Paper Daisies (12 page)

Ben

E
ven as I am dying I am a great blunder of the world, my destiny to leave it in this way, slamming fist to tablecloth, knocking fork onto floor. Choking. Medicine? Sydney University. Biology prize? What kind of hoax is this? Here is a girl I might bloody well come to admire. In fact, I think I do so now already. And I must die. In pandemonium: chairs scraping, ladies gasping. A fish thrashing about for –

Awfff.

The blow between my shoulders dislodges the bread in my throat and the air rushes in, and out again; croaking, ‘S-sorry, I do beg …' as I turn to see who has saved me.

‘Don't apologise.' She frowns. ‘My fault, I'm sure. I sliced the tomato too thickly.'

She sliced a tomato for me. It is difficult to say which is more astounding: the tomato slicing or that belting she just gave me. I don't admire this girl, Berylda. No. I have fallen irretrievably into her frown.

Berylda

‘
O
h, well done!' his messy friend declares, sloshing claret across the table, deep red bleeding into the white cloth. ‘The entertainments here this evening are topnotch – what!'

‘Berylda.' Mrs Weston is on her feet too. ‘Indeed that was well done. Are you quite all right, Mr Wilberry?'

He nods, cheeks flushed, tucking that long hair behind his ears, eyes downcast, clearly embarrassed. ‘Thank you. Quite all right,' he rasps painfully. How unpleasant for him. It was exciting for me, though, for the discovery I have just made: I am stronger than I thought. Far stronger. The force of my fists on his back …

‘Three cheers for Berylda!'

‘Little Miss Dr Jones!'

‘Hip hip hooray!'

Glasses are raised around the table, around my scalpel smile, and I glance the blade up the centre of it at Uncle Alec as all resume their seats. I am exhilarated by this power in me. If I could find the impulse, the passion that was in me just now to drive a blade …

God, arrest this thought and keep it from me. I have just saved a man's life; I am not about to do away with another, no matter how much I'd like to. Need to. Must. Hush. Keep my resolve wrapped tight around the things that might be achieved. I have a demand to make of dearly beloved uncle, don't I, and how can he deny my request for a few days away with my sister now? I have saved his party from ruination. I sit poised in my seat, to watch and wait for another moment, the best moment, to play my card for it.

‘As I was saying, there will be some competition over the selection of a Free Trade candidate amongst the Liberals – fierce. But we will be in it.' He has resumed lecturing Mr Thompson on his political aspirations, lecturing over my feat as if it never occurred, still punishing me for my undergarment recalcitrance, of course. I am not to be forgiven for my insolence. I watch him, waiting for my opportunity to interrupt, and as I do I drill my own resolve into his face:
I will succeed in making you say yes to me.
He is seeking his own assurances from Justice Wardell at his right: ‘We are shoring up the numbers amongst our League. We are the ones to protect the colony – excuse me,
nation
– from the socialists. It begins in New South Wales. We'll break the trade unions here, won't we, Victor. Break them before they take hold, and I am the man to lead the charge.'

As if empty slogans lead anywhere. Why does Uncle Alec despise the trade unions so? What is the workingman to a surgeon but largely irrelevant unless the company offers to pay his bill or he volunteers for unrestrained medical trial and error? Mystifying.

I am certain I see a flicker of unease cross Justice Wardell's face. ‘We've a federal election to get through yet. Much can happen in these coming months, Alec. The Protectionists are strong and might yet throw their hat in with the Laborites – the worker and the farmer have more in common against the industrialist than not, and might make a new party of themselves. All is in flux. No counting of any sort of chickens for a while, I'm afraid.'

Yes. That was a rebuke, if a subtle one. Smashing the workingmen's co-operatives of Bathurst is rather a grandiose ambition in itself. Miners, shearers, timber cutters, a rabble of labourers five thousand strong in this town alone. And Uncle Alec does not have his selection as a state candidate guaranteed. That's almost worth remaining here for indefinitely. To see him thwarted. I see a great hobnail boot grinding his head into the dust of William Street, and a ploughshare dragging over the rest of him.

Lapdog Gebhardt springs to his master's side: ‘Months?' The chemist shakes his jowly chops. ‘But we must be working always against the socialists – now. Immediately. They are the plague of the federation in Germany. Constantly disrupting unity. Constantly disrupting industry. These labour parties in the colonies here are already too strong. Imagine what federation will do for this workers party? They will take over totally. They are tyrannical madmen waiting for this chance. They grow stronger and stronger every day we delay.'

