Read The Road to Gundagai Online
Authors: Jackie French
Blue went.
She woke in the night, half in a dream at first. She was at home, with Willy in the nursery next door, the scent of toasted crumpets and honey lingering from Nurse’s supper, shared with her charge and his older sister.
No, she was in the hospital; no, in the bed in the small hot room at the aunts’. She could hear the footsteps as the poisoner grew closer. If she could open her eyes, she’d see their evil gloating, see the spoonful of white powder …
She wrenched her eyes open and lay still. Madame snored on the floor below her, a high-pitched whistling sound. Someone else snored too, lower and louder.
The elephant, sleeping on her hay.
A light shone through the boiled-lolly windows. Ebenezer’s watchman’s lamp?
No, it was starlight. A million tiny pinpricks of light. Suddenly the tiny caravan seemed roofed by the universe.
Tomorrow she’d help wash an elephant, dressed somehow as a boy. Blue didn’t know how Mrs Olsen would manage to get trousers over her scars, but if her make-up magic could turn Fred into a harem dancer and a bearded lady, she’d be able to make Blue look like a boy.
She reached for the medicine and took a swig, quietly, so as not to wake Madame. But the whistling snore suddenly ceased. ‘You are in pain?’ The voice was as composed as ever.
‘Not too much,’ said Blue.
‘You will sleep again, when the medicine takes effect.’ Again it was a statement, not a hope. ‘I dreamed,’ Madame added. ‘It was a good dream.’
‘I’m sorry I woke you. What was it about?’
‘Monsieur. The dead come often in dreams. At my age only the wicked have nightmares. I dreamed of the day we met.’
Outside, the rumbling snores ceased. A vast creaking of joints and then a quiet chomp announced that Sheba had woken and considered it time for a midnight snack. ‘How did you meet him?’ asked Blue softly.
‘Because he was a gentleman. Gentle and a man, but more than both of those. I was with the Empire Circus then, on the trapeze, as the Boldinis are now. We forded the river at Gundagai. Gundagai gave him to me, and then took him away …’
Madame’s voice faded. For a moment Blue thought she might have gone to sleep and then she said, ‘The river rose in the night. When we woke up that morning, the sky and ground were water. The men of the town helped drag the animal cages to dry ground while we waded to safety. But the water kept on rising. I was strong back then, but the current grew far stronger. It tried to claw me under. I climbed a tree as the water eddied around me. And that is where Monsieur found me, in my damp nightdress.’
‘Did he carry you to safety?’
‘Of course. What man would have done less, a pretty girl in a wet shift that showed her body? But that was not why I loved him.’ Blue could faintly see Madame’s smile in the starlight. ‘He took his big white handkerchief and he tied it around his eyes, there as he stood waist deep in the water, so he could not see my near nakedness. I had performed in silk tights before a thousand audiences, but that is not the same, and Monsieur knew it. I had to tell him where to go. Turn left, I said, turn right, watch out for the drifting log. Then when we reached the dry ground he put me down, and took off his coat. He didn’t remove his blindfold till I had put his coat on.’
‘He sounds … remarkable,’ said Blue.
‘Oh yes. Men gave me jewels quite often, for I was beautiful. They gave me passion, and once a fur coat, but the moths ate it, past Deniliquin. But Monsieur gave me respect and then he gave me love. And when the circus travelled down the muddy road later that week Monsieur came with us.’
‘So he wasn’t with a circus when he met you?’
‘No. He was respectable. Most respectable, with a shop and a good house. But he knew I needed the road, the silence of the audience before they cheer. He sold them both, the house and shop, to come with me. What other man would do that?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Blue, and then, because Madame seemed to be waiting for more comment: ‘What sort of shop did he have?’
‘He was a taxidermist.’ Madame sounded as proud as if Monsieur had been a jeweller to royalty. Blue was glad Madame couldn’t see her smile. So that was where the stuffed bear had come from, and the two-headed calf.
The old woman’s voice was soft from the floor below her. ‘The others have heard this story too many times perhaps. It has been most pleasant, telling it again.’ She rolled over in her makeshift bed. ‘And now you will sleep. You will dream of good days to come and wake up stronger and relaxed and happy.’
It was not so much a command as a confident prediction. Blue lay back and looked up at the blurred stars again. Soon she would travel down the dusty road, just as Madame had with Monsieur. One day she would be well and strong. Strong enough to lift buckets of water to wash an elephant.
