Paper Daisies (29 page)

Berylda

H
e points out koalas and gang-gang cockatoos high in the trees along the way back into Hill End and I see none of them, it's all grey against greyish green-grey to me, a flicker of tangerine head feathers just missed, and I laugh with the rough and lively shouting of the birds above us, the splashing of the cartwheels through puddles, and I allow myself to enjoy it, the sounds of this make-believe happiness, brief as it must be.

Before we sight the first cottages of the town, I reach for his hand again, and I pull him towards me again. I must, as if some magnetic influence drives me to. I cannot push this wanting away. I feel the crack in his bottom lip against mine and I caress it with my kiss, just for the barest moment, no more than our faces meeting with a sweet bump in the road, the tingling brush of his beard, soft, warm, that sort of beard which might be clipped short or might merely be the result of his neglect to shave, impossible to say. And then I look away from him again, with all my terrible thoughts. My desire for him, for this one fleeting chance to be free with him, overlays a need to test my nerve, my skill at deceit: Can I make Ben Wilberry love me? Tonight? This one night that might be ours. A whisper in the darkness that none but us will hear or know. As no one must ever know what I will do tomorrow at Bellevue. Our hands are held hidden under the folds of my skirt at our hips; his large, warm hand around my bruised one; the bottle of poison lies hidden there too. Can I dare love him? Just this once? Before …

‘Berylda,' he whispers to me now, his breath so gentle and warm against my ear. ‘Berylda, does this mean …?'

‘Yes,' I breathe the word out and back to him; I send it up to the grey, invisible birds: let him believe what he wants to believe this means. Let him have his semblance of happiness this day, too. Just this one day.

One day, one night, of love, and I will ask for nothing from this life ever again.

I turn to him, place my finger across my lips, rolling my eyes towards Buckley's back, and then clear my throat theatrically: ‘Ahem. So tell me, Mr Wilberry …' I cast about for another subject and, finding the sprig of daisy-wattle things just about under my nose, I say: ‘Tell me then, what is it that makes a daisy a daisy? So many kinds – but what is it that makes them all the same?'

‘Well …' He clears his throat too, smiling slowly at the game, and he speaks more slowly still, so that Buckley might hear every innocent word, ‘that's not a very easy question to answer, Miss Jones. There are so many varieties of daisy – ninety-four genera on this continent alone and an inestimable number of species – it can be difficult to tell one from the other at times, and with others it can be difficult to find the daisy in them at all. I could bore you rigid with the details.' He strokes the back of my knuckles with his thumb so softly that the tingling it sends across my skin dives within me and swells outward again, for him. I wonder how we might fit together as man and woman; how does this puzzle of anatomy work, from diagram to living flesh? Is it even possible for us? He is so large a person in every other way; will we fit together at all? Oh, how I want to know this. How I want our flesh to touch however it must. ‘But the simple answer,' he continues, ‘lies in the flowers: the heads are all generally comprised of a complex of multiple central florets, and of both male and female parts.'

‘Are they
really
?' I feign enthrallment and don't feign it at all: I could become quite stupefied from it.

Even before he adds: ‘And they mostly all share a certain flocculence.'

‘Flocculence?' Our eyes spark together with an energy that is our own. A true sense of fun that I have never before found in the company of a man. I begin to shake with the effort of holding off a collapse into hysteria. For the second time today, my eyes fill with tears, but marvellous ones. What an outrageously fleshy word. ‘Do tell me, Mr Wilberry, what is flocculence?'

‘Well, Miss Jones, flocculence is a kind of fluff, a woolly down, that exists on the foliage.' He touches the stem of the flower on my blouse, and as he does so his finger trails the side of my breast, just for the tiniest sliver of a second, before the buggy pitches a little again on the rough rills of this track, and then he touches my cheek as lightly: ‘Tiny hairs.'

‘Is that right?'

‘Yes,' he says and my mind is the shape of his smile: tangerine-sliced; sun-shaped. ‘Tomatoes have them on their leaves and stems to catch tiny insects.'

‘Do they indeed?' I banter back. I have not had such fun, such joy, in … ever. ‘You're not suggesting that tomatoes are killers, are you, Mr Wilberry?'

‘Why yes, they are, Miss Jones,' he says. ‘Dangerous things, tomatoes, aren't they? And the flocculence on certain native daisies render them quite deadly to cattle as well – the whole of the Board of Agriculture wants to rip them all up for weeds, never mind the French. But flocculence can be beautiful and more tiny still, too.' He touches my cheek again, more softly still. ‘Like that on a peach skin,' he says. ‘Hardly there at all, but there nevertheless. That's flocculence.'

‘Is it?' I am breathless at his touch, lingering though he has now moved his hand back to his knee.

‘Yes.' And his other hand continues to hold mine beneath my skirt; he holds my hand with his gentle power as he says, ‘Most of the seeds of daisies are flocculent too. The seeds of the
beryldii
,
for example, they are rather a hairy lot – so they can float well and far on the breeze.'

