Zarconi’s Magic Flying Fish

by Kirsty Murray

  This edition published in 2006

  First published in 1999

  Copyright © Kirsty Murray 1999

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  9 Atchison Street

  St Leonards NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: frontdesk@allen-unwin.com.au

  Web: http://www.allen-unwin.com.au

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Murray, Kirsty.

  Zarconi’s magic flying fish.

  ISBN 1 74114 855 3.

  eISBN 978 1 74115 948 6

  I. Title.

  A823.3

  Cover and prelims designed by MATHEMATICS

  Original text design by Sandra Nobes

  Fish logo by Geoff Kelly

  Map by Inkpot Monkey

  CONTENTS

  1. THE BLACK CLOUD

  2. NIGHT TRAIN

  3. ZARCONI’S INCREDIBLE TRAVELLING CIRCUS

  4. SNAKE-GIRL AND OTHER ANIMALS

  5. THE SCENT OF CIRCUS

  6. SPINNING KNIVES AND THE DEMON FIRE-EATER

  7. THE ROAD TO IRON KNOB

  8. SAWDUST IN THE BLOOD

  9. THE OTHER GUS

  10. FISH TALES

  11. BACKWARDS VOYAGER

  12. THE WEIGHT OF DREAMS

  13. COLD WATER, COLD COMFORT

  14. ORDINARY MAGIC

  15. TAKING THE PLUNGE

  16. BREAKING INTO THE PAST

  17. MAKING IT SPIN

  18. BAD OMENS

  19. LIFE BLOOD

  20. SHAKING OFF THE MORTAL COIL

  21. FULL MOON OVER KALI

  22. DESERT WINDS

  23. SOUTH OF MARBLE BAR

  24. THE TIES THAT BIND

  25. UP IN SMOKE

  26. SAVING ZARCONI’S

  27. UNDER AN OPEN SKY

  28. UNRAVELLING THE PAST

  29. ZARCONI’S MAGIC FLYING FISH

  30. AND IN THE END

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Ashton's Circus and Stacey Orton for their generosity; Mark St. Leon, circus historian extraordinaire; Ken Harper and The Little Big Tops for technical information and inspiration; Matthew Taft for his articulate feedback; The Dirty Three for ‘Ocean Songs’; Sarah Brenan and Ros Price for acts of faith; Ruby, Billy and Elwyn Murray and Isobel, Romanie and Theo Harper for being there; Department of Minerals and Energy, WA, and countless tourist information centres through SA and WA; and Inkpot Monkey for his very funky map.

  OTHER BOOKS BY KIRSTY MURRAY

  FICTION

  Market Blues

  Walking Home with Marie-Claire

  Children of the Wind

  Bridie’s Fire

  Becoming Billy Dare

  A Prayer for Blue Delaney

  NON-FICTION

  Howard Florey, Miracle Maker

  Tough Stuff

  1

  THE BLACK CLOUD

  Gus lay listening in the dark. It was hard to make out exactly what they were saying over the rumble of Pete’s snore. He reached up from the mattress on the floor and gave his friend a jab. Pete turned over and lay with his face pressed into the pillow.

  ‘We can’t keep him, Kate,’ said Pete’s dad. ‘You know we can’t take him on. There’s not the money or the space for him here.’

  Gus pulled his sleeping bag up to his chin. He bit his lip and looked out at the dark night outside the bedroom window. You’d think they were talking about a lost dog or something – not a kid they’d known since he was a baby.

  ‘It’s not like he’s family or anything.’

  ‘But he’s got nowhere else to go, Bob.’

  ‘Look, he’s a great kid, but if Annie doesn’t make it, we could be stuck with him forever.’

  Gus wished Pete would start snoring again. He didn’t want to hear any more. He felt worse than a stray dog – more like a kicked mongrel.

  Pete’s mum drove Gus to the hospital the next day. They didn’t talk much on the way there, but she seemed to know what he was thinking because she gave him a quick hug before he walked down the long corridor to his mum’s ward.

