The car had dark burgundy leather seats with little buttonholes and Flora put her fingers in the dimples and laughed. I laughed too but it sounded as though it was the laughter of a different girl, not me. The town gave way to rubber plantations and rice paddies and then jungle, until there was absolutely no one in sight. Parrots called out from the dark, leafy greenness. Monkeys shrilled in the jungle canopy above us. The air was cool and moist, and smelt of earth and growth and things rotting. It made my nose tingle and my skin felt swollen with the sound and the moisture.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, feeling anxious. I remembered Yada’s warnings to be careful of strangers, and Lizzie talking about the white slave trade, saying that white girls were captured and sold by traders to be slaves to wicked men. Suddenly, I was afraid.
Mr Tolego turned around in his seat. ‘It’s cooler in the jungle. Once upon a time there were too many tigers for anyone to be safe here, but don’t worry, you will be safe with me.’ He grinned at us.
‘Tigers! Oh no!’ Flora squealed. She squeezed my arm. ‘Tell him to turn back. I don’t want to see a tiger.’
‘Charlie told me the last tiger in Singapore was shot at the Raffles Hotel,’ I reassured her. ‘He said it was hiding under the billiard table and they killed it, so there are no more tigers.’
‘That was Singapore, Poesy-poo,’ said Clarissa. ‘I’m sure there are tigers in Kuala Lumpur. Look at all that jungle – can’t you imagine their stripes hidden in all the stripy light through the ferns?’
Flora began to make low, whiny sounds.
‘Don’t listen to her,’ I whispered into Flora’s ear. ‘There are no tigers, only monkeys. You like monkeys.’
‘I don’t like monkeys,’ said Valentine, being particularly unhelpful. ‘The hawker outside the hotel has one on a leash and it bared its teeth at me. I wouldn’t want to see a monkey that wasn’t on a chain.’
Flora nuzzled her head against me and sobbed softly. We drove on in silence through the darkening jungle. The light was soft and dappled, as if it were already late afternoon.
Mr Tolego steered the car onto a tiny cart road and parked in a glade.
‘Isn’t it getting on? Shouldn’t we be turning back?’ I asked. But neither Tempe nor Mr Tolego seemed to hear me. ‘Tempe?’
‘We’re going to go for a stroll. Teddy says there’s a lovely walk up here, a little stroll to a grove or something.’
I felt a leaden weight in my stomach. Mr Tolego opened the door on the passenger’s side and held out his hand to Tempe, holding hers a moment too long. She laughed lightly and stepped away from him towards the jungle path.
Flora started to cry again. ‘I don’t want to go for a walk,’ she said, burying her head in my lap. I knew she simply needed to sleep. Why had we brought her with us? Why had I come along? My own choices were a mystery to me.
‘I’ll stay here with Flora,’ I said, hoping they wouldn’t be too long.
Valentine shrank back in her seat and scanned the jungle nervously. ‘I’ll stay behind too. I don’t feel like walking.’
Clarissa climbed down from the car but Mr Tolego didn’t offer his hand to help her. Her face was tight and closed and she fiddled fretfully with the bow of her hat.
Tempe turned and said, ‘Clarissa, perhaps it’s best you stay too, so the little ones don’t feel frightened.’
‘I won’t be frightened,’ I called out. But Tempe only laughed. ‘She’s such a funny little creature, that Poesy. Valentine’s afraid, so you had better stay with her.’ Clarissa stomped back to the car, her face like thunder.
She didn’t speak to us the whole time Tempe and Mr Tolego were in the jungle, but she picked away at the ribbon of her hat until the satin edge was shredded.
When Tempe and Mr Tolego came back along the path, Tempe’s eyes were bright and feverish and she carried her hat crushed against her front with clenched hands. Her fawn dress was crumpled and her hair was frizzy from the damp heat.
‘Why were you so long?’ demanded Clarissa.
‘Oh do shut up, Lissa,’ said Tempe. She slumped in the front seat and watched Mr Tolego with a slightly wary, calculating look as he climbed in beside her and started the motor.
Mr Tolego said nothing on the drive back to town but his face seemed swarthier than ever. No one spoke. Only Flora was cheerful. She had slept in my lap while Tempe and Mr Tolego were in the jungle and she was happy to be heading back to the hotel.
