Down the Road to Gundagai

by Jackie French

  She simply didn’t know. Nor could she think of any way to find out. But on the day I turn twenty-one, she thought, I’ll find a solicitor and make a will. I’ll leave everything I own to a charity, one for elephants perhaps, if there is such a thing, and to Fred and Mah and everyone at the circus. They were her family now. And that would make her safe.

  The wind carried the sound of children’s laughter and the low rumble that Sheba made when she was happy.

  Sheba was almost submerged in the sea, only her back and big-eared head showing. Blue hoped there wasn’t a rip out there. It would be impossible to rescue an elephant.

  But even as she watched, Sheba seemed to have had enough. Slowly she emerged, dripping and grinning, her trunk waving in the air. The children waited, obviously hoping she would squirt them again. But instead the old elephant plodded up the beach to Blue. She stopped and held out her trunk.

  Blue grasped it, and let Sheba haul her to her feet. Blue kissed the crinkled hide between the elephant’s eyes. ‘Thanks.’

  The old girl stood still while Ebenezer arranged her gold-tasselled cloth, then hoisted Blue up onto her back. Blue looked down the beach. Gertrude was a small figure, far away down the sand. ‘Should we wait for her?’

  Ebenezer shook his head. ‘She’ll come back in her own time. Come on, lass,’ he added to Sheba. ‘Time to go home.’

  Most of Hope Town — at least the younger residents — followed them back to the circus. But they lost interest once they saw the Big Top had been dismantled. Ephraim had already driven it to their next camping spot the night before, as well as his and Ebenezer’s caravan.

  Tonight it’ll be our caravan, thought Blue, as the big man helped her down from Sheba’s back. Mine and Mah’s!

  A caravan of their own! Two years ago — only two years, thought Blue — she had redecorated her room, or rather had told Mum and Mrs Huggins what she wanted. White ruffled curtains with blue spots, a bedspread to match, and new wallpaper with faint green leaves.

  There would be no wallpaper now, nor any money to buy new curtains. But there might be spare fabric in Mrs Olsen’s costume trunks. Ebenezer and Ephraim’s caravan had two narrow beds. She and Mah could make patchwork quilts — and maybe one each for Ephraim and Ebenezer too, to thank them for giving up their caravan. A braided rag rug for the floor — Mrs Olsen would show them how — and at every camp they could put the potted geranium on the step. Geraniums grew from cuttings, didn’t they? Mah might know. Perhaps they could have a tiny garden of geraniums in tin-can pots …

  ‘Sheba have a good swim, princess?’ Fred grinned at her, dressed in his old overalls. Blue nodded, scratching another bite, this one on her arm. ‘Where’s Mah?’

  ‘Went back to sleep after we ran through the act for Madame. Didn’t sleep much on the train from Melbourne.’

  ‘Did Madame like the act?’

  ‘She said, “It will do well.” You know how she goes.’ He shook his head. ‘You’d have thought she could see us. Just sat there with her head on one side, listening to me give the patter …’

  ‘That’s all she’d need to tell if the act will work,’ said Blue. ‘She’d believe you if you said it’d look like Mah had vanished. But she’d need to know you could make a show of it. She was listening for the showmanship.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘I reckon. Your patter’s the best in the world, Fred.’

  ‘Thanks, princess.’ He pulled out a pocket watch. ‘Ten o’clock. I better wake Marj up and make sure she gets some grub.’

  Blue frowned at the pocket watch. It was round and gold, with a gold chain. ‘When did you get that?’

  Fred met her eyes. ‘Yesterday.’

  Blue held out her hand. ‘Can I see it?’

  Fred hesitated, then placed it in her hand.

  Blue turned it over. To Joseph, on his 21st birthday, with love from Flinty and Sandy, she read. She looked up at Fred. ‘You stole it!’

  ‘I did not.’

  Blue put her hands on her hips. ‘I know you did! I saw that young medical student with this yesterday. See, that’s his name, Joseph! And he said he had a sister called Flinty.’

