Down the Road to Gundagai

by Jackie French

  The sergeant nodded as she drew to a close. ‘This Madame sounds like she’s a bit too good at picking out people who’d be too scared to leave her circus. Got you undressing in front of men, showing half your bare body. Reckon she’s got you doing just what she wants you to in fact.’

  ‘It’s not like that! More of me is covered as the mermaid than … than your wife would be covered at church. And we don’t show more in the dance than we would bathing. It’s all respectable!’

  The sergeant cocked his head. ‘Don’t seem like that to me. You got any evidence — any real evidence — you were being poisoned?’

  Blue shook her head.

  ‘You leave her alone.’ Fred squeezed her hand. ‘There’s never been any funny business with Belle. She’s been through enough without you badgering her.’

  Ebenezer and Ephraim said nothing, their faces expressionless. Mrs Olsen looked like she was near tears. Only Gertrude and Ginger seemed unaffected, Gertrude examining the furnishings from her sofa, Ginger quietly finishing off the biscuits he’d found on the tea tray.

  The sergeant ignored them all, watching Blue.

  ‘Her hair,’ said Joseph suddenly. ‘Arsenic shows up in hair.’

  ‘You learn that at this medical school of yours, did you?’

  ‘No. From the newspaper last year,’ said Joseph. ‘But I asked the professor when I read the article, and he said it’s accurate. There’s what’s called Marsh’s Test. It’s pretty simple. We could test her hair …’

  Blue fingered her red and black hair. ‘This has all grown since I left. Will arsenic still show up? My hair was falling out,’ she added. ‘That’s why it was all cut off when I arrived.’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably not. We could take a sample anyway. Pity you didn’t keep it.’

  Gertrude snorted. ‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen it. Looked a real mess.’

  ‘I did keep it!’ Blue suddenly remembered Madame neatly wrapping her hair in a hanky. ‘It should be in Madame’s caravan, in the trunk.’

  ‘Then we can get it tested,’ said Joseph.

  The sergeant shut his eyes briefly. ‘I suppose you know how to do that?’ he asked, in the voice of a man who has dealt with punch-ups on Saturday nights and cattle-duffing, but not murderous aunts and disguised mermaids.

  ‘I can find out,’ said Joseph.

  Fred cast him a look that was half gratitude, half suspicion. ‘Doesn’t matter anyway. Belle can’t have anything to do with the skeleton if it’s more than a couple of years old. Mah neither. Or Ephraim and Ebenezer or Ginger and Gertrude if it’s ten years old,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘Madame owns the House of Horrors. She’s the one you should be asking about it.’

  ‘If I could, I would. But it seems that none of you are even sure what this Madame’s name is.’

  ‘She told fortunes as Madame Zlosky when I joined,’ said Blue. ‘But she never uses the name Zlosky. When she speaks of her late husband she just calls him Monsieur. ’

  ‘I first met her as Madame Fratinelli,’ said Mrs Olsen quietly. ‘But that isn’t her name either. She took turns with two other Madame Fratinellis at the sideshow. She bought the tent she uses now from another Madame Zlosky. She just uses the name because it’s on the sign.’

  The sergeant looked at her without speaking for a moment. ‘I gather that you and your daughter perform as the Boldini Brothers.’

  ‘It’s safer for women to pretend to be men on the road,’ said Blue.

  ‘But you also dance as females. That right?’

  Mrs Olsen nodded.

  ‘Seems to me,’ said the sergeant, ‘that people’d pay more to see good-looking girls up there on that trapeze. Took the wife and kids to see the show, and very good you were too. But men like a pretty leg more than men in knee-length costumes.’

  ‘There was a reason for that,’ said Mrs Olsen slowly.

  ‘I imagine there was.’ The sergeant looked at her, no hurry in his voice. ‘Your name is Mrs Olsen, isn’t it?’

  Mrs Olsen nodded, her mouth taut. Ebenezer and Ephraim carefully didn’t look at her.

  ‘And this must be Gertrude, or Gloria as she is otherwise known, and Ginger.’ He gave a half nod towards Ginger. ‘Who also plays a hunchbacked dwarf and Prince Alfonso.’

  Ginger gave a biscuit-crumbed grin. He’s the only one enjoying this, thought Blue. ‘I’m growing. Next year I’m gunna be Alfonso the Great.’

