Read The Road to Gundagai Online
Authors: Jackie French
It was impossible. Not even worth considering. And yet … ‘What happens when you get me down on the ground?’
He shrugged. ‘Have to ask Madame.’
What have I got to lose? she thought. Except my life, my life, my life …
If Uncle Herbert was right, then she didn’t have much of that
to
lose. If a small boy could dive from the roof of the Big Top, she thought, she could survive being lowered from a second-storey window. Suddenly even that seemed better than being trapped in this hot little room.
‘Let’s get one thing straight. It’s not a kidnap. If I come with you, it’s because I want to.’ For some reason that seemed important.
The boy glanced at the window impatiently, his eyes bright in the moonlight. ‘Well, do you want to come then?’
‘All right,’ said Blue.
Dangling, wrapped up like a bundle of lamb chops, halfway down the side of a peeling country house wasn’t the best place to have second thoughts. The dangling itself was strangely reassuring, cocooned as she was in a canvas sling, with two ropes securing her at either end. The descent was slow, even, not the sudden plunge and jerks she’d expected.
But what waited for her below?
White slavers? Nice girls weren’t supposed to know about white slavers, men who kidnapped girls to be sold to brothels or sultans’ harems overseas — real harems, not the golden dancers from the circus. But no sultan would pay for a half-bald girl with scars.
Ransom? Even if Aunt Lilac could be persuaded to pay a ransom to get her back, she and Aunt Daisy were far from rich. They might rent a large house, but only because it was relatively cheap now in the Depression, and by observing what Aunt Lilac called ‘necessary economies’, which meant only two servants, and no cook or gardener, like they’d had at home, not even their own automobile and chauffeur.
Had the circus people been misled by Blue’s ten-pound note and the size of the house? No, she decided. Rich girls arrived at circuses in automobiles, with companions, not shuffling alone along a dusty road. Local gossip would have told them that the old women at the big house bought liver and shoulder of mutton, not leg of lamb and loin chops. Uncle Herbert had money, of course. They might have seen his car and chauffeur. Maybe that seemed riches enough to a barefoot boy. But she was sure he hadn’t been lying when he’d said that she wasn’t being taken for ransom.
The cocoon inched down the wall. Blue glanced down into the garden. The world was shadows: a rose bush, a lilac tree; she could see no people. Surely this couldn’t all have been engineered by a nine-year-old boy?
Maybe he was mad. Maybe every night after the circus the boy broke into homes and lowered the inhabitants out of their windows.
The ground met her, hard. She twisted like a caterpillar in a cocoon, trying to get free.
‘Shh.’ A shadow parted from the lilac tree. ‘Lie still,’ it whispered. Hands untied her, then pulled her to her feet.
Blue stared. She’d expected the ringmaster, or the peanut-seller. This was a woman, tall and wide-shouldered but with a timid rabbit-like face, in a long old-fashioned dress almost to her ankles, and a neat straw hat garlanded with what looked like ancient silk pansies.
The woman put her finger to her lips. She looked up and tugged on the right-hand rope. It fell neatly into her arms. The other followed.
A small figure appeared at the window, pulleys and straps secured about his waist. As Blue looked, the boy edged along the windowsill, reached out, then grabbed the drainpipe that led from the gutters into the water tank below. The boy clambered down, spider-like, until he was just above the tank, then leaped swiftly and neatly, avoiding the tank and a possible clang, landing on the ground by her feet.
It was a feat worthy of Tiny Titania.
He looked at her, grinning, then pulled her shoes out of his pockets and held them out to her triumphantly. He’s waiting for applause, she thought. He’s just got a girl out of a locked second-floor room …
Suddenly she grinned back at him, imagining Aunt Lilac’s face in the morning. Her niece had vanished from a locked room! A girl with scarred legs who couldn’t climb out a window and down two storeys into the garden. It was as good a mystery as any in
The Girl’s Own Annual
, and she was part of it.
The woman beckoned impatiently. She headed out the gate.
Blue bent down and slipped her shoes on over her stockingless feet. She shuffled after the woman, her knees wobbly with weakness, clumsy in her nightdress. I should have changed, she thought. Put on my dress, petticoats, hat …
The woman hesitated. She came back and put a firm arm under Blue’s shoulders to help her along.
It was embarrassing. It was also necessary, Blue realised. The faster they were gone, the less chance they would be seen.