  Gus sat on the end of the bed, waiting for her to wake up. He reached out and touched her chest lightly, just to be sure – to be sure she was still breathing. He could hear Bob Spanner’s voice echoing inside his head: ‘If she doesn’t make it…’

  ‘Mum,’ he whispered.

  She shifted on the bed and slowly opened her eyes. Gus clenched his jaw and felt a muscle twitch in his cheek. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about. He knew he had to get his act together.

  ‘How are you doing, Gus?’

  Gus thought of how he’d spent all afternoon in sick bay at school the day before. Most days he felt like he was sitting in the middle of a black cloud. Even in the hospital, where everything was so light and shining, he could feel the darkness inside of him.

  ‘Good,’ he answered.

  ‘Everything working out round at Pete’s?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he shrugged and looked out the window at the summer day and the long line of cars heading towards the city.

  ‘Gus,’ she said, his name a reproach.

  ‘They don’t want me there, Mum.’

  ‘It’s not you, honey. Kate came to see me this morning and we talked. It’s not their fault. It’s just the doctors say it could be a long while. I can’t help them with money either. They’ve been really good to do as much as they have.’

  ‘Yeah, I s’pose. But what’s gonna happen to me?’ he mumbled, picking at the edge of the blanket, pushing his fingers through the weave until it started to unravel.

  ‘I’ve written to your grandparents,’ she said.

  ‘Grandparents!’ He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  ‘My mum and dad.’

  ‘But I thought they were dead! I thought it was just you and me – that’s what you’ve always said. Just us.’

  ‘I never said they were dead – I never said that – but it’s too hard to explain just now. They said you can stay with them until I’m back on my feet. I’ll come and get you again as soon as I’m strong enough, Gus. It won’t be for too long.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Maybe a month or two – maybe a bit more. But as soon as I can.’

  Gus looked across at the lady in the bed opposite his mother’s. He’d been watching her get thinner and paler as the weeks went by.

  He got up from his chair and pulled a few petals from the flower arrangement on her bedside table. His mum said nothing, just watched as he paced around the bed. He walked over to the window and pressed his face against the glass.

  ‘So where do they live, these grandparents?’

  ‘At the moment, Adelaide,’ said his mum.

  ‘What! You mean I’ll have to leave school and all my friends? And leave you here? Without me?’

  ‘Gus, there’s nothing else I can do. Please don’t make this harder than it has to be. We’ll still keep in touch.

  The circus is always easy to track down and you can write to
me.’

  ‘A circus! What kind of a circus?’

  ‘Your grandparents run a bush circus – a travelling circus that goes from town to town – so they’re on the road most of the time. Don’t worry, you’ll fit in. After all, you’ve always been a bit of a clown,’ she said, forcing a smile.

  Gus was hot and burning all over. He wanted to shout at her – he didn’t care how sick she was. She couldn’t send him away from Melbourne, to people he’d never even heard of before. He stood next to her bed, clenching his fists, ready to argue with her. Then he realised she was crying. He sat down and laid his head on the side of her bed.

  ‘It won’t be forever, Gus,’ she said.

  She rested her small and frail hand on his head and he felt a black tide of fear swelling inside him. What if it was forever?

  2

  NIGHT TRAIN

  It was hot inside the railway carriage. Gus couldn’t get comfortable. Pete’s mum had pinned a great big envelope to the front of his shirt and it kept flipping up and poking him under the chin. It had his name written in big letters: ‘GUS MCGRATH’. She might as well have written ‘RETURN TO SENDER’ all over him. He felt like a reject parcel posted across the country. He didn’t want to meet these weird grandparents. He didn’t want to be on a train racing through the darkness towards Adelaide. He tore the envelope off and jammed it into his pocket.

