Down the Road to Gundagai

by Jackie French

  ‘Not very hungry, Uncle Herbert,’ said Blue, too hot in her long silk dress, its high collar rough against her still-tender neck. Why aren’t they talking? she wondered. Ladies always kept the conversation going. Ladies talked about the weather, or the state of the roads, or the flowers in the garden, to avoid silences like this. Never business, politics or religion, of course, but never silence either.

  The aunts don’t want Uncle Herbert here, she realised. But the aunts couldn’t argue with a telegram. Nor could they have told Ethel not to open the door to him. For a moment she felt vaguely sorry for him, facing the aunts’ hostility, just to see his great niece on her birthday. He had brought her another box of chocolates, and a card with a ten-pound note.

  Aunt Daisy stared at her baked potato. Aunt Lilac cut her mutton into small neat squares, adding a piece of grey bean before lifting each square to her mouth. Uncle Herbert gave Blue a worried glance.

  ‘I’d hoped you would be well by now.’

  ‘The fresh air will soon have her right again.’ Aunt Daisy looked like she wanted to gulp the words back into the silence.

  Aunt Lilac’s prune smile was firmly in place. She reached over to pat Blue’s hand, the right one that was hardly scarred at all. ‘We are taking the best possible care of her.’

  A hot bedroom at the top of the house where no one would see her. Meals on a tray. Blue looked away from her plate as nausea swept through her. ‘The fresh air isn’t making me well.’

  Uncle Herbert met Aunt Lilac’s eyes. ‘What does the doctor say?’

  Aunt Lilac ignored him. She rang the bell. Ethel appeared, sweat trickling down her cow-like face. Aunt Lilac would never have a Chinese girl wait at table.

  ‘Ethel, would you take Miss Bluebell’s plate away please? Bring her the liver custard. I make it myself.’ Aunt Lilac turned to Uncle Herbert. ‘So restorative.’

  Blue closed her eyes at the thought of the liver custard. It was worse than wobbly blancmange or the tapioca that looked like someone had squashed maggots in a bowl.

  ‘And I’ve made tapioca for pudding.’ Aunt Lilac piled more grey beans and gravy onto her fork.

  ‘The doctor?’ repeated Uncle Herbert.

  More silence. At last Aunt Lilac put down her fork, the silver polished into thinness over many generations. ‘There is no doctor at Willow Creek.’

  Uncle Herbert flapped his hands, as though that might give his words more strength. ‘No doctor! Really! She has to see a doctor!’

  As though I am a chipped vase, thought Blue, with no feelings to be hurt.

  ‘There is no need for a doctor. My sister and I can care for our niece perfectly well.’

  ‘Just look at her, woman!’

  Blue blinked at the rudeness. But neither of her aunts answered. A lady does not notice rudeness.

  ‘Bluebell needs to come back to Melbourne. To a nursing home. I … I will make arrangements.’

  Aunt Lilac ignored him. Her eyes were stone. Uncle Herbert bit his lip.

  Ethel brought in the liver custard.

  Blue stared at it, pale grey like congealed snot. The bitter tide rose in her throat.

  She pushed her chair back from the table. ‘I’m sorry …’

  Uncle Herbert rose politely to his feet.

  Blue stumbled out the door. All at once Mah’s strong hands were there. Blue let Mah seat her on one of the upright hall chairs. She grabbed a vase for Blue to vomit in, scattering the roses on the floor.

  Blue retched again, then gasped, trying to get her breath, hoping the spasms in her stomach would stop.

  Words floated, half heard, from the dining room, as she vomited again, nothing to bring up now but the spasms kept coming.

  ‘… am shocked to see how ill she is.’ The rumble was Uncle Herbert. And then, ‘I fail to understand why you took it upon yourselves to take her from the hospital, much less bring her way out here …’

  ‘… better she be nursed by her own family.’ Aunt Lilac’s voice again. Iron had replaced stone.

  ‘At the very least you should have let me know where you intended taking her. It was by merest chance that one of my employees spoke to the chauffeur from the car hire company who brought you out here. What did you think you were doing, taking the girl away from everyone who knows her?’

