The Road to Gundagai (12 page)

She stepped awkwardly down into the darkness, then found she could walk slightly more easily than she had done before. The dance must have ripped her scar, allowing her a half inch more freedom.

It was sore, but a long way from real pain. The night’s coolness stroked her skin. Something smelled good, of meat and strangely of aniseed balls too. How long was it since she’d been really hungry? She forced herself towards the fire. It’s safe, she told herself. Even if the flames spread to the caravans, we’ll be outside. We can run, escape.

Fred stood up as she approached. He wore neither beard and tattoos or harem pants now, just worn moleskin trousers and a blue shirt, his blond hair combed back with hair oil. ‘Good to see you, princess. That sleep’s given you roses in your cheeks again.’

Gertrude snorted. ‘No, it hasn’t.’

‘Sit down, Belle.’ Ebenezer moved to make room for her on a bale of hay. ‘Feel up to a plate of tucker?’

‘Please,’ said Blue. She sat down next to him.

‘Goulash and dumplings,’ said Madame, as Mrs Olsen scooped out a plate of food, then picked up a vast frying pan filled with small lumps of dough and held it over the flames. ‘It is my grandmother’s recipe. It is good.’ The accent was slightly stronger as she spoke of goulash.

‘What is it?’

‘Mutton stew,’ said Gertrude.

‘With paprika,’ said Madame reprovingly, as Ginger passed Blue a tin plate, heaped with shadowed meat and gravy and what looked like lumps of vegetables, and a tin spoon. ‘Lots of paprika. The best that Melbourne can provide. And garlic from an Italian farmer four camps ago.’

‘Lemon rind from the tree we passed last night,’ added Mrs Olsen, stirring the pot again. ‘And potatoes and lots of that wild fern stuff that grows along the railway line. What’s its name again, Madame?’

‘It is fennel. You must smell it before you pick it, in case it is hemlock. If you eat hemlock, you die fast.’

Blue halted the spoon halfway to her mouth. Madame smiled, as if she knew exactly what Blue was thinking. ‘Your dinner is safe to eat. If it was hemlock, we all would be dead by now. Goulash is made from what you have. Nettle tops, sometimes, carrots or celery, tomatoes in autumn, or when we go north.’

‘Always hard to get enough fresh vegetables,’ said Mrs Olsen. ‘We need to put up a sign at the gate maybe.
Wanted: carrots and celery
. Sometimes I think I’d give my eye teeth for a box of onions.’

Madame nodded. ‘Or sour cream. Goulash is best with sour cream. But the farmers give their cream that turns sour to their pigs before it is at its best. How is your stomach?’

Blue flushed. One didn’t talk about one’s stomach in public. ‘It’s fine.’ It was true. Both the cramps and the nausea had vanished.

‘That is good. Now eat.’

Blue ate. It was strange to eat meat that tasted of black jellybeans and aniseed balls. It was delicious, after the first shock of new flavours, but a little was enough.

‘If you don’t want your bones, I’ll have ’em,’ said Ginger. Blue passed him the plate and spoon. He picked up the bones in his fingers and began to gnaw them.

She had never seen anyone eat bones with their fingers before, nor adults eat anything but soup or pudding with spoons. But then nor had she ever eaten seated on a bale of hay, with an elephant slowly chewing beside her.

‘Try a biscuit,’ said Mrs Olsen. She picked one off the dented frying pan, cooling on a bale of hay, and held it out to Blue. One does not pass food with one’s fingers, came Aunt Lilac’s voice. One picks it up with a fork and spoon, or silver tongs …

Blue shoved the voice into the part of her mind labelled ‘Ignore’ and took the biscuit. It was a circle of dough, flat on top and bottom, with a dark sweet filling leaking from one edge. She nibbled. The pastry was rich and sweet and scented with something familiar she couldn’t quite identify. ‘What is in it?’

‘Squished flies.’ Fred’s voice was innocent.

‘What?!’

He laughed. ‘Settle down, princess. Just looks like squished flies, that’s all.’

‘Stop teasing the girl,’ said Mrs Olsen. ‘The filling is currants and jam. Raspberry jam this week. Sometimes it’s dates instead of currants, or sultanas. Crystallised ginger at Christmas. Whatever we can get. It’s an old recipe. A friend gave it to me years ago. You fry them instead of bake them. Useful on the road.’

‘They’re good.’ She was about to try another nibble when something soft and firm touched her hand. She dropped the biscuit in surprise. Sheba’s trunk delicately picked it up from the trampled grass, and inserted it neatly in her vast mouth. The elephant chewed with obvious pleasure. Sheba, it seemed, like squished flies too.

