Down the Road to Gundagai

by Jackie French

  ‘Hello?’ she said tentatively to the operator. That was what you were supposed to say, wasn’t it? Not good morning? ‘Could you put me through to the police station please?’

  ‘Miss Laurence, isn’t it?’ The operator was a woman, sounding middle-aged. ‘I saw you at the circus. Right good acts they were, especially that trapeze. My heart was in my mouth, and no mistake. Putting you through now.’

  ‘Hello. Gibber’s Creek Police Station. Sergeant Patterson speaking.’

  Blue held the receiver out so Mah could hear too. ‘This is Bluebell Laurence speaking.’

  ‘Ah, Miss Laurence. You’ll be wanting to speak to the sisters. I’m afraid they’re not here.’

  ‘What?!’ Had they already been taken to prison in Sydney?

  ‘My wife took them down to the Stores to get some proper clothes.’ She could almost hear his smile. ‘Don’t worry. They’re nice old ducks. Got them staying in our spare bedroom, not in the gaol. Should get a reply today about that husband of theirs.’

  Old ducks, thought Blue. Ebenezer the dignified ringmaster and Ephraim with his strength and solidity were now ‘old ducks’. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll let you know as soon as there’s any news. I was going to ring you today anyway. The police in Melbourne have questioned your aunts and their servant.’

  Blue felt the memory of nausea grip her stomach. ‘Have they arrested them?’

  ‘No. They deny having harmed you in any way. The police searched the house, but there was nothing that contained arsenic, not even weed killer. But of course a long time has passed since you were with them. The house where you stayed with them has now been rented by another family. The police searched there too. Nothing.’

  ‘But Mah heard my aunts talking about how I was going to die of arsenic poisoning!’

  ‘It’s her word against theirs, Miss Laurence …’

  A servant’s word against that of respectable spinsters, thought Blue.

  ‘Have the police spoken to my Uncle Herbert? Herbert Laurence.’

  ‘Miss Matilda gave us his name. Yes, the police have spoken to him. He stated that he had grown … concerned … about your health and absence from Melbourne. But that is all he could tell us.’

  Poor ineffectual Uncle Herbert, she thought. He probably felt guilty that he hadn’t protected her, that she’d had to escape herself. He would have done his best, perhaps, if Madame hadn’t rescued her first. But she wondered how good his ‘best’ might have been.

  ‘You didn’t hear your aunts speak about arsenic yourself?’

  ‘No. But I felt so ill, worse every day. Then I began to get better as soon as I joined the circus. Someone was poisoning me! They were the only people I saw.’

  ‘You’re forgetting the servants. Miss Ethel Stevens and your friend Miss Malloy.’

  ‘Ethel’s been with my aunts as long as I can remember. She wouldn’t do anything unless they told her to.’

  She heard a quiet cough on the other end of the line. ‘The police in Melbourne are inclined to agree with you. Your aunts, however, state that they suspected that Miss Malloy may have been …’

  Mah grabbed the receiver. ‘Now you listen here. If you think I’d ever have hurt Blue, you can think again. I got her out of there as fast as I could.’

  ‘But you didn’t inform the police.’ Blue could just hear the sergeant’s tinny voice from the receiver.

  ‘You’re taking their word for it now! You’d have taken their word for it back then!’

  ‘Miss Malloy, I did not say that either I or the police in Melbourne are taking their word for anything. Did you at any time see your employers or their servant put anything suspicious in Miss Laurence’s food?’

  Mah hesitated. ‘No.’

  ‘And yet you were in and out of the kitchen all the time.’

  ‘Not always. They knew I’d be out of the kitchen when I was helping Blue wash in the mornings and evenings, and when Ethel made me eat my meals out on the back steps. They had plenty of chances to poison Blue’s food when I wasn’t there.’

  ‘They say that you too could have added anything to Miss Laurence’s food when you took it up to her.’

  ‘Could have. Didn’t. You’ve got rocks in your head if you think I did.’ Mah trembled in anger.

  ‘Did you ever taste anything, leftovers perhaps, that made you ill?’

