The Road to Gundagai (9 page)

‘I can’t dance,’ said Blue desperately. Only a blind woman could have come up with a plan like this. ‘Madame, you don’t understand. I’m crippled. There’s a scar …’ It was hard to say the words without crying. ‘After I was burned the top of my legs sort of stuck together. That’s why I shuffle. The police will see my other scars, my hair …’

‘They will not see your scars, or your hair. That is how you will fool them. And you will dance,’ said Madame Zlosky. ‘Or every one of us will be arrested.’

Mrs Olsen arrived to dress her — a new Mrs Olsen. The dull dress was gone, replaced with the gold harem pants and camisole. Her rabbit face had been given new contours with rouge, the thin little mouth reshaped with lipstick. She almost looked pretty, even without bright blonde hair.

Blue stared at the harem pants. ‘They won’t fit over my … my scars …’ Nor could she wear any knickers.

‘They don’t go all the way up, like ordinary trousers.’ Mrs Olsen’s voice was kind, but there was a thread of fear too. For the first time Blue realised that she really was endangering these people. ‘It’ll be easier if you let me dress you.’

It was as though the woman didn’t notice the lack of underwear. She did look at the scar, evaluating without disgust and with only a nod of sympathy. ‘Only that one spot, just like we expected,’ she said to Madame. ‘We can work with it.’

‘Who told you what my scar was like?’

Neither woman answered her. The pants slipped over her legs, loose and strangely cool, the join between her legs hanging at about knee level. Mrs Olsen fastened them just above her hips. Gold silk slippers. Blue waited for the camisole. Instead Mrs Olsen fastened a stocking around her. ‘Pardon me,’ she said, as she pushed two semi-hollow halves of a rubber ball over Blue’s breasts, then slipped the camisole over them. Blue looked down. Her real bosom seemed to grin up at her, looking six times its real size.

‘Better take the bracelet off,’ said Mrs Olsen. ‘It might be recognised.’

‘No!’ Blue put her hand over it protectively.

Mrs Olsen looked even more like a nervous bunny. ‘The police might be looking for it too.’

Madame held up her hand. ‘If we can hide a girl, we can hide a bracelet.’

‘I’m not taking it off.’

‘Be quiet. We hide a girl among other girls. We hide a bracelet among other bracelets.’ Madame nodded in the vague direction of Mrs Olsen. ‘Get the jewellery out. Bracelets for all of us.’

Mrs Olsen cast Blue another worried glance. She pulled out a small box from under the bed. It was black wood, with a keyhole but no key. Mrs Olsen opened it. The box was partitioned into three: the first two held necklaces and bracelets, the last held earrings and brooches. Mrs Olsen piled the bracelets and necklaces into her lap. She shoved some onto her own wrists, then handed a small heap each to Madame and Blue.

Blue looked at the collection of gold and silver chains, the blue and red stones. This would be a treasure fit for a maharajah if the stones were real. ‘This one’s a necklace.’

‘Necklaces can be wound around the wrists,’ said Madame. She held out her wrist to demonstrate.

Mrs Olsen bit her lip. ‘Gertrude won’t like wearing bracelets, even in the dance. Jewellery gets tangled.’

‘Gertrude will do what she is told,’ said Madame calmly. ‘But she will not dance this time. We must have only four dancers, not five. Do the make-up. Hurry.’

Mrs Olsen opened another old black box. Blue sat still as a sponge coated with some sort of pale paste flowed over her face, her neck, down to the top of the camisole. Mrs Olsen dabbed a brown V between her bosom, and more pale brown strokes at the side of her cheeks and nose. A small brush scratched and shaped her eyebrows.

Mrs Olsen reached for a jar. She brushed rouge onto Blue’s cheeks and then a little on the sides of her forehead. Another pot came out, this one holding blue-black paste. Mrs Olsen used her little finger to smear a dash of it under Blue’s eyes and over her eyelids.

Mrs Olsen sat back and studied her. She added more of the pale paste to Blue’s neck, and some rouge to the top of her bosom, and two light strokes down the front of her neck. Blue felt the tickle of lipstick, even brighter than the rouge.

Mrs Olsen picked up a pair of scissors and lifted a lock of Blue’s hair.

‘No!’ Blue flinched back as the first lock was cut, close to her scalp. Hair was a woman’s crowning glory. She had lost too much of it already. This was far shorter than fashionable shingling.

Madame’s head was tilted again, as though trying to follow the operation by hearing alone.

‘She doesn’t want her hair cut,’ said Mrs Olsen.

