The Road to Gundagai (18 page)

Fred shrugged. ‘I reckon our gran must have been Chinese. Marj and me, we’re orphans. I was only six when Ma and Dad died, Marj just a baby. We were sent to an orphanage. No one else wanted to claim us. My hair’s black, like Marj’s. I looked more Chinese before I dyed it. Bein’ blond were part of my disguise.’

Blue stared at him. ‘Why did you need to be disguised?’

‘Got into a bit of trouble up in Brisbane,’ said Fred airily.

Blue looked at him suspiciously. ‘What kind of trouble?’

‘Nothin’ much.’

‘He robbed a bank,’ said Mah flatly.

‘What?!’

‘What else were I to do?’ Fred made it almost sound reasonable. ‘The orphanage was bad enough, but at least they gave us three meals a day, even if it was mostly porridge and bread and scrape.’

‘It sounds terrible.’ Blue thought of her own childhood, walking in the park, Mum on one side, Dad on the other, licking ice cream from the ice-cream truck. Servants, like Mah, to do anything unpleasant or boring. Servants to tidy her toys when she tired of them, fetch Mum’s shawl if she felt cold.

‘They did their best,’ said Mah quietly. ‘There are so many orphans, so few to care for them.’

Fred shrugged. ‘Anyhow, they chucked us out of the orphanage when we was twelve. Nine years ago, that was for me. Girls went into service, like Marj. They got me a job sweeping the floor in a shoe factory — not one of your dad’s. Blimey, but it stank. If it wasn’t the hides being tanned, it was the glue. Made enough to share a bed with two others in a boarding house, more porridge and bread and scrape, and Irish stew on Sundays. And then the factory closed down. Couldn’t get a job no matter how hard I tried. A quarter of Australia unemployed — who’s going to give a job to a skinny twelve-year-old who looks Chinese?’

He looked at Blue, the laughter gone from his eyes. ‘I rode the rattler out of Melbourne. One of the older blokes on the road, Jim, took me under his wing. Showed me how to collect the susso rations “for me sick dad”, line me pants with newspaper so I didn’t freeze sleeping rough at night, how to pinch a shirt from some rich cockie’s washing line when mine wore out. Worked our way up from town to town …’

Blue thought of all the men they’d seen in the past six months, humping their blueys — the rolled-up tatty blankets, the dangling billy — allowed to collect their weekly rations at a town’s police station as long as they were well down the road by sundown, not allowed to linger even when footsore or sick, some with beards like magpies’ nests, with years of grime darkening their skins, others with faces painfully bare from shaving in whatever water they could find in a dam or creek or storm-water drain. Fred had been one of those …

‘Got to Brissie finally, but there were no work there either. So Jim came up with a plan. Just one bank, on payday, when they’d have plenty o’ cash, an’ we’d have enough to set ourselves up real nice. Start up a little shop maybe. Marj too.’

‘Don’t you dare say it was for me,’ said Mah fiercely. ‘I knew nothing. What you did was wrong. Bad.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Fred gazed out towards the sea. The waves hushed faintly beyond the dunes.

‘What happened?’ asked Blue.

‘Jim had a pistol. Old German one. He’d brought it back from the war. No ammunition. Don’t think it even worked, but they weren’t to know that. Covered our faces in balaclavas. Got the money too, four bags of it, everyone lyin’ on the floor. But the manager had a pistol. An’ his was loaded. He got Jim as we was going out …’

Fred’s gaze was still on the sand dunes.

‘Killed him?’ whispered Blue.

Fred looked back at her, his face blank. ‘Didn’t die for two days. But he told them my name, what I looked like. They had a sketch of me in the newspaper. We had this hidey-hole in the shed of an old sugar factory. Snakes as big as your arm and the cockroaches … Anyhow, Jim didn’t tell them about it. I laid low till I was too hungry to hide any longer. Dug a hole for the money. Planned to come back for it later, when the fuss had died down.

‘Didn’t dare go near the train line. I knew they’d be watching the rattlers. Walked as far as I could that night. Slept under a bush, and then next morning, there were these sideshows in a fairground. I thought I could hide in the back of one of their wagons when they moved on, but soon as I got there I saw two police. I ducked into the fortune-teller’s tent …’

‘Madame,’ said Blue softly.

He nodded. ‘She could see in those days. Took one look at me and knew just who I was. “You are a thief,” she told me. “The question is, are you a good thief or a bad one?”’ He shook his head. ‘Thought she was magic for a while, she knew so much, all about the orphanage and Jim. Found out later the coppers had already been in to see her. They’d checked on everyone at the carnival too.