  ‘No. Now you go and nick the miserable so-and-sos who really did try to kill her.’

  A pause. ‘If you’d just get off your high horse for a minute, you could see we are trying. Could you put me back onto Miss Laurence please?’

  Mah handed the receiver back to Blue. She held it so tight her knuckles showed white. ‘Mah saved my life. Twice. Leave her alone.’

  ‘The questions had to be asked.’

  ‘Then go back and ask my aunts again! They can’t just go free!’

  ‘The police are still investigating, Miss Laurence. I’m sorry. It’s all that we can do.’

  And suddenly she did see. All she had — all the police had — was a ball of knotted wool, made up of things people said and the one indisputable fact of the arsenic in her hair. ‘I … I see. Thank you. But leave Mah alone.’ Blue put down the receiver. She looked at Mah. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be, isn’t your fault. Anyway, I’m used to it.’

  ‘That makes it worse.’

  Mah hugged her, hard. ‘They can’t hurt you here. That’s what really matters. You’re safe here, and you’re going to stay safe.’

  ‘Yes.’ My brain believes, but my body doesn’t, thought Blue, trying to stop herself shivering. ‘At least Ebenezer and Ephraim are all right. For now.’

  Mah nodded. ‘Mrs Mutton asked if I’d like to go into town with her to order the groceries. Mr McAlpine’s driving us. You want to come? Get our minds off it all.’

  Blue shook her head. Suddenly she didn’t want to go anywhere, not by car or truck or even elephant.

  ‘You’re sure you’ll be all right on your own?’

  ‘Yes.’ Blue managed to make her voice firm.

  She went up to Madame’s room once more, peering in and receiving a ‘No change, Miss Laurence’ from Nurse Blamey, then sat quietly in her own room, waiting till she felt calmer, trying not to think of Aunt Lilac and Aunt Daisy, still free to eat scones at the teashop, while they blamed Mah for their crime. At last she walked downstairs, then down the hall towards the library.

  It was strange how good it felt to live in a house again, to walk from room to room, with lights that turned on when you clicked a switch, and a bathroom with a big mahogany-faced bath and an indoor toilet on its own mahogany throne. The bathroom she and Mah shared had monkeys on the wallpaper. Blue wondered if it had been added for Miss Matilda’s sons, who were at boarding school.

  She wondered again what had happened to her old friends, back in Melbourne. But of course her last year there friendships had been nibbled at by the Depression, her closest friend forced to move to Sydney when her father found a job there; another vanished, her family possibly staying with relatives, unwilling to contact the old friends of their affluent days.

  For the first time Blue wondered if the circus had passed near Anne’s new home in Sydney. But Anne’s family would have been horrified to find what looked like a barefoot boy on their doorstep. Nor were they likely to believe in a tale of murdering aunts.

  She hadn’t realised how much she had simply immersed herself in her new world of the circus, casting off the old like a skin she’d worn out. Strangely, Drinkwater seemed like the destination she had been heading for the whole time, the circus the necessary vehicle to get her here. Of course she couldn’t abuse the Thompsons’ hospitality for too long. But the idea of a cottage by the river, with Mah and Sheba, seemed more and more attractive.

  There was joy in looking out the wide window when she woke up, seeing the same broad sweep of paddocks each morning, the movement of the river, the quartz gleam of the mountains beyond, k
nowing that those who lived here had a commitment to the place that lasted for generations and not just a night or two.

  She had spent her early life perched on the edge of the continent, in a city made up of European houses and gardens. She had travelled across this land, but mostly in darkness, seeing only the circus and small vistas beyond. Now, at last, she was glimpsing the soul of her country. Sitting with Mah as Sheba washed herself in the river was enough to bring about a strange and deep contentment. You didn’t need to travel to see new things — not when you began to look.

  The land here changed each day — the grass not just greener, but spreading its fingers more thickly on the newly wet soil. Dozens of small wildflowers had sprung up, with tiny purple orchid-like heads or pink blooms no bigger than a fingernail clipping. Even the river grew each day, from its former silver trail to a powerful but smooth wide brown flow, and now and then a surge and swirl of brown and white.

