Down the Road to Gundagai

by Jackie French

  Blue and Mah took turns holding the frying pan over the embers of the fire, breathing in the scent of smoke and hot gum leaves, slowly cooking both sides of the biscuits, then carefully lifting them from the pan to cool on a bale of hay when they were brown.

  ‘How about a taster? Blooming heck!’ Fred dropped the biscuit as it fell to bits in his hand. ‘You’ve made it crumbly,’ he said to Mah. He grinned up at Mrs Olsen. ‘Should’ve left them to the queen of cooking.’

  ‘Language,’ said Madame.

  ‘Blooming heck ain’t bad language.’

  ‘It is coarse,’ said Madame. ‘Monsieur would never have used words like those.’

  ‘Monsieur didn’t have a hot squished fly crumble in his hand.’

  ‘Monsieur was patient. He had charm.’

  ‘I got charm,’ said Fred.

  Madame smiled. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘It’s your own fault it crumbled,’ said Mah. ‘Leave them to cool a bit and they’ll firm up. No,’ she added to Sheba. ‘They’re too hot for you too. Give her a piece of toast,’ she said to Blue.

  ‘None left. She can have my crusts,’ said Blue.

  ‘I’ll eat ’em if you don’t want ’em,’ said Ginger.

  ‘Too late.’ Sheba’s pink-tipped trunk had already deposited the crusts in her mouth.

  ‘Ah, the boy is growing,’ said Madame.

  ‘Two inches since last Christmas,’ said Ginger proudly. He looked from his mother to Madame, then said quickly, ‘I don’t want to play a fairy no more.’

  Mrs Olsen bit her lip. Madame reached out till she found Mrs Olsen’s hand, and patted it. Blue looked from one to the other. Why should Ginger’s suggestion make his mother so nervous?

  Madame turned towards Ginger. ‘Would you like to be a prince instead?’

  ‘What would I have to wear?’ asked Ginger suspiciously.

  ‘Ah, what does a prince wear? Black tights. Black velvet shirt trimmed with gold. A gold crown — there is one in my chest.’

  ‘Really? You mean it! Coo,’ said Ginger happily.

  ‘You think it will be all right?’ Mrs Olsen spoke to Madame.

  ‘I see no reason why it should not be,’ said Madame gently.

  ‘Then I want to grow my hair,’ said Gertrude. ‘If Ginger can stop being a girl in the show, I want to stop looking like a bagman.’

  ‘Long hair gets in the eyes. It can be dangerous.’

  ‘I know that! I can tie it back.’

  ‘I will consider it,’ said Madame.

  ‘I don’t see what it’s got to do with you anyway. It’s my hair.’

  ‘And it’s Madame’s circus.’ Ebenezer grabbed one of the thick fried-egg sandwiches that Mrs Olsen had made to take back to Ephraim. ‘See youse all in a couple of hours.’ The truck rumbled back down the road to Mittagong.

  ‘I’m going to practise,’ said Gertrude shortly.

  The day grew hotter. Madame retired to rest. Blue sat on a bale of hay in the shade of the caravans with Mah and Sheba. The old elephant lay on her side, her head arched with pleasure as the girls rubbed wet brooms back and forth over her body. On the other side of the paddock Ginger hammered in the guy ropes for the House of Horrors, while Fred chatted to a couple of bagmen, standing at the side of the road with their rolled-up blankets and billies. He knows how to get rid of them kindly, thought Blue. Almost every day men and even boys and women would ask hopefully if there was work for them, or even a bed overnight and a meal and a lift to the next town.

  But the Magnifico Family Circus only just made enough to feed themselves and Sheba, and get to the next town. Without petrol the circus couldn’t travel or run its generator. Sheba could forage some of her own food, her big trunk pulling up tussocks of grass, tearing down branches and even bark, but most of the paddocks the circus used were bare of all but thistles. What farmer would give a paddock of good feed to an elephant, instead of his own stock?

  Fred clapped one of the bagmen on the back. It was a gesture of solidarity, but also farewell. The man nodded. He and his friend began to walk away, with the slow measured tread of men who have no energy to spare, except for a final glance at Gertrude, dressed in thin tights and a camisole, working on a new routine.

