Paper Daisies (21 page)

‘Precisely. Apart from you.' I send it back again.

And he laughs, with a warmth gentler than any sun could ever be. ‘Apart from me,' he agrees, looking at the blond hair along his forearms. ‘I don't think you get much fairer than me before you reach albinism.'

He's not that fair; I bask in his burnished warmth. I drink it in and it quenches and stokes at once.

‘Cos, though,' he smiles deeper, a crooked grin for his friend, ‘he's in rather another category. I shouldn't tell tales, I suppose, but you look like you can keep a straight enough face – he's in common law marriage with a half-caste black woman, his
domestic
, shall we say for the neighbours. Susan, her name is, she's a lovely sort, and they have twins, a boy and a girl, two little brown babies toddling about. Only in Queensland. But he's one of a kind, our Cos. Doing his best to be subversive, in all ways, always. I don't know how Susan tolerates him.'

‘Really?' I begin to laugh again, too, and properly, recalling Mr Thompson's cries of
SHOOT THE BLACKS
last night. How wonderfully, deliciously shocking. ‘What about you?' I ask Mr Wilberry. ‘Any illegitimate children of dubious racial origin?'

‘None. I'm rather ordinary, I'm afraid.'

I'm afraid too. You're rather excellent. I jest away from him again: ‘You can't be too ordinary if you survived the King's School with so much of your personality intact. How did you manage it?' In such a place notorious for its brutality, beating young men into the rough shapes of their fathers, and sending them off to the Transvaal, like Clive, who seems such a boy compared to this man.

He sends it back in perfect time: ‘I rowed, in summer at least. Single sculls.' That funny grimace again: ‘I rowed a lot, on the Parramatta – I might have rowed right up to the harbour and out to sea, if I could ever have managed to steal enough decent food.'

His laugh is gentler and deeper still. It is a river, this river.

‘Came out to Bathurst with rugby once, but that was ten years ago – more actually. Rugby was compulsory – except for Cos. He'd cop a thrashing from the sportsmaster instead and go and sit under a tree and wait for cricket season. I wasn't much good at rugby but it was some sort of fun.'

Rugby? Whatever. I want his arms around me here, by this river. I want to lie with him and look up into the arms of the great tree there and wonder at … At how unfair this is, this next turning of my curse. This is too cruel.

‘Oh. Look at that – mint bush.' He points out some thing or other at the edge of the glade ahead. He leans down to pick a sprig of it as we step into the shade and I see the plant, a small mound of lilac cloud; quite pretty. ‘Medicinal shrub, apparently,' he explains to me. ‘Blacks use it for … I don't know, something. A disinfectant, I think.'

‘Do they? I prefer soap and water myself.' It's pretty, though, this bush mint – tiny lilac trumpets of prettiness – and I would like to catch its scent, take a guess at its antiseptic constituent – oil or astringent? – but he is walking away from me now …

Further along the edge of the glade, somehow poised, just as he was along the strand when we stopped earlier this morning. Benjamin Wilberry – Flower Hunter. I smile to myself at that, and this blessed shade, however thin it is. I follow him – straight through a deep puddle. And I don't care that my boots and the bottom of my skirt and petticoat are wet. The water seeps up my stockings: heavenly cool.

‘What?' Mr Wilberry asks himself, transfixed upon some other thing. Pocket knife raised, half-crouching to it now. ‘Strike me – what is this? No. It couldn't be. I don't believe it.'

Ben

B
elieve what you see, Ben.

Not here, now – surely? The rows of fine, long outer raylets, the satin sheen of the bracts beneath, huge blooms, two inches across altogether from tip to tip, set upon dark grey stipes, slender, tough, the foliage confined to the base … the flowerheads raised circlets at the centre, fat, full, open, like tiny crowns, and positioned perfectly to take in whole mornings of the sun here …
Helichrysum
macranthum
? But this species is from the west, from about as far west as you might get – along the Margaret River, on the continent's most southwesterly boot heel. I look behind me as though the old man Buckley might have walked them here under his own boot heels. These are …

Not macranthums, son … look at again. Take it into the light and look again.

I cut one of the stipes, from a plant of three singular blooms, and I know already that this is not
macranthum –
generally there might be a hand of four or five blooms to a stipe with that species; ten or even twenty blooms at once on a plant. I spent a fair amount of time looking, never expecting I'd visit the Margaret River again anytime soon. When was that? Three years ago now – four? Perhaps my memory does fail me after all.