She let herself be half dragged into the unknown. The boy — or dwarf or Tiny Titania — followed them.
The lights, the crowds, the carts and the automobiles had vanished, as though they had all been part of the circus’s illusions. Only the trampled thistles and scattered tickets and peanut shells showed there had ever been a crowd here.
The Big Top hung limp in the moonlight. As Blue watched, it collapsed on itself. Two dim figures moved purposefully about its folds.
A single lamp shone in the window of the old-fashioned caravan. The other two caravans were dark. The elephant still stood by her pile of hay, making no effort to get away, even now the Big Top was no longer closing her in. As Blue looked, the big animal curled her pink-tipped trunk, inserting the hay neatly into her mouth. She turned as Blue and the others approached, her ears flapping back. She raised her trunk enquiringly, then lowered it again, and picked up the teddy bear.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Blue breathed.
The woman looked at her. For the first time emotion flickered over her rabbity face. ‘Yes, she is.’
The elephant took two paces towards Blue. The grey trunk held out the teddy bear. Blue took it automatically.
The caravan door opened.
The woman took her arm away. ‘Go in there,’ she said, and then to the boy, ‘Bed.’
‘But
Mum
!’
‘I said bed. Now.’
The boy made a face. It was such a normal ‘I don’t want to’ face that Blue felt strangely reassured. Up till now the boy had seemed part elf. Now he was just another kid who didn’t want to miss out.
But he obeyed, vanishing into one of the round caravans. He shut the door behind him.
The elephant watched with her small bright eyes. Blue cradled the teddy bear. ‘Do you want me to have it?’
The elephant didn’t reply. Of course she won’t answer, Blue told herself. She’s an elephant. But the elephant didn’t look away either as Blue clumsily made her way up the four steps to the caravan door, the bear in her arms.
No one moved to help her. She peered into the caravan nervously. The light inside was dim, but bright after the darkness outside, its glow enough to see shelves, pots and shawls hanging from hooks, a most domestic-looking broom, the woman seated on the bed, the girl cross-legged on the floor. The woman was unquestionably Madame Zlosky, dressed much as she had been in the tent but without the shawls. The girl’s hair was short and black again, not blonde, but she was still recognisable as Glorious Gloria.
Blue stepped inside the caravan. The girl got up and shut the door behind her. But at least, thought Blue, there was no sound of a key in the lock, or a bolt.
‘Sit down.’ Madame Zlosky’s accent was almost gone. Blue sat on the bed. She’d have preferred to sit on the floor with the girl, but doubted she could manage it. The girl scowled up at her.
‘Why have you brought me here?’ Blue found her voice wobbling with tiredness.
‘We didn’t. You came yourself.’
‘I didn’t lower myself out a window!’ Better, she thought. Her voice sounded stronger now.
The girl snickered. ‘Scared, were you?’
‘No,’ said Blue. She suddenly realised she was clutching the teddy bear like a child.
‘You should have been. If there’s not a corner of you that’s scared when you’re up on the ropes, you’ll make a mistake. Mistakes can kill. That’s what my pa used to say. Pa was the greatest trapeze artist in the world.’
‘Be silent, Gertrude.’
The girl stilled at Madame Zlosky’s tone.
Gertrude? Blue hid a grin. So Glorious Gloria was really a Gertrude. ‘What’s Tiny Titania’s real name?’
‘Ginger,’ Madame Zlosky answered.
‘No one calls a boy Ginger.’
‘Nor did his parents. But he is Ginger now.’
‘Why am I here?’
‘You wanted to come.’
Blue felt a prickle of anger overcome her unease. ‘Stop being a fortune-teller. Why did you help me to come here?’
‘Because you are being poisoned. This is a chance to save your life.’
The chill seemed to sweep from her toes upwards, despite the heat of the caravan. ‘I’m not being poisoned.’ The words were automatic. And then, as the dreadful possibility began to prickle: ‘How do you know?’
‘The same way I knew about the four-fingered lover, that the woman called Mrs Rundle would have a grandchild.’
‘The Great Madame Zlosky knows many things,’ intoned Gertrude.
Blue glanced at her, then back at Madame Zlosky. ‘You have spies, don’t you?’