‘We might be late for the evening show,’ I said, worrying out loud.
Tempe was silent and Mr Tolego didn’t once turn to speak to us. When I repeated my concern, Clarissa set upon me.
‘Stop it, Poesy,’ she said. ‘You are such a worry-wart. If you lot keep your mouths shut, no one will even know we were gone.’
The afternoon light had turned to gold by the time we arrived at the hotel. At the entrance, Mr Tolego finally decided to pretend to be a gentleman and he handed each one of us down from the back of the motor car, lifting Flora all the way to the ground. Valentine giggled and Flora did a little curtsey, as if he were someone special, someone to bother with rather than simply another stagedoor Johnny. But I kept my eyes downturned and followed the other girls around to the back entrance of the hotel. I couldn’t bear to look at him. I hoped I’d never see his pirate’s face again.
26
WHIPPING GIRL
Tilly Sweetrick
Was it Poesy’s fault? Sometimes I wonder. She always seemed to be there when things went wrong, to be caught up in the worst of everything. I was sitting on the terrace finishing off a slice of cake when I heard the fight begin. Every girl looked up, like frightened deer. Miss Thrupp was on her feet in an instant, ushering everyone from the terrace, shooing us up the stairs and back to our rooms. Which was probably rather lucky, because from our balcony I saw everything unfold.
‘Temperance Jones,’ roared Mr Arthur. His voice rang out along the dusty roadway. Tempe and Clarissa stood in a frightened huddle at the tradesmen’s entrance to the hotel. They must have been creeping in from some naughty adventure. But Flora and Poesy and Valentine were there too, standing next to Mr Arthur. Poor little Flora burst into tears of confusion and dear Valentine was white with distress, while Poesy’s face was contorted with horror, as if she had opened Pandora’s Box. Clarissa and Tempe looked as guilty as sin.
Tempe flushed deep red and shut her eyes. Very slowly she spat her words out at Mr Arthur, like sharp little darts.
‘Don’t call me that. Don’t call me Temperance. My name is Tempe. Tempe Melbourne.’
She turned her back on him and started down the path that led to the street. Mr Arthur leapt off the verandah and pursued her. He grabbed her by the arm and spun her around to face him.
‘Temperance, of which you have none. Do you have no sense of what men like that want from you?’
‘He doesn’t want anything from me that I’m not glad to give. I’m no different to Eliza. Or perhaps she doesn’t give as gladly as I do.’
That did it. Mr Arthur raised his cane and brought it down hard across her face. A gash opened above her eyebrow where the cane had slashed but Mr Arthur didn’t stop. As Tempe cried out and cupped her hands around the bleeding wound, Mr Arthur started to drag her back to the hotel. Despite her injury, Tempe fought him every inch of the way until he turned on her again and brought the cane down across her legs and back, again and again, blow after blow. Natives and Chinamen gathered at the back gate and stared at him. A crowd from the hotel spilled out from the side verandah to watch, but no one intervened. Mr Arthur kept beating Tempe until suddenly the cane snapped and the end piece went flying into the undergrowth.
Clarissa, stupid girl, stood wringing her hands. She didn’t have an ounce of sense inside her feathery head. But I should have thought Poesy would have done something. Instead, she stood slack-jawed, clinging to Flora’s hand. At least Valentine had the wit to scream.
It was Ruby who came to Tempe’s rescue. She went pelting
down the stairs and flew off the verandah. She grabbed Mr Arthur’s arm and suddenly the two girls and the man became lost in a tussle of torn clothes and shouted abuse.
Finally, Mr Arthur dragged both girls up to their room and slammed the door on them. Clarissa, who had been loitering on the stairs, was forced inside too, to complete the wicked trinity. Then he took out his set of keys and locked them in. His shirt was drenched with sweat and he was breathing hard. Miss Thrupp and Eloise stood in the hall, staring at the closed door. From behind it we could all hear Ruby shouting swear words at the door, at Mr Arthur, at the whole troupe. We couldn’t hear Tempe at all.
All the adults assembled in the corridor outside the girls’ room: Miss Thrupp, Eloise and Eddie Quedda, even Jim McNulty, the carpenter, and Mr Milligan, the electrician, whom we hardly ever saw except at the theatre. Mostly they looked numb with shock. Only Mr Arthur had anything to say.