Give up on doubting yourself, Ben – look at the bloom again,
Mama insists:
You've been blinded by the shade. Look again.

I step back into the sunshine and yes, there I see it: the colour of the raylets. They are not white as
macranthum
are
.
They're … I'm not sure what colour it is. Not a rose shade, not apricot. Some colour in between – smoky. And the central disc is bronze: a bronze crown, the pollen almost iridescent in the light. Outstanding.

I have never seen this daisy before, in the field, or in a study, and I have lately studied this whole damn genus as it appears in New South Wales.

It is its own. It must be. And I've found it.

I've never found a new species before. Stick this in your pipe, Dubois. With any luck. Here is one fairly incredible daisy.

‘What is it?' Berylda Jones is at my side, staring up at it too.

And I can only tell her: ‘I don't know.'

Berylda

I
've never seen someone so excited to not know something.

‘I have not the slightest notion.' He fills the gorge with it. ‘Oh this is great. Spectacular. I've never seen anything like it.'

‘It's one of your native daisies?' I offer, though I'd never know: it doesn't look like the bedraggled wet-feather ones from Bellevue, or those dried, ever-tired yellow things you might see on railway-cafeteria table arrangements that look like they're made from balls of raffia. This one looks like a daisy, on an elegant leafless stem, a seaweed pink daisy, the same colour as my silk camellia, the one Greta wore last night, not quite real, and the centre of it is like rusted velvet … I've never seen anything like it either.

‘
Helichrysum
most definitely is the genus, but what species?' he asks the hills. This face, this pleasant, manly face is transformed: both inspired and maniacal. Turning now back to me, promising: ‘If it's new, and I suspect it is, I'm going to name it after you.'

Oh no, don't. No. This is too far. Please. ‘It's a handsome flower, lovely, but –'

‘
Helichrysum beryldii
, that's what it shall be.'

And he strides off, calling out: ‘Cos! Cos, old matey – stop whatever it is you're doing.'

I follow him back to our picnic spot, almost running to keep up, and he's ordering his friend about, shoving the base of the flower under his nose. ‘Catch this particularly, Cos, this involucre–' some word, some thing I don't know. A language I don't know and one I find myself now scrambling after, too.
Helichrysum
, I search my scanty Greek. What does that mean?
Helio
– sun.
Chryssos
– Christ? No –
gold.
Treasure. Sun-treasure. Sun-flowers, of course that's what it means.

‘But I doubt these colours will stay fast in drying – they are so subtle.' He is all action, all-consumed.

And Greta is like a magnet to the excitement, dropping her own work, offering: ‘Let me see if I might mix the colour for you. May I try?'

‘Yes, please – would you?' He appears elated that she has even asked, and there he is putting his head together with my sister's, discussing colour, listening intensely to her opinion on the best way forward with this most particular and intriguing shade of pink. He is quite possibly the most excellent man ever to exist.

Dashing back now to the plant again, stooping over it, examining it under a glass, from the nest of leaves near the ground, to the blooms on top of those fine, long stems, and I cannot help but trail him like a lost student. ‘Ah, yes.' He is thrilled again at finding what looks to be a half-dead one, taking a small wallet from his trouser pocket and opening it. It contains tiny brushes, a tiny scalpel, tweezers, and the tiniest envelopes ever made. ‘Seeds. Ripe seeds,' he says to himself, or at least to some other presence of the forest crouching with him by the plant. ‘I can't believe this luck.' Tweezers and envelopes Lilliputian in his hands, he looks at me now and with enraptured astonishment: ‘I've captured some seeds.'

‘Such excitement, for one plant, one flower?' I am hardly less astonished in return.

‘Oh no,' he replies. ‘There's at least seven plants here.'

I'm sure that's tremendous. It is to him. He takes another cutting of a full bloom and explains: ‘One for the herbarium – my collection – in Melbourne. I hope this colour lasts, at least a bit.' And I trail him back to the picnic, back to his haversack, from which he takes a long square jar and a packet of sugar – no, sand. He fills the jar about a third of the way, on an angle, and eases the flower into it, and then gently, gently, gently he fills the jar up to the top. He fills it with such tenderness my feet might strike root and never move from this spot again.

‘What you got there?' Buckley has come down from under his tree to see what all the fuss is about, and Mr Wilberry points over at the cutting his friend is sketching in all its parts: ‘This daisy – I've never seen one like it before.'

