‘Do you think they’ll let me help steer?’ he asked hopefully.
‘No,’ said Blue. ‘I’ll miss you all,’ she said to the three of them, for the hundredth time.
‘We’ll miss you too. I’ll get someone to write,’ said Mrs Olsen.
‘Write us lots,’ said Gertrude. She wore one of the white dresses now, and the black patent leather shoes, though Ginger still wore his shorts and bare feet. Blue doubted he’d ever worn shoes in his life, except the slippers he needed as Tiny Titania and Prince Alfonso.
‘Give Madame our love when she wakes up.’ Mrs Olsen had said that countless times too. She wore a big straw hat that Blue had never seen before, with roses around its crown. ‘Tell her I’m sorry to leave her like this. But she’ll understand.’
‘Of course she will,’ said Mah.
And she was right, realised Blue. Madame, of all people, would know how life’s tides might bring you together, and then drive you apart.
‘The train’s coming!’ Ginger gave a small dance of excitement. ‘Can we go in the carriage behind the driver?’
Suddenly the stationmaster appeared. Mrs Olsen vanished into the station with him to buy the tickets. She had raided Madame’s cash box after all. Blue didn’t know how much she’d left. But she knew that whatever Mrs Olsen had taken would be fair.
‘Here you are.’ Mr McAlpine appeared, a wicker basket in his hand. He passed it to Ginger. ‘You look after that, youngster. There’s a cherry cake and a Thermos of tea and some of Mrs Mutton’s special lemonade. She said the sandwiches are mutton and chutney, and cheese and lettuce.’
‘Cherry cake! Ain’t never had that.’ Ginger peered down the track at the train, basket in his hand. ‘It’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming,’ he chanted.
‘Oh, shut up.’ Gertrude hugged Blue hard, then Mah. ‘Good luck to you too,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I hope you both get rich husbands. Furs, automobiles, everything!’
Blue hid a smile. Trust Gertrude to assume that neither she nor Mah would ever achieve success as a performer. But there were other futures. When she was ten she’d wanted to explore down the Amazon. Perhaps she might even work out what she wanted now.
She could feel the vibration of the train now, as well as see it, its plume of black smoke three times as long as its carriages. Mrs Olsen bustled out as it drew into the station with a shriek of brakes.
Mr McAlpine and the stationmaster helped them on with their luggage, a big trunk for the luggage van, as well as two carpetbags and three hatboxes. Blue wondered if there would ever be anyone to magically produce clothes for her and Mah again. Whatever costumes were left in the circus trunks, she and Mah would have to make them fit themselves, without Mrs Olsen’s sewing.
‘Goodbye.’ She kissed Mrs Olsen, then Gertrude, then Ginger, despite his squirming, then Mrs Olsen again. She could still feel the warmth of her hug as the whistle sounded.
The carriage door closed. Ginger leaned out the window. ‘We’re off!’ he yelled.
Blue waved. She and Mah were still waving as the train’s roar faded.
‘Time to go home,’ said Mr McAlpine quietly.
Your home, not ours, thought Blue. Our home is crumbling.
The three caravans looked forlorn among the tussocks. Over in the next paddock, sheep the colour of rocks gazed at them curiously, in case the new humans might produce hay or anything else important. Only Sheba looked happy as they opened the paddock gate, rumbling at two sheep across the barbed-wire fence, as though pointing out her superior size. The elephant turned as Blue and Mah approached, and plodded over to them. She touched Blue’s neck gently with the pink tip of her trunk, and then stroked Mah’s arm. She held up her trunk enquiringly.
‘Sorry, old girl, no carrots,’ said Blue.
Sheba lowered her trunk in disappointment. Blue wondered if Miss Matilda would mind if they picked some apples. And what would they do about food? Mrs Olsen had done all the cooking, even making up Madame’s concoctions on her orders. All Blue knew how to do was peel potatoes and chop carrots. But the flour sack was full. Mah had helped Mrs Olsen make damper and dumplings and squished-fly biscuits. Maybe Ebenezer and Ephraim could trap rabbits, though these well-tended paddocks seemed free of burrows. But they knew how to fish and catch eels too — and do the messy bits like taking the guts out.