‘Madame offered me a deal. Her Big Top had burned down at Gundagai. That was why she and the Olsens were with the carnival. She and Mrs Olsen were doing the Dance of the Seven Veils too, just the two of them — Gertrude was still too young, and Ginger just a baby. But before her Big Top had burned Madame had been on the trapeze.’

It still seemed impossible to imagine Madame flying like Gertrude across the tent. ‘What was Madame’s act like?’

‘I never saw her,’ said Fred regretfully. ‘She was gettin’ too old for it even then and she knew her eyesight was goin’ too. Anyway, you can’t do the trapeze without a Big Top and the right ropes and pulleys. Gertrude was only eight or nine years old, but Madame and Mrs Olsen were training her up. Knew she was goin’ to be something good. So Madame offered me a trade. She knew how much I’d got in the bank job — enough for a new Big Top and a decent truck. If I told her where the loot was, she and Mrs Olsen would make sure I weren’t found. Never, not so long as I pulled up me socks and stayed on the straight and narrow.’ Fred shrugged. ‘So the Magnifico Family Circus got going again. Me and Madame and Mrs Olsen and the kids.’

‘And Ebenezer, Ephraim?’

‘Nah, they came later. Had some others with us before them too.’

Blue stared at him. So the circus she loved had come from stolen money. There was something more he wasn’t saying. Something big. ‘And Sheba?’

‘Sheba was there, of course.’ Fred gave the elephant a grin. ‘Think Madame wanted that truck mainly so Sheba didn’t have to walk from town to town any more.’

Blue looked at Mah. ‘Did you know what he was doing?’

‘I was still at the orphanage. I saw his picture in the paper. Not a good picture, but there was his name. I knew it was him. I was so ashamed. He wrote to me, but I wouldn’t answer.’ She shrugged. ‘Then when I was twelve I was sent to your parents’ house. Mrs Huggins was hard, but your mother was kind. She gave me your dresses when you grew out of them. Even the blue coat with the rabbit-skin collar. And new shoes from your factories where someone had made a mistake, so they couldn’t be sold.’

Blue flushed. Charity. She’d had so much, and Mah so little. She’d never even noticed. She thought, you scrubbed the hall floor while I went to tennis parties. I thought of you as my friend, but you share with your friends, you don’t just give them the things you no longer need.

‘I’m sorry.’ She met Mah’s gaze. ‘You did everything for me back then. And I just took.’

Fred looked from one to the other, puzzled. ‘I thought you’d both be happy. Being together again and everything.’

Blue ignored him, looking at Mah. If only she’d smile. She attempted a smile herself. ‘You can share everything I have now, though that’s only two pounds, fourpence. Everything else belongs to all of us. Or Madame.’

Mah considered. ‘So if I stay here …’

Fred said, ‘Of course you’re goin’ to stay here!’

Mah kept her eyes on Blue. ‘If I stay here, you’re not going to say, “Mah, please fetch my sandwiches?”’

Blue looked at the sandwich in her hand, then back at Mah. ‘No. Well, no more than I might say, “I’m getting a sandwich. Do you want one too?” There are no servants here, Mah. We work hard, but we work together.’

‘That’s what I told her.’ Fred bit into his own sandwich. ‘Eat up, princess,’ he added to Blue. ‘Marj ate while you were changing.’

‘Mah? Do you hate me?’

‘Hate? No.’ Mah considered. ‘Envied. Resented.’

Blue looked at her helplessly through the darkness. Behind them Sheba munched her hay. ‘I thought we were friends. Sort of friends.’

Mah picked up the teddy bear and cuddled it absently. ‘Not at first. You were a young lady and I was the servant who got your cast-offs. But you let me read your books,’ she said softly. ‘You said, “You’ll like this one.” When you went into town and came back with chocolates you would give me one. You didn’t pick out the ones you didn’t like. You offered me the whole box to choose from. But I didn’t know we were friends till I found myself in the flames to find you.’ Mah met her eyes. ‘If we hadn’t been friends, you wouldn’t have hugged me now.’

‘You didn’t hug me back.’

Mah grinned. Suddenly, magically, her face was Fred’s, with a touch of Fred’s wickedness too. Any housekeeper seeing that grin on a housemaid would have been automatically suspicious. She hugged Blue sharply, her wiry arms strong, then sat back. ‘There you are then.’ She wrinkled her nose at Fred. ‘You can stop worrying, big brother. I’m staying, just as you planned.’

Sheba gave a satisfied rumble behind them. A pink-tipped trunk edged over their shoulders and grabbed the teddy bear. Mah gave a sharp cry as it was plucked from her hands.

‘She only lends it to you.’ Blue bit into her sandwich. The greasy meatiness was good. ‘Pass me another, Fred. I’m starved.’