  The sergeant gave a slight cough. ‘Congratulations. How long have you been with Madame, Mrs Olsen?’

  ‘Just over ten years. Gertrude was eight years old. I was pregnant with Ginger.’

  ‘And their father?’

  ‘My father was Señor Zamorano, the greatest trapeze artist who has ever lived,’ said Gertrude proudly. ‘He died in an accident — not on the trapeze,’ she added quickly. ‘No one beheaded him either. He dived into a flooded creek to save a boy from drowning.’

  ‘Heroic,’ said the sergeant. He looked at Mrs Olsen. ‘Perhaps you could tell me where this act of valour happened? And, if you would be so good, where you were married and where your children were born, and why you choose to use the name Olsen, and not, er, Zamorano.’

  ‘Ginger was born near Ballina,’ said Mrs Olsen. The tip of her nose had turned pink. ‘But you won’t find a record of that.’

  The sergeant waited.

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ said Gertrude impatiently. ‘Tell him what he wants to know and get this over with.’

  Mrs Olsen gave Gertrude a pleading look, then put her arm protectively around Ginger. She took a deep breath, as though to give herself courage. ‘I’ve never been married,’ she said quietly.

  ‘What?’ Gertrude frowned. ‘Of course you were married. You’ve got a photograph of Dad and you on the trapeze when you were kids.’

  ‘That wasn’t your father. That was my twin brother, Ronald. He died just after the photograph was taken.’ Mrs Olsen seemed to shrink into the sofa. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to Gertrude. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Gertrude looked from her to the sergeant. ‘What do you mean? What have you got to be sorry about?’

  The sergeant waited for her to continue.

  Mrs Olsen looked at the floor, not at the sergeant. ‘My name is Sophie Smith,’ she said quietly. ‘Or that was the name I was given at the orphanage. A man called Lenny Frearson bought me and Ronald when we were five years old. And I do mean bought us. He was with a big outfit that doesn’t exist any more. They were terrible to their animals and after a while the punters can tell that sort of thing. Lenny paid money every few years for another orphan or two. He trained us for the high wire and the trapeze.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Trained, tortured. If we were too scared to go up the ladder, he burned our buttocks with his cigarette. Always where it wouldn’t be seen. Don’t want to mark the goods.’

  ‘Mum!’ Gertrude stared, half in protest, half in horror. Blue felt Mah and Fred still and silent beside her. Over in the armchairs Ebenezer and Ephraim seemed to shrink into the cushions. They know about this, thought Blue. Or some of it.

  Mrs Olsen looked at the carpet, not her daughter or the sergeant. ‘Kept us half starved too, so we didn’t grow too big. Easier to catch a featherweight up on the trapeze. Tied us up if we tried to run away, and after a while we knew there was no point running, because the circus was all we knew. A quarter of the children died in the first year. Weeding out the weaklings, Lenny said. That’s how Ronnie died, falling off the high wire.’

  ‘Don’t cry, Mum.’ Ginger pulled out a crumpled hanky from his shorts and wiped her face. Mrs Olsen took the hanky and twisted it in her hand. ‘Ronnie broke his head. There was blood coming out of his ear, but Lenny wouldn’t take him to a doctor. Children are cheap. Cost less than a doctor’s fees. Took him two days to die. Only six years old, he was then. Maybe half of those who Lenny bought ended up crippled before they were ten. Lenny’d leave them at the door of the next children’s home. Told them he’d be back with his knife t
o cut out their tongues if they said how it happened. The ringmaster didn’t care. No one did.’ She met the sergeant’s eyes. ‘I can show you the scars if you don’t believe me.’

  The sergeant nodded. ‘Go on.’

  Tears ran down Mrs Olsen’s face unheeded. ‘Ginger is Lenny’s son. That’s what we girls were good for too, once we were old enough. Sometimes he threw us out, soon as we were showing, but if we were good enough he kept us till we could work again. He called me to his caravan one day. I was three months gone by then. He said, “You’re in luck. I’ll keep you on. A good cow throws a good calf.” And then he smiled and said, “Reckon a sprog out of me and you will do well up on the high wire.” And then I hit him with the axe,’ said Mrs Olsen. ‘Hard as I could.’

  Blue stared. Sometime in the last few minutes Fred had taken her hand and Mah’s. She clutched it as though if she let it go a flood might sweep her away. Had they been travelling with the skeleton of a torturer, Lenny Frearson?

