The Road to Gundagai (22 page)

Mah laughed. ‘You just bought what you wanted, without asking its price?’

Blue shrugged. ‘If Mum thought something was suitable, then I could have it. Music lessons, or a new bicycle. Not things like, well, a diamond tiara or a racehorse.’

‘Your mother had a tiara.’

‘She did, didn’t she? But that would have been a present, from Dad or maybe my grandpa. She wouldn’t have just gone out and bought it.’

‘When you’re twenty-one you can find a lawyer to look after your money. And your tiara,’ said Mah. ‘He’ll find out what you own too. Once you make a new will you’ll be safe.’

So Mah had worked that out too. Blue nodded. The money and whatever property might be involved could be sorted out. But the attempt to poison her? Who’d believe that two respectable women had tried to poison their niece? It would be their word against Blue’s and Mah’s, and Blue had been sick and grief-stricken.

Just under four more years, she thought. When I am twenty-one a lawyer and a surgeon will change my life. Even if she didn’t inherit the company till she was twenty-five, as in Dad’s will, she was pretty sure that she could ask for an income — and a good one. Enough to rent a house to live in with Mah, or the most splendiferous circus caravans in the world. Or buy an aeroplane, as she’d once dreamed, or travel to India … Suddenly she was almost glad she couldn’t have the money now, didn’t have to choose what life she wanted till she was twenty-one. Until then … She smiled as she looked at the caravans, the Freak Show, the House of Horrors and the fortune-teller’s tent. She had a new family now. The Magnifico Family Circus, with an elephant.

As though on cue, Sheba lumbered to her feet. She reached out her trunk for more hay. The door of Madame’s caravan opened.

Madame paused at the top of her stairs, listening, then walked safely over to them, halting only to feel the bale of hay with her hand before she sat down.

‘Did you have a good rest, Madame?’ asked Blue.

‘Ah, Belle, and Marjory too. You are not practising?’

‘Fred’s putting up the House of Horrors, Madame.’ Mah shrugged. ‘I can’t practise our act without him.’

‘You are both lucky you are not real circus.’ Madame nodded towards the faint creaking of the harness that told her where Gertrude was still working. ‘That is what a real performer does. Hour after hour, day after day, all your life until your body stops and you can do it no more.’

Blue felt curiously forlorn. ‘What are we if we’re not circus, Madame?’

‘Family,’ said Madame, as if she knew what Blue had been thinking a few minutes earlier. Sheba waved her trunk as if agreeing. ‘Ah, when I was young. Up at the first grey of dawn. My father taught me tumbling first, and dancing. Every child in the circus was taught to dance the ballet, true dancing, not the dance that you do now. Dancing makes you graceful.’ Blue grinned at Mah, unseen by Madame. Madame told them this at least once a week. ‘You learn where your body is, when you dance. Later he would put cans of jam down around the practice area. If we made a mistake, we hit the can and not the sawdust. It hurts, to hit a can of jam.’

‘That’s awful,’ said Blue.

The old woman shrugged. ‘It was a kindness in the end, for we learned well.’

‘We, Madame?’ asked Mah. ‘Did you have brothers or sisters?’

‘Two brothers, older than me. They went to America with a Wild West show, ah, forty years ago it is now.’ She shrugged again, her shawls rustling against her ancient silk dress. ‘We lost touch. Perhaps they are dead. Perhaps they think I am dead. Who knows?’

‘Didn’t they write to you?’

She turned her sightless eyes to Blue. ‘Even when I had my eyes I could not read, nor could they write.’

‘I … I’m sorry, Madame.’

‘Why? What use are words on a page? I read the voice,’ said Madame grandly. ‘I read the world, not scribbles from a pen. Did I ever tell you how Monsieur got the best of a bushranger?’

‘No, Madame.’ Mah winked at Blue. It was Fred’s wink, with the touch of wickedness in it.

Madame sat on her bale of hay as though it were a throne. ‘Up by Armidale it was. We had teams of horses in those days, but our caravan lingered behind the others. Out he rode on his big black horse, that bushranger, with a pistol in each hand. “Your money or your life,” he said.

‘Monsieur just stood there. So handsome. There never was a man as handsome as my Monsieur. He told the bushranger that the money was not ours to give. Did the bushranger want the elephant to starve, and the lions too?

‘The bushranger laughed. He said that he didn’t mind what a lion ate, as long as it wasn’t him. So Monsieur said he would trade information for our money. There was a delivery for the bank, coming a few hours behind us. All the bushranger had to do was to wait and he would get far more money than he would get from us.’

‘And the bushranger let you go?’ asked Blue.

