Paper Daisies (2 page)

Ben

‘
W
elcome aboard, sir. Ah –' The crewman looks at my ticket; he might be the captain for all I know or care. ‘Mr Wilberry, is it?'

‘Yes.' I just want to get past him, get on, get going. Get this steamer on its way. Mama: the very thought of her stops time altogether.

‘One of
the
Wilberrys?' the chap is asking.

‘Yes.' There's only two of us: Pater and me, and it's infamous Pater this chap is referring to. He must be a Queenslander, I suppose; this is the
Arawatta
to Cooktown. I've taken it a dozen times over the years, at least, and I was fortunate to get on it this afternoon, with only an hour to spare.

‘Well, I'd better make that a special welcome aboard then.' The chap touches the brim of his cap. Hands me back my ticket, with some other load of waste paper.

I keep pushing past him, up the gangway to my cabin. As though I might make this ship go faster, if I keep moving. I throw my bags on the bunk in the room, a room to myself, thank God. My heart is belting around like a lost dog. Wait, Mama, wait for me.

‘Sir.' Another chap behind me, a soft rap at the open door. ‘Dinner is served at seven thirty, if that is suitable for you. Will you join the captain or do you prefer to eat alone? And, um – roast beef or fish pie?'

I look down at the wad of paper still in my hand, half crushed: my ticket and, behind it, shipboard information, what appears to be the cargo list above my fist, should I care to know that we are carrying:
137 cases of beer, 423 bags of onions, 73 cases of cheese, 42 kegs cream of tartar, 191 bales of chaff, 730 bags of rice, 215 cases of starch, 55 cases of currants, 60 cases of naphtha, 48 bags of oats, 27 packages of drapery, 30 cases of soap, 10 cases of brandy, 25 packages of tobacco, 30 reels of barbed wire, 7 horses, a quantity of circus gear
… A quantity of circus gear?

‘Sir?'

‘What?' I ask the chap still waiting at the door, but I don't turn to him.

‘Dinner?'

‘I'll eat here, please. Just a cheese sandwich and bottle of beer – nothing else.'

‘Right you are, sir. Stout or –'

‘Not concerned – you choose.'

‘Of course, sir.' He leaves, closing the cabin door behind him.

I pull open the curtain at the window above the little writing ledge and stare out at the docks, at the confusion of steamers and punts, of business going on and on. It's a cold, grey summer evening as we move out of the Yarra and make for the sea, a wind blowing up from Bass Strait, from Antarctica: a Melbourne specialty. This city that is still so foreign to me, even after ten years: an imposing stonewall of a metropolis built with gold rush cash, long gone now, which manages to be both grandiose and bleak at once – like the weather.

It will take three days, weather willing; three days to get into Brisbane. Round the broken bows of Victoria, up the interminable coast of New South Wales – this continent is far too large. Mama, wait for me.

Berylda

F
lo is at the kitchen table, her back to me, a white powder puff pinned above her tails – Hoddy's tails. She is a living, breathing outrage. Her powder puff is bobbing, as are the long white ears she has made from an old petticoat and wire, as she chops away at a cabbage.

She glances over her shoulder, all painted whiskers and pink-carmined nose, ringlets swinging, and I'm already laughing as she says: ‘Can you hurry up and start shelling those peas, Alice, or we're going to be late.'

Who could argue with that? I tie my apron on over my blue dress and at least my costume is complete too. I'm Alice mostly for my size: the smallest.

As I sit to begin rapid shelling, I ask Flo: ‘What dreadful thing are you making tonight, then?'

‘Oh, just ordinary cabbage noodle stew,' she says,
chop chop.
‘But with peas, for something different.' Her ears bob emphatically.

I laugh some more. ‘Mm mmm.' As if she doesn't frighten boys enough, she's also a strict vegetarian, on conscientious grounds – her whole family are. Exuberant, gin-swilling, vegetarian Christian Socialists. Is there anything more outrageous? She's been trying to get a Vegetarian Society going on campus all year, but so far I am her only acolyte, and that's just for loyalty's sake.