  Pete’s mum had packed him a plastic bag full of food but he didn’t feel much like eating it. The banana was squashed and horrible and the smell of it had somehow got into the bread of his sandwiches. He stuffed them back in their bag. The old man next to him was holding a newspaper that seemed to take up enough room for three seats. At least Gus had a window seat, but now night had fallen it was too dark to see anything but a blur of smudgy black landscape. Gus squeezed past all the long grown-up legs and knees and wandered down the carriage towards the toilets.

  The toilet was tiny and it stank. He looked at himself in the mirror and stuck his tongue out at his pasty white reflection. Most summers, he turned a rich coffee colour. Every summer before this one, he and his mum had spent two weeks with friends down the coast at Torquay. It was the best time of the year. He’d come home brown and strong – even with sunscreen slapped all over him he seemed to soak up sunshine.

  This was the first summer that they hadn’t done it. His mum had stopped working at the hospital just before his birthday, last November, and now she’d become a patient. She was tired all the time and there was no money for holidays, no energy for anything. Gus had always felt sorry for other kids – their mums were so boring. Not like his mum. She was always good for a wrestle, laughed a lot and clowned around. She had seemed younger and stronger than everyone else’s mums until the cancer got her.

  Gus could divide his life into two pieces: before cancer and after cancer. Before cancer, life had rolled along in a smooth pattern of days. School, home, mucking around with Mum, swimming lessons, fish and chips every Wednesday night, after-school care on Tuesdays and Fridays because Mum’s shift was a long one, going down to Torquay in the holidays, having Pete over to stay. And then suddenly, Mum was too tired to do anything much. She had to keep going into hospital for tests, and one afternoon she hadn’t come back. Pete’s mum turned up at the school gate and told Gus that he would have to come home with her. And then things had started to get weird, and now they were going to be weirder than he could imagine.

  He wrestled with the toilet door and lurched out into the carriage again. The rhythm of the train was making him feel sick. The old man with the newspaper smiled as Gus squeezed past. The man looked like somebody’s grandfather. He had a nice face; kindly with little smile lines around his eyes and silver hair brushed neatly to one side. Gus found himself wondering if his own grandfather was going to look something like that. Most of his friends had grandparents who gave presents and made a fuss of them a couple of times a year but Gus had never given a lot of thought to whether he had any or what they were like, until now. He figured he must have asked his mum about them when he was little but he couldn’t remember what exactly she’d said. Not much, that’s for sure. She’d certainly never said anything about growing up in a circus. He couldn’t imagine his mum in a circus. There was nothing ‘showbiz’ about her, especially now that she was sick.

  Gus’s mum had never liked talking about the past. Not even about his father. Gus knew he looked like him – he sure didn’t look much like his mum – but that was about all he knew. When he was four, he had figured out that most other kids had a dad somewhere and had started asking questions.

  ‘Where’s my dad?’ he’d ask. ‘Can I phone him? Where’s he live? When can I see him?’

  His mum always gave the same replies. She didn’t know where he was. She hadn’t seen him since before Gus was born. There wasn’t anything to tell about him. For a while, Gus thought if he asked often enough the answers might change, but eventually he gave up. Now he was beginning to wish he’d kept asking questions about everything.

  Gus pulled his knapsack down from the luggage rack and punched it to soften it up as a pillow. He drew his legs underneath him, curled up in his single seat and tried to sleep. The future was opening up like a big black yawning mouth. It was about to swallow him whole.

  3

  ZARCONI’S INCREDIBLE TRAVELLING CIRCUS

  The sign outside said ‘Keswick’, but the conductor told Gus he had to get off – he’d arrived in Adelaide. Gus stood in the door of the train and felt a rush of panic. The crowd surged along the platform. How would anyone know him? What if no one had come to meet him? He fumbled in his pocket for the envelope with his name on it and stepped out onto the platform. He figured if he stood still long enough, someone would ask him who he was. He couldn’t quite bring himself to pin the envelope back on his chest, so he leant against the wall, right under the Keswick sign, and waited for someone to find him.