Outside, Sheba reached for another mouthful of hay.
HOPE CREEK, NEW SOUTH WALES, MAY 1933
Hope Creek meandered past Hope Town susso camp, then through the sand hills, green at the edges, brown as it slid down the beach to the sea. Blue hadn’t been down to the waves yet. She hoped not to. The ocean still brought nightmares. A line from a poem Mum had loved seeped into her mind:
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, where the winds are all asleep
. It would be good to think of Mum and Dad and Willy, living in a sand-strewn cavern, instead of struggling, gasping …
‘Hey,’ said Ginger impatiently, up to his ankles in the slimy creek. He held out the bucket of water. Blue took it, lifted the second bucket in her other hand, and began the long sway-stepped walk back through the dunes to the paddock where the circus had set up camp the day before. Behind her Ginger filled another bucket. Sheba loved bathing in the waves, but she needed fresh water to drink — a lot of it. Filling Sheba’s water trough was the first job of the day.
Blue edged carefully down the last of the dunes, glad when she’d reached the flat again, despite the occasional prickle on her bare feet. The soles were tough enough to cope with bindi-eyes now, after six months of going barefoot, but uneven ground still jarred the scar between her legs. It was hidden in the cut-off, too-big trousers that hung so low they didn’t rub, for when she wasn’t being a mermaid or a harem dancer she was still a boy, in a tattered, high-collared shirt with a wide-brimmed felt hat pulled down low.
‘Here you go, old girl.’ Blue watched Sheba’s trunk suck up the entire bucketful, then squirt it into her mouth. Blue tried not to resent the precious drops that escaped and soaked into the dry ground. She’d already made two trips for water today, with more to come.
Mrs Olsen looked over at her as she crossed from the Big Top to her caravan, still dressed in her Boldini costume after her early morning practice with Ginger and Gertrude. No practice hours were too long for Gertrude. Or perhaps, thought Blue maliciously, she’d rather practise on the ropes than lug buckets of water or glue clumps of fur back on Bruin.
Mrs Olsen nodded at the buckets. ‘Don’t you go drinking that unless it’s boiled. Who knows what susso-camp muck’s got into it.’ She shook her head. ‘Whoever named this place Hope Town needs a flogging. Never seen anywhere with less hope about it.’
Blue glanced at the shantytown across the dunes.
Hope Town stank. Blue and the circus had passed several susso camps on their journey north, squat hastily erected villages of tar-paper and flattened kerosene tins and scavenged, rusty corrugated iron. Each one was just far enough away from a town or city to stop the townsfolk demanding the police move the squatters on. But Hope Town was the largest camp they’d seen yet, a refuge for the homeless of Sydney, with the sand and the flies and the southerly wind, a greasy creek for water and the thin soil beyond the dunes to try to grow some vegetables.
‘Don’t know why Madame had to land us here.’ Gertrude appeared, dressed in a pair of tights topped with a long-sleeved man’s shirt, straps around her wrists, her short hair damp with sweat. She had taken off the chalked slippers she wore to help her grip the rope; her feet were as bare and calloused as Blue’s and Ginger’s. Even in rehearsal clothes she still looked beautiful.
Blue tried to stifle a pang of envy. No matter what Fred said, or how much greasepaint and blonde hair she wore, she’d never have Gertrude’s glamour. ‘Madame says that punters will motor down from Sydney. Anyway, the Hope Town people deserve a bit of fun.’
Gertrude shrugged.
‘And Sheba likes playing in the waves,’ Blue added.
Gertrude’s sullenness softened. She reached up and patted Sheba’s flank. The elephant gazed down, as though hoping for a carrot, apple or squished fly.
‘Bath water ready in the Big Top!’ called Fred. ‘Ladies first, but you’d better hurry.’
‘Thanks, Fred! Throw us a towel, Mum.’
Gertrude grabbed the towel and headed back into the Big Top. In places like this, when water was scarce, one tub had to do for all of them. Gertrude got first go, as the circus star, then Mrs Olsen, Blue, Ebenezer, Ephraim, Fred and Ginger, in order of circus rank. Madame washed privately, with liberal additions of gardenia-scented ‘toilet water’ sent up from Melbourne to the various railway stations along their route, as well as her precious herbs and spices.
Blue sighed. Gertrude would take an age. She always did, soaking till the water was almost cold. There’d be time to eat breakfast before the tub was free. She climbed the stairs to the Olsen caravan.
