The Road to Gundagai (21 page)

‘Madame! I didn’t know! I thought the bracelets were all fake!’

‘Most are fake. Or rather, not fake, just beautiful in a different way, valuable only for their shine. But some are real. Where better to hide gems than among glass beads?’

Madame had mentioned that men had given her jewels. Or had Sheba stolen the bracelet? Blue wondered. Had someone once taught the elephant to steal? ‘Madame, I don’t know what to say. I shouldn’t have —’

‘Did you ever give my bracelets away before? No. And today you did. So I think it was the right thing that you did, the right person and the right time. It has been a good year for us,’ said Madame. ‘Children starve in Melbourne, families are being locked out of their homes in Brisbane, banks in Sydney fail. But our bellies have been full and we even have new tyres for the truck. We have been lucky. It is good sometimes to pay the price for luck. Now go and find your friend, child, and let an old woman sleep.’

‘You will never be old, Madame,’ said Blue softly.

‘And you will never learn to flatter, child. Now go.’

Blue went.

Chapter 18

DECEMBER 1933

Their luck ran out the next summer, at Berrima. They’d run into a mob of sheep on the road, at least two hundred of them, skinny and bleating and baaing and criss-crossing from one side to the other. It had taken Ebenezer an hour to drive through them each time; and it was impossible to sleep in the caravan with the animals bumping and complaining.

It had been midnight when Ebenezer unhitched the girls’ caravan and headed back to the paddock outside Mittagong for another load, muttering under his breath that the best place for a sheep was in a stew.

It would have been easier travelling during the day, but the truck wasn’t registered. ‘Why pay five pounds unless you have to?’ said Madame. Time enough to pay the registration if and when the police noticed. There was less chance of a policeman noticing if they could do most of the trips necessary to move the caravans, tents and equipment in the early hours of the morning. Besides, Madame preferred the circus to look to have appeared as if by magic when the locals woke up.

Late arrival or not, they were up in the pre-dawn light, as soon as Madame struck her gong. This too was a necessity. Gertrude, Mrs Olsen and Ginger needed to practise their routines each day — even one day without exercise might mean that muscles stiffened or perfect timing slipped. They had to fix their harness to the nearest sturdy gum tree until the Big Top was erected.

A woman and a girl and a boy perspiring with the cumbersome harnesses on their backs was a long way from the magic the Boldinis and Tiny Titania would show that night in the Big Top. The worst thing a performer could hear, pronounced Madame, was the shout, ‘I saw them practising that under a gum tree! You should have seen them sweat!’

Blue did her own exercises, chinning herself up on the exercise bar, and then handstands, with Fred steadying her, careful to keep her legs together so as not to tear her scar, then the harem dance with Madame and Mrs Olsen and Mah, while Fred lugged up water from the creek for Sheba, collected firewood and started the cooking fire.

The harem dance was slowly becoming more complicated and demanding. Every few years the circus came back to places it had visited before and by then the acts needed to be different enough to give the punters their money’s worth, while keeping their favourite bits.

Breakfast was served when Ebenezer came back with the last but one load, the three smaller sideshow tents. Today was for setting up only, a rare chance to breakfast slowly and together.

They sat on bales of hay around the cooking fire, holding out thick slices of yesterday’s damper to toast, then slathering them with butter — the Mittagong farmer’s wife had a cow in milk — and the apple jelly Mrs Olsen had made from apples picked along the roadside the previous autumn. The circus had only one big cooking pot, a Dutch oven with a lid that could bake damper in the ashes, or cook a stew, or heat water for tea or a bath, but not at the same time. The only other cooking implements were the billy that had once held golden syrup, and the battered frying pan. A circus couldn’t carry more equipment than was absolutely necessary.

Mrs Olsen fried eggs in dripping, and they ate them on more buttered toast, to save the washing-up, with big mugs of sweet black tea.

‘Any chance of making some squished flies?’ asked Fred hopefully.

Mrs Olsen looked at him indulgently. She poured the last of the tea out of the billy, and began to mix the pastry, melting the butter, then adding the flour and golden syrup, with the filling coming together in the old tin mug that had held her cuppa, apple jelly today, and chopped dates instead of currants.

Blue and Mah took turns holding the frying pan over the embers of the fire, breathing in the scent of smoke and hot gum leaves, slowly cooking both sides of the biscuits, then carefully lifting them from the pan to cool on a bale of hay when they were brown.