  This new routine would be a solo act. So far all Blue had seen was Gertrude standing alone on a narrow swing as its arc grew wider and wider. Blue was pretty sure the girl had something more dramatic planned. She had been practising when the others weren’t looking. According to Fred, Gertrude always kept the details of a new act secret until she had perfected them.

  ‘She’s good, isn’t she?’ said Mah, her wet broom in her hand. ‘I’d love to do that.’

  Me too. Though I’d love to be able just to run, thought Blue. When I’m twenty-one … the young doctor would be married by then, probably to the girl with the fox fur … ‘Would you really rather do a rope act or the trapeze?’

  Mah laughed. ‘No, not really. I think it’s too late for me to learn the trapeze. I’m scared of heights anyway.’

  ‘But not of fires,’ said Blue softly.

  Mah looked at her sharply. This was the first time either of them had referred to the fire since the night Mah had arrived at the circus. ‘There wasn’t time to be scared. Afterwards, when they’d taken you to hospital, then I was scared.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘Mrs H even gave me a nip of brandy and put cold butter on my burns …’

  ‘Mah! I didn’t know! Were you badly hurt?’

  She shook her head. ‘The blanket protected me. The fire was only really bad around your bedroom, so I was only exposed for a minute or two. Mrs Huggins made tea for the firemen and gave them some of her ginger cake. Mrs H always liked a handsome man.’

  Blue smiled, remembering that cake. Then she frowned. ‘Wait on. How could she have given them ginger cake?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Where did it come from? Or how did she bake it? The house burned down.’

  Mah looked surprised. ‘The servants’ wing and the kitchen and the main part of the house weren’t touched. It was only the bedroom wing that went. Some of the conservatory glass was cracked, but nothing bad.’

  ‘Then why did they pull it all down?’

  Mah put a hand on her arm. ‘They didn’t.’

  ‘But I thought …’ All this time I thought my home was gone, thought Blue. No one had ever told her that most of the house was undamaged, but then she’d never asked. She had just assumed that the inferno around her had been as bad in the rest of the house. ‘Do you know what happened to it?’ she asked quietly. ‘Did Uncle Herbert sell it?’

  ‘No. I went to see it when I went through town on my way up to the circus. The builders had fixed it up real nice. I went to the kitchen door and explained that I’d worked there. The cook said the family only rented it.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it’d be easy to sell a big house, in times like these,’ said Blue. Had the aunts actually said her house had burned to the ground? Blue tried to think back. Everything had been blurred — grief, then pain, and then the growing nausea. Aunt Lilac’s words came back to her: ‘You’ll never be homeless while you have us, Bluebell dear.’

  ‘A house like that is valuable,’ she said slowly. ‘I thought I didn’t have any money, not enough to kill me for. But if there’s the house too …’

  Mah put down her broom and stared at her, brushing her hair from her eyes. She dressed like a boy except when she was in costume, like Blue and Gertrude, but instead of cutting her hair she kept it up under her hat with a scarf. Blue still kept hers dyed black. It was as thick and shiny as if it had never straggled and fallen out.

  ‘Blue, you’re rich.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I have two pounds, fourpence.’ But she knew what Mah meant. ‘And a few hundred pounds when I’m twenty-five. And now the house too.’

  ‘You’re richer than that,’ said Mah flatly. ‘There’s Laurence’s factories. You get the money from them too.’

  ‘No, I don’t.
The solicitor who read Dad’s will didn’t mention the company.’

  Mah shook her head incredulously. ‘What?! I can’t believe you didn’t know. It was in the newspapers after you left. Ethel bought a copy. There was a photo of the house and everything. It said “Missing Heiress”, and all about your family and the factories. Your grandfather set up a family trust. I don’t know how it works, the paper didn’t say. But somehow with your dad and your brother dead you inherit the factories.’

  ‘From Grandpa. Not from Dad.’ So the company wouldn’t be mentioned in Dad’s will, she thought. No wonder the solicitor had told her ‘not to worry’. ‘But they are my aunts! How could they want to kill me just for money?’

  ‘It’s a lot of money. People do many things for money.’ Mah met her eyes. ‘You have never been without money. You can’t understand.’

  ‘I’ve spent more than a year being poor.’

  ‘You think this is poor? With a caravan and beds to sleep in, and all the food we want, good food, meat and cheese and biscuits? Have you ever even been hungry?’