  More silence. Blue closed her eyes to stop the world fading in and out. ‘As Bluebell’s only male relative, I must insist she be brought to Melbourne to a nursing home next week. Tuesday.’ Announcing the specific day seemed to give Uncle Herbert courage. He spoke more firmly now. ‘I will pick her up myself on Tuesday. With a nurse. A proper nurse. It must be obvious to anyone that there is something gravely wrong with her. If she continues like this, then …’

  Ethel dropped a dish, out in the kitchen. As the clang died down Blue caught Uncle Herbert’s final words. ‘… not long for this world.’

  This world? What world? Were they still talking about her? Blue couldn’t think. The world was nausea, spinning around her. She could smell her sweat, bitter as her vomit.

  At last Mah helped her up the stairs. She unbuttoned Blue’s boots as she lay on the bed, then helped her out of the silk dress into a nightdress.

  Blue lay back gratefully on the pillows. ‘Thank you.’

  Mah nodded. Mah rarely spoke. Once Blue had thought that she had little English. But slowly she realised that Mah just didn’t speak unless she had to.

  Mah watched though, and listened. She’d seen enough today to be there at the door when she was needed, just outside the dining room. Now she knew that Blue needed a drink, pouring a glass of water from the big porcelain jug on the stand by the door, before Blue could reach for the Thermos of cold sweet milk that Aunt Lilac insisted she drink to build up her strength.

  Blue sipped. The water tasted sour. Everything tasted sour these days, even Uncle Herbert’s chocolates. Mah must have put the new box by her bedside, as well as the card with the ten-pound note. Flies bumped at the window between the limp curtains, trying to get out. Even more clustered outside, trying to get in. Mah looked at Blue impassively, seeing everything.

  ‘Mah,’ Blue spoke impulsively. ‘Do you … think I’m dying?’

  Mah looked at her silently. Then she shook her head. ‘No, missee. You not die. Not till you very, very old.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Sleep,’ ordered Mah. It wasn’t said kindly, like Aunt Lilac might have said it. It was just — obvious.

  Blue needed to sleep.

  She did.

  It was dusk when she awoke. Shadows clung to the wooden furniture. Outside, the trees rustled as though relieved of the weight of the sun’s heat.

  Somewhere, from far off, came the sound of laughter. Blue sat up, blinking. She had never heard laughter in this house before. Like Queen Victoria, Aunt Lilac was rarely amused.

  Nor, she realised, did the laughter come from the house. The circus, she thought. The elephant! ‘For one night only, just up the road!’

  Mum and Dad would have gone to the circus, Willy up on Dad’s shoulders and Mum in a new hat. Mum always said that the best things in life deserved a new hat.

  One night only. She thought of the elephant’s small dark eyes, the strangely flat pad of its feet. She was glad her brother had seen an elephant before his tiny life was lost in the cold ocean.

  One night before the circus took the road to Gundagai.

  What would it be like to follow the road, and see where it led? One day, she thought, I’ll travel, like Mum and Dad did, just for the joy of it, even though they used the excuse of looking for new sources of leather for Laurence’s Shoes — crocodile skin from Darwin, Persian lamb from Christchurch, ostrich leather from Cape Town. She’d have been with them on that last trip, if she hadn’t caught chickenpox two days before the ship sailed.

  If she hadn’t caught chickenpox, she’d have seen the elephants and the market place. She’d have slid down into the cold water with her family, away from the world of light.<
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  ‘… not long for this world.’ Uncle Herbert’s words floated back. Did Uncle Herbert mean that Blue might die?

  She didn’t feel sick enough to die! She had been burned, but the burns had healed, even if the scars were still ugly and made walking difficult. She grieved, but you didn’t die of grief, or only in books.

  Sometimes she felt hardly sick at all. If you were well enough to want to go to a circus, surely you were too well to die.

  Why shouldn’t she go? The thought seemed to come from that far-off life when everything had been possible, from loving arms and ice cream (indigestible, said Aunt Lilac) to white and pink spotted dresses with flounces at the knee and pink straw hats, instead of the dark clothes of mourning. Why shouldn’t a sixteen-year-old girl go to the circus?

  And if she was going to die (but I won’t, she thought — not till I am a hundred and four and have seen the pyramids and flown an aeroplane and gone to Timbuktu) she would have at least met an elephant, and visited the circus that would leave the faded houses of Willow Creek, still and dusty, behind, and travel up the road, the breeze at their backs, to places with strange names like Gundagai.