Should they use some of the money in Madame’s box to buy food? But they’d have to drive to town to get it. Petrol was expensive. She hoped Mr Thompson could find out soon if she had any money she could use now.
The Olsens’ caravan door opened. Ebenezer looked out. ‘Thought we may as well sleep in here,’ he said. ‘No one else using it now. Rain’s coming,’ he added. ‘Saves using the tents, just to get them wet.’
Blue looked at the sky. It was still blue, even and cloudless to the horizon.
‘Knees are aching,’ said Ebenezer. ‘Always do before a big rain.’
Blue nodded. ‘Where’s Fred? Is he going to sleep in Madame’s caravan?’
Ebenezer glanced back at Ephraim. ‘Fred’s gone,’ he said quietly.
‘I don’t understand. Gone where?’
‘Gone. Really gone.’
‘No.’ For a moment she felt as dizzy as she had back at Willow Creek. But her world still stood, even if he had gone.
Mah stood still for a long frozen moment, then slowly nodded. ‘Thought he might.’ She glanced at Blue and added, ‘Nothing to keep him here now.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Blue helplessly.
Mah shrugged. ‘Been without a brother most of my life.’
And you’ve been a servant too, thought Blue. You’ve had to survive prejudice and jealousy, only employed because people think they can give a Chinese girl her board and keep, not even wages. It shouldn’t be like this …
Ephraim looked at them with sympathy. ‘He left these for you and Mah,’ he said, taking two folded pages out of his pocket. He handed Blue the one marked Marjory. They swapped notes silently, then scanned them quickly.
Dearest Belle,
Had to go north to that job I told you about with my friend with the fishing boat. Sorry I had to leave without saying goodbye, but in times like these a good job doesn’t come along every day. I can’t afford to let it go. Remember me and don’t worry, I’ll turn up again like a bad penny. Look after Marj for me, will you? I know she’ll look out for you. You be happy. Wish it didn’t have to be like this. One day maybe it won’t be, and I’ll be back as
Your ever loving,
Fred
She looked up as Mah finished her own note. Wordlessly, they swapped them. Mah’s was almost exactly the same as hers.
‘What’s he say?’ asked Ephraim.
Blue told him. Ebenezer nodded. ‘He’ll want you to show the sergeant the letter. It’s writ for him as much as you.’
‘Yes.’ Wherever Fred had gone it wouldn’t be to the north, nor to a fishing boat. A new name, a new place, new girls to grin at …
They are all leaving, she thought. Madame, Fred, Mrs Olsen. She caught Mah’s glance. It said, ‘At least we are still together.’
‘The Olsens get off all right?’ asked Ebenezer. He seemed smaller somehow in these vast stretches of paddock and river, as though as the circus dwindled he too shrank.
‘Yes. You really didn’t know anything about Mrs Olsen’s past life?’
Ephraim hesitated. ‘Enough not to go talking about it. You can say too much without realising it, once you get talking. Best say nothing.’
She looked at him sharply. ‘You mean there’s more?’ She put her hand up to her mouth. ‘She didn’t really kill him, did she?’
‘Of course not,’ said Ebenezer. ‘Not a nice woman like Mrs Olsen. She wouldn’t chop off no one’s head.’
Blue stared. Did Ephraim mean that someone else would kill? Madame perhaps? Blue tried to think. Madame could be ruthless, had no compunction about breaking the law of the land and of convention whenever she felt that what she wanted or
needed was right. Like Mrs Olsen, Madame had the broad shoulders of a woman who had trained for decades for the trapeze. Ten or twenty years ago Madame might have had the strength to cut off a man’s head. But could she actually have done it?
No. Madame’s sense of right and wrong is as firm as tree roots in a rock, Blue thought wearily. The branches might wave whichever way the wind blows, but Madame would never do what she thought was wrong.
But if Madame thought a man should die? If for some reason she felt his bones should stay unburied? Hair has power, she’d said, as she tucked Blue’s locks away. Did bones have power too? Blue had a vague memory that the remains of evildoers had once been buried at the crossroads. Was there some evil that meant that a body deserved no burial at all?