‘No one else will eat that gloop except for you, Flo.' Margie swishes in, her auburn tresses piled high in an impossible pompadour: our Queen of Hearts. ‘You should be banned from contributing to supper – forever and always – never mind occasions at St Paul's.'

‘Oh!' Flo pretends offence and shrugs, ‘Each to their own,' before brandishing her knife at the bowl of oranges and limes at the other end of the table. ‘Margie, hurry up and start on the fruit, will you – for the punch.' Which will be lethal, with the addition of Hoddy's contraband – don't even think it too loudly lest our strictly teetotal Miss Macdonald, our dear principal, suspect the no good we are up to. Miss Macdonald will not be joining us this evening, though: as a Master of Arts in Archaeology herself, she has a faculty dinner on, oh stroke of fortune, and she's put Margie, third year honours in Logic and Mental Philosophy, in charge of us all in her absence – madness. All twenty-one of us here at Women's.

Soon our little communal kitchen is full of swishing and bustling and laughter, all girls together, and I do so love it here whenever it's like this, so full of colour and fun. Jayne is a vision in purple and yellow braided bathing costume, black whiskers and ears – the Cheshire Cat; Phylly, in a vast, bright red crinoline, spotted all over with discs of brown paper, is the magic mushroom. Jen starts playing her guitar somewhere amongst us; she will win the French Medal this year. I could stay here in Women's College forever, sit here at this table pulling pod strings forever, if I were allowed. But a terrible wave of longing and dread sweeps through me at the notion: that I might not return to Bathurst one day. How could I ever think such a thing, of abandoning my sister there, to deal with him alone? I must book my train ticket – I'll do that tomorrow. I must.

‘Berylda Jones, how beautiful you are as Alice – stand up.' Jayne is grinning over me, turning to Eva Marie to say: ‘Isn't she? Look at her.' Faces look at me, towering over me, even as I stand, and Jayne is asking, ‘How on earth do you cope being so pretty, Berylda? Do you even come from this world? Your complexion, your eyes – you are an unusual thing. Where did you get your loveliness from?'

The longing and the dread sweeps through me again. I feel the blood rush to my cheeks, but I am stone. I cannot reply to Jayne. But I don't have to.

‘Keep shelling those peas!' the White Rabbit shouts above her noodle soup, and my smile returns at her command.

Soon enough Margie is herding us all across the lawn towards St Paul's, with our pots and trays and punchbowl, and the boys are thrilled to see us, all whistling and carrying on. I have two cups of punch – it's delicious. I even let Clive Gillies-Wright kiss my hand when he finds me. He says something to me about this morning's exam having been full of tricks, but I'm not listening; I'm hoping he doesn't get shot on the veld, or get dysentery. He is a nice boy. He's dressed as the Hatter, a rainbow of ribbons wound all around his topper, but with green tights and gold brocade tunic he's at least half Romeo. If I were a nice girl, we might have something to talk about, reason to dance.

But that's by the by, and I am tired now. Well and truly tired, right inside my brain and in my bones, the tricky physics of exhaustion has me. As the piano starts thumping for a song and all the sweaty ra-ra in the room starts up in earnest, I make my excuses. I don't need to be here, I know how things will go: there will be fantastical tales told of Mafeking and Her Majesty's gunships, unanimous envy of Clive's impending adventure, uproarious jokes told about sending over a football team instead to sort out the enemies of Empire over a beer-guzzling contest, and Doug Jefferies, who is already eating one of the brown-paper discs off the bottom edge of Margie's mushroom, will soon be up on one of the tables, smashing a plate or two, before stumbling outside to fall into the lake, or some similar thing – upon which the college warden will call the occasion to a halt five minutes before curfew at ten p.m., reminding us all that such casual frivolities as this will be banned in future if students do not comport themselves appropriately and respectfully as young ladies and gentlemen.