I cannot reply to this sweetness: that he will truly name his flower after me. I hear it anew. The seaweed pink daisy from the Turon will be
Helichrysum beryldii.
I am astonished by this compliment now, this honour. Ben Wilberry is the sun and he names his flower after me.

‘Why do you study plants, Mr Wilberry?' I ask our hidden hands.

‘Hm. I …' He ponders the question for a moment before he says: ‘I want to understand how beauty is made, its genius, in all its parts, from leaf to forest, I suppose. I seem to need to understand this, how it all works together, where and why. The ecology of life. A fairly new branch of … beauty. I find answers often in the smallest … Ah –'
He bends to me again and whispers: ‘I am in love with you, Berylda Jones.'

His sun reaches into my bones. Even as my blood rushes weeping through me for the tragedy that this is and can only ever be. This absolute impossibility. But still I reply: ‘And I you, Ben.'

And I turn away again. For I know this is no lie. I believe that I love Ben Wilberry in return, such as I am capable of loving.

This one, brief day. This is all we have. Before I am destroyed forever.

I force my thoughts back to practicalities, the realities, as the first of the mine poppet heads of the town rises out of the bush with the distant banging of the crushers; douse my passion with the true facts of the matter. Amongst the many hard, cold ones I possess, I find a litany of intimate abuses:
You ungrateful little slut
,
my hair screaming from my scalp, each creeping threat across these past five years, each demeaning criticism, each pinch of his grasp. The scrape of Alec Howell's thick-bristled beard on my neck. A bitch kicked, yelping on the floor.
Be a good girl now.
Predatory footsteps down the hall, coming for my sister. Coming now for me.
I want you visibly gravid by election day.
As my sister is gravid by him now, and it remains that I have failed to find a cure for this today, for Gret. What step next with this then? Perhaps I can do nothing about it today at all. Yes: perhaps it is even best to wait. Alec Howell will be dead at some time in the night tomorrow, and once he is dead, I will find a text amongst those he keeps in the locked cabinets at the hospital to tell me what purgative and what dosage I might use. Of course. That is what I will do. In my grief for my dear uncle, I will ask only for his books.

‘What are you thinking of now?' Ben Wilberry says beside me.

‘Think?' I return to him once more. ‘I'm sure I don't have the foggiest clue.'

Because I have quite lost my mind, haven't I? I look ahead. Clouds are gathering grey-green bruises, just as they did yesterday afternoon. Bright white lightning forks between the cleft in the hills. It shatters the air, scattering the birds. It startles Whiskey in her harness, too.

‘Whoa.' Buckley is pulling her back hard to keep control.

And yet, though I hate storms like nothing else, I am unmoved by this one. Delusion over delusion: Tomorrow, I will be free. Gret and I will be free, and that is all.

One desire over all: freedom.

Ben Wilberry's arm is around my shoulders, his body a shield absorbing any fear I might otherwise have had. ‘Strike me,' he says as the rain begins to spatter, ‘that one was a bit too close.'

Ben

T
he wind tears across the top of the pear tree in the yard, stripping leaves, as we run from the stables towards the back doors of the pub, Mrs Wheeler waving from the verandah: ‘Inside! Oh my Saviour! Come inside!'

There is no rain now, little that there was, but the wind is cold and just about gale-force, carrying dust and twigs and possibly most of the mine tailings off Bald Hill and pelting it all into us.

‘Oh!' Berylda shouts as I grab her up by the waist halfway across the yard, the quicker to get out of this weather, and inside. As I set her down upon the boards again, she leans back and our hands shut the door together. Shutting the cold wind out together, our faces side by side, so together, just for half a blink, before we turn back to the room. The rear parlour, we find ourselves in, not the saloon, and here is Cos, playing cards with the maid. He is evidently much improved in mood from this morning, having found a miracle cure for his paralysis.

‘Well, well, now look what the cat dragged in – Wilby sweetheart, you've come back to me!' he bellows above the deck he's dealing, well into his cups, several empties on the mantel behind his head, into the stout and some other thing, and the toe of his boot under the card table is tapping against the shoe of the maid: that explains the change in his mood. What's her name? Katie? Would it matter? I shake my head and return the self-satisfied smile of my friend: insufferable bastard that he is. I could not shake my own mood right now if I tried: I have never been so happy.

‘Ryldy!' Greta rushes into the room to embrace her sister. ‘You were ages – and you're a disaster. Look at you – you've got leaves all through your hair. Look at your hair.' Greta Jones appears much improved too, all rosy and full of fun, as if she might have been plied with some beverage as well, something to make her bounce right up out of her sickbed. ‘We were just getting worried about you, weren't we, Mrs Wheeler?'

‘Worried?' says Mrs Wheeler with that flustering dismay of hers, despite her having just witnessed our safe arrival. She peers hard at Greta and half-cringes, half-winks. ‘Oh yes. Worried. We were. But Miss Greta, what are you doing out of bed?'

‘Oh shush – it's all right! I'm all right!' Greta waves her away.