  ‘This is the worst day of my life,’ he thought.

  A few metres up the platform, someone else was waiting – a big man, built like a bear and almost bald. His hands were thrust deep in his pockets and he was leaning against the wall. As the crowd thinned he looked up and down the length of the platform and finally he stared at Gus. Gus stared back. The man had the bluest eyes he’d ever seen – like little pieces of sky.

  Gus couldn’t move. He waited as the man lumbered up the platform.

  ‘Augustus O’Brien?’ asked the giant.

  ‘No, my name’s Gus McGrath and I’m waiting for my grandfather.’

  ‘Gus McGrath, is it? Now why’d your mother call you McGrath? You’ve got the O’Brien eyes, no doubt about it.’

  ‘Are you him?’ asked Gus in a small voice.

  The man put his hand out. ‘Doc O’Brien,’ he said. Gus felt his own hand disappear into the big man’s fist.

  ‘Should I call you Grandfather or Grandpa or something like that?’

  ‘You can call me what you like, long as it’s civil. But everyone else calls me Doc.’ They looked at each other for a long uncomfortable moment.

  ‘C’mon then, boy, can’t hang about all day. Got work to do.’ He strode down the platform to the parking lot, threw Gus’s bags into the back of a battered red truck and gestured impatiently for Gus to hop in. Zarconi’s Incredible Travelling Circus was painted on the door in faded yellow letters. Gus felt as if his feet were made of lead as he walked across the bitumen towards it.

  ‘I’ve got a letter for you,’ Gus shouted above the roar of the engine.

  He took the crumpled envelope out of his pocket and pushed it across the seat.

  ‘From your mother?’

  ‘No, from Mrs Spanner. She was looking after me for a bit while Mum was in hospital.’

  ‘Nothing from your mother, then?’

  ‘No,’ Gus said and turned to stare out the window.

  He thought of his mother in the hospital the last time. When he’d tried to ask her about his grandparents.

  ‘You’
ll find out for yourself, Gus,’ she’d said. ‘They’ll be good to you. Don’t worry.’

  ‘But why haven’t we ever been to see them?’

  ‘It’s a long story. When you’re older, I’ll tell you about it.’

  Gus looked hard at his grandfather as the truck headed out into the traffic. His nose was like a tropical fish – red at the base and shot through with strange colours. He didn’t have much hair left and the top of his head was smooth, shiny and red. And he was so big. Broad shoulders, a barrel chest – everything about him was huge. Gus sank a little lower in his seat. His grandfather reached across and took the letter, tucking it into his shirt pocket.

  ‘Haven’t got much to say for yourself, eh boy?’ said his grandfather.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not like your mother then. She always had plenty to say.’ He laughed, but his laughter was like an angry bark.

  They passed around the edge of the city, heading west.

  ‘Do you have a house around Adelaide?’ asked Gus.

  ‘A house!’ roared Doc. ‘By god, you wouldn’t catch me living in one of these little boxes!’ He gestured out the window. ‘Never lived in a house in my whole life and not about to start now. No, I’ve got a home – and that’s the road. Was good enough for my father and his father and it’s good enough for me. Always sorry it wasn’t good enough for your mother.’

  Gus winced.

  ‘So where am I gonna stay?’

  ‘With me and your grandmother. You can sleep on the couch up the front of our caravan.’

  ‘The couch?’

  ‘Comfiest bed in the place and I should know. I’ve slept on it often enough after your grandmother’s had a go at me.’

  Gus frowned and shut his eyes. If he held his breath as well, he could imagine he was underwater, water pressing all around him, dark and still and quiet. He gasped as Doc cuffed him across the back of the head.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ asked Gus, putting one hand to his chest.

  ‘You looked like you were stacking on one of your mother’s turns. She used to hold her breath till she turned blue. Not a pretty sight.’