She thought of the potion Madame had given her. If Madame ever killed, it would be like that, she thought. Not with a sword or an axe, but poison. Like I was poisoned …
No! Madame wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Blue was too tired. Too battered by too much. It was all too much. She glanced back at the house, secure in its green trees. She couldn’t even sit with Madame unless she knocked politely on the door and asked permission. The nurse would probably make her scrub her feet next time before she came in.
‘Miss Matilda said we can eat with the men,’ said Ebenezer. ‘Said we should go up to the big shed when we hear the bell.’
Blue nodded, with a vague sense of relief. At least they would be fed. They had roofs over their heads. There were many worse off.
It was little consolation.
Chapter 28
Mah changed into a dress for dinner, an old one of Blue’s she had brought with her, a pale green shift with a flounced hem. She slipped on her shoes and fluffed her hair. ‘What do you think?’
‘You look pretty.’ Somehow seeing Mah back in a dress made it seem as though the circus was gone for good. We’re just a huddle of people and a truck with a Big Top on it, she thought. The magic has gone. She smiled. And an elephant.
Mah held up another of Blue’s old dresses. ‘Don’t think this will fit you any more.’
‘It didn’t when Mum gave it to you.’
‘I had a look in Madame’s caravan. Gertrude’s taken all the dresses that might fit you.’
‘I thought she might.’ Blue shrugged. ‘If it’s a choice between harem pants and shorts at dinner, I’d better stick with shorts.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Mah pulled out a skirt. ‘Try this.’
‘It’ll be too short.’
‘Wear it low down. There, that’s right. Now tuck your shirt in and tie the scarf around your hips. There!’
Blue looked at herself in the mirror. It wasn’t Bluebell Laurence, the nicely brought-up young lady. It wasn’t a scruffy circus brat either. The dye was washing from her hair already, leaving it red partly streaked by black, tiger-like, strange but not unattractive. Sunlight and time had faded the scars on her neck, leaving them almost unnoticeable. I may not be quite sure who that girl in the mirror is now, she thought, but I like the look of her.
Mah handed her the shoes she had worn when she had escaped from her aunts’ house. Blue slipped them on.
Dinner was served in a big room off the men’s quarters, next to the kitchen. It held a motley collection of chairs from at least six dining suites, an upright piano in the corner and a table that looked like it could seat fifty, and possibly did during shearing season.
Now there were a dozen men seated at it, including to her surprise Joseph and Mr McAlpine. She had thought they’d have had someone cook for them down at the manager’s house. It was unmistakeable, large with a wide verandah opening onto a conspicuous lack of garden — it was the only one of the Drinkwater houses without one — and it boasted a solid coach house that she supposed housed the car.
Both men stood up as she and Mah approached. ‘Good evening,’ said Mr McAlpine. He held out her chair for her. Joseph held out a chair for Mah.
The courtesy almost made her cry. Everything makes me feel like crying just now, she thought. How long had it been since a man or boy had held out a chair for her? For the past year she had mostly perched on bales of hay. ‘Thank you.’
She sat as vast platters of food were plonked on the table by a man with a grey beard that could hide an emu’s egg, a potato-sack apron, and the trousers, faded check shirt and workboots that all of the Drinkwater men seemed to wear. Even Joseph had lost the flannel trousers he’d worn earlier, and replaced them with what were undoubtedly work clothes, and his own.
Somehow it felt good that he owned clothes that fitted into her new world, as well as ones from her old one.
The food in front of her wasn’t like either the careful creations of Mrs Huggins or the fragrant stews that Madame had decreed were what her circus dined on. Here were giant piles of charred chops, oozing juice and fat, two vast mounds of mashed potatoes, another two of weeping cabbage boiled with hunks of carrot, glistening with melted butter, and more butter in coolers along the table, along with baskets of black-crusted white bread, already sliced, as well as three-quarters of an enormous sweating cheese.
The men ate quickly and efficiently, some with knife and fork, others with knife and fingers, using their forks as spoons to scoop up the mashed potato.
Joseph carved the meat from his chop, neatly slicing away the charred bits. He smiled at her. ‘Cookie’s puddings are better than his chops.’