  ‘No,’ said Blue. She thought of Aunt Lilac and Aunt Daisy’s economies: only Mah and Ethel to do the work, and roast shoulder of mutton, not legs of lamb. Stewed prunes instead of fresh peaches. The aunts had never been hungry either. But to them, perhaps, two servants and prunes and custard was poverty.

  She was going to be rich. Was rich, even if she couldn’t use any of it now. She should feel different. But she didn’t. ‘I never even asked the solicitor exactly how much money I had. Girls aren’t supposed to talk about money, or think about it. That was Dad’s business, or my husband’s after I married. Mum didn’t even carry money most of the time. She just put everything on accounts, at the tearooms, the dressmakers, everywhere. You’re not supposed to know how much money your husband has. It wasn’t good manners even to ask about how much something cost.’

  Mah laughed. ‘You just bought what you wanted, without asking its price?’

  Blue shrugged. ‘If Mum thought something was suitable, then I could have it. Music lessons, or a new bicycle. Not things like, well, a diamond tiara or a racehorse.’

  ‘Your mother had a tiara.’

  ‘She did, didn’t she? But that would have been a present, from Dad or maybe my grandpa. She wouldn’t have just gone out and bought it.’

  ‘When you’re twenty-one you can find a lawyer to look after your money. And your tiara,’ said Mah. ‘He’ll find out what you own too. Once you make a new will you’ll be safe.’

  So Mah had worked that out too. Blue nodded. The money and whatever property might be involved could be sorted out. But the attempt to poison her? Who’d believe that two respectable women had tried to poison their niece? It would be their word against Blue’s and Mah’s, and Blue had been sick and grief-stricken.

  Just under four more years, she thought. When I am twenty-one a lawyer and a surgeon will change my life. Even if she didn’t inherit the company till she was twenty-five, as in Dad’s will, she was pretty sure that she could ask for an income — and a good one. Enough to rent a house to live in with Mah, or the most splendiferous circus caravans in the world. Or buy an aeroplane, as she’d once dreamed, or travel to India … Suddenly she was almost glad she couldn’t have the money now, didn’t have to choose what life she wanted till she was twenty-one. Until then … She smiled as she looked at the caravans, the Freak Show, the House of Horrors and the fortune-teller’s tent. She had a new family now. The Magnifico Family Circus, with an elephant.

  As though on cue, Sheba lumbered to her feet. She reached out her trunk for more hay. The door of Madame’s caravan opened.

  Madame paused at the top of her stairs, listening, then walked safely over to them, halting only to feel the bale of hay with her hand before she sat down.

  ‘Did you have a good rest, Madame?’ asked Blue.

  ‘Ah, Belle, and Marjory too. You are not practising?’

  ‘Fred’s putting up the House of Horrors, Madame.’ Mah shrugged. ‘I can’t practise our act without him.’

  ‘You are both lucky you are not real circus.’ Madame nodded towards the faint creaking of the harness that told her where Gertrude was still working. ‘That is what a real performer does. Hour after hour, day after day, all your life until your body stops and you can do it no more.’

  Blue felt curiously forlorn. ‘What are we if we’re not circus, Madame?’

  ‘Family,’ said Madame, as if she knew what Blue had been thinking a few minutes earlier. Sheba waved her trunk as if agreeing. ‘Ah, when I was young. Up at the first grey of dawn. My father taught me tumbling first, and dancing. Every child in the circus was taught to dance the ballet, true dancing, not the dance that you do now. Dancing makes you graceful.’ Blue grinned at Mah, unseen by Madame. Madame told them this at least once a week. ‘You learn where your body is, when you dance. Later he would put cans of jam down around the practice area. If we made a mistake, we hit the can and not the sawdust. It hurts, to hit a can of jam.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ said Blue.

  The old woman shrugged. ‘It was a kindness in the end, for we learned well.’

  ‘We, Madame?’ asked Mah. ‘Did you have brothers or sisters?’

  ‘Two brothers, older than me. They went to America with a Wild West show, ah, forty years ago it is now.’ She shrugged again, her shawls rustling against her ancient silk dress. ‘We lost touch. Perhaps they are dead. Perhaps they think I am dead. Who knows?’

  ‘Didn’t they write to you?’

  She turned her sightless eyes to Blue. ‘Even when I had my eyes I could not read, nor could they write.’

  ‘I … I’m sorry, Madame.’