The food was laid out under fly covers on the hinged shelf that covered Gertrude’s bed during the day. Everyone helped themselves to food whenever they had spare time. The only meal the circus folk ate together was dinner, a proper meal after the performance, when the crowds had trickled away, leaving the circus once more their own.
Today’s offering included the usual damper baked in the fire’s ashes last night, the inevitable cheese under fly netting, a vast billy of cold sweet tea topped with a flyproof doily, and a plate of squished flies. There were tomatoes too, massive and misshapen, as though they didn’t know the correct shape to grow in this coastal soil and battering wind, a jar of pumpkin chutney and a plate of sliced cucumbers.
Blue helped herself liberally, shoving cheese, chutney, tomato and cucumber onto a vast damper sandwich. Tomatoes and cucumbers were a treat. Most country towns had few vegetables even for those who lived there, much less for a visiting circus, except for the everlasting potatoes and pumpkins, unless a Chinese market gardener had made it his business to supply the town.
But meat was usually plentiful — no matter how far out in the sticks they were, there was always a cockie farmer willing to swap a side of elderly mutton for tickets for his family, and if that failed there were bunnies by the hundred for Ginger to trap. Flour was bought by the sackful, tea in a chest, and jam and golden syrup in the largest tins a general store might stock.
But they kept no sugar, as it dissolved each time the caravans had to cross a creek or when the roof leaked, which somehow it always did no matter how often the cracks were plugged. Both the billies of tea and the squished flies were sweetened with golden syrup. Big slabs of damper with an ooze of golden syrup across the top, combined with mugs of tea strong enough to dissolve a spoon, gave energy before a performance.
Blue took a big bite of sandwich, enjoying the crunch. At least autumn in a shantytown meant tomatoes and cucumbers, as well as potatoes and pumpkin and maybe a cabbage or two. Blue closed her mind to how they might have been fertilised. She took the sandwich outside and sat on a bale of hay to eat the rest of it, watching Sheba shove trunkfuls of fodder into her mouth, careful not to disturb the teddy bear that sat watching them all.
‘Penny for your thoughts, princess?’
‘Not worth a penny.’ Blue moved over to give Fred room to sit too. ‘I thought you were off to get Madame’s package from the station.’
‘Got to help you get set up in the tent first.’
‘Ephraim won’t start selling tickets for an hour yet. And I can manage.’
‘And strain yourself trying. Not while I’m around you won’t.’ Fred stood as she swallowed the last of her sandwich, and held out his hand to help her up. ‘You go get into your costume. The first of the punters’ll be here early, I reckon.’ He looked across at the shantytown. ‘They’ll want their money’s worth at the sideshows. Most of those poor sods ain’t got nothin’ else to do.’
Blue nodded. She slipped into Madame’s caravan — even after six months it was still Madame’s, not hers as well — and quickly applied the rouge, kohl and lipstick to make her look alluringly like a mermaid, then picked up the hessian sack that contained her wig and costume. Changing in the Freak Show tent was a nuisance, but the top half of a mermaid couldn’t go walking across the paddock on human legs where a member of the public might see her.
Fred was waiting by the Freak Show tent. He grinned. ‘I won’t peek.’
She grinned back. He made the same promise at least twice a week. ‘You’d better not.’
She fastened the Freak Show tent flap behind her, then quickly slipped out of her shirt, pulled on the tight silk top, then arranged a pair of soft rubber balls to push up her breasts so they seemed bigger, though not as large as the ones she wore in the dance. But the dance was performed under artificial starlight. Here the punters could examine her more closely. And did. Now to arrange the wig, the necklaces and bracelets …
She had to sit down to wriggle on the sequinned tail. It clipped with invisible fasteners to the underside of the silk just above her navel, and was skin tight across her hips and thighs, stuffed with straw below. ‘Ready!’ she called to Fred.
Fred appeared suspiciously quickly. He grinned at her again. ‘You’re pretty as a picture. And I didn’t peek. May I never eat another squished fly if I tell a lie.’
‘I believe you.’ She was sure he hadn’t. Fred might flirt, or openly admire, but he’d never stare at a girl furtively through a slit in the tent. Nor would Madame have what she called ‘doings’ at her circus.
‘Upsadaisy, princess.’ Fred lifted her, his wiry arms strong, up onto her ‘rock’ — a mound of hessian over chicken wire, roughly plastered and painted brown, in the middle of the big tub of water.