The Undertaker Orchid

Melbourne, January 1867

Georgiana watched her husband. He was laughing in a way she didn’t recognise: his head thrown back a little, his teeth on display. It struck her as genuine, and it made her wonder what she needed to do to elicit such a laugh from him.

Gordon stood with his hands in his pockets, engaged in conversation with Mr Spencer, who lived two houses further along the street. Mr Spencer was also a surgeon. Perhaps that’s why Gordon was so free with his smiles, his nods and his laughs; perhaps it was because Gordon saw Mr Spencer as a kindred spirit. She wondered what that made her. 

She stood slightly back from the white lace curtain, not wanting the two men to know she was watching. She remembered the smiles he’d given her when they first met. Those smiles had been weighted with something she hadn’t known at the time, hadn’t known until after their marriage. There had been looks, too — certain looks that made her insides shiver. The look on his face on their wedding day, when she had become his; the ones on his face that first night, deep in the shadows of her dark bedroom. But those looks and smiles had all disappeared.

She darted to her chair as Gordon said goodbye to Mr Spencer and entered the house. She heard Mary greet him and take his coat. The drawing room door opened, and Gordon walked in.

Georgiana laid down the needlepoint she hadn’t even registered she’d picked up. ‘Hello darling,’ she said. ‘How was your afternoon?’ She didn’t know where he had been. He’d seen patients in the surgery this morning, as usual, but had disappeared after his midday meal. She wouldn’t ask him about it, because she wouldn’t get an answer.

‘Very good, my dear, thank you.’ Gordon walked past her chair to the table underneath the window. ‘Ah, I thought I’d left this here.’ He picked up a small book then turned to his wife. He bent down, and her jaw tightened as he kissed the top of her head.

‘I’m afraid I won’t join you for supper tonight,’ Gordon said, flicking through the book. ‘Dr Pryor is in town and I invited him and his colleague for a late meal. I’ll be in my study until then.’ He gave Georgiana’s shoulder a pat, and was gone.

The wall clock ticked. The study door clicked shut. There were other faint noises coming from the rear of the house, possibly Mary going about her work. Georgiana turned her face to the window as a horse and carriage rattled past. These sounds all existed beyond her, in some other world. She longed for the rustle of ferns, or the call of an owl.

She remembered the day she and Gordon had met, on one of her father William’s monthly gatherings at their home. The doctor had visited to check up on William while Georgiana was out in the forest, collecting. She’d returned to the house in the gully with a bright orange fungus she had sliced from a tree with her small knife. As she approached the rear of the house, navigating the vast field of ferny bracken that lay on the floor of the gully, she had seen the doctor on his horse, disappearing down the track. She hadn’t known then how sick her father was, how little time she had left with him.

She’d entered the little house and found her father in his chair in the front room, his eyes closed. But he’d brightened when he saw her, and dismissed the doctor’s visit as a waste of time. He was far more interested in what Georgiana had collected in her basket. She’d shown him the orange fungus, and he’d told her of a cluster of pterostylis curta growing down in the far gully that she might like to investigate. He’d been fidgety, she remembered now. Nervous.

She’d helped to prepare the bedrooms for three guests, and the dinner table for four. Three of the visitors were from Melbourne — Mr Dobson, Dr Atkins, and, of course, Gordon Mortlock. All three were travelling together and would arrive at the house in the late afternoon. The fourth person to join them was Jasper Linwood, who lived only a mile down the road. As such, he was always the first to arrive at her father’s gatherings, heading to their house after he’d finished his work.

On that day Jasper had found Georgiana as she stood at her drawing desk, leafing through sketches.

‘Hello Georgie.’ Jasper leant over the desk to see what she was looking at. She caught the usual scent of sawdust. ‘Is this one new? I like it.’

He pointed to a sketch she’d completed that afternoon, of a tree fern and fungus. The arm of his white shirt had a few specks of sawdust on it, and she reached out and brushed them off, onto the floor and away from her drawings.

She gestured to the fungus. ‘I found this one today. It was clinging to the tree in such an unusual way. I’m not sure I’ve captured it correctly.’

‘Seems perfectly fine to me.’ Jasper reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He opened it up, and showed Georgiana a sketch. ‘I found this one today, behind the mill. I didn’t have much time to capture it, so it’s rather basic, I’m afraid.’

It was a flower of some sort, with a long thin stem and star-like petals. Georgiana, as usual, marvelled at Jasper’s ability to capture so much in so few lines. She knew he would’ve sketched this in a rush, during the few spare moments he could steal for himself during the day. Yet he still managed to capture the essence of the flower, the parts of it that made it unique.

Georgiana said, ‘My drawings are so chaotic compared to yours.’

‘Yes, that is true.’ Jasper adopted a joking air of superiority. ‘Quite undoubtedly the messiest things I’ve ever seen.’

She laughed and gave his arm a shove.

From outside came the sound of wheels on the drive. They both looked up as a carriage rolled slowly past the window.

‘Ah well, time to be civilised,’ Jasper said, folding up his sketch and tucking it into his pocket. ‘I should probably put my coat on.’

Georgiana slipped her own sketches away and went outside to join her father on the verandah. Jasper soon followed, sliding his arms into his coat.