  ‘I did not steal it.’ There was no laughter in Fred’s face now. ‘Well, princess, are you going to believe me or not?’

  She looked at him. Would Fred lie to her? No, she thought. Not to her. Or to Mah either, she suspected. But he might not tell them everything.

  Fred looked at her, curiously intent. ‘Well?’ he prompted.

  ‘I believe you,’ she said slowly. ‘You wouldn’t lie to me.’

  Fred nodded, his face still strangely serious. ‘Thanks, princess.’

  ‘But where did it come from, if it wasn’t stolen?’

  ‘I didn’t say it wasn’t stolen. I said I didn’t steal it.’

  ‘Who did?’ Ebenezer? No! Nor Ephraim. Madame … possibly. But a blind woman couldn’t even have seen the watch, much less stolen it from a waistcoat pocket. Blue remembered how she had lost her bracelet six months ago. Had someone stolen that too, then given it back?

  ‘Sheba,’ said Fred, scratching a bite on his neck.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Blue still held the watch defensively.

  ‘I mean she pinches stuff. Just sometimes. Mostly from people she likes.’

  ‘Like Ebenezer’s hat, under the hay?’ And my bracelet, she thought. That’s how they knew they could find it for me.

  Fred nodded.

  ‘And then you give them back again.’

  Fred’s eyes held laughter now. ‘Not always.’

  ‘Well, this pocket watch is going back to its owner.’

  ‘Can’t. He’s gone.’

  ‘I’ve got his address.’ The laughter vanished. ‘How did you get that?’

  ‘He’s going to be a doctor,’ said Blue tiredly. ‘He wanted me to see another doctor who might be able to fix my legs. I said no, so he gave me his address in case I change my mind.’

  ‘I don’t want you writing to him.’

  She wanted to say that she’d write to whoever she wanted to. But if she wrote to Joseph, it might lead to more than just an exchange of letters, and she and Fred both knew it.

  Fred was her friend. Mah was her friend. She owed them her life and her happiness. Nor could she risk Joseph trying to find out where she came from. ‘I’ll just send his watch back. No letter with it. No forwarding address.’

  Fred watched her. ‘What about your legs?’

  ‘I … I don’t know. Doctors must talk to each other. Even another patient in the hospital might mention it.’ She tried a smile. ‘It might even get into the newspaper if anyone learns that they’re operating on a circus mermaid. There can’t be too many injuries exactly like mine.’ She shrugged. ‘I was reported missing, Fred. I can’t risk the police finding me. Not till I’m twenty-one anyway, and the aunts can’t take me back.’

  ‘People die in operations,’ said Fred flatly. ‘You’re fine as you are. You’re beautiful.’

  He had called her beautiful before, but never without laughter. He really does think I am beautiful, thought Blue.

  ‘Fred.’ She hunted for the words. ‘I can hardly go to the toilet by myself. I can’t run. I can’t even get married —’

  ‘Don’t see why not,’ said Fred.

  ‘I’m not going to show my legs to any man. You think I’m beautiful now. But if you saw my scars, well, every time you looked at my face you’d be thinking of them.’

  ‘No,’ said Fred. He took her hand. ‘It’s not just your face that’s beautiful. It’s all of you. And I’ve imagined what your legs must look like, scars and all.’ He held his hand up as she began to protest. ‘Of course I have. An’ I know there’s nothing you could show me that would make you less lovely.’

  Tears prickled. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  She turned and hobbled up the steps of Madame’s caravan before he could see her cry, the watch still in her hand. She stopped and knocked, then opened the door. �
�Excuse me, Madame. I need to get changed.’ She wiped her eyes, hoping the old woman didn’t hear the tears in her voice.

  Madame nodded from the bed, her big feet with their knotted veins lying up on a pillow. She rested more often now during the day. Blue was glad that soon she would at least be able to sleep in the comfort of her own bed again.

  ‘Did Sheba enjoy her swim?’

  ‘She loved it. The kids from the camp helped wash her.’

  ‘She would have enjoyed that too. She loves the waves. I remember …’ Madame’s voice drifted into silence.

  ‘How long have you owned her, Madame?’

