The Road to Gundagai (2 page)

The man with the placard saw her at the window. He doffed his hat. ‘The Magnifico Family Circus! For one night only, just up the road! Come young! Come old! See the Tiny Titania, the fairy who flies! Have your fortune told by Madame Zlosky! Experience for yourself the House of Horrors! More chilling and more horrible than anything this side of the Black Stump!’

‘See the two-headed calf!’ The other man took up the cry, as though there were a bigger audience than one girl and the thistles. ‘The world’s largest grizzly bear! The Sultan’s Harem dancers! The Boldini Brothers on the flying trapeze! One night only! Fresh from a triumphant Melbourne season! Now on the road to Gundagai!’

Gundagai! She’d always loved that name, tracing the Murrumbidgee River it sat on in her geography book. Did they have typists at Gundagai? She never wanted to see the sea again. But the Murrumbidgee River! Even the name made her smile. She leaned out of the window and waved at the elephant.

The elephant seemed to look at her too. It raised its trunk, almost in a salute. Blue felt her smile grow. Silly, she thought. As if an elephant would really notice her. But it had been so long since she had smiled.

‘Bluebell?’ Aunt Lilac’s step had been so quiet Blue hadn’t heard her. ‘What are you doing at the window?’

Blue turned. ‘Aunt Lilac! It’s a circus!’

‘Is it?’ Aunt Lilac’s voice was gentle, though her eyes held worry, and what might be anger too. Aunt Lilac’s voice was always gentle. Only her black dresses were stiff, starched so they seemed to suck in all the light, high-necked with skirts almost to her ankles, just like the ones she had when she was young and Queen Victoria was still on the throne, and buttoned boots, the sort Laurence’s Shoes hadn’t made since the war. Times might change, Aunt Lilac said, but modesty and good breeding did not.

‘Please, can I go?’ If the aunts and Ethel and Mah helped her, she could manage it.

Aunt Lilac shook her head.

‘Please! It’s my birthday!’ She hated how forlorn that last plea sounded. ‘I … I’d like to see the elephant.’

The last postcard she’d had from Mum and Dad, posted at Cape Town, had had elephants on it. It had arrived weeks after it had been sent, while Blue was in hospital. It was the only thing she owned now from her old life, except the silver bracelet that never left her wrist.

Soon be home
, the postcard said in Mum’s scrawl. (Mum said her governesses had never managed to teach her a ladylike hand.)
Missing you so much. Hope you like elephants. We saw a man carving them in the market yesterday and bought you a set of them, all different sizes, from big to tiny. Dad says you can put them along your windowsill and pretend you are looking out at Africa.
And then, in tiny letters, because she was running out of room,
With love always, Mum
. Dad had scribbled his and Willy’s names beside hers.

Her carved elephants had gone down with the
Southern Star
. But at least she could see — touch? — a real elephant …

‘Bluebell dear, you are not well enough.’ Aunt Lilac sounded preoccupied, as though life suddenly held a much larger problem than a niece who wanted to go to the circus.

‘I … I’m feeling better now.’

Aunt Lilac smiled, an Aunt Lilac wrinkled-prune smile of face powder and lavender water. ‘My dear, you know it is impossible.’

Because I am an invalid, thought Blue. Because I can only shuffle. Because everyone will stare at my neck, my balding head. Because now I am a family secret, to be hidden up in the top storey of the house and not seen, even by tradesmen, so I do not shame the family with my looks. Because …

‘Because your Uncle Herbert is coming to luncheon.’

‘Uncle Herbert!’ Blue hadn’t had a card from Uncle Herbert ever since she’d left hospital. There’d been no letters from anyone in her past life. It hurt, a little, that none of the girls from tennis or church had even sent her a get-well card.

‘For your birthday. He sent a telegram this morning to say he is arriving at half past twelve. You will be tired after his visit.’

Blue blinked at the edge in Aunt Lilac’s voice. She almost sounded nervous. But Aunt Lilac was never nervous. Ladies met life with a smile, and a back as straight as a ruler.

‘Do you feel well enough to come downstairs?’ Aunt Lilac’s fingers looked stiff, as though they wanted to pluck nervously at her skirt. But ladies never fiddled with their clothes. ‘I’m sure he’ll understand if you would prefer to have your luncheon here on a tray. We can give him your regrets.’

‘Thank you, Aunt Lilac, but I’ll come down.’

