Chapter 12

Beth

‘Hello, pet,’ Gran said warmly as she opened the front door.

I had messaged her during the day to tell her I would be dropping past after I’d finished work and run some errands. I probably should have just left work early again; I had been distracted the entire day with thoughts of Gran and Gerry, and how Gran would react to the news I had found out about their relationship and discovered a way to connect them. But, over the course of the day, my sense of hesitation had evolved into full-scale anxiety, so I was happy to defer telling her for a couple of hours.

I dipped into her open arms for a hug.

‘How was your day?’ I asked as I nodded to Herrick en route to the kitchen. I noticed Gran had draped some beads across his antlers since I was last at her house.

Gran removed two beers from the fridge and handed one to me. My grandparents had drunk a beer at seven o’clock every single night they were at home. The crack of the ring pull, the hiss of the air escaping the can and the slurp as they captured the froth that escaped from the top was usually set against the trumpet fanfare that heralded the beginning of ABC News.

I found myself deliberately avoiding her eye contact as Gran chatted away about the cuttings of Geraldton wax she’d helped herself to from a house down the road.

‘Are you okay, darling?’ she asked. ‘You seem a million miles away. And it’s not like you to fidget.’

She gestured to the ring pull of the can that I had twisted and bent until it snapped into four satisfyingly even segments.

‘Sorry,’ I replied, trying to refocus on what she was saying while collecting the metal pieces into a pile. ‘Go on. What were you saying?’

‘Never mind, it was nothing. I was just chatting. Tell me, what’s going on with you? You seem a bit …’

As she searched my face for clues to help inform the next word of her sentence, my stomach lurched. I knew I had to tell her now, or I would completely lose my nerve.

‘It’s just … well …’ I took a deep breath to steady myself. ‘I have a bit of news, actually.’

She sat forward in her chair and nodded her head as if to encourage me to go on.

‘Do you remember at lunch the other week, when Jarrah was talking about star signs, and she gave me a hard time about not believing in fate or …’ I wiggled my fingers to convey the frivolity of the whole conversation, ‘leaving anything to the universe?’

‘Yes, darling. Although sometimes it’s hard to keep up with all the things you two disagree about,’ she said.

Usually I would prickle at this, but I had bigger fish to fry.

‘Well,’ I continued, ‘do you remember we stopped at the shops on the way home so you could fill your prescription?’

‘Yes, darling,’ she said guardedly, her eyes narrowing.

‘While you were in the chemist, I bought a lotto ticket to prove her wrong.’ I felt the words rush out of me. ‘I wanted to prove that we make our own luck and that things don’t just land in our lap because they’re predestined to.’

I took a big sip of my beer.

‘Except I didn’t. Prove her wrong, I mean,’ I continued eventually.

I paused, waiting for a sign that the penny had dropped. The room was silent until the kitchen wall clock ticked over.

‘Do you mean …?’ she began. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I won lotto,’ I blurted. ‘Second division! I won $264,412.51.’

I slapped my hand across my mouth.

‘Oops, I wasn’t meant to tell you how much I won,’ I mumbled from behind my fingers.

‘Beth!’ Gran gasped. ‘Good heavens. Congratulations!’ She pushed herself up off her chair to embrace me over the table. ‘When did you find out?’

I told Gran about checking the ticket, driving to the Lottery Head Office and the excruciating days that had followed when I’d deliberated over what to do with it.

‘What are you going to do with it?’ she asked. ‘Goodness, Beth. This could set you up for the rest of your life.’

I’d had a few days to get used to the idea of my win, but seeing Gran’s reaction renewed my sense of shock about the whole thing.

‘Well. I’m still deciding. I’ve bought a new car, and I plan to buy a couple of other bits and pieces, and then I’ll pay a chunk off my mortgage, and I might go on a trip somewhere.’

‘A new car,’ Gran exclaimed excitedly. ‘That is good news.’

I couldn’t ignore that her reaction to my getting a new car was more animated than her reaction to the win itself.

‘I’m also planning on giving some to Mum and Dad, and Jarrah and Elijah,’ I continued. ‘I was going to tell them on Sunday, which is why I got so annoyed when Jarrah told us she’d quit her job. I know this money was never mine to begin with, but I just couldn’t bring myself to hand over a cheque for her to fritter away on living expenses while she works out what job will “nourish her soul”.’