  ‘All her life.’ Blue noticed Madame did not say how long that had been. ‘But you do not own a friend.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She nodded: the apology was accepted.

  ‘How did you come to meet then?’ Blue knew enough now of circus life to know that skills were passed on from one generation to another in the circus. If Madame had been a trapeze artist, then at least one of her parents probably had been too. But had the other had an act with elephants?

  ‘You are wondering who my parents were and if Sheba’s mother lived with them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My father was Leonardo, my mother Ludmilla. My father worked the trapeze until his death. He fell,’ she said simply, ‘when I was nine years old. My mother and I did the act after him.’

  ‘But … but how could your mother keep going up on the trapeze? I know she must have needed to make a living. But how could she risk your life too?’

  ‘Because that is what we do. Money? Pah! A clever mind can always find ways to make money. But to fly, to defy the ground, to hear that gasp of the crowd — that is different. To feel the joy of the great height you must also accept that one day perhaps you will fall. But my father also was stubborn. He was forty-two when I was born. My mother was eighteen. He should have retired from the trapeze when his joints began to stiffen.’ Madame shrugged. ‘But he did not. My mother turned to telling fortunes when she was thirty-eight. I became a fortune-teller too when the edges of my eyesight began to turn to shadow. My mother, she lived till ninety-four.’

  Blue tried to calculate. If Madame’s mother was only eighteen years older than Madame, and if she had died at ninety-four …

  ‘Now you are working out how old I am.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Blue.

  ‘I will tell you this instead. I will die on the birthday of my Monsieur. And Sheba will still be with me when I die. Ah yes, I can tell my own fortune too.’ The old face gentled into remembrance. ‘Sheba was born when the Empire Circus was at its winter camp on the Murray. We stayed there every year for three months, to work up the acts, repair the rigging. Sheba was born too small. For many months she staggered when she walked. We had only carts, in those days, pulled by the horses and the elephants. No place for a baby elephant who couldn’t walk.

  ‘I loved her,’ Madame said simply. ‘Monsieur found me sobbing when I knew she must be left behind. I had never carried a child to term, you see, much as I would have loved one, a child of Monsieur to hold and love. Monsieur said, “We will stay and we will keep her.” Monsieur worked in Mildura for two years, while Ludmilla and I camped by the river, and Sheba grew strong, even if she did not grow big. And then we started our own circus — Monsieur still had the money from selling his house and his shop, which we used to buy a Big Top — and we were happy, and then it ended, at Gundagai. But love does not die …’ Madame stopped, and listened as Blue scratched yet another bite under her camisole.

  ‘Fleas,’ said Madame resignedly. ‘From the children of Hope Town. We will all have fleas. Tell Mrs Olsen to hang the costumes in the sun before we pack them, or we will never be rid of them. And boil the everyday clothes and everyone must bathe before they put them back on.’

  Blue looked at the bites on her arms and legs. A small brown body hopped out of her camisole. She squashed it quickly between her fingernails.

  ‘Oh, I forgot. I hope you don’t mind. A woman who was here last night had a baby afterwards. She wants to name it after the mermaid. I gave one of your bracelets to her son to give to her. Is that all right?’

  Madame looked towards her feet, or possibly at something, someone, from long ago. The silence grew uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry …’ said Blue. ‘We have so many bracelets in the chest. I didn’t think you’d mind.’

  Madame waved a hand. ‘It is no matter. It was a good thing to do. A woman needs some brightness at a time like that. Queen or pauper … which one was it?’

  ‘The smallest, the gold chain and those little red glass beads.’

  Madame nodded. ‘I thought it might be. I hope she wears it with joy or, if not, takes it to a good jeweller, not a rogue of a pawnbroker.’

  Blue stopped, the camisole in her hands. ‘It … it wasn’t valuable, was it?’

  ‘They were rubies,’ said Madame calmly. ‘Small but real.’

  ‘Madame! I didn’t know! I thought the bracelets were all fake!’

  ‘Most are fake. Or rather, not fake, just beautiful in a different way, valuable only for their shine. But some are real. Where better to hide gems than among glass beads?’

