Down the Road to Gundagai

by Jackie French

  Joseph caught her looking towards the house. ‘They’ll call you at once if there’s any change. One of the nurses will be with her all night. Nurse Blamey might be a tartar, but she knows what she’s doing. One of the best with stroke patients.’

  She nodded. ‘Thank you. Mr Thompson — how is he really? Sorry,’ she added. ‘I don’t want you breaking any confidences.’

  ‘You’re not. I’m not his doctor. He’s getting better. Didn’t know if he’d pull through at first, but every day there’s an improvement. He was overdoing it last year. Seemed to think he could fix Australia’s whole unemployment situation with a few new inventions. But he and Matilda are both a bit alike in that. They take on everyone’s problems with enormous energy.’

  ‘Including the circus’s?’ said Blue.

  ‘And my family’s. I’ll tell you about that one day. Just now you look all in. Andy?’ His brother looked around. ‘We need to see the girls back to their caravan.’

  ‘We can do that.’ Ebenezer and Ephraim stood up. They looked uncomfortable, not so much out of place as wishing they were far away.

  ‘We’ll walk you down too.’

  The McAlpine brothers collected a couple of lamps at the door. Outside, the dogs chewed the last of the dinner scraps, their ears pricking up as the strangers passed. The moonlight had found the river and turned it into a golden highway between its sandy banks. The night smelled of sheep droppings and dog and the lingering scent of chops. Above them diamond lights shone a wagon wheel of stars. It was as though the whole universe turned on its axis from this paddock by the river.

  All her life she had longed to travel, the family holidays or business trips, the adventure of the road ahead with the circus, the dreams of Gundagai. Suddenly, absolutely, she wanted to be nowhere else than here. It was almost as if her feet had grown roots into the ground, as if the heartbeat of the earth pounded into her body.

  Joseph had let the others get a little way ahead. He looked at her curiously in the lamplight. ‘Penny for your thoughts.’

  Blue shook her head. ‘I’m not sure what I’m feeling. I just feel, I don’t know. The river, the hills. I’ve never been here before, but somehow I feel …’

  ‘Like you belong?’

  ‘Yes. Does that sound silly?’

  ‘No. It’s what my dad felt when he first saw Rock Farm. That’s where I grew up. Flinty, my sister, feels that way about it too. I don’t think it has to be where you’re born. Do you know the old Shaker hymn?’

  She shook her head again.

  He began to sing, his voice light and tuneful.

  ‘’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free

  ’Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

  And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

  ’Twill be in the valley of love and delight.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Blue. ‘Exactly. It’s not a valley. But it feels … right.’

  ‘I love the river too.’ He seemed quite unembarrassed as another young man might be, talking of the land he loved. ‘Andy’s like me as well. We love the plains and the hills. It took Flinty a while to realise that Andy didn’t just want the job down here. He loves the place too.’

  They walked slowly through the dew-damp tussocks. Once again Blue wished she could stride properly. A walk that looked seductive in harem trousers was just awkward in a skirt.

  ‘I’ve got to go back tomorrow morning, early,’ said Joseph abruptly. ‘I’m sorry. I wish I didn’t have to.’

  She was astonished at the wave of bleakness that filtered through her. Even this small bit of familiarity was going …

  ‘I need to take the bag of your old hair up to Sydney. I know how to do the test, but it needs to be witnessed properly. It’s a beautiful colour,’ he added.

  ‘I was half bald. I looked like a monster.’

  ‘You could never be a monster. I hope you won’t need to dye it any more.’

  Blue touched her hair self-consciously. ‘Not much point now.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ She thought he might have flushed, but it was hard to tell in the dark. ‘Look, I’ll be down next weekend. I’ll get the night train, be here first thing Saturday morning. You’ll be all right till then?’

  The coldness vanished, bringing both relief and a strange irritation. Everybody seemed to think she needed to be looked after.

  I learned to stand on my hands as the mermaid, she thought. I was a star of the circus! Only a small circus, true, but the wonder in the audience’s eyes had been real nonetheless. She looked around to find Joseph’s eyes on her, concerned.

  ‘I’m sorry. Last night and today have been, well, too much.’ Like the circus, she thought, act after act. But there at least you knew that the Galah was coming, and it would all be over.

