The Road to Gundagai (3 page)

One night before the circus took the road to Gundagai.

What would it be like to follow the road, and see where it led? One day, she thought, I’ll travel, like Mum and Dad did, just for the joy of it, even though they used the excuse of looking for new sources of leather for Laurence’s Shoes — crocodile skin from Darwin, Persian lamb from Christchurch, ostrich leather from Cape Town. She’d have been with them on that last trip, if she hadn’t caught chickenpox two days before the ship sailed.

If she hadn’t caught chickenpox, she’d have seen the elephants and the market place. She’d have slid down into the cold water with her family, away from the world of light.

‘… not long for this world.’ Uncle Herbert’s words floated back. Did Uncle Herbert mean that Blue might die?

She didn’t feel sick enough to die! She had been burned, but the burns had healed, even if the scars were still ugly and made walking difficult. She grieved, but you didn’t die of grief, or only in books.

Sometimes she felt hardly sick at all. If you were well enough to want to go to a circus, surely you were too well to die.

Why shouldn’t she go? The thought seemed to come from that far-off life when everything had been possible, from loving arms and ice cream (indigestible, said Aunt Lilac) to white and pink spotted dresses with flounces at the knee and pink straw hats, instead of the dark clothes of mourning. Why shouldn’t a sixteen-year-old girl go to the circus?

And if she was going to die (but I won’t, she thought — not till I am a hundred and four and have seen the pyramids and flown an aeroplane and gone to Timbuktu) she would have at least met an elephant, and visited the circus that would leave the faded houses of Willow Creek, still and dusty, behind, and travel up the road, the breeze at their backs, to places with strange names like Gundagai.

Money? She looked at Uncle Herbert’s ten-pound note poking out from the birthday card. Blue didn’t know how much it cost to go to a circus, but ten pounds should be more than enough.

But I’m hideous, scarred. People will stare. She bit her lip. Not in the high-necked dress, the long strands of her remaining hair carefully arranged, the velvet hat the aunts had brought her to wear back from hospital pulled down to cover her bald spots. The growing darkness would hide her shambling walk and, anyway, no one here knew her, only Ethel and Mah, and Aunt Lilac wouldn’t be letting either of them go to the circus.

Mah could help her downstairs …

No, not Mah. A girl of Blue’s class — even an orphan, dependent on her aunts’ charity — had every right to go to the circus. Blue could risk Aunt Lilac’s angry smile for herself, but a servant like Mah was vulnerable. If Blue was going to go to the circus, it had to be alone.

Strength seeped back into her, despite the nausea. If she felt faint, she could sit down. If she wanted to be sick, she’d find a bush.

She found her dress again, and slipped it over her head, buttoning it high up to her throat. No underwear: impossible to pull it past her scar.

She had no writing paper or inkwell, or even a pen and blotting paper. She’d had no need, with no letters to reply to. But Mah had brought up a pencil a few weeks ago with one of those new ‘crossword’ things from the newspaper. She used the back of Uncle Herbert’s card to write a careful note, propping it on her bed.

I have gone to the circus. I will be back soon.

Love,

Bluebell

She didn’t love her aunts. She was reasonably sure they didn’t love her either. But they had upset their lives to care for her. It might not be accurate, but they had earned more than
Sincerely yours
.

Buttoning her shoes left her dizzy. Blue waited till the room steadied, then shuffled to the door. The big house creaked as the day’s heat seeped from its crevices.

Down one flight, down the next. She paused, hearing Aunt Daisy’s voice briefly from the living room below. Uncle Herbert must have left, not trusting his automobile headlights to get him back to Melbourne in the dark.

The clock boomed in the hallway. She counted the strokes. One, two, three, four, five, six …

Six o’clock. The aunts dined at six, keeping early hours in the country. Dinner should keep them occupied for at least an hour, with their small ladylike bites, cold mutton and reheated potatoes left over from the lunchtime roast, then sipping the tea that Ethel would bring them on the silver tray. Ethel would be having her supper now too, in the kitchen, and Mah eating hers on the kitchen steps. (‘I’m a Christian woman,’ Ethel had informed Aunt Lilac. ‘I’m not eating at a table with no heathen.’) It would be at least an hour before Ethel gave Mah the tray to take to Blue’s room. Perhaps Mah might even say Blue was asleep, and she didn’t want to waken her.