Ahh.’ Gran nodded her head in realisation. ‘I see.’

‘So, I think I’ll just sit tight until I’ve had some more time to think.’

‘Well, sweetie,’ she said, reaching for my hand. ‘I’m absolutely thrilled for you.’

‘Thanks, Gran,’ I said, my stomach tightening at the thought that sharing details about my lotto win was just Act One. ‘But that’s actually just the start of it.’

I let go of Gran’s hands and took another sip of beer.

‘Do you remember when I asked you whether there was anything you wish you’d done, or somewhere you’d wished you’d been?’

Gran nodded.

‘Well, that was actually a fact-finding mission. I was trying to work out how I could share some of this win with you in a way that you’d enjoy. I figured handing over a cheque would be a bit meaningless.’

‘Oh, darling,’ Gran tsked. ‘I insist you don’t give me a penny; I want for absolutely nothing.’

‘Except that’s not 100 per cent true,’ I replied, knowing that there was no going back from here. ‘Is it? You told me you wanted to know what happened to Gerry Burnsby.’

Gran flinched slightly.

‘What happened to Gerry Burnsby,’ she repeated slowly. ‘Oh pet, that’s ancient—’

‘I looked her up,’ I blurted.

‘Her?’ she reiterated cautiously.

‘Yes, Gran. Her.’ I emphasised the feminine pronoun to demonstrate my complete understanding of its implication. ‘I found her online.’

‘But how did you …?’ Her eyes widened and she sat up a little straighter.

‘I googled her name, Gran. You can find anything or anyone on the internet. I hope you’re not mad.’

Gran stood up quickly, her chair squeaking across the floor. She walked to the sink where she filled a glass of water and gulped from it hurriedly. Even with her back to me, I could see her hand was shaking.

‘I’m sorry, Gran,’ I said, panicked that my fears had been realised and she was mad at me or that I’d upset her. ‘I just wanted to do something nice for you. You said you wanted to know … so I thought … and once I found out …’

She put her hand to the bench but misjudged its proximity and re-righted herself on the draining rack. A cascade of cutlery cluttered onto the floor.

I guided Gran back to her seat, refilled her water and then gathered up the utensils and put them in the sink.

She looked pale and definitely seemed rattled. She was usually so pragmatic and calm, it was unsettling to see her so vulnerable.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked, afraid of her answer.

‘I should never have said anything,’ she said, as if scolding herself. ‘What was I thinking? Speaking about Gerry after all these years … I must have been out of my mind.’

I reached for her hands but she retracted them quickly and placed them in her lap.

‘I don’t know what to tell you, Beth,’ she said finally. Softly.

‘You don’t have to tell me anything,’ I said. ‘The way I see it, we have a few options. You can tell me to drop it, and I will never mention it again. You have my word that I will never tell a soul. Or, I can tell you what I know, and you can decide what to do with that information. I don’t even have to tell you now, if you’re not ready to hear it. I could tell you tomorrow, or next week, or next month. Either way, you can tell me as much or as little as you want.

‘But I want you to know,’ I added, ‘that I didn’t mean to pry and I never wanted to hurt you.’

Silence hung between us, but I noticed some of the colour had returned to her face. She was fiddling with her wedding band on her right ring finger; she’d moved it there a year to the day after Grandpa died.

‘When it comes to Gerry, I ...’ she started, before shaking her head and abandoning that train of thought. I imagined her mind was racing. ‘It was just so complicated. I still don’t know what to call our relationship, or my feelings for her. And, until you, until now, no one else has ever known about it.’

I allowed a few moments to pass, to create space for her to add more, if she wanted to.

‘As I said, Gran, you don’t owe me, or anyone else, an explanation,’ I said finally. ‘But if you are interested, I think I’ve found a way to contact her.’

She sat forward in her chair and, for the first time since she’d sat down again, she made eye contact with me.

‘She’s alive?’ she blurted. ‘I mean, I didn’t think she wouldn’t be. But we’re both getting on. And, after she left, I guess it was just easier for me to stop imagining her life without me in it.’

I nodded, waiting for her cue that I should go on. She was stroking her thumb on the back of the opposite hand.

‘Okay,’ she said finally. ‘Let’s hear it. Where is she? And what the hell has she been doing all these years?’