‘Too much ginger beer?' Berylda is smiling with her sister, who is picking out the bits of leaves caught in her hair, most of which has come loose from under her hat. Long dark hair falling everywhere across her blouse. She is a disaster, an exquisite disaster, and she tells Greta: ‘Good to see you have obeyed my prescription.' Her laughter chimes high and loud as Greta sways against her. ‘How much ginger beer have you had?'

‘Oh lots – lots of something.' Greta is quite well schnigged, I would say.

And Mrs Wheeler mutters: ‘Sometimes is stronger than other times – sometimes too much sugar in the lemons. Oh God.' And some Baltic oath.

‘And sometimes simply too much ginger beer?' Berylda offers, as Mrs Wheeler flusters away muttering something about getting cake and tea, and the curve of Berylda's smile for her sister makes me love her even more. How could Cos fail to catch that in her? That love, right there, in her face, her eyes, her soul. But he does not directly acknowledge her presence in this room at all.

He speaks only to Greta, asking her: ‘Did you finish your picture, Miss Greta Jones?' Pretending to admonish her: ‘I can't recommend you anywhere as an illustrator if you have no portfolio of works to show – you'll be dismissed as just another reprobate layabout dabbler.' Does he admonish me in that, too, for our argument this morning? I can't tell; he's looking down at his cards once more.

‘Oh yes, Cosmo, but I've been working away most diligently. I've been very, very busy.' Greta grins at him, firm friends they seem now, and she fairly leaps out of the room: ‘I'll go and get it, shall I? And so I shall!'

She is gone and returned with her sketchbook before I can blink the grit from my eyes, and she is showing us all the drawing she has done today, another fantastical scene. ‘See?' It's a picture of the mermaids from the steam organ swimming up out of the chimneys of the hotel, swimming into the sky, somehow like music, somehow becoming a flock of birds towards the top of the page.

‘Oh, Gret …' Berylda sighs, covering her face with her hands, closing her eyes; she seems touched by whatever this picture means to her, or perhaps she is only taken over by amazement at her sister's talent, that emotion Greta is able to bring to what she sees, or dreams – bringing lines on a page to such life. I am amazed again too.

But Cos doesn't seem to see or hear the admiration and devotion in Berylda's sigh; he sees only her face in her hands, as if he is determined to misread her, and he says to the ceiling: ‘Oh but it's the artist's lot, isn't it? Can't please everyone – or if you're very lucky, any bloody one.' He says to Greta: ‘I will purchase that – go and do another.' He snaps his fingers.

Greta throws her head back in her drunken fun and waves at him dismissively: ‘You are an awful, awful person, Cosmo Thompson. Hard taskmaster.' Her laughter rings around the room.

Berylda rubs her forehead; weary. She rubs her eyes; no doubt gritty too.

Cos shrugs, turns back to his cards; back to the maid: ‘Katie – ahoy there!' She sits mute as a mermaid sculpted of paste as he smacks a card down on the table in front of her. ‘Now, what were we talking about before we were so rudely interrupted? That's right, I was telling you the truth about storms – the Blacks know by the skedaddling of the insects when one is on the way. Pity you don't have any Blacks around here then, eh, isn't it? What did you do with them all?' He looks under the card table and grips this Katie round the ankle to make her scream, and make Greta scream with laughter again too, as Mrs Wheeler returns carrying a tray and screaming, ‘Cake!'

And I must make an exit, not least to wash this grit from my eyes.

‘Mr Wilbarrow! Mr Wilbarrow! You don't want cake?' Mrs Wheeler squawks at my back. ‘But you must be hungry!'

‘Thank you, sorry, please, in a moment,' I make some vague apology, as I cross the saloon, to return to the bedroom, for my towel and the water jug.

Where, on the night stand, I see Cos has replaced his sketch of Berylda with his completed illustration of my discovery. I blink at the page. What does he mean by this? Apart from that, technically, he is very bloody good. If he could be bothered, I'd have him draw the entire world for me. So exact; unprettied, unlike so much botanical illustration. He has even captured something of the bronzed sheen of the involucral bracts underside the bloom. Such an acute perception; understanding of structure. Why can't he see Berylda? For
my
sake? Or has something here changed too? Between Cos and me. I pour out a basin of water and splash a face full into my eyes. Perhaps if he could see something a little deeper in a woman than the size and set of her breasts … but that's not true, either.

‘So what do you reckon is happening here?' I ask aloud, into the mirror.

Ignore him, old bear – everyone else does
, Mama doesn't hesitate to advise me, or add:
You could change your shirt, too, dear, you're a bit spicy.

And just for a moment, I feel her at my back, her hands grasping me by the elbows, urging me. To do what? I don't know. My mother is dead. She is not really with me, except in my mind. Am
I the one then who is confused, about Berylda, because my mother wanted above all else to see me settled, see me in love? Do I see things in Berylda that just aren't there? Things that aren't real?

A sound at the door interrupts my thoughts, not a knock but a creaking of boards, and I think it's Cos, come to have it out. But it's not. It's a note, slid under the door quiet as smoke. A torn corner of art paper, an untidy pencil scrawl:

Meet me in the stable loft – midnight

B

Shhhh

What's the time now? Perhaps half-past three? Make it four. Make it midnight – make it now. This is real.