What time did the circus start?

She was going to find out.

Blue shuffled through the dust and thistles at the side of the road. The scar that glued her thighs together was no bigger than the mouth of a teacup, but it was still enough to stop her taking all but the most ladylike of steps. Carts and sulkies and their hot horses passed in a dusty trickle, heading to the circus paddock. Here and there lamplight or candlelight flickered from farmhouses across the paddocks.

Only one light glowed, a universe of brightness in the twilight ahead of her: electric light, powerful enough to beat back the night. She felt as well as heard the beat of the generator.

It was more light than she had seen since she’d gone to the Royal Show at night the year before, just with Dad that time, as Willy was only two months old, too young for Mum to take him to the Show with people coughing polio or whooping cough germs all over the place. That light had almost eclipsed the moon and so did this, though on a much smaller scale.

‘Hurry, hurry, hurry! The Magnifico Family Circus! Tonight only!’ the voice boomed from the paddock gate.

More wheels sounded behind her. She melted back towards the barbed wire as a farm cart passed, two giggling couples in the back. The women wore bonnets — bonnets! In 1932! The cart stopped at the paddock gate so its driver could hand money to a shadowed man, then veered off to an area marked out for vehicles: carts, sulkies, a few shabby automobiles.

On the other side of the paddock the light spilled from a not particularly big Big Top with gently flapping canvas walls. Three smaller tents sat to one side with billboards out the front: a
House of Horrors
, its sides painted with ghosts and skeletons; the
Freak Show
tent next to it, its walls showing badly sketched dragons and sea monsters that Blue thought were unlikely to be inside; and there was a small queue in front of the one that said
The Amazing Madame Zlosky
.

A dwarf with a hunched back stood on a platform outside the Freak Show. ‘See the world’s biggest grizzly bear! Sixpence a time!’ His voice squeaked on the word ‘sixpence’.

Blue shuffled up to the gate, adorned now with a poster of a young man flying through the air towards a dangling trapeze. The ticket-seller was the man with the trombone she had seen earlier. He looked sharply at her dark silk dress, her velvet hat. Blue suspected she would be the only audience member in silk tonight.

His face became carefully blank again. ‘Three shillings for a front-row seat, two shillings for the high seats, a shilling for the stalls. Sideshows are extra.’ His voice was high and gruff as he gave her a practised grin under his salt-and-pepper moustache.

‘A seat at the back please. Not a high one.’ Blue held out the ten-pound note.

‘A shilling seat then.’ The man stared at the note, making no pretence now. ‘Blimey. Ain’t seen one of them for a while. I ain’t got change for ten quid, not yet anyhow.’

Blue calculated quickly. She couldn’t carry a hundred and ninety-nine shilling pieces without a handbag. ‘Could you give me five shillings now, and the rest of the change after the show?’

The man looked at her strangely. ‘You’d trust me to give it back then?’

‘Yes.’ Blue didn’t care if he was trustworthy or not. She had nothing else to spend the money on. ‘Never, if you’re going to die,’ said a whisper. Blue ignored it. She peered into the shadows behind the tent lights, trying to see the elephant.

The man seemed to come to a decision. ‘Here.’ He poured a small pile of sixpences and a couple of shillings into her hand. ‘That’s enough to see the sideshows and buy yourself some peanuts. Sit in the front row and someone’ll bring the rest of your change after the show.’

‘I’d rather sit at the back.’

‘Suit yourself, girlie. At the back then.’ He hesitated. ‘You from the big house, ain’t you?’

She nodded. ‘Please, where is the elephant?’

‘The Queen of Sheba? You missed the feeding.’ He grinned at her, showing missing teeth on either side. ‘A penny a carrot for the elephant. But she’s resting before the performance. She’s an old girl now.’ His voice gentled. ‘Too old to be jostled all day by strangers.’

Blue swallowed her disappointment. She’d hoped to pat the elephant, even perhaps have a ride on it.

‘Tell you what,’ said the man suddenly. ‘After the show’s over, I’ll introduce you. How’s that? You can give her a carrot.’

It felt like a birthday present, her only real one, more real than the box of chocolates. ‘Wonderful.’

The man with the moustache laughed. ‘You enjoy the show then. Don’t forget the House of Horrors.’

She’d had enough horrors of her own. But she grinned at him anyway. How long had it been since she grinned?