  ‘I wish I didn’t have to go.’

  ‘Nothing else is going to happen.’ She forced herself to smile. ‘Or maybe Ephraim is going to turn out to be the lost King of Ruritania.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, it’s the skeleton who is the lost King of Ruritania. Put in your House of Horrors by an evil chancellor after a palace coup.’

  ‘And all Madame’s jewellery is real, looted from the palace treasury by the revolutionaries who deposed the chancellor …’ She stopped, remembering that one bracelet, at least, had been true gold and tiny rubies.

  They paused at the caravan steps, where Andy was waiting. Mah had already gone in. The lamplight glowed soft from the windows. Joseph hesitated, then reached over and squeezed Blue’s hand. ‘You look after her,’ he said to his brother.

  ‘I will,’ said Mr McAlpine. Blue bit off a retort. They were being kind. And, if she was to be honest, she did need looking after. She wouldn’t have even known how to cook her own dinner tonight.

  ‘See you Saturday morning,’ said Joseph.

  She smiled. ‘Yes.’ She turned at the caravan door to watch them both climb the hill to the manager’s house. Someone had lit the lamps there too. If she craned to see past it to the big house, she could also see the light from the window she thought was Madame’s room.

  Down by the river Sheba pulled at the lush grass.

  Chapter 29

  The days fell into a pattern: breakfast up at the men’s quarters, more chops or what Cookie called pigs in a blanket — slices of last night’s roast mutton fried with onions and gravy — big hunks of bread with butter and cheese or jam. The men were friendly, but not too friendly. As Madame would say, all most respectable. Blue wondered if having a woman boss next door made the men a little more than usually polite to stray females.

  They visited Madame after breakfast, Blue and Mah together and then Ephraim and Ebenezer. Nurse Blamey wouldn’t let them linger in the sick room, nor allow more than two to visit at once. Like a dog barking to keep its backyard for itself, thought Blue, glancing up to see the sister in her spotless white watching from the door. Even Ephraim’s trombone couldn’t wake Madame now, much less disturb her. If they thought it might have, they’d have tried it.

  The sick room seemed too silent for a woman who had been the centre of a circus. The whole homestead was silent, except for the occasional voice of a servant or Miss Matilda, and footsteps muffled on the rugs. Mr Thompson was either in his room or the library.

  The next job was carrying buckets of water up to their caravan to wash. Ephraim and Ebenezer had taken even the small tents down and packed them safely under the tarpaulin in the back of the truck now they weren’t being used. It was impossible to fit the tub in the caravan, so they made do with washing the bits they could reach.

  ‘We used to call it a “possible” at the orphanage,’ said Mah, her legs up on the bed to give Blue room to wash. ‘Wash up as far as possible and then down as far as possible and then someone would always say, “What’s poor possible done to be left out?”’

  ‘You don’t talk much about the orphanage.’

  Mah shrugged. ‘Not much to tell. Every day was like every other
day, except when they let us go to school. Of course all the other kids there avoided us. Easy to pick us out — we all had to wear blue gingham, even the boy’s shirts. Said we had nits.’

  ‘That’s unfair!’

  ‘Well, we did have. All the time. They said we stole the other kids’ lunches too. Some of us did that too.’

  ‘Not you,’ said Blue.

  ‘No. But I ate the ones that Fred shared with me.’ She looked out the window. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be hungry. Not just “I want my dinner” hungry. The sort that’s like an animal gnawing your insides.’

  ‘No.’ She’d been scarred, poisoned, hurt. But there had always been food and someone to provide it for her. ‘I suppose half of Australia is hungry now.’

  ‘Do you think the Depression will ever end? Maybe it’ll go on like this forever,’ said Mah. ‘Men with their swags looking for work and sixpence a week and your keep if you’re lucky.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Blue towelled her back, then began the difficult task of hauling on her shorts so they hung just below her scar. ‘The other depressions lasted for about ten years, I think. This one’s been about four so far.’

  ‘What other depressions?’

  ‘The 1890s one, and the one in the 1840s. The banks went bust then too. Didn’t you learn about them at school?’