  Money? She looked at Uncle Herbert’s ten-pound note poking out from the birthday card. Blue didn’t know how much it cost to go to a circus, but ten pounds should be more than enough.

  But I’m hideous, scarred. People will stare. She bit her lip. Not in the high-necked dress, the long strands of her remaining hair carefully arranged, the velvet hat the aunts had brought her to wear back from hospital pulled down to cover her bald spots. The growing darkness would hide her shambling walk and, anyway, no one here knew her, only Ethel and Mah, and Aunt Lilac wouldn’t be letting either of them go to the circus.

  Mah could help her downstairs …

  No, not Mah. A girl of Blue’s class — even an orphan, dependent on her aunts’ charity — had every right to go to the circus. Blue could risk Aunt Lilac’s angry smile for herself, but a servant like Mah was vulnerable. If Blue was going to go to the circus, it had to be alone.

  Strength seeped back into her, despite the nausea. If she felt faint, she could sit down. If she wanted to be sick, she’d find a bush.

  She found her dress again, and slipped it over her head, buttoning it high up to her throat. No underwear: impossible to pull it past her scar.

  She had no writing paper or inkwell, or even a pen and blotting paper. She’d had no need, with no letters to reply to. But Mah had brought up a pencil a few weeks ago with one of those new ‘crossword’ things from the newspaper. She used the back of Uncle Herbert’s card to write a careful note, propping it on her bed.

  I have gone to the circus. I will be back soon.

  Love,

  Bluebell

  She didn’t love her aunts. She was reasonably sure they didn’t love her either. But they had upset their lives to care for her. It might not be accurate, but they had earned more than Sincerely yours.

  Buttoning her shoes left her dizzy. Blue waited till the room steadied, then shuffled to the door. The big house creaked as the day’s heat seeped from its crevices.

  Down one flight, down the next. She paused, hearing Aunt Daisy’s voice briefly from the living room below. Uncle Herbert must have left, not trusting his automobile headlights to get him back to Melbourne in the dark.

  The clock boomed in the hallway. She counted the strokes. One, two, three, four, five, six …

  Six o’clock. The aunts dined at six, keeping early hours in the country. Dinner should keep them occupied for at least an hour, with their small ladylike bites, cold mutton and reheated potatoes left over from the lunchtime roast, then sipping the tea that Ethel would bring them on the silver tray. Ethel would be having her supper now too, in the kitchen, and Mah eating hers on the kitchen steps. (‘I’m a Christian woman,’ Ethel had informed Aunt Lilac. ‘I’m not eating at a table with no heathen.’) It would be at least an hour before Ethel gave Mah the tray to take to Blue’s room. Perhaps Mah might even say Blue was asleep, and she didn’t want to waken her.

  What time did the circus start?

  She was going to find out.

  Blue shuffled through the dust and thistles at the side of the road. The scar that glued her thighs together was no bigger than the mouth of a teacup, but it was still enough to stop her taking all but the most ladylike of steps. Carts and sulkies and their hot horses passed in a dusty trickle, heading to the circus paddock. Here and there lamplight or candlelight flickered from farmhouses across the paddocks.

  Only one light glowed, a universe of brightness in the twilight ahead of her: electric light, powerful enough to beat back the night. She felt as well as heard the beat of the generator.

  It was more light than she had seen since she’d gone to the Royal Show at night the year before, just with Dad that time, as Willy was only two months old, too young for Mum to take him to the Show with people coughing polio or whooping cough germs all over the place. That light had almost eclipsed the moon and so did this, though on a much smaller scale.

  ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry! The Magnifico Family Circus! Tonight only!’ the voice boomed from the paddock gate.

  More wheels sounded behind her. She melted back towards the barbed wire as a farm cart passed, two giggling couples in the back. The women wore bonnets — bonnets! In 1932! The cart stopped at the paddock gate so its driver could hand money to a shadowed man, then veered off to an area marked out for vehicles: carts, sulkies, a few shabby automobiles.