Suddenly, desperately, she wanted to see someone from the outside world. She looked at Uncle Herbert’s giant box of chocolates on the dresser. Mah had brought them from the hospital. They each had one a day. Mah liked the hard centres. Blue ate the soft chocolate creams. A nibbled chocolate seemed to stay down, when Aunt Lilac’s liver puddings just made her sick. But the chocolates were nearly gone.

Maybe Uncle Herbert would know how she could become a typist. He managed rental properties, so he must have an office, like Dad’s at Laurence’s Shoes. Women weren’t supposed to understand business, but Dad had taken her to his offices sometimes, he’d even shown her about the factories. Maybe Uncle Herbert might have a job for her. After she was well, of course. I
will
get well, she thought.

Aunt Lilac’s lips tightened. ‘Very well. I will send the girl up to help you get dressed.’

Blue glanced out the window. The elephant had vanished, leaving only an untidy pile of droppings in the middle of the dusty road. ‘Yes, Aunt Lilac,’ she said.

Chapter 2

Lunch was long, and dappled with silences, filled only by the chink of forks on plates and the bump of flies at the window.

The table was long too, and dark with carved legs. Uncle Herbert sat at one end and Aunt Lilac at the other, with Blue and Aunt Daisy facing one another across the middle. Aunt Daisy looked more like an ageing rose than a daisy, all faded pink cheeks and dressed in dusty grey, with fat little clutching hands that seemed to grasp her knife and fork as though they’d never let go.

Uncle Herbert was long as well, thin as a spider, wearing a black suit and blue striped tie and well-polished black shoes from Laurence’s last summer collection, with eyeglasses and three strands of hair over his scalp. Blue felt faintly jealous: a man could be bald and no one cared. A man could inherit at twenty-one. A man could run a business or be a lawyer. Then she felt sick again as the food on her plate stared up at her.

Long strips of roast mutton, long boiled carrots, long boiled beans, a long brown stripe of thin gravy …

Her stomach did a somersault. She bit her lip to stop being sick.

‘No appetite?’ asked Uncle Herbert. They were the first words he’d spoken since they sat down, except to ask Aunt Daisy to pass the salt. He glanced back at Aunt Lilac, as though aware he’d cracked the silence of the room.

‘Not very hungry, Uncle Herbert,’ said Blue, too hot in her long silk dress, its high collar rough against her still-tender neck. Why aren’t they talking? she wondered. Ladies always kept the conversation going. Ladies talked about the weather, or the state of the roads, or the flowers in the garden, to avoid silences like this. Never business, politics or religion, of course, but never silence either.

The aunts don’t want Uncle Herbert here, she realised. But the aunts couldn’t argue with a telegram. Nor could they have told Ethel not to open the door to him. For a moment she felt vaguely sorry for him, facing the aunts’ hostility, just to see his great niece on her birthday. He had brought her another box of chocolates, and a card with a ten-pound note.

Aunt Daisy stared at her baked potato. Aunt Lilac cut her mutton into small neat squares, adding a piece of grey bean before lifting each square to her mouth. Uncle Herbert gave Blue a worried glance.

‘I’d hoped you would be well by now.’

‘The fresh air will soon have her right again.’ Aunt Daisy looked like she wanted to gulp the words back into the silence.

Aunt Lilac’s prune smile was firmly in place. She reached over to pat Blue’s hand, the right one that was hardly scarred at all. ‘We are taking the best possible care of her.’

A hot bedroom at the top of the house where no one would see her. Meals on a tray. Blue looked away from her plate as nausea swept through her. ‘The fresh air isn’t making me well.’

Uncle Herbert met Aunt Lilac’s eyes. ‘What does the doctor say?’

Aunt Lilac ignored him. She rang the bell. Ethel appeared, sweat trickling down her cow-like face. Aunt Lilac would never have a Chinese girl wait at table.

‘Ethel, would you take Miss Bluebell’s plate away please? Bring her the liver custard. I make it myself.’ Aunt Lilac turned to Uncle Herbert. ‘So restorative.’

Blue closed her eyes at the thought of the liver custard. It was worse than wobbly blancmange or the tapioca that looked like someone had squashed maggots in a bowl.

‘And I’ve made tapioca for pudding.’ Aunt Lilac piled more grey beans and gravy onto her fork.

‘The doctor?’ repeated Uncle Herbert.

More silence. At last Aunt Lilac put down her fork, the silver polished into thinness over many generations. ‘There is no doctor at Willow Creek.’