‘This is your doing, Miss Thrupp,’ he said, his breath coming in short gasps. ‘Your disgrace. How did they leave the hotel without your knowing? You are employed to control these girls. And by God, if you can’t, then you force me to measures most unpopular. Someone has to save them from ruin.’
Lo’s face twisted in a snort of outrage. ‘As if you care when a girl is ruined,’ she said, but then she looked stricken, as if she wished she’d never spoken.
Miss Thrupp hitched her baby higher on her hip. Little Timmy’s face was a funny shade of yellow and his head lolled around on her shoulder in a peculiar way.
‘I cannot be involved in these histrionics. I have a sick child to care for. You employed me as matron, not as a prison guard.’
She turned and walked stiffly back to her room.
Tempe couldn’t perform with us for the closing show in Kuala Lumpur. On the platform at the station the day we left for Ipoh, she sat on top of a trunk with a scarf wrapped around her head to hide her bruises. Ruby and Clarissa stood either side of her as if they were her bodyguards, but they needn’t have worried. No one wanted to talk to them.
I was glad to be on the train again. If you shut your eyes to the jungle you could imagine you were anywhere in the world. The rhythm of the wheels, the smell of coal and the feel of the leather seat beneath us were comfortingly familiar, like any other tour. Valentine and I held hands and pretended we were somewhere else other than on a steam train riding through the dark jungles of the Malay Peninsula. My poor little Valentine. She was quite shaken by her terrible adventure. I told her she should never, ever go anywhere without me, ever again and she swore she never would and sobbed on my shoulder.
After Ipoh and Butterworth, we took the ferry across to Georgetown on the island of Penang. It was a pretty little town and the audiences were kind to us, even if there weren’t many of them in the theatre.
Next morning, when we came down for breakfast in our hotel, Tempe and Clarissa were sitting in the foyer, their arms folded across their chests, their faces like thunder. Outside the hotel, Mr Arthur organised for their suitcases to be loaded onto the back of a bullock cart. I knew instantly that he was sending them home. He was talking with an older, matronly-looking woman. She didn’t seem very excited at having been appointed as chaperone to the two vixens, but Mr Arthur slipped a small wad of money into her hand and she smiled, a horrible glossy smirk.
We’d just sat down for breakfast in the dining room when Mr Arthur walked straight to our table.
‘Are you ready, Valentine?’
Valentine couldn’t look at me. She hung her head and a big tear rolled down her cheek and plopped onto her skirt. ‘I’m sorry, Tills. I didn’t know how to tell you. I’m being sent home too.’
‘But you didn’t do anything,’ I cried. I put my arms around her neck and clung to her. I didn’t care about the others leaving but I couldn’t bear the thought of losing Valentine.
‘Enough nonsense,’ said Mr Arthur. ‘Come along, Valentine.’
‘I’ll only be a minute,’ she said to him, and she hugged me tightly. ‘It’s all right, Tilly dear,’ she said, kissing me on the cheek. ‘I don’t want to go to India. I want to go home.’
‘But why must he choose you? Why not Poesy? She was in the car too.’
‘Poesy told him we’d been with Mr Tolego instead of saying we’d been out for a stroll, silly girl. Clarissa wants to scratch her eyes out. Besides, Poesy doesn’t want to go home.’
‘But why do you want to?’ I cried.
‘I’m going to stay with Mrs Essie and if Tempe and Clarissa try to say bad things about Mr Arthur being too rough, I will say otherwise.’
‘You’d lie for Mr Arthur?’ We both looked into the foyer where Mr Arthur was tapping his foot, waiting for Valentine to finish her goodbyes. He pointed to his watch impatiently and Valentine nodded.
‘It wouldn’t exactly be lying to say Tempe and Clarissa exaggerate everything. I’ve been with the Percivals since I was five years old, Tilly. They’re like family to me. You have to stick up for your family.’
I gripped her arm as she tried to leave me. ‘You can’t go. You can’t leave your sister behind. Iris is your real family.’ I wanted to say she couldn’t leave me but everything was turned upside down. For the first time in our lives, I wasn’t sure of her.
‘Iris can take care of herself. She is twelve years old, for goodness sake. Besides, Mr Arthur can’t spare her. She’s the best in the troupe.’
