Paper Daisies (26 page)

Berylda

‘
M
iss Jones? Good morning?' I hear him across the saloon, closing his door behind him, precisely as I do mine.
Click.
Unavoidable, as I am sure he will be all day, unless I miraculously find the courage to throw myself across Jack's saddle and make my way to Ah Ling's farm alone, wherever it is along the road from here to Tambaroora. Could I do that? Go alone? No. I hardly possess the courage to return Mr Wilberry's good morning.

But I must. Consider this a test of will, of nerve. Turn around.
Look at him.

I look at his stockinged feet, finding his boots outside the bedroom door, and my heart both sinks and flies at the sweep of sunlight that is his hair falling across his face as he bends to pick them up by their laces. He hasn't made himself somehow less attractive during the night. Bright, expectant eyes looking up at me across this room, asking as if he's just found the words with fresh uncertainty: ‘Early bird?'

‘Hm? What? Yes,' is the greeting I give him, as incoherent as it is graceless. ‘Morning. It is.'

‘Hm. Yes, apparently. Well …' he replies, and I am caught up in the warmth of his early bird embarrassed smile, the warmth of that voice, saying: ‘I was just about to take a wander, a stroll, before breakfast – you wouldn't care to join?'

‘No.' I hurl this word at the boots in his hand. ‘Thank you. I am not yet prepared for the day, I'm afraid. I am on my way to the kitchen, for warm water, for my sister. She is unwell.'

My mouth is dry with a strange fear, that truths will slip from me if I allow too many words to pass from my lips, that all will be undone. How am I ever going to find the face, the words, the firmness to do what I must do? Today. Tomorrow. To be this murderess I must be.

‘Oh. No. Unwell?' he asks me, his concern so very quick, so real. This man is no wolf; he is like no other man. I know this; he is just what Greta says he is: a prince. ‘I hope it's nothing serious,' he says.

‘Nothing serious? No. I hope not, too,' I reply and I wish that he could be my friend, a friend like no other, so that I might tell him everything. How I hate that time has set the rhythms of our lives one against the other, like the rock crushers that pound out over this town, dissonant, incongruous – impossible for us to be in any way together. But the sadness of this thought is a shroud thrown across my fear, at least, and I regain a firmer grasp on my senses. I find a steadier rhythm for my heart as I allow myself to look into his gentleness, and I say to him: ‘Greta will be unable to join us today, however. Forgive me my preoccupation, please –'

‘Not at all,' he says. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?'

‘No.' How I wish and wish and wish there were; how I wish his very gentleness would cause all wolves to disappear. Vanish. All turned to rock and crushed to dust by the fact of his existence. But in this I suddenly see there is something he can help me with, and immediately: I am safe to test myself with this man and his kindness. I might try my face, my words on him. Practice deception. Now. Find a lie.
What
lie? I'm quite good at lying when I need to be, but this is hardly pinching books I shouldn't have, is it. Why should it be any different, though?

‘Oh dear,' I say pinching my forehead, snatching at the first thing that comes. ‘I've just now realised I have done something very silly, Mr Wilberry, and left Bathurst with my purse full of nothing but handkerchief, and I need to obtain some headache powder, for my sister.' I have loose change enough in my purse for that, and more than enough ability to obtain credit, I'm sure, anywhere in this district for anything, just as I am sure Mrs Wheeler has half a cupboard of headache powder somewhere in this house, but I ask him, ‘I couldn't possibly borrow a few coins from you, could I?'

‘Borrow?' He is appalled at the idea; already has his hand in his pocket, stepping across the room towards me in his stockinged feet. This manipulation is so easy, too easy, it shames me so that I don't think I can keep my nerve a moment longer. ‘For your sister? Oh no, please don't consider it a loan. It's the very least I –' He holds out his hand to me: a crumpled pound note and several coins.

I will fail this test; I will fail every test: I can't deceive this man. I can't deceive anyone. And yet I have to. I
must
try. I must succeed.

