben

  I lose my way in the words as I look back at the girl again and see that she is not a child at all but a young woman, compactly made. She is wearing a blue dress, a gown of pale blue; she is a piece of sky drifted down onto this chocolate-box verandah. A displeased one. Not surprising, I suppose: I just addressed her as young miss.

  ‘You would like to look at what, where?’ Her frown is severe, her hand raised against the sun. />
  ‘The daisies …’ I look again down the lee, into the heavy boughs of the cherries, searching for something appropriate to say in such a circumstance as this – incidental conversation with the fairer sex, of which I am generally – no, absolutely – lacking. ‘I am a botanist …’ I offer and then, unable to think of anything else to say, I determine to make my departure swift and immediate. ‘I beg your pardon. Miss. Ah … I do apologise. I am sorry to have disturbed you.’

  ‘Ha!’ The girl waves me away for a nuisance. ‘Disturb me? Prince finds you a good enough fellow. Go and look at your daisies.’

  She turns and walks quickly away, around the western side of the verandah, stopping briefly to speak to a workman who is approaching the rear of the house with a barrow of wood. Then she disappears into the shade of the awning; a door creaks open and then closed again.

  I look back down at the dog. Prince. Good name for him – a proud beast. And a distrustful one: I thought he might actually jump the fence for me. Teeth bared and snarling. Intimidating, and I am not easily intimidated, not by animals at least. And then he just as suddenly stopped. Sniffed the air, propped his paws up on the fence, as though in welcome, then bounded up towards the gate here, as though asking me to follow, and I did.

  The dog licks the back of my hand now as I reach down to raise the latch. Funny creature. I must have confused him somehow; some smell about me. There might be a fair smell about me, too, or a foul one – I realise that I haven’t had these strides properly laundered since I left Melbourne. Perhaps the girl caught a whiff of me as well. That’s almost a month’s worth of whiff, and more. Strike me, but it suddenly seems I’ve been on the road a long while. Wandering. Years, not weeks.

  I look behind me as I open the gate and see Cos there where I left him, down by the verge of the road, still drawing on his pipe, book open on his chest. I assure him mentally that I shan’t be long, but as I do a sense of uncertainty slips through my mind. Shan’t be long.

  Ahead, I look to the white blooms, under the good care of the old melaleuca by the dam there – linariifolia, just like Mama’s, its broad canopy in full flower, too, as though dusted with frost. Are these Mama’s elatum beneath its shelter? They are exquisite, whatever they might be, floating on this gentle breeze, as though over the surface of the water, against slow ripples of molten bronze.

  I really have no idea how long I shall be.

  As long as this farewell takes me, I suppose. My chest tightens at it: Farewell, Mama. Where is she now? Wandering pleasantly through some celestial garden, I hope; a small child capering along beside her, asking her the names of the flowers.

  I am that small boy still. I shall always be.

  Just as these are indeed her white everlastings here, so improbably, on this hillside in Bathurst.

  Yes, it is elatum. Joy blunders through me. Here they are. The fineness of the leaves, the tall, elegant hands, each stem topped with their inflorescence of bell-shaped bracts, with their multiple rows of snowy rays, holding deep golden discoid flowerheads swelling at their centres. And they are profuse; thriving. I look into the sky as though I might see the way this piece of my childhood garden floated down six hundred miles to find me here. The dog beside me barks once in concord. Yes, it might well appear I am not mad.

  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 Don’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 ha
ir 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.