Paper Daisies (8 page)

Berylda

‘
T
ell Mary,' Uncle Alec commands me as he closes the door.

‘With relish,' I hiss under my breath as I walk away from him, towards the kitchen. Mary won't be pleased, she'll have to bring in a pair of chairs from the drawing room, a tragedy of mismatching woodwork and china to upset the order of her world, but that is of no concern to me. I lean my head around the door and address the colander hanging above her at the basin: ‘The master has invited two more guests – see to it that they are accommodated at the table.'

She complains: ‘Oh but they'll have to put up with the tarts what have got the cracked pastry, there's no other –' Et cetera. She can complain to the maid, poor Lucy; she will anyway.

I must return to Gret, to tell her about our visitor, share this news that she will love, but as I make a dash across the rear parlour to do just that, I find Uncle Alec there, and by no accident: he is waiting for me. Hands behind his back, he is peering over the mullioned panes in the doors here, as if inspecting them for smudges, as if he's not in fact checking to see that his own reflection is as agreeable to him as it was the last time he looked.

‘Berylda,' he warns as he turns to me, stepping into the centre of the room, blocking my path. ‘You do not walk away from me as you did just now. That was very rude.'

I stand before him, staring at the chiselled wedge of his nose. I do this unthinkingly at the beginning of a remonstrance, and his face vanishes around it. Behind him, the day is fading; buttermilk clouds spatter up from the hills: altocumulus, such formations are called, if I remember that lesson in atmospheric physiography correctly.

‘Is this how you intend dress for dinner?' He detests that I have cropped all of my hemlines; he has told me this every day since he collected me from the station.

I say nothing: obviously I am dressed for dinner. I love this evening dress, its simplicity. It is my Wonderland dress. My prettiest dress, mantel of organdie set over silk marocain, and prettier for the cropping of its train during term, too. I wonder how Clive Gillies-Wright is going; if he's packed for the Transvaal yet.

‘If you must wear such an ugly gown, at least have the decency to wear appropriate undergarments beneath it. Enough of this adolescent rebellion. Put a corset on. Immediately.'

Rage fills the space before me and I cannot hold back these words, this defiance: ‘I will not wear a corset this evening. I am decently dressed as I am now.'

‘What did you say?' The voice scritches with instant infuriation, shocked by my insolence, as am I.

And yet I can't step back from this rage. You have injured my sister; in ways I can barely understand. I inform him: ‘No woman of intellect wears a corset beneath her dress.' Or not unless she intends to continue in Arts – and no one at Women's College wears a revolting Gisbon Girl straight-front. No one serious would.

‘A woman of intellect?' He laughs. ‘Is that what you are? You look stupid. You look slovenly. Like a gypsy tramp. Loose. You will only make a fool of yourself.'

‘Then there's no reason not to let me, is there,' I retort. Blindly. I am not a fool. I have won the Biology prize for First Year, I remind myself; I have been accepted into medical school. I am Bryl: Flo calls me Bryl for brilliant. What would she do, what would she say if she were here, in this moment? I do not know; I have never confided a hint of any of this in her, or anyone.

I walk past him. I walk away from him with my heart drumming out thunderclaps of fear. I have never been so bold with him. But I am angry bold now. I have reached my limit this day, for all that he has done to us. His insatiable need to beat and tether everyone and everything to his will. From the moment I wake in this house, his relentless litany of criticisms begins: I butter my bread too thickly; my perfume is too strong; my hair too tightly pulled back from my face; and my skirts are too high above the ground:
Your stockings may be glimpsed when you walk, Berylda. It's unseemly.
Well, let the ladies faint with outrage then and the men tremble with desire, but let me get about them freely. What's
unseemly
is a man having any opinion whatsoever on women's undergarments. A man? A rapist. Is that a man?

‘Berylda. You do not defy me.'

I do. God help me, but I do now.

I close the door on him and his rising ire before he can grasp my arm to brand me with it. Exhale as the latch clicks at my back, keyless and useless against him, but he doesn't force his way. He will have too many other vastly petty details to attend to at this time. He'll be needing to petrify little Lucy over the state of the silver next, line up the labels of the wine bottles, pluck his eyebrows.

‘Shall I wear this dear old thing again, Ryl?' Gret is here, in my room. Of course she is, where I expected to find her. She is at my long mirror with her own favourite gown held to her, of delicate fawn voile, tulle-ruched, lovely in every way but for the Chantilly train that trails behind it like Miss Havisham's regret. I'd like to tear it off and burn it. ‘I think I shall,' Greta answers herself and asks another question: ‘Cinch me in for it, will you, please?'

Cinch her into her straight-front? There she is with it already fastened to her frame, waiting for me to pull in the laces. ‘No,' I snap back into myself and at her. ‘Don't wear that corset tonight – don't wear a corset at all.'