Uncle Herbert flapped his hands, as though that might give his words more strength. ‘No doctor! Really! She has to see a doctor!’

As though I am a chipped vase, thought Blue, with no feelings to be hurt.

‘There is no need for a doctor. My sister and I can care for our niece perfectly well.’

‘Just look at her, woman!’

Blue blinked at the rudeness. But neither of her aunts answered. A lady does not notice rudeness.

‘Bluebell needs to come back to Melbourne. To a nursing home. I … I will make arrangements.’

Aunt Lilac ignored him. Her eyes were stone. Uncle Herbert bit his lip.

Ethel brought in the liver custard.

Blue stared at it, pale grey like congealed snot. The bitter tide rose in her throat.

She pushed her chair back from the table. ‘I’m sorry …’

Uncle Herbert rose politely to his feet.

Blue stumbled out the door. All at once Mah’s strong hands were there. Blue let Mah seat her on one of the upright hall chairs. She grabbed a vase for Blue to vomit in, scattering the roses on the floor.

Blue retched again, then gasped, trying to get her breath, hoping the spasms in her stomach would stop.

Words floated, half heard, from the dining room, as she vomited again, nothing to bring up now but the spasms kept coming.

‘… am shocked to see how ill she is.’ The rumble was Uncle Herbert. And then, ‘I fail to understand why you took it upon yourselves to take her from the hospital, much less bring her way out here …’

‘… better she be nursed by her own family.’ Aunt Lilac’s voice again. Iron had replaced stone.

‘At the very least you should have let me know where you intended taking her. It was by merest chance that one of my employees spoke to the chauffeur from the car hire company who brought you out here. What did you think you were doing, taking the girl away from everyone who knows her?’

More silence. Blue closed her eyes to stop the world fading in and out. ‘As Bluebell’s only male relative, I must insist she be brought to Melbourne to a nursing home next week. Tuesday.’ Announcing the specific day seemed to give Uncle Herbert courage. He spoke more firmly now. ‘I will pick her up myself on Tuesday. With a nurse. A proper nurse. It must be obvious to anyone that there is something gravely wrong with her. If she continues like this, then …’

Ethel dropped a dish, out in the kitchen. As the clang died down Blue caught Uncle Herbert’s final words. ‘… not long for this world.’

This world? What world? Were they still talking about her? Blue couldn’t think. The world was nausea, spinning around her. She could smell her sweat, bitter as her vomit.

At last Mah helped her up the stairs. She unbuttoned Blue’s boots as she lay on the bed, then helped her out of the silk dress into a nightdress.

Blue lay back gratefully on the pillows. ‘Thank you.’

Mah nodded. Mah rarely spoke. Once Blue had thought that she had little English. But slowly she realised that Mah just didn’t speak unless she had to.

Mah watched though, and listened. She’d seen enough today to be there at the door when she was needed, just outside the dining room. Now she knew that Blue needed a drink, pouring a glass of water from the big porcelain jug on the stand by the door, before Blue could reach for the Thermos of cold sweet milk that Aunt Lilac insisted she drink to build up her strength.

Blue sipped. The water tasted sour. Everything tasted sour these days, even Uncle Herbert’s chocolates. Mah must have put the new box by her bedside, as well as the card with the ten-pound note. Flies bumped at the window between the limp curtains, trying to get out. Even more clustered outside, trying to get in. Mah looked at Blue impassively, seeing everything.

‘Mah,’ Blue spoke impulsively. ‘Do you … think I’m dying?’

Mah looked at her silently. Then she shook her head. ‘No, missee. You not die. Not till you very, very old.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Sleep,’ ordered Mah. It wasn’t said kindly, like Aunt Lilac might have said it. It was just — obvious.

Blue needed to sleep.

She did.

It was dusk when she awoke. Shadows clung to the wooden furniture. Outside, the trees rustled as though relieved of the weight of the sun’s heat.

Somewhere, from far off, came the sound of laughter. Blue sat up, blinking. She had never heard laughter in this house before. Like Queen Victoria, Aunt Lilac was rarely amused.

Nor, she realised, did the laughter come from the house. The circus, she thought. The elephant! ‘For one night only, just up the road!’

Mum and Dad would have gone to the circus, Willy up on Dad’s shoulders and Mum in a new hat. Mum always said that the best things in life deserved a new hat.

One night only. She thought of the elephant’s small dark eyes, the strangely flat pad of its feet. She was glad her brother had seen an elephant before his tiny life was lost in the cold ocean.