  ‘Didn’t go enough to learn much, except how to read and write and do some sums. That’s all we were supposed to need.’

  ‘What did you do all day then?’ Blue had a vision of the orphanage kids playing hopscotch behind the kitchen.

  ‘Scrubbed,’ said Mah. ‘Every blinking floor had to be scrubbed every day. Helped look after the younger ones. I never want to change another nappy in my life.’

  Blue looked at her in surprise. ‘You’ve said that before. You really don’t want to be married and have children?’

  ‘Not unless I can have a nanny to do the boring bits. Used to think I’d like to be a cook, but Mrs Huggins would never let me help. Learned a bit watching her though.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to have learned any of Ethel’s recipes,’ said Blue with feeling.

  Mah grinned. ‘She thought the carrots would jump up and strangle the old ladies if she didn’t boil them to death first. Blue, if Madame … if the circus doesn’t keep going, have you thought about what you’d do?’

  Blue sat next to her on the bed. ‘I asked Mr Thompson to find out if I have any money — money we can use now, I mean. I need to write to Uncle Herbert too, I think. I probably should have written to him before. But I was so sick at first, and then when I got better, well, I wasn’t sure about the poisoning till you arrived, and after that … I just didn’t, that’s all. But maybe there’s enough money to give me an allowance …’ Miss Matilda had said she was probably a wealthy young woman. ‘I’m older now too. Maybe you and I could rent a cottage together.’

  ‘What about Ebenezer and Ephraim? And Sheba?’

  ‘Maybe two cottages. And a paddock for Sheba.’ Where could an elephant go except to another circus or a zoo? She thought of the caged animals at the Mammoth, the elephants with chains around their legs, and shuddered. Sheba belonged with people who loved her.

  ‘We need Madame to tell us our future,’ Blue said slowly. She gave a slight grin. ‘And to make sure the right future happens too.’

  ‘All will be well,’ intoned Mah, in a reasonable imitation of Madame’s accent at its strongest. ‘Ze elephant will live in ze big paddock wiss her friends, and all will be happy.’

  Blue glanced out the window. Sheba stood on the sand by the river, squirting herself with water. She had already eaten most of the grass in her paddock. Mr McAlpine had started sending a man down with fresh hay for her each day.

  Hay cost money. How long would Miss Matilda’s generosity continue?

  The sergeant arrived back on Wednesday. So did the rain, sheep’s fleece clouds at first, drifting from the south-east, turning to bruises that looked over the land, then a sudden squall of hail and one of rain, so heavy each drop stung the skin. Blue and Mah raced for their caravan. Ebenezer and Ephraim were already in theirs.

  Blue peered out the window at Sheba. Ebenezer and Ephraim had fixed a couple of tarpaulins into a shelter for her, but for now she seemed to enjoy the rain, letting its freshness pour over her back, gazing in a superior fashion at the sheep slowly turning sodden in the next paddock.

  ‘I thought she’d be mourning Madame,’ said Blue.

  ‘Maybe she knows Madame is being looked after.’ Mah tucked her feet up on the bed. The old woman still lay up in the big house, neat and straight in the starched sheets and satin comforter, her eyes shut, her skin waxy, her arms where they had been placed at her sides, almost as if she was already in her coffin.

  ‘I suppose.’ Blue arranged herself on the other bed. She was bored. Usually when it rained there was dance practice to do in the Big Top, or exercises, or mending costumes or turning them into new ones, sitting on the bales of hay while Madame told stories of long ago. But the Big Top still sat on the truck. Would it ever rise again? And who would perform in it? Would they tell stories like Madame?

  ‘Remember Madame telling us how Monsieur saved that woman from going over the waterfall?’ Mah must have been thinking the same thing.

  Blue smiled. ‘Up in the Blue Mountains. The silly woman bent over to see the falls and fell in …’

  ‘… and Madame said Monsieur not only held out the handle of the umbrella for her to catch hold of, but lifted his hat at the same time. The mark of a true gentleman.’

  ‘Can’t you just see him?’ said Blue. ‘I bet he had a striped waistcoat and a gold fob watch. One that Sheba had stolen from someone.’

  ‘Would Sheba have been with her then? How old is she?’