‘Hooroo, fare thee well, good luck.' I tap Clive on the back of his shoulder, and I flee, as Flo mouths to me through the crowd: ‘You rat.'

I am. Single-minded, and necessarily so. The night is my only chaperone as I tread back across the lawn. I shall read myself to sleep, as usual: finish the chapter on the circulatory system from the copy of
Braithwaite's Surgical Anatomy
I smuggled out of the undergraduate med library in my skirt a week ago.
Just browsing
, I told the librarian's doubtful glare:
I'm hoping to get into Medicine next year
. Just ‘borrowing' a book I'm not allowed to have.

Ben

‘
S
o you bothered yourself to come home after all, did you, son?' Mama smiles at me from her bed, in her elfish way. She is a small sweet bird; she can't be dying. But she is. She is too small against her pillows. I can see that her breath pains her even as the opium tonic is easing her way. ‘My dear bear.' She holds out her hand to me, and I fall to my knees beside her: relief that I am here; guilt that I was not here all this time. I haven't been home since winter break, since June; she wasn't so bad then; yes she was. ‘Ben, please.' She holds my head to her smallness. ‘Don't cry.'

I wasn't, until she said the word. Now I cry like a small boy, into her pillow.

‘Hush.' She pats my head. ‘My Benjamin bear, it's all right.'

I struggle to regain my senses. In June, we went riding out along the line of Capricorn, out from Eleonora at Jericho, as we do every winter break, when the weather is best there. We ride out along the dusty ochre plains, towards the Jordan, her hat flying off the back of her head as she brings her horse up to a gallop, daring me after her. Every year, since I was a small boy. She can't be dying. Eleonora Trenton Wilberry: my mother. Ellie. Mama. But she has been dying all the while since June; since before then. She told me all about it that day, and the certain prognosis.

‘Ben,' she says into my hair now. ‘I'm very pleased that you are here. I'd like you to do something for me, on your way back down south, if you can.'

‘Whatever it is, consider it done,' I tell her, but I can't yet look up.

‘There's a bloom,' she says, and she pauses, the pain too much. I would tell her not to talk, but she must tell me what she wants me to do. I wait for her to continue, and after a moment she does. ‘It's
Helichrysum
– of some kind, I think,' she says. ‘I don't know what species. It's on the farm, at Mandagery. I would see it every January, when I was a girl, by the creek. It was the first paper daisy I ever saw, though I didn't know what it was back then. Go and find it for me, will you, Ben? And bring some back for the garden here. I always meant to …'

She is half-dreaming through the opium, but she must tell me more. I ask her: ‘What does it look like, Mama, this bloom – what colour is it?'

‘Oh, you won't miss it, Ben,' she says and I can feel her smile radiating through her hand on the back of my head. ‘It's red, a little pompom of flame at the centre; rows and rows of raylets all around, spearheaded. Like small red suns. Woody stipes – a bit like
elatum.
But so red. Get some, will you? I don't think the farmer will mind, do you? Who owns that property now? Do I know that? Or have I forgotten? I wish John hadn't sold the farm when Father died. Oh Ben, but I'm looking forward to seeing Father again, and Mother too. In a little while. Don't worry, my sweet bear, they will look after me. They always have.'

Have they? They married you off to Pater, didn't they? And a man called Bentley has the Trenton place at Mandajery Creek, although for all my rambling across the country I've never been there myself – it's somewhere in central New South Wales. Where the female breeding stock is better, apparently: less chance of accidentally marrying someone with a bit of black in them, than in Queensland. And still I can't look up at Mama. Anger has me for this little while, at all she has had to contend with; at all she has been denied. By Pater. Who is right now out at our property, at Jericho, breaking in a new manager. Because that's what you do when your wife of thirty years is dying. Eleonora: name a cattle station after your pretty wife and tame her, and forget her. When he bothers to get here, I will tell him what I think of him, once and for all. Tell him what I should have long ago: that he's a selfish bastard. He's the reason I live in Melbourne and only come home twice a year; when Mama – when there's no longer a reason for me to come home, I won't come home at all. Not for him.