I flinched and dropped her arm. She might as well have slapped me. She’d always said I was the best actress in the world. I watched her walk out of the dining room.
Out in the street, I stood to one side as Tempe and Clarissa said their farewells. Valentine didn’t look back at me as she climbed onto the wagon.
‘He can’t be doing this,’ said Ruby, wrapping one arm around Clarissa’s neck and the other around Tempe’s and drawing them close to her. ‘You can’t go. I won’t let you.’
Tempe turned her ruined face away. ‘I’m glad. Williamson’s will have me, and I won’t try out for the juvenile company either. I’ll be a real showgirl. I’m sorry you’re not coming with us, Ruby. When you come home, you can audition for Williamson’s too and we’ll all be together again. Then we’ll be real actresses, singing songs worth singing.’
‘I want to come now, but he won’t let me,’ said Ruby bitterly. ‘He doesn’t want my parents to find out that he’s a brute, in case they come after Beryl and Pearl.’
The three girls huddled together for a moment, nestling into each other’s bodies like a kindle of kittens. Clarissa looked up at Poesy and scowled.
‘What are you staring at, poo-faced Poesy,’ she said. ‘Go away.’
Poesy stood a little apart from the rest of us. Her yellow hair fell limply around her shoulders and there were purple shadows under her eyes. ‘I only wanted to say goodbye,’ she said.
‘If you’d kept your big mouth shut,’ said Clarissa, ‘we wouldn’t be leaving. You’re a tattler, a tell-tale-tit, and I hope all the nasty monkeys come to take a bit.’
Even Tempe thought that was too harsh. She put her hand out and stilled Clarissa’s sharpness.
‘You sound like a five-year-old, Lissa. It’s all right, Poesy. This is not your fault. But be careful, all of you. No one can trust the Butcher.’
That was the first time I heard anyone call Mr Arthur ‘the Butcher’.
As Valentine, Clarissa and Tempe climbed onto the wagon, they turned to wave goodbye and Tempe’s scarf slipped to one side. The sight of the long gash down her face seared the word ‘butcher’ into my brain. Butcher, butcher, butcher. He’d taken my Valentine from me and cut me to my heart.
27
THE SHOW MUST GO ON
Poesy Swift
Nightmares plagued me. Sometimes Mr Arthur came storming through the jungle, sometimes I could feel Mr Tolego’s hands sliding up my body, and all the while I could hear Clarissa’s voice shrieking, ‘Tattler!’ Then everything would turn red and I would wake trembling.
After Kuala Lumpu
r, some of the girls refused to sleep in the same room as me. I was moved in with Lizzie again. It was such sweet relief to be with her. Once, I woke from my nightmare confused and sobbing. It felt like the middle of the night but it must have been early because Lizzie was coming in through the door and the light spilled across my bed. She lifted the mosquito netting and climbed in beside me. Even though it was hot to have two bodies so close, I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep once she held me. Sometimes I felt Lizzie was the only one who believed I hadn’t tattled. All I’d said to Mr Arthur about the trip with Mr Tolego was that we had been motoring in his new car. What else was I to say when Mr Arthur saw us all sneaking in the back entrance of the hotel? I never told anyone about Tempe disappearing into the jungle with Mr Tolego, not even Lizzie. It was when Flora sucked her thumb and said she was afraid of tigers that Mr Arthur turned on Tempe.
Lizzie said it was a good thing that Tempe and Clarissa were being sent home. She said they were poisoning the troupe, making everyone turn on Mr Arthur, and that he’d only done his duty. But Miss Thrupp and Mr Milligan the electrician had gone cold on him. You could see the frosty expressions on their faces when he spoke to them, you could sense their disapproval. You could hear them muttering about not being paid enough and how the tour would end in tears.
But it wasn’t Mr Arthur’s fault that the audiences were thin and so many of the children were falling ill. First it was Daisy and then Valentine’s little sister, Iris.
The day after Valentine and the others were put on board a steamer to Australia, Iris collapsed on stage. It was our last night in Penang and she’d been playing Winifred, the lead in A Runaway Girl. As soon as the curtain fell, her eyes rolled back in her head and she crumpled in a heap. Luckily, Lionel was close enough to catch her. Miss Thrupp and Lo bundled her into the dressing room and stripped off her costume, which was drenched in sweat. The rest of us had to wait in the wings.
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