  My country, she thought, as she opened the door to the library. She’d already visited it last night. Most of the library seemed to have been ordered for its matching leather covers, but there were shelves of new books too or, rather, books bought in the past twenty or thirty years: The Girl’s Own Annuals, The Boy’s Own Annuals, the Dorothy Sayers books Miss Matilda had spoken of and many more besides. She plucked out a random book that looked interesting, Black Foot’s Last Stand, and limped over to one of the deep leather armchairs to read it, then stopped when she saw someone was already there.

  Mr Thompson stood up shakily as she approached, steadying himself with one hand on his armchair. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Laurence. I didn’t see you come in. I must have dozed off.’

  He seemed to have forgotten she had asked him to call her Blue. She hesitated, wondering if she should take the book upstairs or if he’d welcome company. Mr Thompson solved the dilemma by adding, ‘That’s one of Joseph’s sister’s books.’

  ‘She lent it to you?’

  ‘No. I meant she wrote it. She’s written quite a few.’

  She looked at the author’s name: Felicity Mack. ‘Joseph said his sister’s name is Flinty. Has he got more than one sister?’

  Mr Thompson lowered himself into his armchair. ‘He has two. Kirsty is supposed to be studying Arts at Sydney University.’

  She caught the inflection. ‘Supposed to be?’

  Mr Thompson grinned. He had a good grin. Blue hardly noticed the slackness of half his face now. ‘Joseph says she spends half her time at the aerodrome, learning to loop the loop. Flinty is short for Felicity, and she uses her married surname. She and Sandy didn’t marry until just after her first book was published, but she published it as Felicity Mack anyway.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘Flinty told me at the wedding breakfast she wasn’t going to let Sandy get away again. There’d be no backing out if she used his name on her book.’

  Why would a woman want to marry a man who might be unwilling? ‘Did he want to back out?’

  ‘He was badly scarred in the war,’ said Mr Thompson briefly. He used his right hand to hold up his left one, showing a faint discoloured area across his hand and along his arm. ‘I was scarred myself when I was younger than you. An accident at a jam factory.’

  The scars were hardly noticeable after so many decades. ‘Did your father own jam factories?’

  The grin appeared again. ‘I was the odd-job boy. I repaired the canning machine, kept the boiler stoked. That’s where I met Matilda. She worked at the factory too. Long story and for another day,’ he added.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tire you.’

  ‘You haven’t.’ He was telling the truth, she thought. He looked interested. Alive. ‘I saw your elephant out by the river when I was shaving this morning. She was puffing sand all over her back. Fascinating. Does she do that often?’

  ‘Sometimes. I think it might be to get rid of flies. Or maybe just for fun.’

  ‘It was fun to watch her.’

  ‘Mr Thompson, do you know who is running Laurence’s factories now?’ She suddenly felt guilty. The factories had just been a source of income, something Willy would take over some day in the future, while she married, as women did. Now she knew they were places where people worked the jobs that kept their families fed. If the factories closed, those jobs would go.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know. I could find out for you, but your Mr Cummins will have all the details.’

  It seemed strange to hear of ‘her’ Mr Cummins, as if she was important enough to have a solicitor. ‘I wonder if Uncle Herbert is managing them. Though he has his own business.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Your father had a brother?’

  ‘He’s my great-uncle really. My aunts are just my mother’s cousins too.’

  ‘You didn’t ask him for help?’

  ‘I was planning to, just before …’ Before a small boy arrived in my bedroom at midnight and dangled me out a window and down a wall, she thought. ‘… before I joined the circus. But I never knew him well. For some reason my parents never saw him much.’

  ‘Do you think he’d do a good job running your factories?’

  ‘I don’t even know enough about them to feel that they are mine. It’s been as if I had one life, and then the world turned into marshmallow for a while. And then I was with the circus, and well … life outside it was for other people, not us.’

  ‘A marshmallow world.’ He absent-mindedly wiped a drop of spittle from the corner of his mouth with a white handkerchief. ‘I like it. It’s what I’ve felt the last few months.’