‘Your word is my command, princess.’ Fred passed her the plate, then offered it to Mah.

Mah took a sandwich and started eating. When she could, she said, ‘If you hadn’t been my friend, I wouldn’t have written to Fred, saying he must save you.’

‘I … don’t understand.’ But suddenly she did, the pieces of the jigsaw coming together. The servant who heard everything, the brother at the circus …

The wind sneaked over the dunes, smelling of ice and sea. Mah shivered. Fred took off his jacket and put it over her shoulders.

‘After the fire …’

After you saved me, thought Blue.

‘… I heard Mrs Huggins say the police had found a couple of kerosene tins in the nursery next to your bedroom. The police came down hard on us, but why would servants want to do such a thing? Your family were good to us. Even if they hadn’t been, jobs were hard to get.’

Blue tried to think who might have had access to the nursery. So many people had come back to the house after the funeral service, not just the aunts and Uncle Herbert but the factory managers, Mum’s friends from church and tennis, and men Dad had been at school with, as well as his friends from the business world.

Blue shook her head. ‘Someone would have noticed if any guest carried kerosene tins.’

‘Reckon someone was paid to torch the place,’ said Fred.

Blue felt the hairs rise on her arms. Fred knew about things like theft and arson. Kind, laughing Fred. Fred who had robbed a bank, with a pistol. Had it really been unloaded? She blinked.

‘Easy enough for someone to come in through the window. They could leave a couple of candles burning near the cans, nice fat ones, so they could get away afore it all flared up.’

He’s talking like it was a circus trick. He doesn’t seem to realise it was my life, thought Blue. ‘So you came to the hospital to look out for me,’ she said to Mah slowly.

Mah shrugged. ‘Partly. Mostly I needed a job too. Even a decent bed and my meals till I could find another one. Stupid Chinese girl, not speak English much. Work for nothing. At least I got to eat your liver custards.’

‘You had to eat my leftovers!’

‘Better than burned porridge at the orphanage. But I got worried,’ said Mah. ‘The burns healed, but you got sicker. Every day you got sicker. I watched. I listened. And then I heard your aunt say “arsenic”.’

Blue sat as though the air about her had turned to ice. She had accepted intellectually that the poisoning story was probably true. She had even accepted that her aunts might have been responsible.

Almost.

This was different. ‘Did they really say they were going to kill me?’ she whispered. ‘Are you sure?’

Mah looked at her with sympathy. ‘It was about two weeks before you left. I was outside the door. “That Chinese girl is absolutely not allowed in the dining room,”’ she mimicked. ‘I heard your Aunt Daisy say, “How long does arsenic take to kill?” Then your Aunt Lilac said, “Who can be sure? One more dose, or twenty, and she will be dead. Weedkiller can kill bluebells too.” Then Ethel saw me. Gave me a fat ear for eavesdropping.’

‘Weedkiller can kill bluebells too.’ How could Aunt Lilac have said that? thought Blue. How could they poison their own niece? What had I ever done to them? ‘Did they say why?’ Her voice trembled.

Mah shook her head.

‘For money,’ said Fred flatly. ‘It’s always for money.’

Blue shook her head. She wasn’t rich, not with the house burned down and Dad’s salary gone. Even if the aunts had inherited after she died, was being Mum’s cousins close enough so they’d inherit automatically? A few hundred pounds wouldn’t turn them into murderers. It might seem like a lot of money to people like Fred and Mah, but not to Aunt Lilac and Aunt Daisy. The pearls and silverware Aunt Lilac had inherited from her own mother had to be worth more than that, though Aunt Lilac would probably never sell them.

‘Evil old witches, that’s what I think. It’s all right, princess. You’re safe with us now.’ Fred picked up a shawl from one of the bales of hay and wrapped it around Blue’s shoulders.

Blue tried to push her thoughts into order. ‘That’s why you brought my water up to me. And the dry toast …’

Mah nodded. ‘I drew that water out of the well. No one can poison dry toast, not if it’s from the loaf we all ate in the kitchen. I kept trying to think how they were doing it. It couldn’t have been in the liver custards or tapioca either, ’cause the old girls knew I ate them too, and I didn’t get sick. It might have been the milk. I poured it out the window, as often as I dared. But who’d have believed me? Not the police. Probably not even you. If I’d spoken out, I’d just have been homeless and you’d have had no one at all. I knew I had to get you away, somewhere safe. I had to get a job so I could rent a room and convince you to come with me. I went to the library on my half day off, read all the job notices in the newspapers. There was a bit in one of them saying that Magnifico’s was in Ballarat. I sent a telegram to Fred care of the circus there, saying I needed to see him urgently.’