‘Shoot them. Shoot them now,' Mr Thompson insists with a theatrical wave of his hand. ‘Chain 'em up with the blacks and the Kanakas and shoot 'em all. Ingrates! I'll cut the blasted cane myself, see if I don't. Australia for the White Man! Australia for the Fat White Man!'

‘That joke is stale,' Uncle Alec admonishes, disdainful curl of the lip, not turning from Dr Gebhardt and Mr Wardell to address Mr Thompson directly.

‘It's not entirely a joke, though, is it, Mr Howell?' Mr Thompson is suddenly sharply sober once more. ‘It's what you'd really like to do, isn't it? Get rid of the lot of them that won't do as you want them to do. Aren't what you want them to be. Your skivvies, your vassals, your slaves.'

‘What are you then, sir? A libertine? An anarchist? Nihilist? Some other inane fad?' Uncle Alec's shoulders shift in discomfort as he is forced to face Mr Thompson. Oh but this is fun now. I am on the edge of my seat; so is Gret, her eyes wide, napkin pressed to her lips to hide her own enjoyment of this turn.

‘No. I am myself.' Mr Thompson's smile is open and smug. ‘I am a fat white man.' Most definitely a handsome man; most comfortable in himself, and most definitely aware of the effect of it, too.

And Uncle Alec is writhing inside with the challenge of it all; rattled and raising the scritch in his voice just enough to betray himself: ‘You think it fair and just that the unions stand over industry demanding their wages at threat of bloodshed? For that is what they do.'

Mr Thompson snorts, dismissively: ‘You think it fair that industry stands over poor men and keeps them poor not at threat of bloodshed but with bloodshed in fact?' A slow nod over a wry and calculating smile. ‘I'm fascinated by it all. That's what I am. Fascinated. You do realise that the Labor Party is more for the Fat White Man than anyone in this room, don't you? Dependent upon you as a lamb. And no one hates a coloured skin the way the worker does. You really should consider going in with them. You can all join fat white hands as the ultimate Super Party. It's the only way your empires will continue to survive this New Age, the only way you will ever be the kings you think you ought to be – make the workers your friends and go on a big, long black shoot together, Waltzing Matilda all the way. I'm not joking.'

‘You're not, are you,' J.C. Dunning says beside him, fascinated himself; Dunning is a fat white bullfrog, and a little keen on Mr Thompson's wild ideas, it seems. Keen on his flagrant liberty. He says to Mr Thompson: ‘But you have some cheek.'

‘Not as much as you do, sir,' Mr Thompson retorts, patting his own ample stomach.

‘Ho!' And Justice Wardell almost chokes on his canapé too, roaring: ‘Jolly good!'

Jolly good, I'll say. The balance of power here is topsy-turvy now all round. Anything might happen tonight.

‘I cannot apologise enough,' Mr Wilberry rasps at his napkin, pressing his fingers against his forehead, squeezing his eyes closed.

‘Please, please, Mr Wilberry,' I admonish him, almost gaily, ‘do not apologise again.'

‘I'll say, we should do it as the Germans do, eh?' Major Harrington nudges Dr Gebhardt. ‘Make military service compulsory. That'll sort out the lot. Conscription is the way!'

I wonder if perhaps that's not a bad idea – universal military service whereby all men would be compelled to go off and shoot each other – and that thought, as well as the wine I've just glugged down, makes me laugh.

Mr Wilberry looks across at me. He appears somewhat terrified, before he says: ‘Your laughter is – er. Quite an enchanting sound, Miss Jones. Hm.'

I laugh again: enchanting? How curious; how thoroughly absurd. He smiles, a pleasant and gentle smile. A pleasant and gentle face, even his eyelashes are fair. I return his smile, but I am confused once more, and even more strangely. Is this man whispering sweet nothings to me? I'm not sure; I don't know men, not young men. I am best known for my avoidance of them. An odd sensation creeps up the back of my neck, warmth and chill at once, and I don't know this sensation, either. My heart drums wildly. I look down at the table. I look at his hands there, either side of his plate. Such large hands, Mr Wilberry has, they dwarf the plate. He could throttle another man with one firm grasp, and with this thought I see these hands tight around Alec Howell's neck, shaking him, bashing him into the mantel. What I might make them do, if I could. Oh God. I look away, into Dr Weston's left cufflink, my eyes blurring around its tiny enamel crest.