I told Gran about Gerry’s tenure with the University of New London and recounted the article from the Western Weekly.

‘Oh, that,’ Gran said with a soft chuckle; it was so good to see her smile again. ‘She was outraged about that article. She hated that the journalist was more interested in her clothes and hair than her academic endeavours. So, naturally, I teased her about it mercilessly.’

I handed her a printout of Gerry’s article ‘Elizabeth Gould: watching from the wings’.

She scanned the article, which described Elizabeth Gould’s life. She was a skilled artist who had married John Gould in 1829 and become his trusted professional collaborator. They travelled to Australia in 1838 where, for two years, she feverishly illustrated the plants and animals her husband and his team collected and described. Her work from the expedition was immortalised in the acclaimed series The Birds of Australia, which was still an eminent resource for Australian ornithology. But almost a year to the day after they returned to England, Elizabeth died from childbirth complications. Devastated at the loss of his wife, John named what he thought to be the world’s most beautiful bird species after her – the Gouldian finch.

‘Gerry gave me that print, you know,’ Gran said, gesturing to the illustration of the trio of birds that featured in the article.

‘I suspected that.’

‘We admired Elizabeth Gould, so much,’ she continued. ‘We first learned of her when we found a copy of a book released in the 1940s, which contained a collection of letters she’d written and sent back to her family in London.’

She sat back in her chair, her shoulders slumped.

‘Gerry was so many things to me,’ she continued, her eyes filling with tears. ‘She fulfilled me intellectually, emotionally and physically. We would spend hours discussing philosophy, politics and feminism …’ she gestured to the article – it went on to give credit to all the other female scientists whose contributions to their fields had been overlooked in favour of men, or stolen outright by them. ‘She was a wonderful confidant and companion. We had so much fun together, and shared such tenderness and intimacy.’

Her voice crackled. ‘It was a confusing time. But it was such a happy one.’

‘I suspected that too.’

‘How did you say we could get in contact with her?’ she asked tentatively.

‘We can message her through a networking platform for scientists,’ I replied. ‘Do you want to see a picture of her?’

She sat forward again, this time with such force that she knocked the table and caused our drinks to wobble. ‘Do you have one?’

‘There’s a photo on her bio page.’

I pulled my phone from my bag and swiped and stabbed until I landed on the photo of Gerry. I turned the screen to face Gran.

She took the phone and gasped. I watched her eyes flit over the screen.

‘Her hair was strawberry blonde when I knew her,’ she said wistfully. ‘And it’s shorter. But she’s still got those beautiful blue eyes. And I see she still doesn’t leave the house without her “touch of lippy”, as she used to say. She’s still so beautiful.’

She startled and thrust the phone back at me. ‘She can’t see me, can she?’

I laughed. ‘No, of course not.’

She exhaled quickly.

‘I need to think about all this,’ she said.

‘Of course,’ I said, slipping my phone into my bag. ‘Do you want me to stay with you for a bit?’

‘No, darling,’ she said, shaking her head decisively. ‘I’m fine. It’s just a lot to … it’s been a long … I’m fine.’

‘Honestly, I can stay if you—’

‘No,’ Gran said. ‘Actually, I had planned to get an early night tonight anyway.’

I suspected she hadn’t thought about what time she would be going to bed before that moment, but I understood her keenness to be alone.

‘Okay,’ I said, rising from the table. ‘But if you need anything, just let me know.’

‘I will, love,’ she replied before adding: ‘I’d rather not tell anyone about any of this, so please don’t—’

‘Gran, I would never,’ I replied assertively. ‘I won’t tell a soul. And I won’t do a thing until you tell me to.’

I walked to her side and wrapped my arm around her shoulders, giving her a side hug.

‘I’m just sorry it was so difficult for you to love who you wanted to back then, Gran,’ I said. ‘I can only imagine how hard it must have been to hide your relationship from everybody.’

‘Thank you, pet,’ she replied, her voice cracking again. ‘Are you okay to let yourself out? I’m just going to pop to the loo.’

‘Sure,’ I replied, releasing her from my grip. ‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’

As I reached the front door, I turned back and saw her stop in the hallway to look at the Gouldian finch painting. I watched as she reached up and tenderly touched the birds and then wiped beneath her eyes.