Dr Atkins had been his usual jovial self, giving both Georgiana and William a warm embrace and clapping Jasper on the back. Mr Dobson was more subdued, but still greeted them pleasantly. In his hand was a small object wrapped in a handkerchief. He opened the package to reveal a small mushroom.

‘Found this fellow when we stopped for lunch,’ Mr Dobson said.

‘Wonderful,’ William replied, but his eyes were on the third man alighting from the carriage. ‘Mr Mortlock, I’m very glad you could join us.’

Mr Mortlock shook William’s hand. ‘Please, call me Gordon.’

‘Very good, very good.’ William shuffled his feet and looked around. ‘And this here is my daughter Georgiana.’

Georgiana took Gordon’s hand. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr Mortlock.’

He was quite tall and thin, with dark hair that stuck close to his head. He had a moustache that was as slender as his body. His handshake, though, was strong and firm. ‘The pleasure is mine,’ he said to her.

The talk around the dinner table was lively, as it always was on such occasions. Georgiana found herself seated next to Gordon, and at one point, when William was engaged in discussion with the other men, Gordon turned to her and said, ‘I understand you assist William in his studies?’

‘That’s right,’ Georgiana replied. ‘It’s something I’ve done since I was a young girl.’

‘I suppose that with him as a parent it was inevitable that you should have an interest in such things,’ Gordon said.

Georgiana looked fondly at her father. ‘Yes, I doubt I could have grown up not interested in flowers and plants and everything else in the natural world.’

‘It’s good of him to indulge your hobbies.’

She smiled at Gordon, but was surprised that she also felt the smallest stab of annoyance. ‘Well, I’d hardly call it a hobby, Mr Mortlock, since it takes up the vast majority of my time.’

Gordon looked amused. ‘That’s fair.’ He leaned back in his chair, still looking at her. ‘So is it fungi that captures your interest, like it does your father? Or are such things too unpleasant for you?’

‘Fungi are not unpleasant, Mr Mortlock. Perhaps they don’t arouse the same passions as other species might, but they have their charms.’

Gordon raised an eyebrow. ‘Charms?’ He leant forward and picked up a piece of fungus from the dish at the centre of the table. William always had specimens on display for visitors to discuss. Gordon held the spongy white lump between two fingers, palpating it slightly. ‘I would dearly love to hear you explain the charms of this object to some of the women I know in Melbourne. They’d be positively horrified.’

Georgiana laughed, then reached out and took the fungus from his hand. The tips of her fingers brushed his palm. ‘That sounds like a challenge I may very well take you up on, Mr Mortlock. That is, if I’m ever in Melbourne.’

She looked up and noticed Jasper at the far end of the table, watching her. Heat rose in her cheeks, and she looked away. She was very conscious of her heart beating beneath her dress, and of both men’s eyes on her.

‘I admit that I’m fond of fungi,’ she said to Gordon, attempting to keep her voice cool, ‘but I prefer ferns and flowers.’

‘Ferns, flowers and fungi,’ Gordon said. ‘That’s almost poetic.’

Dr Atkins, who had heard Gordon’s last comment, leaned over and said genially, ‘You may joke, Gordon, but Miss Georgiana here has produced some very fine paintings of fungi. I’m sure had she the talent for poetry she could write just as beautifully about the blasted things. I’m no fungi enthusiast, but I do appreciate good art.’

William, who had been growing increasingly intoxicated as the night wore on, now said loudly, ‘Yes indeed, my daughter has the talent for bringing out the beauty in all the strange things we find in this little part of the world. Georgiana, run and fetch your sketchbook. Show these city men that we’re not all cultural invertebrates out here.’

Georgiana obliged, her face even warmer now. As she brought her sketchbook back to the table, she said, ‘You know that Jasper is just a good an artist as I am. Perhaps he can share his work, too?’

But the men weren’t interested in Jasper. They pored over Georgiana’s drawings and made approving comments, and the warmth she felt inside shifted into something closer to pride. When Gordon commented on one particular sketch and said, ‘The detail here is exceptional,’ she found herself beaming at him.

Eventually, the men had moved onto other topics, and then retired to William’s study, which was Georgiana’s cue to make herself scarce. Jasper, however, had watched her clear the table, then followed as she took the plates to the small kitchen at the rear of the house. Here, a door opened out onto the forest, and Georgiana propped it open with a stone. She liked to hear the sounds of the night as she cleaned.

Jasper stepped outside, then turned to face her.

‘You’re leaving?’ she asked.

‘I’m just too tired today,’ he said.

He had looked at her then with an odd expression. She caught it and said, ‘Why are you looking at me in that manner?’

He opened his mouth, but then seemed to change his mind. He stuck his hands in his pockets and shook his head. Moonlight caught on his fair hair.

‘You are very talented, you know that, don’t you?’ he said.

She had given him a curious look. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘I just want you to remember that.’

‘Yes, Jasper, I will remember,’ she said, her tone light and teasing. She did know it, after all, even if it was something she only sometimes thought about.

And Jasper had smiled at her, said, ‘Goodnight, Georgie,’ then disappeared into the forest.

Two weeks later, Gordon had proposed to her. Two months after that, her father was dead, the little house in the forest was empty, and she and Gordon were married and living in Melbourne.