Page 13 of Birds of a Feather

‘How did you do it?’

‘It was silly, really. I knocked my arm at the herbarium when I was putting away a new specimen.’

When she wasn’t traipsing around the bush checking on orchids, Gran volunteered in the state herbarium to catalogue new species records. She and a team of volunteers gathered in a lab to attach newly collected specimens to special parchment, using dental floss – a hardy and trusted material. They applied barcodes, details of when and where it was found, and a label with whatever name it had been given. Then they put it in a special plastic container, inside a climate-controlled, fireproof vault alongside records that were collected on early European expeditions by the likes of Bruni D’Entrecasteaux, Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders.

As we got into the car and drove towards my parents’ house, Gran told me that the specimen she’d been working on was a new species of mistletoe. A softly spoken botanist whom I’d met on a field trip a few years back found the plant while he was surveying for wattles. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of plants in the north-west and figured that if he didn’t recognise it, it was probably new to science. He was right.

‘You should have seen his face when he saw the specimen carrying his name,’ Gran recounted. ‘He was absolutely chuffed. And so he should be; it’s a great honour.’

‘I’ve always thought botanists are lucky they get plants named after them,’ I mused. ‘I feel for the entomologists, who have their life’s work honoured by the naming rights of a newly discovered cockroach or dung beetle, or the parasitologists who work with parasites.’

She chuckled.

With only a few minutes’ drive left until we arrived at my parents’ place, I sought to steer our conversation away from whether the naming of a North American slime-mould beetle Agathidium bushi – after George W Bush – had been intended as an honour or insult, and instead towards my recent financial windfall.

‘Gran,’ I began, seizing a brief moment of pause. ‘Do you want for anything? I mean, is there anywhere you wish you’d gone? Anything you wish you’d bought? Anything you wish you’d done? Or anything you’d like to have another go at?’

‘Goodness me, darling. That’s a deep question for a Saturday morning. What’s brought this on?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ I lied. ‘I’m just curious if there’s anything you regretted not doing. Or seeing. Or buying.’

‘No. Not really,’ she said, her head tilted slightly in thought. ‘I have all I could possibly need. I’m happy and healthy and comfortable. And I’m surrounded by a loving family and good friends. I’ve enjoyed a rich, full life …’

Her inflection went up, and the sentence hung as if incomplete.

‘Go on,’ I encouraged, braking at a set of red traffic lights and taking the opportunity to study her face for clues.

‘Oh no,’ she said with a little shake of her head. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘Please, Gran. What were you going to say?’

She fiddled with the dangly beaded earring that hung from her right lobe.

‘Well … since you’ve asked. I’ve always wondered what happened to my first love.’

I snapped my head around to look at her. I had expected her to say ‘I’ve always wanted to see the Amazon’ or ‘I’d rather fancy a grand piano’, which I would have satisfied with an all-expenses-paid trip, or a surprise delivery of a Yamaha. Tracking down a long-lost lover was not what I had anticipated. I doubt I would have been any more shocked than if she’d told me she wanted to try heroin.

‘Your first love? Who was that?’

It had never occurred to me to ask if she had been with anyone before Grandpa, and she’d never volunteered it. I wondered if Mum knew anything about this mystery relationship.

‘Gerry Burnsby,’ she replied, her voice slightly breathy.

‘You’ve never mentioned him before,’ I said, doing my best to keep my eyes on the road now the traffic had started moving again.

‘Of course not, darling. It’s ancient history. We studied botany together at university and lived in the same college. Gerry was from the UK but was studying on a government-sponsored exchange in Australia. We were so in love.’

‘So what happened between you?’

She sighed deeply. She was stroking her thumb on the back of her opposite hand, which she routinely did when she was reading or when her mind wandered elsewhere.

‘Gerry went back to London. We promised we’d write to each other, and even made plans for me to visit when I finished my degree. But I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and never received a reply.’

‘My goodness, Gran. I’m so sorry. Did you ever find out what happened?’

‘Our relationship was … complicated,’ she replied tentatively.

‘Complicated? How?’

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