‘How about a taster? Blooming heck!’ Fred dropped the biscuit as it fell to bits in his hand. ‘You’ve made it crumbly,’ he said to Mah. He grinned up at Mrs Olsen. ‘Should’ve left them to the queen of cooking.’

‘Language,’ said Madame.

‘Blooming heck ain’t bad language.’

‘It is coarse,’ said Madame. ‘Monsieur would never have used words like those.’

‘Monsieur didn’t have a hot squished fly crumble in his hand.’

‘Monsieur was patient. He had charm.’

‘I got charm,’ said Fred.

Madame smiled. ‘Perhaps.’

‘It’s your own fault it crumbled,’ said Mah. ‘Leave them to cool a bit and they’ll firm up. No,’ she added to Sheba. ‘They’re too hot for you too. Give her a piece of toast,’ she said to Blue.

‘None left. She can have my crusts,’ said Blue.

‘I’ll eat ’em if you don’t want ’em,’ said Ginger.

‘Too late.’ Sheba’s pink-tipped trunk had already deposited the crusts in her mouth.

‘Ah, the boy is growing,’ said Madame.

‘Two inches since last Christmas,’ said Ginger proudly. He looked from his mother to Madame, then said quickly, ‘I don’t want to play a fairy no more.’

Mrs Olsen bit her lip. Madame reached out till she found Mrs Olsen’s hand, and patted it. Blue looked from one to the other. Why should Ginger’s suggestion make his mother so nervous?

Madame turned towards Ginger. ‘Would you like to be a prince instead?’

‘What would I have to wear?’ asked Ginger suspiciously.

‘Ah, what does a prince wear? Black tights. Black velvet shirt trimmed with gold. A gold crown — there is one in my chest.’

‘Really? You mean it! Coo,’ said Ginger happily.

‘You think it will be all right?’ Mrs Olsen spoke to Madame.

‘I see no reason why it should not be,’ said Madame gently.

‘Then I want to grow my hair,’ said Gertrude. ‘If Ginger can stop being a girl in the show, I want to stop looking like a bagman.’

‘Long hair gets in the eyes. It can be dangerous.’

‘I know that! I can tie it back.’

‘I will consider it,’ said Madame.

‘I don’t see what it’s got to do with you anyway. It’s my hair.’

‘And it’s Madame’s circus.’ Ebenezer grabbed one of the thick fried-egg sandwiches that Mrs Olsen had made to take back to Ephraim. ‘See youse all in a couple of hours.’ The truck rumbled back down the road to Mittagong.

‘I’m going to practise,’ said Gertrude shortly.

The day grew hotter. Madame retired to rest. Blue sat on a bale of hay in the shade of the caravans with Mah and Sheba. The old elephant lay on her side, her head arched with pleasure as the girls rubbed wet brooms back and forth over her body. On the other side of the paddock Ginger hammered in the guy ropes for the House of Horrors, while Fred chatted to a couple of bagmen, standing at the side of the road with their rolled-up blankets and billies. He knows how to get rid of them kindly, thought Blue. Almost every day men and even boys and women would ask hopefully if there was work for them, or even a bed overnight and a meal and a lift to the next town.

But the Magnifico Family Circus only just made enough to feed themselves and Sheba, and get to the next town. Without petrol the circus couldn’t travel or run its generator. Sheba could forage some of her own food, her big trunk pulling up tussocks of grass, tearing down branches and even bark, but most of the paddocks the circus used were bare of all but thistles. What farmer would give a paddock of good feed to an elephant, instead of his own stock?

Fred clapped one of the bagmen on the back. It was a gesture of solidarity, but also farewell. The man nodded. He and his friend began to walk away, with the slow measured tread of men who have no energy to spare, except for a final glance at Gertrude, dressed in thin tights and a camisole, working on a new routine.

This new routine would be a solo act. So far all Blue had seen was Gertrude standing alone on a narrow swing as its arc grew wider and wider. Blue was pretty sure the girl had something more dramatic planned. She had been practising when the others weren’t looking. According to Fred, Gertrude always kept the details of a new act secret until she had perfected them.

‘She’s good, isn’t she?’ said Mah, her wet broom in her hand. ‘I’d love to do that.’

Me too. Though I’d love to be able just to run, thought Blue. When I’m twenty-one … the young doctor would be married by then, probably to the girl with the fox fur … ‘Would you really rather do a rope act or the trapeze?’

Mah laughed. ‘No, not really. I think it’s too late for me to learn the trapeze. I’m scared of heights anyway.’