  Even the sergeant took a moment to speak. ‘You cut his neck with an axe?’

  ‘No. His hand. His right hand. Smashed it to pulp with the back of the axe. Smashed it so he could never swing on the trapeze again.’ The voice was unemotional. ‘And then I ran. Out into the night. Sheltered under a bridge for two days. Drank from the creek and had nothing to eat. No idea where to go or who might help me. All I’d ever known was that circus, and Lenny made sure none of us knew more. Madame found me. She was doing the sideshows back then, telling fortunes while Sheba gave rides to the kiddies. She said a dream told her to cross the bridge, and she found me. Lying by the side of the creek, she said I was. I don’t remember. All I know is I woke up safe in Madame’s caravan and she fed me her potions with bread sopped in them, and I still had my baby safe within me.’

  ‘And Lenny Frearson?’ The sergeant’s voice was gentle.

  ‘I didn’t kill him. I swear I didn’t kill him. But he never rode the trapeze again. Last I heard he was cutting cane up near Cairns. Magnifico’s never went that far north. But that’s why I called myself Olsen, and did the act as a man. I knew Lenny’d be looking for me, asking any circus who passed about girls on the flying trapeze.’

  ‘But what about my father?’ Gertrude’s voice held anguish as well as anger. ‘Where does my father come into it? And if you’re not my mother …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mrs Olsen again. ‘I’m so sorry, Gertrude.’

  ‘But I remember him!’

  ‘You remember Lenny. The kids called him Dad. Lenny said making it seem like family stopped anyone asking questions. If one kid asked, another would take their place.’

  ‘But he wasn’t cruel!’ Gertrude was silent suddenly, as though remembering. Blows perhaps, thought Blue. Or scars of her own, on her buttocks perhaps.

  ‘Lenny bought you from a mission up in Queensland when you were tiny. That’s why your skin is dark.’

  ‘You mean I’m Aboriginal, not Spanish?’

  ‘He was hurting you,’ said Mrs Olsen desperately. ‘Gertrude, you have to understand. The scars on your back — that’s how you got them. I couldn’t leave another child to be tortured. Madame and I crept back one night and took you. Next morning I told you your dad had been killed, that we had to work at the sideshow now. Madame told you stories of the great Señor Zamorano and you began to remember them as true. And I’d been a mother to you. I really am your mother, all you’ve ever known —’

  ‘It’s not true.’ Gertrude sprang to her feet. ‘It can’t be true! I don’t know why you’re lying, but you shouldn’t lie about my father, about me. I can remember him on the trapeze. He wasn’t any Lenny Frearson! I’m the daughter of Señor Zamorano.’ She stared around at them all. ‘I have to be! I’m going to be the most brilliant trapeze artist in the world. A baby from a mission can’t be that!’ She ran towards the door.

  Mrs Olsen jumped up too, and ran after her and grabbed her arm.

  ‘Let go of me!’

  ‘Gertrude, you have to understand.’

  ‘If you’re not my mother, then you have no rights over me.’

  She’s using her anger to stop herself from crying, thought Blue. Gertrude would never cry in front of others.

  ‘I’m leaving. I can leave, can’t I?’ she demanded of the sergeant. ‘I’ve got a job offer. A good job! I’m going to America! Far away and as fast as I can.’

  The sergeant hesitated, then nodded. ‘You can leave, if you really do have that job. Whoever that skeleton is, you’ll have been too young to know anything about it. We’ll need an address for you though.’

  ‘Care of the Mammoth Circus,’ said Gertrude proudly. She flung herself away from Mrs Olsen and out the door. Mrs Olsen followed her. Blue could hear their voices, getting fainter as they left the house, and headed down towards the caravans near the river.

  Blue wanted to go after them and help. But this was something mother and daughter had to sort out without an audience. And the sergeant was waiting.

  Ebenezer and Ephraim sat motionless. Why don’t they look shocked? she thought. And Fred — how much of this did Fred already know?

  Blue shuffled over to Ginger, alone now on the sofa, and put her arm around him. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked quietly. Ginger nodded. Most of the horror of the story seemed to have passed over him. He’s only known kindness, thought Blue. Ginger had always lived in a small kind world that visited many towns, but he was never part of them.