‘How awful of me to ask.' I pluck two coins from his hand, whatever they are I don't know, and shards of truth rattle out of my lies as I do: ‘I shall repay you. Thank you. Or at least my uncle shall have to repay you, when we return to Bellevue. I don't have any money anyway, I must admit, only allowed five pounds per month and resentment causes me to spend it all on fripperies –'
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
, fake gaiety hammers out of me, flinty and crude as shale. ‘Starve myself for silk flowers and perfume. Just as well my roommate at Women's is a vegetarian – like you, although she doesn't eat eggs or dairy. Isn't that funny? I mean that she's a vegetarian, too? I told you about her yesterday – the one studying Law? We live on shredded air, the pair of us, and I'm still always short two bob.' What stream of nonsense did I just blabber at him?

‘You don't need to repay me, Miss Jones, please,' he says to me, holding out the pound note for me to take as well, his voice deep with affection, reaching deep into me. There is a small crack in his bottom lip; I should like to salve it with some glycerine. ‘Five pounds a month doesn't amount to many fripperies, or too much of an overabundance of vegetables, I'm sure. At least not in Sydney, I don't imagine.'

No, it doesn't. That is certainly true. I look at the pound note in his hand, its edge trembling at me; its Royal Bank red ink drawn on the Queensland sun. I might have three or four shillings in my purse, in total, I suppose, a farthing or two somewhere in the bottom of my carryall. This pound is something I might need between now and tomorrow. Who knows what for? Take it. Take every opportunity as you must.
Take it
,
I demand of myself.

And I take it. I grab the note and I cannot look at him again: ‘Thank you.'

I scuttle from him like the vermin I am. If I can't keep my resolve with even this small deception, how am I going to achieve what I must do today? How will I speak as I must to Ah Ling? How will I convince Alec Howell to drink from my cup tomorrow?

Where is my courage?

I arrive at the kitchen to find Mrs Wheeler and her maid already busy about their day. Bread baking. Pots steaming. Ordinary life bubbling and clanking away in here.

‘Miss Berylda – oh, but what is the matter?' Mrs Wheeler looks up at me over a cup full of oats, perceiving so clearly and so instantly that I am lost.

I must not be lost. I snap my orders to Mrs Wheeler, snapping at myself: ‘My sister is unwell today, after all. It's the time of the month,' I grab at another lie. ‘She takes it badly, and the timing is bad. May I have a bowl of warm water for her, please, to wash, and a headache powder, if you've any?'

‘Ah, but I knew she was pale, didn't I.' Mrs Wheeler appears as delighted at her correct guess as she is diligent about fulfilling my requests, bowl and powder produced in a single heave of her bosom. ‘Wasn't I saying this to you last night? Yes I was, remember. I know these things – I
know
.'

You don't know anything, Mrs Wheeler, I say to myself. She can't know anything, not of the devil in her calliope nor of the devil in me. Lithuanian gypsy she might be, but she cannot see what runs through my mind. No one can. I say to her: ‘Thank you so much. See to it that my sister is disturbed by no one but you today.'

‘But Miss Berylda, of course!' Mrs Wheeler assures me; she will bar all the windows and the doors with her own good name. ‘I will care for your sister in all ways.' Good.

I return to Gret with the powder and the bowl, my mind ragged already as I set about dampening a flannel for her and pouring a fresh cup of water from the night-stand jug. I am so distracted I don't even glance at her as I hand her the flannel.

‘Ryldy?' I hear her, though, through the crashing and rushing of my thoughts. ‘Ryl, are you angry? Please don't be angry. There's no point; it's a waste to be angry.'

‘Angry?' If I were any more angry I'd burn this hotel down to the ground with the heat of this emotion alone. I could scream at her:
And what do you propose I do instead of being angry? Pretend this isn't occurring? Pretend that you are not in the condition you are so very obviously in? Ignore it and it will all go away?
But I will not so much as whisper any such thing to her. By tonight, there will be no condition to worry about; tomorrow, there will be no monster, either. I have refound my courage here. My sister is my courage; her innocence is my courage, as is her quiet and enduring fortitude. I say to her: ‘Yes, I am angry, darling; you know me too well, don't you. But I'm not going to be angry in a moment, because I'm going to take myself out into the air right now and let it go from me. All right?'

She nods. ‘Yes, good. I don't want you to be angry and always burdened by concern for me. I want you to be happy, Ryl – please. I feel bad enough. Enjoy the day. For me.'