  Blue glanced out at the elephant again. She stood in her shelter now. She seemed to grin at the sheep. ‘Madame said Sheba had been hers all her life, Sheba’s life that is. But she didn’t say how long that had been.’

  ‘How long do elephants live?’

  ‘Sixty years? Seventy? I read it somewhere. We need a library,’ she said regretfully. Sometimes they had camped near a lending library, but no librarian would lend a book to a barefoot boy — or a girl who looked like one — from a circus.

  Someone banged on the door. Blue opened it. Mr McAlpine looked up at her from under a big umbrella, his hat and oilskin glistening with raindrops. He held another umbrella out to her. ‘Sergeant Patterson would like to see you all again, up at the big house,’ he said. He hesitated, then added, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be there too. And Miss Matilda.’

  Blue felt a lump like half-chewed cheese in her throat. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  She and Mah dried their feet carefully on the doormat. Blue hoped they’d rubbed off any mud as they walked across the polished boards and bright carpets into the living room.

  The others were there already: Miss Matilda, in what must be her favourite armchair, the armrests slightly worn; Mr Thompson in the chair next to her, wearing a tie for the first time since she’d met him; the sergeant business-like on a straight wooden chair; Ebenezer and Ephraim together on one of the sofas, their faces wooden. Ephraim’s white fingers clutched the edge of the sofa. Blue and Mah took the other, with Mr McAlpine, his hat and oilskin hung in the hall outside, standing next to Miss Matilda.

  ‘Good morning.’ The sergeant stood politely as Mah and Blue were seated, then sat down again. It felt odd to be treated as a young woman again. ‘First of all, Mr Joseph McAlpine has been in touch with me or, rather, his Professor Sanders has.’ The sergeant looked at Blue. ‘It seems that someone really was trying to poison you, miss.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Blue. I need to say something else, she thought. But what could you say when you had been told for certain that your aunts had wanted you dead, had watched you suffer day after day? Mah gripped her hand and squeezed it.

  She had known that she really had been poisoned. She had always known it, known perha
ps at some level even before Ginger had appeared through her bedroom window. But that was different from being told it by a policeman.

  ‘Not that it has any bearing on the present situation,’ the sergeant went on. ‘But believe me, it’s now a matter of police investigation. Apparently your aunts moved back to their home in town when … after you left. The Melbourne police are interviewing them today, and I expect they’ll want to talk to you too.’

  ‘Will I have to go back to Melbourne?’ Blue hated the quaver in her voice.

  The sergeant looked fatherly. He probably has six children, thought Blue. All girls. ‘No, Miss Laurence. The police in Melbourne haven’t told your aunts where you are either, simply that you are well and safe.’ He nodded to Miss Matilda. ‘I think you’re best off here at Drinkwater for the moment. Is that agreeable to you?’

  ‘Yes, please, if it’s all right with Mr and Mrs Thompson. Thank you.’ She wasn’t sure who she was thanking, Miss Matilda for her hospitality and kindness, the sergeant or even the laws of Australia for trying to protect the innocent and find the guilty.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the sergeant, not looking police-like at all. ‘They’ll take good care of you.’ For a brief moment Blue imagined his expression if she said, ‘I don’t need taking care of. I’m going to jump in my biplane and explore the jungle.’

  ‘Now as for this skeleton of yours.’ The sergeant looked around the room. ‘We’ve found Mrs Olsen’s Lenny Frearson alive and well and cutting cane up north, just as she told us. We’ve also found a Mrs James Feehan. She says she worked with the Magnifico Family Circus as a juggler and clown eight years ago, until she married Mr Feehan. Is that right?’

  Ebenezer and Ephraim nodded. ‘Nice man, Mr Feehan,’ said Ephraim, curiously expressionless. ‘Cabinet maker.’

  ‘Yes. Well. Seems the circus, er, acquired Mrs Feehan, or Miss Patricia Larson as she was then, when she was living with an uncle, who, er …’ the sergeant cleared his throat ‘… abused her.’

  Ephraim and Ebenezer nodded again. ‘That was about the size of it,’ said Ebenezer. To Blue’s surprise his hand reached out and grasped Ephraim’s.