  ‘Why? What use are words on a page? I read the voice,’ said Madame grandly. ‘I read the world, not scribbles from a pen. Did I ever tell you how Monsieur got the best of a bushranger?’

  ‘No, Madame.’ Mah winked at Blue. It was Fred’s wink, with the touch of wickedness in it.

  Madame sat on her bale of hay as though it were a throne. ‘Up by Armidale it was. We had teams of horses in those days, but our caravan lingered behind the others. Out he rode on his big black horse, that bushranger, with a pistol in each hand. “Your money or your life,” he said.

  ‘Monsieur just stood there. So handsome. There never was a man as handsome as my Monsieur. He told the bushranger that the money was not ours to give. Did the bushranger want the elephant to starve, and the lions too?

  ‘The bushranger laughed. He said that he didn’t mind what a lion ate, as long as it wasn’t him. So Monsieur said he would trade information for our money. There was a delivery for the bank, coming a few hours behind us. All the bushranger had to do was to wait and he would get far more money than he would get from us.’

  ‘And the bushranger let you go?’ asked Blue.

  ‘No. He took our money, and my jewellery too. But he said that if there really was a bank coach coming, then he’d send them back to us.’

  ‘Was there a bank coach coming?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Blue didn’t ask how Monsieur had known. She supposed that back then too everyone in the circus had gathered what scraps of information they could to give to the fortune-teller. Madame insisted that she did have the sight. Knowing who was in love with whom, or if someone’s husband was riding with the bank coach the next morning, simply helped her understand what her visions told her. Blue thought she might even mean it.

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘We set up the Big Top. Just as we had finished a boy ran up to Monsieur. Oh, I can see him now, a boy like a plucked rooster, and Monsieur in his silk topper. A gentleman had asked the boy to give a box to the handsome man in the top hat. That was Monsieur,’ said Madame complacently. ‘Always the most handsome in any town we visited.’

  ‘All the money was in the box? And your jewellery?’

  ‘Of course. We of the road do not cheat each other. And it was the bank’s fault that the money had been t
aken. I had told the bank manager’s wife that I could see a shadow looming about her husband. Tell him to stay home with you for the next week, I told her.’ Madame raised both hands, her rings gleaming. ‘Perhaps she did not listen. Perhaps the husband did not listen to her. How many men listen to a woman? And now my ears tell me that Ebenezer is finally coming, and you two lazy girls must work.’

  Blue got to her feet as a small cloud of dust approached trailing the big circus truck, with Ebenezer driving and Ephraim next to him, and a big tarpaulin covering the poles and sides of the disassembled Big Top on the tray. They’d all be needed to haul on the guy ropes to keep the framework steady and upright, while Fred, Ephraim and Ebenezer did the heavy work, putting the metal poles together and hauling up the canvas sides.

  Blue began her awkward shuffle over to the big truck, then stopped. Instead of untying the tarpaulin, Ebenezer walked towards them, his face grave. Ephraim strode over to Fred and Ginger.

  ‘What is it?’ Mrs Olsen looked out of her caravan, her sewing in her hands.

  ‘Bad news,’ said Ebenezer shortly. He sat on one of the hay bales. He waited till the others had clustered around, Fred between Blue and Mah, Mrs Olsen and Ginger, Ephraim at his side, Gertrude standing a little apart, still in her practice tights and slippers. Madame sat alone, on the bale nearest to Sheba.

  Even the elephant seemed to be waiting.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Madame.

  ‘The Mammoth played Goulburn last week,’ said Ebenezer heavily.

  ‘Ah,’ sighed Madame. She seemed to sag.

  ‘Wouldn’t it rock your socks,’ said Fred.

  Blue looked at the others. Only Mah seemed unaffected. ‘What’s the Mammoth? Why is it so bad?’

  ‘The Mammoth is the biggest circus in Australia just now, that’s what’s bad,’ said Ebenezer. ‘They’re over from America. Just came from New Zealand, and I think they’re heading home after they’ve done Queensland. Got their own train carriages, even. Did a three-week stint in Goulburn. Only went back to Sydney on Friday.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What’s so bad about that? Goulburn’s miles from here.’

  ‘Only an hour by train. That’s how they got a three-week season. Everyone from Wollongong to Queanbeyan will have gone to the Mammoth. They won’t be wanting to see Magnifico’s, not so soon after.’