Page 16 of Birds of a Feather

Even without taking my eyes off the road, I knew the look she was giving me; it was the one that encouraged me to take responsibility for my role in my relationship with Jarrah.

‘You’re just two very different people. And, while she can be a bit … directionless, you know if you ever needed anything, she’d be there for you in a flash.’

She was right. I thought back to high school, which wasn’t the easiest time for me. While Jarrah was the ‘it’ girl of the school, I’d spent my lunchtimes sheltering in the library from Nadia Ktasia and her henchwomen. When Jarrah found out I was the subject of an entire chapter of their Mean Girls-style ‘Burn Book’, and they were the ones who shoved a mandarin into the bell of my trombone on the night of the jazz concert, causing a terrible mess, she launched into action. She told them that if they didn’t stop bullying me, she’d mobilise the entire school against them. And they knew she could.

‘I know,’ I said to Gran. ‘But I just can’t sit around watching her wasting her life. I mean, she’s still living at home, while leading a completely self-indulgent lifestyle, without any foreseeable prospects.’

‘But aren’t they her issues to work out?’ Gran offered rationally. ‘I mean, it’s her life.’

In usual circumstances, this might be sound advice. But Gran wasn’t armed with all the information. And I’d be damned if I was going to give Jarrah money to skulk around doing nothing.

Chapter 11

Beth

After I dropped Gran off and drove home, I checked over my meal plan for the following week. I had allowed myself a bought lunch on Wednesday and Friday, and takeaway Thai on Saturday night. By my standards, this was a splurge.

I walked back into the lounge room, placed my coffee on the table and slumped on the couch with my laptop in my lap. I double-clicked on the file icon of the latest version of my lotto spreadsheet. It opened, and Jarrah’s name was highlighted; a record of the last edit I had made. I sighed deeply and closed the file again.

At least the day wasn’t a total loss – there was Gran’s surprising revelation about the ‘one who got away’. I had no idea if it would be possible to track down Gerry Burnsby, but I figured a Google search of his name was a good place to start.

The search engine boldly declared there were twelve exact results. The first one – a paper on the metabolic rate of vascular plants native to central England – was written by Gerry Burnsby et al. Could it be that easy? I wondered. Gran and Gerry had studied botany together, so it seemed plausible that he would write a paper on English vascular plants.

I clicked on the link, and a scientific paper popped open. The paper was presented in the typical way: title at the top, followed by the authors’ names. I scanned the list of authors – Frederick E Forsyth, William K Lee and Gerry M Burnsby. A superscripted ‘three’ annotated the ‘y’ at the end of Gerry’s surname, which correlated to a list of tertiary institutions below. Gerry was associated with the University of New London. I found the university’s website, but paused after typing Gerry’s name in the website’s search bar.

Was searching for Gerry a violation of Gran’s privacy? What if I found him? Would Gran want to know? Of course, I’d have to tell her if I found him. But then what? If she really wanted to find him after all these years, wouldn’t she have done it herself by now? And why did this feel like a betrayal of Grandpa?

I took a sip of my coffee and steadied myself. While it would be an uncanny coincidence if it wasn’t, there was no guarantee that the Gerry Burnsby who authored the paper on vascular plants was the same one Gran fell in love with all those years ago.

I hit enter, and the search results filled my screen. I hovered my mouse over the first entry: ‘Meet our team – staff profiles: Department of Botany (Plant Sciences)’. I clicked on the link, and twelve smiling faces appeared. I scanned their faces, looking for someone who might be Gerry Burnsby, but there were only four men on the team, and they were all too young to have been at university with Gran.

Just as I was about to back out of the page, I spotted the name ‘Burnsby’ under a photo of woman with a warm, broad smile and cropped white hair. If I had to guess, I would place her in her late seventies or early eighties – roughly the same age as Gran.

The caption read ‘Geraldine “Gerry” Burnsby – Adjunct Professor’.

My mouth fell open, and I lurched towards the screen for a closer look. My eyes darted between the woman’s photo and her name. It couldn’t be the same person, could it?

Was Gran’s first love a woman?

I clicked on the photo, which enlarged the picture and brought up a biography advising Geraldine had graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Botany) from Fisher University in Perth in 1959. Gran had said Gerry was from the UK and studying on a government-sponsored exchange. If she had graduated in 1959, she would have been at Fisher University at the same time as Gran.

‘Our relationship was … complicated,’ Gran had said. ‘It was a different time back then.’ There was a heaviness to her words as if they still weighed on her.

Indeed it would have been nearly impossible for Gran and Gerry to be open about their relationship in the 1950s without risk of prejudice and persecution.

‘We were so in love,’ she’d reminisced.

I scanned Gerry’s biography. She’d specialised in plant sciences and worked at the United Kingdom Herbarium. She was now retired from full-time work but still held tenure as an adjunct professor at the University of New London.

I clicked back to the tab with the search engine and scrolled down the page. I reached one from Trove – an Australian database for journals and newspapers – and double-clicked on an article from the Western Weekly dated 27 February 1956. A grainy, pixellated photo of a man kissing a young woman on the cheek was positioned underneath a headline that announced ‘LOCAL BOYS PLANT ONE ON ENGLISH BOTANY STUDENT’.

Eighteen-year-old Londoner Miss Geraldine Burnsby might be a long way from home, but she’s finding her way around Perth, thanks to some very willing tour guides.

Miss Burnsby has travelled from the UK to study botany at Fisher University as part of an exchange with the University of New London. She is one of two lucky girls who began their undergraduate degrees in the School of Plant Sciences this year.

Was Gran the other one? I continued reading.

On the day we met her, Miss Burnsby wore a fetching floral blouse and navy slacks, which showed off her svelte physique and alabaster complexion.

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