‘What?' Greta looks at me in the mirror, wide-eyed, as if I have lost my mind.

Perhaps I have. I am still holding the stranger's daisies; alien things; why do I have them? I have quite forgotten. I toss them on the chest at the foot of my bed as I repeat to Gret: ‘Don't wear the corset. Don't wear one any more.'

‘Why?' She is wary at my bizarre demand.

‘I want you to be free in this way, if we can be in no other, that's all. Now. From this moment. Please.' That's all? I am demanding that my wounded sister provoke her tormentor more?

‘Ryldy, I'm not as brave as you are.' She shakes her head and looks down with such defeat, such sadness, my anger only rises up again and higher.

‘Yes you are,' I demand now. ‘You are braver than I am, Greta. Every single day.' Every single day that you spend alone with him, when I am not here. I cannot leave you alone with him again.

‘Ryl …' She remains wary. ‘Uncle Alec will not like this …' But I have begun unfastening her, and with the pop of each stud down the busk, I promise her silently: He will not touch you again. I don't know how I will achieve this, but he will not touch you ever again.

‘A woman ought to be able to be both beautiful and unshackled, oughtn't she?' I twitter on outwardly, pulling the obscenity from her, and she groans, knowing her protest is useless, as I button her into her gown. ‘A woman ought to be able to go about in the world undeformed by the apparatus of torture. She ought to be deemed right as she is made. You are excellent just as you are made, my sister. Now here.' I fluff the tulle cloud of her mantel about her shoulders and then take a pink chiffon sash from the drawer of my dressing table, to match the camellia in her hair. I tie it loosely around her waist and deem it: ‘Grecian chic – direct from Paris. You heard it first in the
Sunday Times
,
direct from Mullumbimby
.
You are lovely, you are perfect – you are slim enough, my darling.' She is so slim, so small, we both are, the absence of corsetry is more noticeable for what it doesn't pretend to plump; how can it not be more right, more modest to go without? I kiss her on the cheek: ‘You are excellent. See?'

‘Hm.' She smiles slowly, swishing one way and then the other. The bodice of the gown drapes softly down to her waist without all the boning and banding beneath; there are few women who could say they make such a fitted piece look more beautiful without help. Of course my sister is excellent, in every way.

I stand beside her in the mirror, and we grin together for a moment with the scandal. And then I shudder at myself, at my own absurdity. What
am
I doing? Both of us corsetless at dinner: Uncle Alec will most definitely be furious, disinclined to grant me the favour of any excursion to Hill End. But some switch has been thrown today. I will match him for fury. If he attempts some retribution, if he lays so much as a whisker on my sister again, I will fly at him. Be in no doubt. I will scream this whole town down. I will scream until we are free. Or until I am locked up.

‘I'm not sure.' Gret brushes a hand across her abdomen, still wary, but playing along with me now. ‘I might be a little bit too free here – I feel as if I might float off.'

‘You won't float off,' I quip, convincing us both we can pull this off. ‘You are no longer duck-shaped.'

‘Oh!' Gret laughs, really laughs. ‘You are too funny.' Tossing her chin up with that sudden burst of who she really is. ‘Quack.' She flaps her elbows. The loveliest duckling that ever there was.

‘Quack quack.' I put on my eminent physician voice to make her laugh more: ‘And I'll have you know that it has been scientifically established as a fact that you'll enjoy your meal a whole lot more without your belly being pushed back to where your bum should be.'

‘Oh!' She pretends dismay at my coarse language, hand to brow. ‘You do learn awful things at that university.'

‘I do.' I can only agree.

‘And oh again but what are these?' Gret says suddenly, not laughing now. She has seen the flowers on the chest by the bed. I stare at them with her and for a second I wonder, too.

She picks them up, and as she does I remember: our stranger. ‘Oh them.' I pretend indifference. ‘Yes. Well. Guess who's joining us for dinner.'

‘No – really?' She has guessed.

‘Yes. Our stranger. That's right. That was him at the door just now. His name is Ben Wilberry. Botanist and bringer of bedraggled daisies from our dam.'

She looks down into them, her face a picture of pure delight, of this small wish made true. ‘Oh but they look gorgeous cut, don't they?'

I want a photograph of her holding them, gazing into them just as she is now. A bunch of these plain things made gorgeous in her arms. ‘Yes,' I say. ‘And I must report that Mr Wilberry has fearfully big strong hands, too. He might just cart us off yet.'

I am only jollying her along, of course, and she knows it, but she says, wistful, all her sadness returned: ‘I feel so light without my corset, I think I might be very easy to carry.'

I hold her around the waist, tight to me, tight around the wrongness of what that monster has forced inside her, and I promise her and all that hurts her as I kiss her cheek once more: ‘My Gret, you will always be easy to carry. You are a thistle wisp.'