‘I heard that!’ The whiskered man peered out of the next room, a wooden spoon raised. ‘You got any complaints about my cooking, you say them to my face.’
Joseph held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘Just saying how good your puds are, Cookie. That’s why I come and stay with my ugly mug of a brother. Just to get a piece of your pie.’
‘Yeah. Well.’ Cookie subsided back to his oven.
‘Last bloke who gave Cookie any lip got a mouse sandwich.’ The man across the table had three teeth, all of which had made quick work of five chops, now only well-chewed bones on a last scraping of potato. Like most of the men, he’d left the cabbage and carrot alone. ‘All neat on his plate that sandwich was, innocent as corned beef and chutney. Then he bit down on it.’ The three teeth showed again in a grin. ‘You could have heard him roar all the way to Sydney.’ He held out a hand, all ingrained grime and muscle. ‘I’m Ringer Higgs.’
‘Belle,’ said Blue automatically. She glanced at Joseph and Mah, then added, ‘It’s Bluebell actually. You can call me either Belle or Blue.’
‘Me aunt grew bluebells,’ said Ringer. ‘Or it might have been dahlias. One o’ them flowers anyway.’
Blue concentrated on her food while Ebenezer and Ephraim quietly introduced themselves. She was hungry. No lunch and a long day, and the chops were tender, even if they were charred, and the mashed potato was rich with butter.
Something thudded on the table next to her. ‘Apple pie and cream,’ said Cookie, ‘and if our flash Mr Joseph has seen a better pie in Sydney I’ll be glad to take it up with him outside.’
Joseph grinned. ‘It’s the best in Australia. All right?’
‘You ain’t tried it yet.’
Joseph took a slice, tasted, and waited five seconds, all eyes upon him. ‘The best in Australia. Official.’
Someone clapped ironically. Cookie saluted with his spoon. Blue found herself grinning too.
The pie was as good as Joseph had said — if not the best in Australia, at least a contender for the prize. She was just scraping the last off her plate when one of the men sat at the piano.
‘She’s my love bird,’ he sang.
‘My tweet tweet love bird
She’s so sweet
Goes tweet tweet tweet
My sweetie pie love bird …’
It was as unexpected as if the dogs outside had begun to baa like sheep. She had been so used to thinking that all the fun in the world was enclosed in their small world of the circus. Yet here it was, springing up in a shed full of men. She blinked as Cookie appeared, minus his apron, car
rying a ukulele. He strummed along with the piano.
‘Tweet tweet sweet
My sweet sweet sweet
Ladyyyyy bird!’
Mr McAlpine stood up and bowed to Mah. ‘Would mademoiselle care to dance?’
Mah grinned. He swept her into an energetic Charleston, arms and legs flying, as men stood and clapped the beat, and the piano and ukulele players pounded on.
‘Belle?’ Joseph stood too and held out his hand.
Blue flushed. ‘I can’t dance. Not like that anyhow.’
‘Oh, crikey, I forgot.’
He looked so stricken she tried to smile. ‘Really, it’s all right.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘It’s fun to watch anyway.’
And it was. Tune after tune, Mah with partner after partner. The Charleston gave way to polkas, some of the men dancing with each other, first bowing with elaborate courtesy. Ebenezer and Ephraim watched, as silent as they’d been during the meal. They looked small among the farm workmen, without the height of their top hats, lost in this new world, without the easy expertise they had at the circus.
The electric lights came on, the generator out the back thudding not quite in time with the piano. Mah leaned against the piano, out of breath, pretty and flushed as Ringer began to sing in an almost tuneful baritone.
‘It’s all for me grog
Me jolly jolly grog
It’s all for me beer and tobacco!
For I’ve spent all me tin
In the shanty drinking gin
And across the western plains I must wander …’
Was Fred wandering across the western plains? Did they do this every night, Blue wondered, or was it just for her and Mah?
Perhaps a bit of both, the usual few songs around the piano after dinner extending into an impromptu dance. Did Miss Matilda and her husband ever join in? But not now, she thought. Not after his stroke. And she had forgotten Madame, up in her bedroom. How could they enjoy themselves, while she lay there?
Down the Road to Gundagai Page 26