‘Promise me? Promise me, Ben?' she asks.

‘I promise.' I will find her bloom and bring it back here for her, and then I'll –

‘Don't disappointment me, Benjamin. And heaven knows, you've been such a disappointment to me.' She tugs at my hair, to make me look up: she is having a joke with me even now, with her wry smile, one I can't help returning. She loves that I am a botanist in Melbourne; she is as proud and pleased as a mother could be at that. She places her small bird hands either side of my face and adds: ‘A perennial disappointment, you are, my son – every time you fail to bring a girl home. Aren't there any girls down south? None at all?'

‘It would appear they have somehow failed to see me in their midst,' I try to joke, for I am a large and lumbering person, not easy to miss. I try to laugh but it's a strange, dull noise that comes from me. Because I am a disappointment to her: she has been asking me this question for the past two years, yearning for grandchildren, any children, to fill this empty house. I am twenty-seven years old, nearing twenty-eight; I have no excuse for this disappointment, except that it seems I am not equipped for that part of life. I only have to look at an attractive young lady and I become an imbecile.

‘I'm sorry, Mama,' I tell her. I am sorry in every way.

‘Hush with sorries, Ben. You have nothing to be sorry about. I made you. You are perfect. Your time will come. She will be perfect too.' Mama closes her eyes. She seems to sink further into the pillows; shrinking before my eyes. She murmurs something else, but I don't understand her.

‘What is it?' I ask her. ‘Tell me.' Tell me every last thing you must.

She sighs; a shallow, rasping sigh. She doesn't open her eyes, but she murmurs along a breath: ‘Don't argue with your father, Ben. Walk away from him, as you have always done. Walk away …'

She doesn't speak again. She sleeps, and she doesn't wake. I watch over her, but she will not wake.

I watch her breathe.

‘Nothing more to be done, Ben.' Doctor Blaine is at the door. ‘If the pain should disturb her again, I can administer the drug by hypodermic syringe. She will feel no more pain if I can help it, let me assure you.'

Assure me? I cannot be sure if any of this is even real. I know all of the facts of the matter, of course: that Blaine had thought for so long it was only a stomach ulcer, as had Mama, and by the time the tumour was detected, it was considered too large, too risky to operate. They had a go at the X-ray treatment, to no avail; I had a go at researching this far-fetched cure and that, to no avail. Blaine said it would be a matter of months, or perhaps a year, maybe two; it was never easy to predict, except in its ultimate result. But now that the inevitable is occurring, I am lost to these facts. All facts but one: my mother is my light, and she is leaving me.

I sit with her and watch her breathe. I hold her little sparrow hand all through the night and into the dawn, until she breathes no more.

‘She is at peace, Ben,' Blaine says as he checks to find it true. ‘She is with God.'

She is gone.

I walk out into the garden. Her garden here at Indooroopilly, in lush, evergreen Brisbane. My mother's beautiful creation, of poinciana, jacaranda, her melaleucas by the river, and her drifts of
Helichrysum
there –
elatum
. A host of small white angels swaying on the warm breeze against the wide green river. In full bloom. They fill the house, they are the stars of all of her arrangements, her beloved paper daisies, her everlastings. They will fill the vases at St Andrew's too; every summer they do, by her hand, and now they will appear on altar and casket for her.

No. She cannot be gone.

She should have been a botanist.
Oh but you can't be a botanist north of the border, wouldn't matter who you were
,
she'd wave away the suggestion.
No such silly thing as botany in Queensland, dear, you know that.
No such thing as a university in Queensland, either.

I plunge my hands into the cool of the river as though this might cool my pain, hush the sound that is breaking from me now.

Another sound belts through it anyway. Pater's team of four careering up the drive for the stables. The bastard has bothered to come home.