Madame eyed Blue critically. ‘Another week, perhaps two, I think, and your hunger will come back. Your strength too. So, the question now is, what to do with you?’

It was as though a cold wave had erupted from the shadows. ‘But … but I thought I was going to stay with you.’

‘Of course,’ said Madame impatiently, as though that had never been in doubt. ‘But to be with the circus you must work, firstly because if you do not someone will notice. A girl who does nothing, they will say. Is she a runaway? Is she a tart? A boy who does nothing, he must be a thief. Always people from the circus are suspected.’

Blue nodded, thinking of the sergeant.

‘Also it is good to work. To work at what you love, with those you love, that is the heart of life. It withers the soul to sit and let others work to keep you. But also you must work to earn your keep. Once …’ Madame waved her hands as though gesturing at the past. ‘We were rich, rich enough for the bracelets to be rubies, not red glass. But that was when my darling Monsieur was alive, before the fire at Gundagai, long before this beast they call the Depression ate away our lives. These are not good days. We are lucky to make enough for the petrol. A dozen eggs and a loaf of bread will let you see the circus now, and Mrs Olsen mends our costumes till they are more darn than silk. So, you must work. But as what?’

‘Put her in the House of Horrors,’ said Gertrude.

Silence fell. Even Sheba seemed to look at the older girl reproachfully.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that,’ she said.

Yes, you did, thought Blue. Strangely the suggestion didn’t hurt. For she had been a monster when she’d looked in the mirror, back in the aunts’ musty rooms. But today, for a while, she had been beautiful, with the blue sky as her roof.

Gertrude poked the fire. ‘It isn’t fair! Me and Mum have the only real talent in this show.’

‘And me,’ said Ginger.

Gertrude gave her first real smile. She ruffled his hair. ‘All right, and you, brat. But we don’t even get any wages.’

Madame shone her sightless eyes through the dimness. ‘We share what we have. You’d like a star on your caravan perhaps? A sign that says
The Glorious Gloria
?’

‘Why not?’

‘Gertrude, leave it.’ Mrs Olsen’s voice was quiet. It was even almost afraid.

‘Why should I? If we’re supposed to be sharing things, then why don’t I have a say in who joins us? We could’ve taken on that juggler in Bendigo. Why take on a crippled girl?’

‘I have my reasons.’ Madame could have been Queen Victoria now, a thinner one with a hawk nose. ‘I always have my reasons, and they are good ones.’

‘You’re jealous ’cause Belle’s prettier than you.’ Fred reached for another squished fly. ‘Or she’s gunna be, when she gets some meat on her bones.’

For a second Blue wondered who he was talking about. Then she realised that Belle was her. Beautiful.

Gertrude glared across the flames. ‘I am not! And she isn’t! She never will be either!’

‘Enfants! Behave!’ Madame’s voice was a lash. ‘Gertrude, you are beautiful. Belle, you are also beautiful. Both are different beauties, and both are useful.’

‘She can take my place in the dance,’ said Fred. ‘Me muscles are getting too big to be a girl’s.’

Gertrude’s glare had razor edges. ‘All Fred does is the dance and lie around as the bearded lady. I do more work than anyone in the whole show.’

‘An’ you’re asleep while I’m taking down the Big Top —’ Fred began.

‘Silence! Fred, you will keep dancing for now. In the new year, I promise we will replace you. Belle, you will take Gertrude’s place in the dance. She is right. She must be fresh for the trapeze. If I could, I would put the trapeze on first. But the audience must wait for it. Belle, you said you used to ride a horse, but we do not have a horse, and it takes years to learn the tricks with one. Do you do anything else that might be useful?’

‘I used to play the violin. I haven’t played since … since the accident.’

‘Your hands are not scarred?’

Blue had forgotten Madame was blind. She glanced at Ebenezer. He is the ringmaster, she thought. He should be in charge. But he was scraping up his second helping of goulash as calmly as Ephraim, content to let Madame decide.

‘No,’ said Blue. ‘They’re not scarred. I could be a clown.’

‘No, you couldn’t,’ said Ephraim. ‘Takes more work than you think, getting folks to laugh. A clown needs to move his whole body too, arms and legs all over the place. That’s what makes it funny.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Not saying we couldn’t work you into the act, but it might take months to get it right. Nothing has a crowd throwing tomatoes faster than a dead-fish clown.’

‘Dead fish?’

‘A stinker,’ said Ephraim.

The group was silent, apart from a burp from Ginger, and the slow munch of Sheba at her hay.

There’s nothing I can do, thought Blue. If I had a whole body, I could learn. But not with the tops of my legs fused together.

‘A mermaid,’ said Mrs Olsen abruptly, out of the darkness.