Please, God, fate, whoever, if anyone is listening yet, give me the strength. I close my eyes with this one endless wish: Give me the strength to carry both of us. Carry us away.

The Festivities

Disobedience—that is the nobility of slaves.

Thus Spake Zarathustra

`

Ben

‘
N
o.' Cos is not amenable to the idea, glancing back towards the house. ‘Forced march up that hill again? For what? Some dead-boring dinner with some farmer you've just met? So I can spend the evening listening to you go on ad infinitum about your shrubbery? No.'

‘He's a doctor, not a farmer. And you didn't go all the way up this hill the first time,' I reply. ‘Hardly a hill at all, and in any event, I'm sure we can arrange a cab.' Though it's barely three miles back to the Royal from here; or not much more, at any rate.

‘I'm not so sure about that, Wilber,' he grumbles, trudging sullenly on. ‘Oh look – another hill.' He points ahead to, indeed, another small round knoll, but one the road winds around, and as it does the town begins to re-emerge from windswept bushland with the appearance of the hospital: monumental building that speaks of monumental aspirations – ones that tumble into a sports oval down the other side of the rise.

‘Oh look,' I say to josh him as much as to laugh at where we find ourselves. ‘And now here's the ubiquitous cricket pitch. I could just leave you here for the night, couldn't I? Leave you to graze the wicket?'

But the only response I receive is an emphatic, scornful snort and a continued dragging of heels. I'll have to work harder at this. Could I be bothered?
Wonderful
,
the girl smiles at me again and again, and I am bothered more than is reasonable. I beg a little: ‘Come on, Cos. Please. What's the difference between a pub full of people you have no interest in and a house full of people you have no interest in? Come on, it's New Year's Eve.' As though I care for that.

Just as I say this a gang of oiled-up young louts swagger out from a lane and onto the street over the other side of the oval, pushing and shoving each other along towards town, possibly shearers or miners or similarly enthusiastic groggers, possibly on their way to the Royal for the dance they're putting on. I try again: ‘Look – not only will there be cabs tonight, there'll possibly be an ambulance or two.'

Cos grunts, still dragging his feet. ‘But I don't want to trim my beard,' he whinges, determinedly churlish.

And that annoys me: ‘Since when has an untrimmed beard stopped you from partaking of free feed and water?' Never. I look over at him as we cross the road into the main street, an enigma to me as ever. We've known each other fifteen years, since our first journey from Brisbane to Sydney, to school at Kings, at Parramatta. We were both thirteen; he complained the whole way on the steamer even then; and every single time. If he's not being entertained as he wishes to be entertained, he's not happy. Misanthropic. Mercurial. Spoiled. Never challenged to be anything else. But he's not entirely his own creation. If the Wilberrys command a sizeable tract of Central Queensland, the Thompsons have great swathes of the coast, under cane, purchased dirt cheap in the 1860s, and two elder sons to squabble over its skyrocketing profit. He doesn't need a challenge, a gainful occupation, so he doesn't have one, despite his not inconsiderable talents. He shares none of my restlessness. For all the years I've been away in Melbourne, in the Shallow South or the Bog Smoke, as he calls what, in a few hours' time, will be our national capital, he's never bothered to visit me: too much trouble. And yet, here he is, troubling with me now …

Looking sideways at me now, through his scowl: ‘Do you reckon they'll have a decent Scotch at this place?'

I do believe I might be cracking him. ‘I reckon the grog and tuck will be fairly decent, yes,' I promise him. ‘The host is eager to impress.' And I must warn him: ‘Nearly fell over himself at mention of the Wilberry name. A fan of Pater's, I'd say.'

Another sideways glance: ‘Why do you want to have dinner with him then?'

‘Ah. Well …'

‘What?' He's interested now.

‘Well, there will be … hm. Of course there will be others attending the party.' I've already given myself away. ‘There is, ah –'

‘Oh God, man, it's not, is it? No. Not a
lady
.' His laugh, at my expense, is already arseless. I want to see a girl, and like some callow youth, I cannot go alone. ‘That settles it then, doesn't it, my old matey.' He sets off now at a potbellied wallaby trot through the town. Ludicrous fellow, my stalwart friend. ‘Reckon that nice bit of barmaid'll press me tails at this short notice?'

Nice bit of comely redhead at the Royal. ‘I'm sure she will,' I say, although his question was rhetorical. Cos has little trouble with convincing maids of any kind to do anything at all for him. And I remember only now that there's a stain on the left knee of my dress-suit trousers. White sauce delivered by a rogue chunk of stewed carrot, three evening ago, back at the club. What am I doing to myself here? I'm sure I won't even speak to the girl. Berylda. Even her name is daunting. Amazing.

‘Chop chop, Wilber.' Cos is shoving me along now. ‘We don't want to be late.'

And I imagine Mama is laughing, too.