Page 19 of Birds of a Feather

‘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.

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