The Road to Gundagai (25 page)

What else was there to say? thought Blue. She looked out the window too. Gertrude must have been planning this for months, waiting for the chance to show a bigger circus what she could do.

The trolley-bus travelled slowly, stuck behind a horse and cart. A line of people stretched down the road. Another circus? she wondered. Or maybe a moving picture show. She’d only seen one, a silent film called
The Sentimental Bloke
. It had been funny and sad in bits, with the captions flickering up in between each scene. She’d read that there were moving pictures with sound now — talkies.

She stared at the crowd. They didn’t look like they were going to the moving pictures. They didn’t look like they were going to anything good or fun.

She leaned forwards and spoke to the bus driver. ‘What are all those people queuing for?’

The driver flashed her a look, then turned back to the road. ‘Soup kitchen. They’re waiting for a meal.’ He spoke with the dispassion of a man who still had a job; a man who knew just how precious that job was.

Blue looked at the crowd as the bus slowly passed them. Each person was curiously colourless, wearing clothes so old they were almost grey; the faces were grey too in the electric streetlights.

Children clinging to their mothers’ hands; women with hopeless faces; and men who looked both tired and angry, ready to punch the world, knowing they had failed to keep their families fed. Old women, in black with shabby shawls; old men in suits that drooped at the knees, their grey whiskers untrimmed. Here and there was a good suit and hat above a face blank and desperate. The line moved slowly, step by step.

How long had those people been waiting there? And what would they get when they reached the end of the line? ‘Soup kitchen’ — not mutton stew kitchen, she thought, or even cheese sandwiches kitchen. How hungry did you need to be to wait like this for a bowl of soup?

Money, she thought. Money could feed them. I have money. No, I will have money.

Four years to go until she was twenty-one. But maybe she could write to Uncle Herbert. He probably wouldn’t believe that the aunts had tried to poison her, but once she’d made the accusation maybe she’d be safe. They wouldn’t dare to hurt her again. Uncle Herbert would help her find somewhere to live …

But not with the circus. Respectable girls did not travel with a circus. And they were her family now.

‘You cold?’ Fred put one arm around her and the other around Mah. It felt good, solid and safe.

If Gertrude left, the circus would need her act even more. Her mermaid mightn’t be a ‘real’ circus act, one that needed years of practice and training, but it was popular. She wondered if she could come up with a new clown act too. She couldn’t cartwheel or turn somersaults on her hands, but she could curl herself into a ball perhaps, and roll with her legs together.

Maybe she wouldn’t have to do any acrobatics at all, just come up with funny patter. It’s the idea that makes a good act, she thought. Whoever dreamed up the concept of turning upper-class men into clowns was brilliant. Maybe you could even run a circus where the ideas for the act were as important as the training. Perhaps they could advertise for a new trapeze act in the newspapers. It might never occur to Madame to do so, but surely there were trapeze artists and other performers out of work, like so many others.

The bus pulled up at Central Station.

The white of the sideshow tents shone dimly in the dawn light. A shadow stepped towards them. It was Ephraim. ‘Have a good time, kids?’

‘Wonderful, thank you,’ said Mah.

‘Madame said youse is all to sleep in. No punters till tomorrow.’ He stretched wearily. ‘I’m going to get the fire going. I’m parched for a cuppa.’

Gertrude nodded without speaking. She ran past Sheba and up the stairs of her caravan. Her mother’s sleepy voice greeted her.

Fred walked Blue and Mah over to their caravan. Blue stopped at the steps. ‘Fred … are you going to tell Madame about Gertrude’s job offer?’

‘Dunno. It’s Gertrude who should do the telling, but I bet she won’t.’ He looked at his sister. ‘What do you think, Marj?’

Mah spoke with no hesitation. ‘Don’t say anything.’

‘But we owe it to Madame …’ Blue hesitated. Madame must have guessed why Gertrude had been so eager to go to the Mammoth. Madame seemed to see everything, with those faded eyes, sorting the facts and reaching conclusions. Of course, she also expected all information, no matter how small, to be brought to her.

‘If she asks, we tell her the truth. But Gertrude deserves a chance to make a life beyond this.’ Mah’s gesture took in the laden truck, the small sideshow tents with their faded images.

‘Good-oh.’ Fred wandered off, past Madame’s caravan and the House of Horrors to the Freak Show tent. Blue followed Mah into their caravan.