‘But not of fires,’ said Blue softly.

Mah looked at her sharply. This was the first time either of them had referred to the fire since the night Mah had arrived at the circus. ‘There wasn’t time to be scared. Afterwards, when they’d taken you to hospital, then I was scared.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘Mrs H even gave me a nip of brandy and put cold butter on my burns …’

‘Mah! I didn’t know! Were you badly hurt?’

She shook her head. ‘The blanket protected me. The fire was only really bad around your bedroom, so I was only exposed for a minute or two. Mrs Huggins made tea for the firemen and gave them some of her ginger cake. Mrs H always liked a handsome man.’

Blue smiled, remembering that cake. Then she frowned. ‘Wait on. How could she have given them ginger cake?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Where did it come from? Or how did she bake it? The house burned down.’

Mah looked surprised. ‘The servants’ wing and the kitchen and the main part of the house weren’t touched. It was only the bedroom wing that went. Some of the conservatory glass was cracked, but nothing bad.’

‘Then why did they pull it all down?’

Mah put a hand on her arm. ‘They didn’t.’

‘But I thought …’ All this time I thought my home was gone, thought Blue. No one had ever told her that most of the house was undamaged, but then she’d never asked. She had just assumed that the inferno around her had been as bad in the rest of the house. ‘Do you know what happened to it?’ she asked quietly. ‘Did Uncle Herbert sell it?’

‘No. I went to see it when I went through town on my way up to the circus. The builders had fixed it up real nice. I went to the kitchen door and explained that I’d worked there. The cook said the family only rented it.’

‘I don’t suppose it’d be easy to sell a big house, in times like these,’ said Blue. Had the aunts actually said her house had burned to the ground? Blue tried to think back. Everything had been blurred — grief, then pain, and then the growing nausea. Aunt Lilac’s words came back to her: ‘You’ll never be homeless while you have us, Bluebell dear.’

‘A house like that is valuable,’ she said slowly. ‘I thought I didn’t have any money, not enough to kill me for. But if there’s the house too …’

Mah put down her broom and stared at her, brushing her hair from her eyes. She dressed like a boy except when she was in costume, like Blue and Gertrude, but instead of cutting her hair she kept it up under her hat with a scarf. Blue still kept hers dyed black. It was as thick and shiny as if it had never straggled and fallen out.

‘Blue, you’re rich.’

‘No, I’m not. I have two pounds, fourpence.’ But she knew what Mah meant. ‘And a few hundred pounds when I’m twenty-five. And now the house too.’

‘You’re richer than that,’ said Mah flatly. ‘There’s Laurence’s factories. You get the money from them too.’

‘No, I don’t. The solicitor who read Dad’s will didn’t mention the company.’

Mah shook her head incredulously. ‘What?! I can’t believe you didn’t know. It was in the newspapers after you left. Ethel bought a copy. There was a photo of the house and everything. It said “Missing Heiress”, and all about your family and the factories. Your grandfather set up a family trust. I don’t know how it works, the paper didn’t say. But somehow with your dad and your brother dead you inherit the factories.’

‘From Grandpa. Not from Dad.’ So the company wouldn’t be mentioned in Dad’s will, she thought. No wonder the solicitor had told her ‘not to worry’. ‘But they are my
aunts
! How could they want to kill me just for money?’

‘It’s a lot of money. People do many things for money.’ Mah met her eyes. ‘You have never been without money. You can’t understand.’

‘I’ve spent more than a year being poor.’

‘You think this is poor? With a caravan and beds to sleep in, and all the food we want, good food, meat and cheese and biscuits? Have you ever even been hungry?’

‘No,’ said Blue. She thought of Aunt Lilac and Aunt Daisy’s economies: only Mah and Ethel to do the work, and roast shoulder of mutton, not legs of lamb. Stewed prunes instead of fresh peaches. The aunts had never been hungry either. But to them, perhaps, two servants and prunes and custard was poverty.

She was going to be rich.
Was
rich, even if she couldn’t use any of it now. She should feel different. But she didn’t. ‘I never even asked the solicitor exactly how much money I had. Girls aren’t supposed to talk about money, or think about it. That was Dad’s business, or my husband’s after I married. Mum didn’t even carry money most of the time. She just put everything on accounts, at the tearooms, the dressmakers, everywhere. You’re not supposed to know how much money your husband has. It wasn’t good manners even to ask about how much something cost.’