‘No. He took our money, and my jewellery too. But he said that if there really was a bank coach coming, then he’d send them back to us.’

‘Was there a bank coach coming?’

‘Of course.’

Blue didn’t ask how Monsieur had known. She supposed that back then too everyone in the circus had gathered what scraps of information they could to give to the fortune-teller. Madame insisted that she did have the sight. Knowing who was in love with whom, or if someone’s husband was riding with the bank coach the next morning, simply helped her understand what her visions told her. Blue thought she might even mean it.

‘What happened then?’

‘We set up the Big Top. Just as we had finished a boy ran up to Monsieur. Oh, I can see him now, a boy like a plucked rooster, and Monsieur in his silk topper. A gentleman had asked the boy to give a box to the handsome man in the top hat. That was Monsieur,’ said Madame complacently. ‘Always the most handsome in any town we visited.’

‘All the money was in the box? And your jewellery?’

‘Of course. We of the road do not cheat each other. And it was the bank’s fault that the money had been taken. I had told the bank manager’s wife that I could see a shadow looming about her husband. Tell him to stay home with you for the next week, I told her.’ Madame raised both hands, her rings gleaming. ‘Perhaps she did not listen. Perhaps the husband did not listen to her. How many men listen to a woman? And now my ears tell me that Ebenezer is finally coming, and you two lazy girls must work.’

Blue got to her feet as a small cloud of dust approached trailing the big circus truck, with Ebenezer driving and Ephraim next to him, and a big tarpaulin covering the poles and sides of the disassembled Big Top on the tray. They’d all be needed to haul on the guy ropes to keep the framework steady and upright, while Fred, Ephraim and Ebenezer did the heavy work, putting the metal poles together and hauling up the canvas sides.

Blue began her awkward shuffle over to the big truck, then stopped. Instead of untying the tarpaulin, Ebenezer walked towards them, his face grave. Ephraim strode over to Fred and Ginger.

‘What is it?’ Mrs Olsen looked out of her caravan, her sewing in her hands.

‘Bad news,’ said Ebenezer shortly. He sat on one of the hay bales. He waited till the others had clustered around, Fred between Blue and Mah, Mrs Olsen and Ginger, Ephraim at his side, Gertrude standing a little apart, still in her practice tights and slippers. Madame sat alone, on the bale nearest to Sheba.

Even the elephant seemed to be waiting.

‘Well?’ demanded Madame.

‘The Mammoth played Goulburn last week,’ said Ebenezer heavily.

‘Ah,’ sighed Madame. She seemed to sag.

‘Wouldn’t it rock your socks,’ said Fred.

Blue looked at the others. Only Mah seemed unaffected. ‘What’s the Mammoth? Why is it so bad?’

‘The Mammoth is the biggest circus in Australia just now, that’s what’s bad,’ said Ebenezer. ‘They’re over from America. Just came from New Zealand, and I think they’re heading home after they’ve done Queensland. Got their own train carriages, even. Did a three-week stint in Goulburn. Only went back to Sydney on Friday.’

‘I don’t understand. What’s so bad about that? Goulburn’s miles from here.’

‘Only an hour by train. That’s how they got a three-week season. Everyone from Wollongong to Queanbeyan will have gone to the Mammoth. They won’t be wanting to see Magnifico’s, not so soon after.’

Madame nodded. ‘And even if they did,’ she said, ‘it would not be good.’

‘Why not?’ asked Blue.

‘Because everyone would see what a little tin-pot circus we really are.’ Gertrude’s voice was bitter. ‘They applaud because they ain’t got nothing to compare us to. But if they’ve seen the Mammoth …’ She shrugged her pretty shoulders. ‘The Mammoth has two rings. Six trapezes, not two. Tigers, lions, a high-wire act, a proper bandwagon with euphonium and trumpets, even monkeys in the menagerie.’

‘How do you know so much?’

‘Saw the pictures in a newspaper.’ Madame said newspapers were an extravagance. But often one would be left behind by someone in the audience.

‘No point even unpacking the Big Top,’ said Ebenezer. ‘Nor goin’ on to Goulburn as we planned neither.’

Madame nodded slowly. ‘We need to go where the railway doesn’t reach. Bilgola, Hunter Creek, Maracatta …’

‘They’re small,’ objected Ebenezer.

‘Enough is all we need. Bilgola is near Gibber’s Creek. There is a factory at Gibber’s Creek. A factory means wages. The Bilgola publican will pay us thirty shillings a night to stay in the paddock next to the hotel, as long as we have an hour’s intermission for the men to drink. Two or even three good stops will get us back near Melbourne.’

‘Mammoth’s been there too,’ said Ephraim gloomily.