Madame Zlosky smiled. It was a real smile, not the seer’s. ‘We listen. Ask questions at the gate sometimes. “You’re looking blooming today, my dear.”’ Suddenly the old voice was that of the ticket-seller. ‘And then the girl whispers, “I’m expecting, but no one knows yet, not even my mum.” And Ephraim tells me.’
‘Someone told you I’m being poisoned?’ asked Blue slowly.
‘Yes.’
‘Who?’
‘That I can’t tell you. One day perhaps. Not yet. ’
‘I don’t believe it.’ And yet she did. Or accepted it might be happening, which was almost as bad. Because she was young, had been healthy, and should be getting better, not worse. Because grief and burns didn’t cause nausea and retching day after day, or hair to fall out every time she brushed it. ‘How am I being poisoned then? Who by?’
‘The poison is arsenic, I suspect.’ The voice was matter of fact. ‘Arsenic makes hair fall out, like yours. You feel ill in your stomach, do you not? You vomit, you cannot eat?’
‘You know all about arsenic poisoning then?’
‘Anyone who read about the Glintock poisoning case in the newspaper last year knows about arsenic.’ The voice was dry. ‘Arsenic is easy to buy at any chemist shop, for killing rats or slugs or weeds. It can kill quickly. But small amounts, day after day, it can make someone sick, till it seems that death comes naturally.’
‘You … you think that’s what they are doing to me?’
The thin face nodded to where Blue’s voice had come from. ‘You don’t scream “No, it is impossible” now? Mr Glintock gave his wife too large a dose too suddenly. The coroner even said so. The coroner was a fool too. He might as well have told the whole of Australia: this is how to poison your wife and not be found out. But men are so often fools. Did you know the police believe that the fire at your house was set deliberately?’
‘No! I … They never told me.’
‘You were too ill, I imagine,’ said Madame Zlosky. ‘Truly ill, back then.’
‘But why would anyone want to kill me?’ I’m a nuisance, she thought. But you don’t kill someone because they are a bother to you. And I wasn’t such a nuisance before the fire, before I was burned and disfigured.
‘I can’t tell you that either.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
‘A little of both. If I told you, it would be a guess, not truth.’
‘You could be lying,’ said Blue. ‘Making all this up.’
‘Do you think I am?’
Blue tried to think. Her stomach spasmed again. She wiped the sweat from her forehead. ‘I think … I think you believe it’s true.’
Gertrude snorted from her spot on the floor. ‘Madame doesn’t lie.’
‘Of course I do. Well, Bluebell Laurence? You have a choice. You can come with us or go back to your big house. Mrs Olsen will help you in through one of the ground-floor windows. I do not think we could haul you back up to your bedroom. You will have to explain to your aunts how you got out of a locked room. I suggest you say you walked in your sleep and woke up on the sofa. It is obviously untrue but also cannot be argued with. So, what do you choose?’
‘Where are you going? Gundagai?’ Gundagai, she thought. It had an opera house, didn’t it? And a wide sweeping river and paddle boats …
‘Not to Gundagai.’
‘But the ringmaster said —’
‘The punters have no need to know where we are going,’ said Madame Zlosky. ‘Just where it will please them to think we go. We never go to Gundagai.’
‘Why not?’ She didn’t really care. Her brain was full. She was so tired …
‘There was a fire at Gundagai. Yes, all I loved I lost in a fire too. But I made the choice to build my life again. I had a choice, and you have a choice. There is always a choice, but few have the courage to choose. Now I need your answer. We must be gone by morning, when you’ll be missed.’
Blue tried to think. She couldn’t just vanish. It wasn’t fair on the aunts. They had done their best …
Or tried to kill her. She thought of the bitter liver custards, the flasks of curdled milk. They had taken her away from Melbourne, hidden her even from Uncle Herbert.
Women like Aunt Lilac and Aunt Daisy didn’t kill people. Murderers looked like …
Like anyone else, she thought, thinking of Mr Glintock’s face in the newspaper. He was such a nice man, the neighbours said. But Uncle Herbert would be concerned, and Mah. Mah had put a rose on Blue’s tray that morning because it had been her birthday …
She thought of her hair, falling out. Someone is poisoning me, she thought. Even if I go to Uncle Herbert, he wouldn’t believe the aunts might be trying to kill me. Even if he did … She shivered. If someone had really burned down a house to kill her and then fed her poison, perhaps nowhere she was known would be safe.
A thought floated unbidden into her head: if I go back to that house, I will die.