‘We do not have time for this.’ Madame turned, almost but not quite facing Blue. ‘You will let Mrs Olsen continue or you will go back. Your hair is too easy to identify.’

Blue nodded at Mrs Olsen.

Snip. Snip
. The long red locks fell onto the floor.

‘Your hair will grow back,’ said Mrs Olsen softly. ‘Properly, won’t it, Madame?’

‘In a few months, perhaps, when the poison is out of her system.’ Madame held out her hand. Mrs Olsen carefully gathered up the red strands and handed them to her. Madame reached down and pulled out a box from under the bed, then wrapped the locks in a silk handkerchief. ‘Hair has power,’ she said. ‘You must keep it safe.’

Blue did not let her opinion of the superstition show. She ran her hand over her scalp. Her head felt ridiculously light, the remaining fuzz of hair as soft as velvet. She shook her head, enjoying the coolness, then stopped as Mrs Olsen began to run something dark into the stubble that was left.

‘You’re slim enough to pass as a boy most of the time. No one will think that a black-haired boy could be a red-headed girl, or that a dancer could be a girl with a limp. There, all done. Better give the make-up a few minutes to dry before we put the wig on. Now, you need to learn the dance. It’s a simple one.’

‘No, it’s not,’ said Blue helplessly, ‘I’ve seen it!’

Mrs Olsen looked at her with surprising patience. ‘It’s simple when you know the pattern.’

Blue was silent. Didn’t they realise how impossible this was?

‘Stand up,’ said Mrs Olsen.

Blue stood, steadying herself with a hand on the bed.

‘Now take a step forwards, like this, knees together. Put one foot exactly in front of the other. See?’

Blue tried it. To her surprise the new step was easier than her shuffling walk.

‘A new walk, a disguise also,’ said Madame. ‘It will make your hips sway, like the dancer you are supposed to be.’ She shook her head. ‘As soon as we could walk, we all were trained in the dance. Dance makes you graceful. It teaches you where your body is. Trapeze, tightrope, acrobats, we all needed the discipline of the dance. Ah, I have seen such dancers in my time. But your moves will be enough to fool the punters.’

‘Punters?’ asked Blue. She vaguely recalled hearing the term last night, but she’d been too tired to ask what Madame was referring to.

‘Audience,’ said Mrs Olsen. ‘There are always four dancers. You’ll be the third in line. It’s dark when we walk in, so you need to count your steps. It will be forty paces exactly if you walk the way I showed you. Turn right after forty paces. Count to ten before you lift your arms. You count like this. One and two and …’

‘One and two and …’ repeated Blue.

‘That’s it. The beat of the music will help. Everything is to the count of eight. The dance really only has four movements. Move your hips, arms up, arms down, turn as you cast off a veil. Then do it all again. You sway your arms up, like this.’

Blue copied Mrs Olsen’s gesture as Madame tapped a beat. It was surprisingly easy.

‘Put your arms down, and sway them again. That’s right. Now sway your hips, like this. You try it.’

Blue moved her hips to one side, then back and around. To her relief they moved without pulling her knees apart. Her legs still felt like blancmange, but it was good to move her body again, after so many months of trying to keep it still.

‘You almost have it. Pretend your hips are doing a figure of eight, not a circle. Yes, you’ve got it.’ Mrs Olsen nodded approvingly. ‘You’ve got some muscle on you. Haven’t spent your whole life on a sofa, I reckon.’

‘I used to bicycle, and play tennis. We had a tennis court at home.’ Blue tried to keep the longing from her voice. ‘And riding, and dancing lessons.’

‘Don’t think the tennis will help you much. The rest, well, possibly. We dance for ten minutes. Can you last that long?’

‘Yes,’ said Blue.

‘No,’ said Madame. ‘It will be five minutes tonight, and every night until she is stronger. We cannot risk her collapsing, or even looking faint. Drink your medicine again,’ she added to Blue.

Blue obeyed, then drank some water to wash away the taste. ‘Is there a drug in it? I slept so soundly last night,’ she added apologetically.

‘Of course there are drugs in it. I told you. Garlic, for that is good to take away the poison, chamomile, valerian … but not, I think, the kind of drugs you mean. The valerian, the hops, the passionflower, they all help you sleep and calm your nerves too, as well as your stomach. They relax you, if you like. You slept because you relaxed, and because you were tired. I remember …’

Someone knocked on the door urgently. Ginger’s face peered in. ‘Mum! It’s the coppers. Three o’ them.’

Madame stood up calmly. ‘Then it is time the dancers rehearsed. Your name is now Belle. That way if you look up when someone says the name Bluebell it will not look suspicious.’