  ‘You’re getting better,’ she said tentatively.

  ‘For what it’s worth.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘How could you? One day I was Mr Thomas Thompson, industrialist. The next day I was a cripple who could hardly speak.’

  ‘Perhaps I do know,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I’m sorry. Yes, perhaps you do.’

  ‘Is it interesting, running factories? Dad seemed to think so, but he was interested in everything.’

  ‘I think I’d have liked your father. Yes, it’s fascinating. You’d think it was just the same old thing, day after day. But there are always challenges. New markets overseas, new products. You can’t stand still in business. You need to reinvest, new machinery, new ideas —’ He stopped and looked out the window. ‘Everything I haven’t been doing for the past five months,’ he added. He looked back at her. ‘Like to come to the factory with me after lunch?’

  ‘Very much.’ She found that she meant it. ‘You make wireless sets, don’t you? How do you sell wireless sets overseas? I mean, people there wouldn’t even know about ones made in Australia.’

  ‘Find out who might be interested in selling them and write to them. Send samples. One of my biggest contracts is with the British Army. We’ve needed it the last few years, I can tell you. That contract has kept a lot of people in jobs.’

  ‘Unemployment is a difficult problem,’ she said tentatively.

  Mr Thompson shifted in his armchair, one hand moving the other till it sat on the hand rest. ‘It’s not. It’s a simple one.’ The slurred words were easier for her to understand now. ‘People just have to be less selfish.’ He gestured at the polished wooden furniture of the room, the richly coloured rugs on the floor. ‘Most factory owners claim they can’t keep going in times like these without cutting wages. But how can a bloke live with himself if he lives in a house like this and runs two motorcars and then cuts the wages?’

  ‘But you still live in a house like this.’

  He gave her his half grin. ‘Didn’t cut the wages though. Cut the price of wireless sets and phonographs — we make phonographs too. Profit isn’t as high with lower prices, but we sell three times as many, which means we employ three times as many men too. Five times, as some of them are on three-quarter time. And we only run one car now, not two.’ He wiped another bit of spittle from his chin. ‘Andy McAlpine runs a flashier car than we do. Buys a new one every two years.’

 
‘But you can’t employ everyone.’

  ‘Not even close. There are men knocking on the factory door every day looking for work. Matilda’s set up a camp for the unemployed down the river, out of town. Better than those susso camps near the coast, but it’s still pretty rough. At least we give them proper building material for their huts, not just hessian and kerosene cans. Matilda’s set up a lavatory block, proper pit dunnies and showers. There’s a school and a teacher.’

  ‘You’re good people,’ said Blue softly.

  ‘Are we? Sometimes what you don’t do feels heavier than what you do. Our boys go to a good boarding school, not a one-teacher shack. There’s always more needed.’

  ‘And you made yourself ill trying to do it,’ said Blue shrewdly.

  He gave another half grin at that. ‘That’s what Matilda says. But she won’t stop either. Got the local chicken keepers to form a union — they were only getting sixpence a dozen for their eggs before, but now it’s one and three, and two and six for a plucked chicken. Every house in the district has a vegetable garden now, or she wants to know why.’

  ‘People don’t object to being told what to do?’

  He laughed, holding his hanky to his mouth to stop the spittle escaping from the slack part of his mouth. ‘They’re used to her. Her great-grandfather was just the same. He was the first white settler out here. No one could hold a candle to him, except his grandson, Matilda’s father. Her dad got the Shearers’ Union going here, back in the nineties. The whole country still sings about him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Blue.

  ‘Once a jolly swagman …’ The tune was wobbly, but recognisable.

  ‘The swaggie was her father? The one who died in the billabong?’

  Mr Thompson nodded. ‘Wouldn’t give in when old Drinkwater — he used to own this place then — refused to let union labour onto his land. People remember how her dad fought to make things better …’

  ‘You’ll never take me alive, said he.’ The quiet voice came from the doorway, not singing, but giving the words more meaning than Blue had ever heard in them before. ‘I was there when he said that. There when he died too. I never knew my father for long, but he taught me not to give up. You do what’s right, and you keep on doing it.’