‘You haven't?' Buckley scratches his head under his hat. ‘I reckon you might find a few of them coming round Sofala way – up over the other side, round Monkey Hill, you see them.'

‘Dinkum?' I see the boy in Mr Wilberry, the euphoria of the hitherto impossible made real and true. ‘How far is that?'

‘Too far today, Mr Wilberry, 'fraid to say.' Buckley can only disappoint him. ‘Another day's travel again from here.'

‘Oh. Right. Well. For another day, then.' Mr Wilberry clears his throat, tucks that too-long hair behind his ears, coming back into himself as if he were shaking off a dream. ‘Great. Good.' He looks to me, apologetic once more: ‘That was all a little unexpected, wasn't it?'

Perhaps. I want to say this is how life is meant to be. Should be. Mystifying journeys punctuated by such serendipity. A puzzle constructed and solved by hope. By love. But all I can say is: ‘Yes.'

And I turn from him, the skinlessness shivering up from my boots to consume me once more. Burning. I can't tolerate this nearness to him any longer. We cannot be friends, no matter how I am drawn to him, no matter how reasonable the attraction might be. I do not have men friends. I cannot and never shall, no matter how noble, how excellent this one appears to be. They are wolves, in one way or another, all of them. I force the steel back into my spine, into my will, and remind myself: I am here to erase the one that slaves my sister and me. I am not here to play games of sweet nothing. Of hearts and flowers and fantasies. I catch a taunting glimpse of it, a wedding veil, a tossed bouquet, an escape – the most ideal of escapes there could ever be – before Alec Howell grasps my wrist: he would never allow me to marry Mr Wilberry. Should Mr Wilberry even want to marry me. In the next two days. And why would he? Beneath this sunshine, my soul is black with hate and fear and pain. Step away from him, Berylda. Step away.

I do, and I return to Gret, kneel on the blanket next to her, my shoulder aching as if the devil has in fact just wrenched my arm again.

‘Can I see your painting now, Gret?' I pick up the sketchbook discarded behind her. I can barely hear my own voice above this clashing mayhem in my head.

But I hear Greta: ‘Ryl! No. Don't look yet. It's still not finished. It's supposed to be a present for you.' Snatching the book away.

Too late for me to fail to see what picture she is making: beyond a poppy-strewn bank, amidst the whirl of half-coloured lines it is she and I, in the willow, and Libby –

Oh dear God.

Libby's face looking up at us from the river. In the river.

I am washed through with heartbreak. And then as suddenly numb to it, somehow across the other side of it. I am barely here at all.

I hear myself say to my sister: ‘It's finished enough for me to say it's lovely.' The sound of elsewhere, far, far away.

‘Well, you would say that.' Greta remains annoyed; and I am so sorry that she is. ‘But Mr Thompson peeked, too,' she says, ‘and he said I should make drawings for children's stories. He might know someone that –'

‘Really? That's nice.' I stare and stare into the fringed edge of the picnic blanket, the fibres of the wool scribbling into tiny spikes of mean grass. Struggling to bring myself back to the earth. Here.

‘Nice,' Mr Thompson's drawl is sneering, at me. ‘Really
nice.
Lovely.'

Mr Wilberry clears his throat again. ‘I think I'll just take a wander further downstream for a bit.' I can't see him, but I watch him walk away, alone along the bank.

Ben

D
amn that. She turns her back, she turns away. What must she think of me? What in idiocy's name has got hold of me? Carrying on all round the place. All my blundering questions to her, pressing her about the uncle, pressing for answers I have no business knowing, and then – save me –
Helichrysum
beryldii
? Did I really press that on her, too? Yes, I did. I've known the girl less than twenty-four hours and I've gone pretty well straight from dumbstruck imbecile to how about I name a new species after you?

Even Mama has nothing to say about that. How could I be so presumptuous? So inept. Such a bloody –
Seeds! I've captured some seeds!

Because it's just me, isn't it. Can't help myself. And I'm doing it again right now. I've just spotted a
Hakea saligna
,
a good-looking eastern needlewood, and my head is turned: fine spread of the branch ribs, good length to the leaf, it must be happy here. Past flowering, though. Pity. All we have today is the flat-headed warts of the fruit.

Little wonder she turns her back.

I have spent too long alone with my obsessions –
making daisy fucking chains.

A copper-wing butterfly suns itself on a leaf, a flash of turquoise before it flies away, too.

Leaving the frown. The frown devours me.