‘Then we hope the memory has faded by the time we get there,’ said Madame crisply. ‘We will stay here a few days. The grass is good for once, and so is the water. Ginger, put out the rabbit traps tonight.’

Ginger grinned.

‘Bunny for dinner again,’ said Mrs Olsen resignedly. ‘And damper instead of bread.’

‘Better than no dinner at all. Is there firewood?’

‘Plenty around, Madame,’ said Ebenezer.

‘Good. Ebenezer, you go around the farms. Ask if they can spare a quarter of mutton, a case of apples, a sack of potatoes, whatever they have in exchange for visiting the sideshows. We will open them tomorrow. Ephraim, you will play the ghost in the House of Horrors, give the punters an extra thrill for their money. Mah and Gertrude, you will dance in the Freak Show tent. Take off two veils only. The men must pay an extra penny if they want you to take off more.’

‘You make us sound like night-club dancers,’ said Gertrude angrily.

Madame shrugged.

‘No parade with Sheba?’ asked Ebenezer.

‘No parade. Tell anyone who asks that we are resting, practising new acts. And that,’ said Madame, her sightless gaze moving around the circled watchers, ‘should be the truth. I want something new, from all of you, by the time we leave here. But for now we are just the sideshows, and when they come, you must be good.’

No one will come, thought Blue, as Madame made her way back to her caravan. Or hardly anyone. Maybe a few travellers might stop from curiosity. If we make five shillings, we’ll be lucky …

She followed Mah towards their caravan to get changed, then stopped as someone touched her arm. It was Gertrude. Blue looked at her, surprised. In all of the last year the girl hadn’t sought her out once.

‘Come to the circus with me,’ said Gertrude abruptly.

Blue blinked. ‘The Mammoth? But it’s gone back to Sydney.’

‘We can get the train. Please? I need to see what a proper circus is like!’

‘But you’ve been with the circus all your life.’

‘The Magnifico isn’t a proper one. Not like the Mammoth. I can hardly remember the one when I was small.’

‘Why did your mother leave it?’ asked Blue curiously.

Gertrude shrugged. ‘She won’t talk about it. I think they may have asked her to leave, after Dad died. She probably couldn’t give a show by herself, till I got old enough to join the act properly, and then Ginger. Did you know Dad was Spanish?’

Blue shook her head.

‘That’s why I’m so dark. I take after Dad’s side of the family. Señor Zamorano,’ said Gertrude proudly. ‘The greatest trapeze artist in the world. Well, will you come with me?’

‘Why do you want me to come with you?’

‘Because you’ve got enough money for the tickets,’ said Gertrude frankly. ‘And because I bet Madame wouldn’t let me go on my own. But you’re her pet. She’ll let us go if you ask her. Will you do it?’

Tigers, thought Blue, lion tamers and a high-wire act. Sydney. They could even stop at a café and have ice cream.

It had been more than a year since she’d eaten ice cream.

‘Can Mah come too?’

Gertrude shrugged as if she didn’t care what Mah did.

‘I’ll ask Madame,’ said Blue.

Chapter 19

The air inside Madame’s caravan was composed of heat mixed with greasepaint and rice flour, gardenias and the strange perfume that was perhaps the essence of Madame herself.

‘Well?’ demanded Gertrude. Her fingers twisted nervously. She really wants this, thought Blue. The silence stretched.

Madame stared into nothing. As though she is listening to someone we can’t see, thought Blue. At last the old woman nodded.

‘You may go tomorrow. But you will take Fred with you. It is not respectable for three young girls to go alone. Fred will find out the train timetable.’

‘Thank you, Madame.’ Blue exchanged a delighted glance with Mah. Gertrude said nothing, but her fingers stilled.

Madame bent down and pulled a small tin out from under the bed. She opened it, then held out three ten-shilling notes. ‘It is good for performers to see other acts. But you do not have to use your last two pounds. The circus will pay for the tickets. Belle, take these.’

Gertrude flushed. ‘Why does Belle get to keep the money?’

‘Because she is used to handling money and you are not.’

Blue glanced at Gertrude. In the year she’d been with the circus the only people who had spent any money were Ebenezer, who bought petrol, and Mrs Olsen, and that was just to buy the peanuts and lollies at the nearest general store, to be resold at intermission at marked-up prices, the groceries and Sheba’s hay, or the money orders at the post office to pay for Madame’s herbs sent up from Melbourne. In fact Blue had never handled more than a few shillings that her father had handed her to buy fairyfloss, or a ride on a merry-go-round, before she’d had the ten pounds from Uncle Herbert. But she thought it best not to tell Madame that.