Hannah touched his cheek gently and smiled at him.
‘No, she was already a fine acrobat when I joined Zarconi’s. Such a beautiful trapeze artist.’
‘So did Vytas train her then?’
‘No, your grandfather trained her.’
‘Doc! Could he – I mean, he couldn’t do that sort of stuff!’
‘Gus, things aren’t always as they seem. There is no act in this circus that your grandfather wasn’t part of once. Doc understands everything about trapeze. He was an excellent catcher – big and powerful with a very sure grip. A good catcher is what makes trapeze beautiful to watch. The act he did with Annie and Gus was famous in this country – they were the Fabulous Flying Zarconis. If Zarconi’s still had an act like that, never would we have trouble getting an audience.’
‘We could have an act like that! If you’d teach me how to fly, Effie and me could do a great act. If you’d just let me up there, I know I could work up something really hot.’
‘Your grandfather would not want this, Gus,’ said Hannah, and she turned away.
It wasn’t often that the circus spent two nights in any town, but Doc seemed to think it was worth staying over an extra night in Albany. Effie and Gus wandered around the town in the afternoon, buying sweets and arguing about whether their new clowning routine was going to work.
Doc had dreamt it up and Effie thought it was hilarious but it was the sort of routine that made Gus hate being a clown. He had to stand there looking dumb while Effie threw buckets of water over him, drenching him completely. He’d pretend to lose his temper and chase her around the ring with another bucket, out for revenge. But of course, he was the fall guy and had to just miss her every time. Finally, Effie would jump on to the lap of someone in the audience and Gus would threaten them with another bucket. The audience would be convinced that they were about to be drenched with water, but the last bucket would be full of confetti.
‘Well, at least it’s part of the show and it’s funny,’ said Effie. ‘Doc says he wants me to do the snake-girl routine before the show. Things must be really tight if he’s going to drag out that old trick!’
At seven o’clock, the first early arrivals to the circus were met by Doc and Effie outside the ticket booth. Effie wore a worn-out jungle costume of fake leopard skin and had Lily draped around her neck. Doc offered everyone the chance to have their picture taken with the Wild Jungle Girl and her live snake. A few were even game enough to let Effie hang Lily around their necks for the shot.
For the first time ever, Gus felt sorry for Effie. He knew she was embarrassed and trying hard to hide it. Just as the fourth customer put his arm around her, something went wrong with the camera. Doc started fiddling with it and cursing but it was Effie who looked really angry. The customer didn’t want to take his arm from around her while they waited for Doc to fix the camera. She wriggled to try and get away from him but still he pulled her closer. When Doc looked up and saw the look on Effie’s face, he stepped in and gave the man a shove in the middle of his chest. For a moment, it seemed there was going to be a fight, but somehow Doc managed to calm things down and Effie ran back to the Cuelmos’ caravan.
The show was cursed from the start that night. Anything that could go wrong did go wrong. The audience was restless and the applause was half-hearted for every act.
When Gus and Effie stepped into the ring, nothing they did felt right. By the time they started the water bucket routine, Gus was worried and annoyed with Effie. He chased her just as he had in rehearsal, but she was dodging him more than usual. How was he expected to make it look convincing if she wouldn’t slow down? He drew back the bucket and flung the water out of it with all his might, missing Effie and catching a big burly bloke in the audience smack in the face. For a split second the man looked flabbergasted, then he leapt to his feet, water dripping from his eyebrows, and grabbed Gus by the front of his costume.
Gus could only mutter, ‘Sorry, mister, sorry.’ Suddenly, Doc was next to them, prying the man’s hands from Gus’s costume and trying to subdue him. There were boos from up the back of the bleachers. Nance put some music on and announced Kali. Effie and Gus quickly left the ring, while Doc hustled the drenched man out of the tent, shoved some money into his hand and told him to clear off.
‘No bloody sense of humour, mate. That’s your problem. It’s only a little bit of water. Lighten up.’
‘Call yourself a circus,’ shouted the man as he stood outside the tent, dripping. ‘Bunch of geriatrics and a couple of lousy kids. You got a bloody cheek taking people’s money to watch that!’
The man stormed off into the darkness and Doc sighed. He looked down at Gus who was standing limply beside him. ‘C’mon, sonny Jim. Let’s get you out of that wet gear,’ he said.
They stood at the back entrance to the tent and Gus stripped off his sodden costume. Doc offered him a towel.