Blue stared at them, the old woman, the younger one, the boy. They seem so used to this, she thought. The police, the deception.

Mrs Olsen pulled another trunk from under the bed. A scent of mothballs and lavender filled the caravan as she pushed away an assortment of faded clothes and brought out four bright gold wigs. She put one on herself, adjusting it with the ease of long practice, put two on the bed, then placed the third on Blue’s head.

It felt heavy, and almost immediately hot. It also itched. Mrs Olsen pulled aside a shawl that hung on the wall, revealing a mirror. ‘What do you think?’

Blue gazed at the mirror. A woman stared back at her, a — what was the word? — a voluptuous woman, at least in her twenties. She looked beautiful, exotic and completely unfamiliar.

‘Smile,’ ordered Madame. ‘Smile and keep on smiling. Look the policemen straight in the eye. Fools think a liar never looks you in the eye. You want to charm them too. Put your chin down, then look up at them through your lashes. Do it. Now.’

Blue put her chin down, looked up, smiled. The dancer in the mirror gazed up at her seductively. It’s me, she thought. That’s really me. I’m beautiful.

No, the make-up and the rubber-ball halves had created the beauty, and the gold silk costume. But she was part of it nonetheless. Yesterday’s monster had vanished.

Mrs Olsen let the shawl fall over the mirror again as Madame said, ‘Mirrors have power. Never make an ugly face in a mirror. The image in a mirror lasts forever, even if you cannot see it. Never leave the mirror uncovered.’

‘No, Madame.’

‘Remember to smile. Do not speak unless you are spoken to. If you feel faint, breathe slowly and deeply. You must on no account show weakness. They are hunting for a weak girl, not a strong one. Look at where the audience would be as you dance, not the other dancers. And keep on smiling. Always, always smile. Your name is Belle Olsen. You are Mrs Olsen’s youngest daughter, Gertrude and Ginger’s sister. You have always been with the circus. You were born on the road to Gundagai.’

So I have been, in a way, thought Blue.

‘Now go outside. I must change too.’ Madame made a shooing gesture. The harem dancer followed Mrs Olsen out of the caravan.

Chapter 10

The smell of brown grass and canvas hit her, overpowering the scent of greasepaint and a strange mouldy odour from the wig. She blinked, trying to take it all in.

The circus looked exactly as it had the day before: the high Big Top and the three small tents, though as yet there was no dwarf — or Ginger — describing the Freak Show’s wonders outside, or anyone at the gate selling tickets.

Even the paddocks around them looked the same, bare and brown and full of thistles, edged with barbed-wire fences. The only difference was a farmhouse on one side, its pale yellow paint peeling, heat shimmering from its tin roof. Cabbages and silver beet wilted in a small garden plot. Hens pecked as though they did it from long habit, rather than any expectation they’d find something good among the dust.

Best of all, there was Sheba, her grey hide wet from her recent washing, standing in the scanty shade of a tarpaulin. Her ears flapped back as she gazed at Blue. Did elephants grin? she wondered. It almost seemed as if the giant creature smiled at her.

‘Poor old girl,’ said Mrs Olsen. ‘No real shade for you today. Not even a creek to paddle in.’

‘She’s not tethered,’ said Blue. The ground felt hot through her slippers. ‘Why doesn’t she wander off?’

‘Tether Sheba?’ The voice behind her sounded as outraged as if she’d suggested tying up a baby. Madame stood on the caravan steps, a new Madame, her face pale with make-up, the blonde wig covering her grey hair and much of her wrinkled neck, and what Blue suspected was a bosom as fake as her own pushing up the flimsy camisole. But Madame’s now erect posture was real. Her waist looked like a young woman’s, and the wiriness of her arms would pass for youthful slimness in dim light. She lashed a shawl around her neck, covering the last of the wrinkles. ‘You do not tether your friends.’

‘Sheba stays where she’s loved,’ said Mrs Olsen simply. ‘Where would she go?’

‘I … I’m sorry.’ Blue wasn’t quite sure why she was apologising. Horses had to be tethered sometimes. Why not an elephant? Suddenly she was aware that Sheba was watching her. The grey trunk reached out towards them.

‘She wants her teddy bear,’ said Mrs Olsen.

‘I … I thought it was a gift.’

Mrs Olsen smiled. ‘A loan. I’ll get it for her.’ She nodded to a sack under Madame’s caravan. ‘Give her half the carrots while I get changed. One at a time. And no more questions,’ she added softly. She nodded towards a vehicle Blue hadn’t noticed: a long black police car.