They all stared at her.

‘Makes sense, don’t it? Can’t move her legs much, and pretty as a picture in the blonde wig.’

‘We can’t have a mermaid in the harem dance!’ objected Gertrude. ‘The punters’ll recognise her.’

‘Time we changed the wigs for the dance anyhow. I’ll dye them dark as soon as I can find some walnut husks. Belle’ll be blonde as a mermaid — mermaids have golden tresses —’

‘And bare breasts,’ added Fred wickedly.

‘None of that language here,’ said Ebenezer.

‘It is a good suggestion,’ said Madame. ‘No,’ as Blue began to object, ‘the circus must always be most respectable. You will be covered, but in silk, the same colour as your skin. The long wig will cover anything that should not be seen. No proper clothes, just the tail up to your waist, and the silk to the top of your neck. You can do this?’ she asked Mrs Olsen.

Mrs Olsen nodded. ‘I can use that old sequinned evening dress to make the tail. Stuff it with straw.’

‘Not too much.’ It almost seemed as though the blind woman could already see the costume. ‘They must see the shape of her hips. She has good hips, does she not?’

‘Too right,’ said Fred.

Madame ignored him. ‘The tail must fit tightly about the hips, but padded just enough to hide that she has legs.’

‘Some geezer’s going to try to get his paws on her first town we come to.’ Fred suddenly sounded protective. ‘She ain’t used to that. Why don’t we —?’

‘She will sit on a rock, in a tub of water — Ephraim, you will see to that.’ Madame’s tone did not allow for discussion.

‘Yes, Madame.’

‘And if anyone tries to reach across the tub to touch the mermaid, the bearded lady will push them in.’

‘That’d be good for a laugh,’ said Ephraim.

Fred grinned. ‘Or a punch-up.’

‘Either,’ said Madame comfortably, ‘as long as it pleases the punters. Belle, you will also help Ginger wash the Queen of Sheba each morning. He will show you how. You will help Mrs Olsen with the sewing. You can sew?’

‘I’m not any good making patterns or embroidery, but my hemming and blanket stitch are all right.’

‘As long as you can sew a seam and put back a button or repair a hem. That will save Mrs Olsen’s eyes by lamplight. And that is enough for tonight.’ She turned to Blue. ‘Off you go to bed.’

‘Please, one more thing. Could I write a letter? It’s to someone who might be worried about me. A girl called Mah. I should have thought of her last night, but I felt so sick.’ She tried a smile. ‘My brain turned into marshmallow. She’s a maid at my aunts’. She saved my life during the fire.’

Ebenezer shook his head. ‘Your aunts will see any letter afore it gets to one o’ their servants.’

‘I’ll write it,’ said Fred. ‘I’ll tell her what she needs to know, but make it look like it comes from me.’

‘What do you mean?’

Fred grinned. ‘How about this then?
Dear Mah, Just to say the work is going bonzer. Never thought I’d like growing cabbages and spuds, but it’s the life for me all right. Even the rose bush you gave me is looking good, pretty as a picture.
I’ll sign it,
Your loving brother, Daniel
, no address. If she’s got any sense, she’ll know the rose bush means you.’ He winked at her. ‘You’re pretty as a rose too.’

Blue blushed. ‘That would work,’ she said hurriedly to cover her confusion. ‘Mah doesn’t blabber either. Thank you.’

He grinned. ‘Any time, princess.’

‘By the way,’ Ebenezer reached into his pocket, ‘here’s your nine pounds, fourteen shillings.’ He smiled at her. ‘Didn’t charge you for the Big Top show, seeing as you only saw half of it.’

How could she take money? ‘No, really —’ she began.

‘Take it,’ advised Fred. He flashed his grin at her again. ‘You ain’t gunna see no wages.’

Mrs Olsen nodded. ‘What we have we share. Or as Madame thinks best.’

‘Quite right. And now to bed.’ Madame, as ever, expecting obedience.

Blue stood, suddenly an outsider again. ‘What do you all do now?’

‘Wash up and go to bed too,’ said Mrs Olsen. Her smile was kind across the firelight. ‘Ephraim stays awake, in case any locals come looking for trouble. Ebenezer takes over the watch at two o’clock.’

‘You put the fire out too?’ The question was spoken before Blue could stop herself.

Ephraim looked at her steadily. ‘The fire goes out each night. It’s cold tea for us in the morning, and no porridge neither, just cheese and damper.’

‘I have not allowed a fire to burn all night since my Monsieur died,’ said Madame. ‘And that is also why we use an expensive generator to light the Big Top now, and not acetylene gas. No flames will hurt anyone in my circus. Now go to bed.’