‘I’m really sorry, Doc. It was just an accident, I didn’t mean to hit him. I had water dripping in my eyes and all and I just didn’t judge it right.’
‘It doesn’t matter, kid. Don’t be too hard on yourself. He was a right so-and-so.’
Gus took the towel and looked up at Doc curiously. Doc’s face looked grey and his brow was criss-crossed with frown lines, but there was no anger in him. Gus felt a rush of warmth for the old man.
‘Problem is, the bloke was right,’ said Doc as he tousled Gus’s wet hair dry. ‘This circus – it’s old, worn out. Once we really were incredible. You know, when I was a boy and my grandfather ran this show, all the fliers advertised it as Zarconi’s Incredible Stupendous Magic Circus. And then by the time my father was running it, they pulled Stupendous out because we just couldn’t live up to it, and then I had to pull out Magic and now I reckon I ought to pull out Incredible too. There’s nothing very incredible about this outfit any more.’
‘That’s not true, Doc,’ said Gus. ‘I reckon the acts are really good.’
‘You don’t know anything about circus, boy. This circus needs a new act – something fresh – not the same tired old stuff we’ve been doing.’
‘I could do something fresh, if you’d let me,’ said Gus, hitching the towel up to cover his bare shoulders. ‘If you’d let me on the trapeze, Doc. I know I could do it. It would be really special. Me and Effie and Hannah, all three of us.’
‘Slow down, boy,’ said Doc holding his hands up as if he were halting traffic, ‘You can’t even aim a bucket of water and you want to fly around in the rigging.’
‘I could learn. It would be just like your old act that you did with my mum and uncle Gus but all fresh and new again. We could be the Fabulous Flying Zarconis again, and everyone would want to see it just like when you did it.’
Doc went red in the face and his eyes narrowed.
‘Who told you that?’
Gus stepped back and clutched the towel tightly. He couldn’t answer. He knew he’d just got Hannah in deep trouble and he backed away as his grandfather strode towards him. Doc grabbed Gus’s bare shoulders.
‘Who told you?’ he shouted, so loudly that even the horses grazing nearby stopped and looked up in alarm.
Gus felt all the blood drain away from his face. He wished he knew how to faint. He couldn’t run away because Doc’s hands gripped him so hard.
‘Doc?’ came Nance’s voice. She’d come out of the tent, her hands full of knives and juggling clubs. ‘What are you doing to that poor boy? It was an accident, don’t you give him a hard time.’
Doc turned to look at her for a moment and in the instant his grip loosened, Gus made a break and ran for it. The cool evening air sent a shiver over his damp skin as he bolted across the lot and climbed into the caravan. He could hear Doc and Nance’s voices rising in angry shouts. He curled up on the couch and thought about the sea. He felt at sea right now, but if he closed his eyes and thought about his father he could imagine that they were both dolphins swimming in the water off the Bight. Swimming past Duc d’Orleans Bay – his
dolphin father in King George Sound and him alongside, diving through the deep waters. As near to flying as he would ever get.
14
ORDINARY MAGIC
Nance and Doc argued all night. Gus could hear Doc shouting about Hannah and the next morning, Doc was asleep in the sawdust of the ring again. Everyone packed and loaded up slowly without the usual talk and jokes. No one said anything to Gus. Even Effie avoided him. He felt that bad luck and clumsiness hovered around him like a cloud.
As it was Sunday, Nance handed him the mobile and he sat on a bale of hay and dialled the number of the hospital. Even though his mum was cheery on the other end, full of hope for the latest treatment, Gus felt numb. It was like talking to a stranger. He couldn’t think of anything to tell her. He answered all her questions politely but there was an empty place inside him which he couldn’t explain to her.
He climbed into Pikkle’s truck and slumped. Pikkle liked to turn the music up so loud that you had to shout to make conversation, and that suited Gus fine. He didn’t want to talk to anyone.
They drove through jarrah forests and set up camp near a river, not far from a town called Denmark. The afternoon was warm and still. The generator hummed lazily in the background as Cas unloaded the animals and set them out to graze. Vytas immediately went down to fish off a little jetty.
Doc slung a rope low between two trees and pulled it tight. He’d been quiet all day, as if the night of shouting had taken the roar right out of him. Gus knew the tightrope was a peace offering.
‘You kids, you should do some wire work. Maybe you could work something up to put in your clowning routine. Get rid of the buckets, eh boy?’