  Madame had mentioned that men had given her jewels. Or had Sheba stolen the bracelet? Blue wondered. Had someone once taught the elephant to steal? ‘Madame, I don’t know what to say. I shouldn’t have —’

  ‘Did you ever give my bracelets away before? No. And today you did. So I think it was the right thing that you did, the right person and the right time. It has been a good year for us,’ said Madame. ‘Children starve in Melbourne, families are being locked out of their homes in Brisbane, banks in Sydney fail. But our bellies have been full and we even have new tyres for the truck. We have been lucky. It is good sometimes to pay the price for luck. Now go and find your friend, child, and let an old woman sleep.’

  ‘You will never be old, Madame,’ said Blue softly.

  ‘And you will never learn to flatter, child. Now go.’

  Blue went.

  Chapter 18

  DECEMBER 1933

  Their luck ran out the next summer, at Berrima. They’d run into a mob of sheep on the road, at least two hundred of them, skinny and bleating and baaing and criss-crossing from one side to the other. It had taken Ebenezer an hour to drive through them each time; and it was impossible to sleep in the caravan with the animals bumping and complaining.

  It had been midnight when Ebenezer unhitched the girls’ caravan and headed back to the paddock outside Mittagong for another load, muttering under his breath that the best place for a sheep was in a stew.

  It would have been easier travelling during the day, but the truck wasn’t registered. ‘Why pay five pounds unless you have to?’ said Madame. Time enough to pay the registration if and when the police noticed. There was less chance of a policeman noticing if they could do most of the trips necessary to move the caravans, tents and equipment in the early hours of the morning. Besides, Madame preferred the circus to look to have appeared as if by magic when the locals woke up.

  Late arrival or not, they were up in the pre-dawn light, as soon as Madame struck her gong. This too was a necessity. Gertrude, Mrs Olsen and Ginger needed to practise their routines each day — even one day without exercise might mean that muscles stiffened or perfect timing slipped. They had to fix their harness to the nearest sturdy gum tree until the Big Top was erected.

  A woman and a girl and a boy perspiring with the cumbersome harnesses on their backs was a long way from the magic the Boldinis and Tiny Titania would show that night in the Big Top. The worst thing a performer could hear, pronounced Madame, was the shout, ‘I saw them practising that under a gum tree! You should have seen them sweat!’

  Blue did her own exercises, chinning herself up on the exercise bar, and then handstands, with Fred steadying her, careful to keep her legs together so as not to tear her scar, then the harem dance with Madame and Mrs Olsen and Mah, while Fred lugged
up water from the creek for Sheba, collected firewood and started the cooking fire.

  The harem dance was slowly becoming more complicated and demanding. Every few years the circus came back to places it had visited before and by then the acts needed to be different enough to give the punters their money’s worth, while keeping their favourite bits.

  Breakfast was served when Ebenezer came back with the last but one load, the three smaller sideshow tents. Today was for setting up only, a rare chance to breakfast slowly and together.

  They sat on bales of hay around the cooking fire, holding out thick slices of yesterday’s damper to toast, then slathering them with butter — the Mittagong farmer’s wife had a cow in milk — and the apple jelly Mrs Olsen had made from apples picked along the roadside the previous autumn. The circus had only one big cooking pot, a Dutch oven with a lid that could bake damper in the ashes, or cook a stew, or heat water for tea or a bath, but not at the same time. The only other cooking implements were the billy that had once held golden syrup, and the battered frying pan. A circus couldn’t carry more equipment than was absolutely necessary.

  Mrs Olsen fried eggs in dripping, and they ate them on more buttered toast, to save the washing-up, with big mugs of sweet black tea.

  ‘Any chance of making some squished flies?’ asked Fred hopefully.

  Mrs Olsen looked at him indulgently. She poured the last of the tea out of the billy, and began to mix the pastry, melting the butter, then adding the flour and golden syrup, with the filling coming together in the old tin mug that had held her cuppa, apple jelly today, and chopped dates instead of currants.