Fred had found some paint a few stops before — Blue carefully hadn’t asked him where. The outside of their caravan was now a fresh yellow and red, the inside pale cream. The patchwork quilts hadn’t turned out quite the way she’d expected: it was harder to make something straight and flat out of fabric scraps than she’d thought. But she was proud of her new home, the potted geranium on the step, the rug of plaited rags sewn together, the curtains made out of washed and ironed flour sacks. Mrs Olsen had even added a ruffle.

She sat on the bed out of the way while Mah changed into her nightdress, then changed herself, carefully folding the white dress to go back into Mrs Olsen’s trunk. She pulled the curtains to keep out the growing daylight and prying eyes, then lay down. But even though she’d only had a few hours’ doze on Fred’s shoulder in the railway station and on the train, sleep eluded her.

‘Mah? Are you asleep?’

‘No.’

‘You know, what you said before, about Gertrude deserving a chance to make her own life — if
you
could be anywhere in the world, would you be here?’

‘Of course not.’

Blue blinked at the certainty in Mah’s voice. ‘You’d rather be a servant?’

‘No!’

Blue felt relief melt through her. She’d been afraid Mah might say she’d only left service and come to the circus because of her, and Fred. ‘What then?’

‘A kitchen of my own.’ Mah’s voice was dreamy. ‘A kitchen I could bake in every day, every sort of cake or biscuit in the world. And a house to go with it. A strawberry patch and apricot trees.’

‘A husband and kids?’

‘Maybe. Don’t know. I’ve changed too many nappies to think about kids for a while. What about you?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Blue honestly. ‘If someone offered me eight pounds a week, I wouldn’t leave here.’

‘Easy for you to say.’

‘Perhaps. If … if nothing had ever happened, I’d be going to parties. A ball at Government House, being presented to Lady somebody or other. I couldn’t go back to that now.’

‘There’s other things to do.’

‘Like what?’

‘We could be taxidermists, like Monsieur. We could set up a shop in Gundagai. Pet dogs stuffed half price on Tuesdays.’

‘Throw away your china ducks flying up the wall. Buy our stuffed bats instead. Why wear a fox-fur coat when you could wear the whole fox, sitting on your shoulder?’

‘Mmm.’ Mah’s giggle was a sleepy one. ‘G’night, Blue.’

‘Good night.’ Blue lay back, staring at the pale ceiling.

Chapter 20

They stayed at Berrima over the Christmas week, enjoying the coolness of the Highlands in midsummer, as Sheba munched the grass, her droppings turning green and sloppy. They rode in the back of the farmer’s cart to the Christmas service in the church, the girls in the white dresses again, and Madame in rusty black. Christmas dinner was pot-roasted chicken, the hens a gift from the farmer. To Blue’s surprise the farmers around gave them other gifts too, home-grown strawberries, toffee, loquat jam, soft-fleshed white peaches, even a giant Christmas pudding, all making the day special. But they gave each other no presents. Most had no money to buy them, or privacy to make them. And what they had, they shared.

Nothing more was said of Gertrude’s job offer. Blue supposed that the older girl had told her mother and was trying to persuade her to either let her go, or come herself as well, with Ginger.

Blue felt guilty about her silence. But Mah was right. Gertrude’s life was darned costumes and rabbit stew. The Mammoth not only offered her good wages, but a chance to become a true star, in vaudeville perhaps, filling theatres, not just circus tents. Blue suspected Gertrude longed for stardom even more than the eight pounds a week. Once a performer became a star she might stay a star, even through her forties, and have enough to live well even when it was all over. But you needed to be young to achieve that stardom. Ginger too would have opportunities with the Mammoth that he’d never get travelling the backblocks of Australia.

Mrs Olsen had to choose between loyalty to Madame and a future for her daughter. It would not be an easy choice. Blue felt she owed it to Mrs Olsen to let her make the decision with no interference from the old woman.

By January they were back on the road, to small towns and small audiences, but enough — just — to pay the petrol bill, buy the hay for Sheba and a sack of flour for the damper. And still Gertrude had said nothing about leaving. Nor had Mrs Olsen. Had Gertrude even told her mother? Blue couldn’t tell. She was sure Ginger knew nothing. The boy took pleasure in tricking the audience, but he couldn’t keep a secret from his friends.