‘I'll try,' I lie to her, too. I will never be happy; I will never enjoy a day again. But such is our life. I will be courageous instead.

I find something of a smile for my sister as I step out onto the verandah from our room – to startle another woman making her way to the ladies' conveniences from the room next to ours. Another guest? I didn't notice any others here yesterday, but then I'm not sure I'd notice a great gnashing Jabberwock in my path unless it were specifically addressing me. The woman makes some sound of acknowledgement, clutching her toilet bag to her breast, and I suppose I make some similar sound in reply as I step past her.

Step out into this town of filthy rock-crushing metronomes thumping out the rhythm of my purpose. Listen: let that sound
be
my purpose:
bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang
.

Past the ramshackle fence by the Wheelers' tank stand the road bends away through the centre of the town, and I keep walking down it. One step after the other, my actions must be thus from now: small, alert, deliberate. Intent. A yard of knotted grapevines, gone wild with neglect, is strangling an apple tree as I continue into the town, and I ask this air: make me as wild and uncaring of what I will destroy. For who will suffer when I erase Alec Howell from this world? Who, truly? No one. Another surgeon will be found for the hospital; another candidate found for the Liberal League Free Traders; Mary will cry her fantasies to sleep in the kitchen. He is no saver of lives for any reason of compassion; a doctor only for the control over life it affords him; a politician craving power for the same reason. Life will go on once his is ended. The natural order of all other things will remain, such that it is. Bread will be baked; pots will steam. This town will go on, grinding itself into nowhere for the dividends of distant investors. The children playing hopscotch in this street between the draper's and the next public house will still be runny-nosed and poor. Their mothers will remain trapped here, never having left the goldfields since they got here, or were born, and the window of the draper's will continue to advertise Grand Prix P.D. Corsetry.

I reach into my pocket for the wishbone, and I feel the crumple of Mr Wilberry's pound note around it. I push the rough edge of the snap through the soft paper, and I stab it into my palm.

We will be free.

Tomorrow: we will be free.

I am ready to succeed in this. Ready as I will ever be. I simply have to be. I turn around, and head back to the hotel – I want to be on the road as soon as possible. The time for thought is past. The time to act is here.

‘Morning, Miss Berylda.' And Buckley is at the stable gate to meet me. Good. Excellent.

‘Morning,' I reply before snapping out an order at him, too: ‘Have Sal ready within the hour. Please.' As if we might crack out to wherever this Ah Ling is and back in time to return to Bathurst today. Impossible.

And Buckley underlines it for me: ‘I'm resting Sal today, miss. She had the longest day of all yesterday.' There is rebuke in that, and I deserve it. Yes. Poor Sal. He says: ‘We'll be taking the Wheelers' mare out and when she's ready.'

There is more than rebuke in that, and well beyond a servant's place, but before I can make my rankling felt and understood, he says: ‘And you'd do well to take moment too – think about what you're doing.'

‘I do beg your pardon?' You don't challenge me.

Yes, he does; he holds my stare for the longest time, sticking me to the gravel with his old black eyes. Then he says: ‘It's not all up to you, Miss Berylda, whatever might be going on with all your rushing about, getting here, going there. I'm not too fussed if you want my word on it or not, but I'll tell you anyway: you might miss what's right in front of you if you don't take a moment to see.'

‘See what?' I blink into his impertinence, astonished.

‘What's looking right at you,' he says, remaining not too fussed at all, and he nods up the road, behind me.

I look over my shoulder and there is Mr Wilberry coming down the other way, returning from his walk, a slow loping streak of unbleached canvas and Huckleberry straw against the hazy grey hilltop behind him. He doesn't see us; he has stopped to look at some sort of plant poking through another derelict fence there, a half-dead bracken frond by the look of it.

Buckley's brick dust scours into me: ‘You'd do worse to look at one such as that feller.'

‘What?' What is Buckley suggesting? I remain too astonished to ask.

‘You know what he was doing when he wandered off from us yesterday?' Buckley is as unperturbed, informing me: ‘Following a platypus, he was. Lost track of the hour following a platypus up the riverbank. That's the sort of feller he is.'