  ‘I’m glad she’s not my sister. She makes Mum cry. Don’t care who my father is neither.’ He looked around the room. ‘Don’t need a father, do I? I got all of youse. An’ Sheba too.’

  ‘Yes. You’ve had us.’ Ebenezer’s voice had a tone Blue had never heard before.

  ‘You’ll be as great a trapeze artist as Gertrude is. Better,’ she said.

  ‘I’d rather be an engine driver,’ said Ginger.

  Blue blinked at him. It had never occurred to her that someone with talent and skills might not want to use them.

  ‘You don’t have to practise every morning to be an engine driver. You just go “Toot toot” and the engine carries you away. I want to live in a house. Like this,’ added Ginger. ‘So does Mum. She wants a pink house. Every time we pass a pink house she says, “That’s what I’d like to live in.”’

  Blue felt as if the air had been sucked from her lungs. She had lived with these people for over a year, but never really known them. Yet somehow the morning’s horrors had solved one problem. Gertrude could go to her hoped-for stardom. And if the Magnifico Family Circus ended here, it might not be a tragedy for Mrs Olsen — impossible to think of her by any other name — or Ginger.

  But what about the rest of them? She looked over at Ebenezer and Ephraim, sitting so still in their armchairs. The sergeant did too.

  ‘You got any wild tales to tell?’ he asked them.

  ‘No,’ said Ebenezer.

  ‘Don’t know where we was born,’ said Ephraim solidly. ‘Never asked. Only ever known the circus. Joined up with Madame about seven years ago; she’d had the new Big Top a few years by then. Well, it were second-hand, but new for us. Fred here and Mrs Olsen were already with her.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Fred.

  ‘And the skeleton?’

  Ebenezer shrugged. ‘We were the ones that put it up each time. Knew it was real bone. Never thought about it, no more than I thought about Bruin.’

  ‘The bear,’ said Fred.

  ‘And your full names are?’

  ‘Ephraim and Ebenezer Jones,’ said Ebenezer.

  ‘Good common name, Jones,’ said the sergeant. ‘Nearly as common as Smith.’

  Ebenezer shrugged. ‘Can’t help that.’

  ‘Where did you work before you joined Magnifico’s?’

  ‘The Jones Family Circus. Small outfit. You won’t have heard of it,’ said Ebenezer.

  The sergeant stood up heavily. ‘Someone will have. If it exists. I need to do some checking.’ He looked around the room. ‘None of
you are to leave the district. Is that understood? That Gertrude, whatever her real name is, can go if she wants to. But no one else.’

  ‘They can camp here as long as necessary,’ said Miss Matilda quietly.

  ‘We ain’t goin’ nowhere till Madame gets better,’ said Ebenezer. ‘And Sheba shouldn’t be travelling neither.’

  If Madame does get well, thought Blue. She shut her eyes. Best that Madame sleeps through all of this. Let her wake up when it’s all sorted. We owe her that. It’s her turn to be protected now.

  She opened her eyes. ‘Come on,’ she said to Mah. ‘Mrs Olsen needs us.’

  Chapter 25

  They left Joseph and the sergeant with Miss Matilda. Blue half thought Joseph might walk down to the caravans with them. But when Fred put a protective arm around her shoulder and Mah’s he turned back to the others.

  They walked in a huddle down to the river paddock. It felt strangely wrong to leave the solid certainties of the house, to go down towards the tents and caravans again. I am a house person, she thought. So’s Mah. We eat with knives and forks. Read books …

  Suddenly she longed to curl on a sofa and read a book. To sing around the piano after dinner, or sit at the living-room table planning the family’s next adventure, to New Zealand or Tasmania. To choose a dress from a wardrobe, and not a musty trunk. She looked at her dusty toes, the soles of her feet so hard now that even the bindi-eyes in the lawn didn’t bother her; her heels cracked and ingrained with grime.

  Fred held the gate to the river paddock open for them. Sheep stared at them across the barbed wire. Blue suspected that other eyes did too, from the sheds and cottages. The river ran smooth and endless between its sand and trees. The caravans and tents looked shabby next to it. Gertrude’s voice echoed up to them, yelling something indistinguishable.

  ‘I’m goin’ down to Sheba,’ said Ginger abruptly. He ran through the tussocks, ducking under the wire to the elephant’s paddock instead of opening the gate. Sheba plodded towards him; one eye looked slightly swollen, but she walked steadily, her trunk waving as Ginger approached her.