Breathe. Listen to the table talk, people merely making noise at each other, until I find Mrs Weston's voice amongst it. She is politely, reasonably attempting to subvert the natural order of Mrs Dunning's tiny mind, over the eternally stalled Women's Franchise Bill. ‘Who else but a woman can take the issues that most affect us up to our administrators – deplorable rates of maternal and infant mortality, deplorable dearth of properly trained nurses in the bush. Men do not care for these things at the ballot box, Virginia, not even where they care deeply for their wives and daughters. It is not their care to consider. It must be for women to take it up to the parliament somehow.'

‘Oh, Augusta, I suppose you are right,' Mrs Dunning concedes regretfully. ‘But only to a point. Perhaps women –
married
women, mind you –
might
participate one day. But not the full franchise, surely. What lady would want to participate in the parliaments themselves? Not any lady, I would say. It's simply not right, not the right way of things. It simply wouldn't work.'

Like slapping the Virginia Dunnings of this world across the face with reality: futile. Like most overprivileged women of her generation, she can't imagine why or how others of her sex might want or need to do anything beyond producing children and afternoon tea parties. Like most determinedly feeble-minded women, she can't imagine how any of the limitations inflicted upon womankind might be overcome at all. And why would you want to anyway when your husband buys you mink and pearls? No amount of reasoning, polite or otherwise, that South and West Australia haven't morally or economically disintegrated under their equal suffrage provisions will shift the unshiftable, make the thoughtless think. No amount of irony that our monarch remains a woman, a mother of nine, grandmother of everyone else and Queen over twenty British prime ministers thus far will make the blind see. No wonder New Zealand declined the invitation to join in our Federation.

But Augusta Weston understands the practicalities of justice, unfurling her rich velvet reason up the table now to the host: ‘What do you say, Alec? Should a lady have the full vote here? Full rights of franchise? How would I go in the parliament?'

I look up as he chuckles, having been put on the spot, squirming in it, and like a true politician he refuses to answer the question: ‘I am sure you would be formidable, Mrs Weston.'

‘Will you push for it? My vote?' She presses him, bright lavender entreaty with a dare. ‘Are you indeed our man for the New Age?'

And again he squirms away: ‘For your vote, Mrs Weston, yes of course. I would be unwise not to push for your approval.'

‘Yes, you would.' Mrs Weston sighs deep inside her therapeutic foundations, and as her husband makes some condescending jest about the necessity of his wife's approval in all things, she says, ‘Thank you, Donald,' before rejoining Anna Gebhardt's discussion of Bavarian mental hygiene as the more engaging conversational option.

Alec Howell will not vote for our enfranchisement when the bill comes around again. Why in heaven's name would he? He is our guardian. What more could we want? Sir Henry Parkes reincarnate he is not, and he is proud of the fact. Liberal only in his ambition, his lust to command. To belittle. To deride. To control. If he is the new man for modern conservatism, what will the face of the party be? Monstrous.

‘I believe in the full enfranchisement of women,' Mr Wilberry says softly beside me. Almost too softly. Clearing his throat, running a fingertip along the length of his soup spoon; such a tiny soup spoon under his hand. ‘My mother was something of a suffragist, a supporter at least. She could never express the view openly. I believe she would want to now, for the younger ones coming up.'

‘Would she? That's good,' I reply, brusquely, disconcerted immediately again, and I cannot look at him. This man, this pleasant, gentle stranger, who provokes this odd sensation, a prickling of my skin at the depth of his voice, a queer rush of feeling that is at once welcome and not welcome at all.

‘Women?' Mr Thompson splatters himself across the table for a timely distraction. ‘I say shoot them – Mrs Weston. Mrs Weston, you'll be in this, won't you? Bloody women – chain 'em up with the blacks and shoot 'em. Get rid of 'em once and for all. That'll teach 'em.'

‘Yes, yes,' Uncle Alec tries condescension with our clown now, ‘we've heard that one.' Above Mrs Weston's hoot of, ‘Hooray to that, young man,' and Dulcie's, ‘I don't understand what any of you are talking about now,' he resumes his discussion with Justice Wardell: ‘I mean to say, what happens if a female parliamentarian is alone in the House – middle of the night, late sitting. What has she? One hundred and twenty-five chaperones or one hundred and twenty-five wolves about her?'

It is as if a black sheet is thrown across my vision at the words.

I know what Alec Howell might do. Are they all like him?

Wolves
.

Mr Thompson turns on Mr Dunning: ‘You'd have a hard time containing yourself, wouldn't you? I don't mean you personally, Mr Dunning, of course. Wouldn't have to be too quick on her feet to get away from you, eh, now would she?'

‘What did you say?' J.C. Bullfrog can't quite grasp the attack.