She stepped into the paddock that had become the circus.

Chapter 3

The crowd milled around the three sideshows, men in farmer’s hats and long-wearing Laurence’s Jumbuck boots, women in ankle-skimming pre-war dresses or slim flapper tunics with long loops of beads pretending to be pearls bouncing on bosoms too rounded and uncorseted to be truly fashionable. Boys with bare feet and cut-down shorts and shirts made from well-washed flour sacks wriggled and laughed between the adults.

A small queue still waited outside the fortune-teller’s tent. Muffled shrieks came from inside the House of Horrors.

The hunchbacked dwarf still yelled the Freak Show’s wonders at the crowd. His feet were bare too, small and grubby. ‘Step right up! See the bearded tattooed lady! All the way from the South Seas! See the world’s biggest grizzly bear!’

The dwarf leered down at two girls in straw hats. ‘Biggest claws you’ve ever seen! And teeth! Teeth like this!’ His small hands gestured about a yard wide. ‘That bear terrified the village back in the old country, till me grandpa captured it. Now you can see it for sixpence!’

The girls giggled. One nudged the young man beside them. He hesitated. Sixpence was a lot of money in times like these, especially after paying a shilling to enter. The girl nudged him again. He handed over six threepenny bit pieces. He followed the girls, still giggling, into the tent.

Blue didn’t want to see either the bear or a bearded lady. I’m a freak too, now, she thought. A shadow of something large moved, over behind the Big Top. The elephant. Blue looked around. The circus people all seemed occupied. She shuffled away from the crowd, towards the shadow.

Then, suddenly, there was the elephant, in a small courtyard made by three circling caravans, two rounded and with peeling paint, the third of carved wood, just like a gipsy caravan in books. A big truck and one side of the Big Top, broken by the performers’ entrance, completed the enclosure.

The elephant looked larger closer up. It peered out from behind a pile of hay topped with a big shabby teddy bear. All at once its trunk came up, as though it were smelling her.

Blue hesitated, then made her way past the nearest caravan into the courtyard. A voice inside snapped, ‘I don’t care what Madame says! I want to grow my hair long!’

A woman’s voice muttered something placatory.

The elephant dropped its trunk, curling it around a biscuit of hay. It lifted it into its mouth, and chewed. Blue edged closer, next to the straw. The elephant swallowed its hay. Slowly, very slowly, the big animal stepped forwards. The massive trunk rose again. Suddenly its pink tip stroked the fabric of Blue’s sleeve.

Blue held herself as still as she could. Elephants could be dangerous, couldn’t they? They could charge you, or gore you with their tusks. But this elephant didn’t have tusks. It didn’t even have a chain on its leg to stop it wandering into the crowd.

She should walk away now, in case it got angry because she didn’t have a carrot to give it. If she had to run, she’d fall.

But the elephant didn’t feel dangerous. The tip of its trunk gave her hand a final nudge. It felt moist and warm and friendly. The elephant stepped back. The trunk curled around another mouthful of hay.

Blue stared at it. ‘Were you shaking hands with me? You were, weren’t you?’

The elephant gave a long low snort. It sounded amused.

She’d shaken hands with an elephant!

‘What are you doing?’

A girl a year or two older than Blue scowled from the doorway of the caravan. She was beautiful, her dark eyes large, her smooth skin deeply tanned, her black hair as short as a boy’s. A long silk shawl hung from her shoulders to her knees, showing white silk stockings and small gold slippers. Only her fingernails were ugly, short and cracked as though from hard work. ‘No one’s allowed back here.’

‘I … I’m sorry.’ Blue turned. She shuffled as fast as she could towards the sideshow tents and the crowd.

Was the girl still staring at her? No one else was going into the Big Top yet. She hesitated, then handed the hunchbacked dwarf at the Freak Show a sixpence.

‘See the grizzly bear,’ he told her, his face peering at her from between his shoulders. He lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘Me dad found it as a cub. It was brought up like one of the family. Blokes from the zoo have offered us a thousand pounds for that bear. But we wouldn’t part with it. Not old Bruin.’

‘You told the girls earlier your grandpa caught it.’

The dwarf looked at her for two long seconds, then grinned. ‘Well, it’s like this. It went savage when it grew older, see? Toothache, that’s what it was. That’s when it terrified the village and Grandpa caught it.’