  On the other side of the paddock the light spilled from a not particularly big Big Top with gently flapping canvas walls. Three smaller tents sat to one side with billboards out the front: a House of Horrors, its sides painted with ghosts and skeletons; the Freak Show tent next to it, its walls showing badly sketched dragons and sea monsters that Blue thought were unlikely to be inside; and there was a small queue in front of the one that said The Amazing Madame Zlosky.

  A dwarf with a hunched back stood on a platform outside the Freak Show. ‘See the world’s biggest grizzly bear! Sixpence a time!’ His voice squeaked on the word ‘sixpence’.

  Blue shuffled up to the gate, adorned now with a poster of a young man flying through the air towards a dangling trapeze. The ticket-seller was the man with the trombone she had seen earlier. He looked sharply at her dark silk dress, her velvet hat. Blue suspected she would be the only audience member in silk tonight.

  His face became carefully blank again. ‘Three shillings for a front-row seat, two shillings for the high seats, a shilling for the stalls. Sideshows are extra.’ His voice was high and gruff as he gave her a practised grin under his salt-and-pepper moustache.

  ‘A seat at the back please. Not a high one.’ Blue held out the ten-pound note.

  ‘A shilling seat then.’ The man stared at the note, making no pretence now. ‘Blimey. Ain’t seen one of them for a while. I ain’t got change for ten quid, not yet anyhow.’

  Blue calculated quickly. She couldn’t carry a hundred and ninety-nine shilling pieces without a handbag. ‘Could you give me five shillings now, and the rest of the change after the show?’

  The man looked at her strangely. ‘You’d trust me to give it back then?’

  ‘Yes.’ Blue didn’t care if he was trustworthy or not. She had nothing else to spend the money on. ‘Never, if you’re going to die,’ said a whisper. Blue ignored it. She peered into the shadows behind the tent lights, trying to see the elephant.

  The man seemed to come to a decision. ‘Here.’ He poured a small pile of sixpences and a couple of shillings into her hand. ‘That’s enough to see the sideshows and buy yourself some peanuts. Sit in the front row and someone’ll bring the rest of your change after the show.’

  ‘I’d rather sit at the back.’

  ‘Suit yourself, girlie. At the back then.’ He hesitated. ‘You from the big house, ain’t you?’

  She nodded. ‘Please, where is the elephant?’

  ‘The Queen of Sheba? You missed the feedin
g.’ He grinned at her, showing missing teeth on either side. ‘A penny a carrot for the elephant. But she’s resting before the performance. She’s an old girl now.’ His voice gentled. ‘Too old to be jostled all day by strangers.’

  Blue swallowed her disappointment. She’d hoped to pat the elephant, even perhaps have a ride on it.

  ‘Tell you what,’ said the man suddenly. ‘After the show’s over, I’ll introduce you. How’s that? You can give her a carrot.’

  It felt like a birthday present, her only real one, more real than the box of chocolates. ‘Wonderful.’

  The man with the moustache laughed. ‘You enjoy the show then. Don’t forget the House of Horrors.’

  She’d had enough horrors of her own. But she grinned at him anyway. How long had it been since she grinned?

  She stepped into the paddock that had become the circus.

  Chapter 3

  The crowd milled around the three sideshows, men in farmer’s hats and long-wearing Laurence’s Jumbuck boots, women in ankle-skimming pre-war dresses or slim flapper tunics with long loops of beads pretending to be pearls bouncing on bosoms too rounded and uncorseted to be truly fashionable. Boys with bare feet and cut-down shorts and shirts made from well-washed flour sacks wriggled and laughed between the adults.

  A small queue still waited outside the fortune-teller’s tent. Muffled shrieks came from inside the House of Horrors.

  The hunchbacked dwarf still yelled the Freak Show’s wonders at the crowd. His feet were bare too, small and grubby. ‘Step right up! See the bearded tattooed lady! All the way from the South Seas! See the world’s biggest grizzly bear!’

  The dwarf leered down at two girls in straw hats. ‘Biggest claws you’ve ever seen! And teeth! Teeth like this!’ His small hands gestured about a yard wide. ‘That bear terrified the village back in the old country, till me grandpa captured it. Now you can see it for sixpence!’

  The girls giggled. One nudged the young man beside them. He hesitated. Sixpence was a lot of money in times like these, especially after paying a shilling to enter. The girl nudged him again. He handed over six threepenny bit pieces. He followed the girls, still giggling, into the tent.