The small towns gave way to even smaller towns, where the streets were deserted at midday, except for dogs panting in the shade. But the more isolated the town, the more the locals longed for anything to break the monotony of work and sleep and sleep and work. The audiences were as large as they had been in the bigger centres and they left smiling too.

They rarely stayed more than two nights in any place, trading off a higher petrol bill for a fresh paddock for Sheba and a new audience. Ginger set his rabbit traps each sunset. Ebenezer, Ephraim and Fred foraged for young branches of wattle and kurrajong and other greenery to add to Sheba’s diet. The truck needed new tyres again, but Ebenezer used his pen-knife to carve new treads into old ones he’d found at a dump. They needed new brakes too, but a log tied onto the back could be rolled out to drag along the road and slow them down on the steep hills. And every morning Gertrude practised, practised, practised, even before Madame woke and struck her gong, refusing to meet Blue’s eyes.

The truck chugged down onto the plains, the mountains to the left of them, travelling south now. The towns were further and further apart, so that it took two days’ travelling to get the circus from one to the next. Thin cattle wandered the ‘long paddock’, the stockmen and women on their wiry horses tipping their hats as the circus truck passed, the mob slowly parting to let the truck through, then closing behind it again.

Paddocks eaten out by rabbits, more holes than grass; fence lines where erosion had left silt piled halfway up the posts; silent crews of road gangs on relief work, thin-legged in ragged shorts, too starved to even natter as they swung their mattocks. Even here bagmen tramped, looking for work, or perhaps having lost all hope of finding it, hats with drooping brims, and tattered swags, faces brown with dirt and sun.

At last they met the train tracks again, but it was a branch line now. Bunyagong, Samuel Waters, Gibber’s Creek …

Gibber’s Creek was the biggest town they’d been in since they left the coast: six pubs, new houses along the road to town, the big factory that made wirelesses and miraculously seemed to be employing as many men as it had before the Depression.

They camped at the showgrounds, well out of town, opposite the train station. The police sergeant had made it clear that no circus performers, swaggies or bagmen were welcome in the park on the main street. But the people still came, in their carts and buggies and automobiles. The Big Top was packed for the first two nights, and almost full the next.

‘Twenty-four pounds, two shillings and sixpence,’ said Ebenezer, as they sat around the fire on the third night. It was goulash again. Madame had finally had new spices sent from Melbourne, flavouring the mutton that seemed to be the only non-rabbit meat that people west of the Great Divide ever ate. But at least Gibber’s Creek had vegetables, the first ones they’d had for weeks except for the watercress Mrs Olsen picked in the creeks they passed, and boiled well to kill the liver fluke. Tonight’s stew was rich in carrots, potatoes, hunks of pumpkin, chokos and leeks.

Blue picked up a bone with her fingers, to gnaw the last of the meat, then caught Mah’s eye. She grinned. The Blue of two years back ate with a silver knife and fork, and never with her fingers at the table, except for the wafer on top of an ice-cream sundae that for some reason the rules of manners said you could pick up. The Blue of two years back slept in a carved wooden bed, not on a thin feather mattress with costumes stored under it.

But she was happy, Blue realised. Without even noticing it happiness had grown, like the bluebell for which she was named slowly unfurling under the soil before it sprang up into the light.

Mah made a quick calculation. ‘That’s eighty-nine pounds for the three days.’

‘This is good,’ said Madame. Sheba flicked her trunk in agreement. Madame’s accent had been growing stronger lately. It came and went like the moon, thought Blue, or some tide only known to Madame. ‘It will take us four days and much petrol to get to Willawar.’

Blue glanced at Ephraim. The next days would be hard on him and Ebenezer, with all the trekking back and forth. But Ephraim just nodded.

How many camps has he made in his life? Blue wondered. How old was Ephraim? Fifty? Fifty-five? Had he never wanted to be more than a clown and roustabout? Had he ever dreamed of flying on the trapeze like Mrs Olsen and Gertrude, as Madame and her parents had once done? Or had he once twisted on high ropes, but stopped when his joints grew stiff, like Madame’s mother?

‘One of the women swapped her old curtains for half a dozen tickets.’ Mrs Olsen’s hands busied themselves frying more squished flies. ‘Green velvet,’ she added with satisfaction. ‘Faded in places, but I can cut out some good bits.’ She smiled at Fred. ‘How’d you like a green velvet cloak for your magician’s act?’