Doc glanced across to where Gus and Effie were sitting in the shade of a gum tree, winked and then laughed. Gus felt Doc’s laugh like an embrace.
Cas came out of his caravan and sat on a camp stool, watching Effie and Gus mucking around on the wire. After a few minutes, he went into his caravan and came back with a box of eggs and a skipping rope.
‘Here, kids,’ he said ‘I’ll show you a couple of things to help with this. First, you skip. If you can get tight control of your footwork when you are skipping, it’s good practice for the wire.’
Effie reached out for the rope, but he offered it to Gus instead. Gus tried it forward and backwards. He tripped occasionally, but it only took him a couple of minutes to get into a rhythm and skip really fast.
‘Here, give me a turn,’ said Effie impatiently.
‘Let Gus finish, Effie,’ said Cas.
Effie looked sulky and folded her arms across her chest. Gus didn’t like to hog the rope while she was watching with such slitty eyes. He handed it over and Effie immediately started to skip in a really complicated style – she crossed her arms, danced around while she skipped and sang skipping rhymes.
‘Can I have another turn?’ asked Gus. He’d worked out a few tips from watching her and was keen to try them.
‘I haven’t finished,’ she said.
‘Give Gus the rope, Effie,’ said Cas.
‘Just one more rhyme,’ she said.
‘Gus O’Brien is no good, chop him up for firewood
If he is no good for that, feed him to the old tomcat.’
Gus looked at her in disgust. She shot him one of those dazzling, superior smiles that always wound him up.
‘My name’s not O’Brien,’ he said.
‘Whatever,’ she replied, dropping the rope at his feet.
Cas knelt amongst the dry gum leaves that covered the ground and arranged the eggs in rows. Effie stood beside him, resting one hand on his shoulder as he laid a long rope in and out of the lines of eggs.
‘Now, Gus. You try this first.’
The trick was to walk on the rope weaving your way amongst the eggs without stepping on them. It was a whole lot harder than it looked, even in bare feet, and Gus felt little beads of sweat break out on his forehead. Effie followed him and he looked back at her and smiled nervously. It was like walking through a maze. Suddenly she reached up and shoved him in the back. Gus lost his balance and came down hard on one of the eggs.
‘Yuk!’ The sticky mess oozed between his toes. ‘What did you do that for?’
Effie said nothing. Cas glared at her.
‘Go inside our caravan, Effie. If you can’t work with Gus, you can go and do your schoolwork.’
Effie folded her arms again and strode off to the caravan, slamming the door behind her.
‘What’s her problem?’ asked Gus.
Cas just shrugged, and stared after his daughter thoughtfully.
Gus avoided Effie for the rest of the day but in the evening Vytas sent them both down to the river to retrieve some fishing gear that he’d left on the jetty. They sat on the end of the jetty and dangled their feet in the water.
‘I’m sorry about this morning,’ said Effie.
‘It’s okay.’ Gus was glad she was the one to open the conversation. ‘But why do you get like that sometimes?’
‘I don’t know. It just gets up my nose, the way everyone wants to show you how to do stuff. Everyone makes a fuss of you. Before you came along – well, it was different.’
‘But they don’t make a fuss of me!’ exclaimed Gus. ‘Doc won’t let me do anything.’
‘Well, Hannah and Vytas and my Dad do. Especially my Dad.’
‘No he doesn’t. He’s just nice to me because he feels sorry for me. Thinks I’m pathetic. That’s all it is. It’s not to do with you.’
‘Well, the thing is, I have to share him with so many people, it’s just really rough having to share him with you too.’
‘What are you talking about? You don’t have to share him with anyone. It’s not like you have any brothers or sisters or even a mum to share him with. He’s all yours.’
‘Oh yes I do,’ she said, ‘I have to share him with Kali and Buster and the horses – even with a bloody snake. I mean, I love all of them but he always seems more worried about them than he is about me.’
‘What a load of crap,’ said Gus. ‘And anyway – at least you’ve got a dad. At least he’s around. I’ve never even seen a picture of my dad.’
‘I have,’ said Effie.
Gus looked at her in amazement. ‘Where?’
‘Nance has a whole bunch of photos in a tin inside the safety deposit box. I went through them last week and there was this one of your mum with a bloke – kind of dark he was but I reckon he must be your dad. You can sort of see because of the way their faces are – if you mixed them up together, your mum and your dad’s faces, then you’d get you.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘’Cause I wasn’t meant to be looking at them. I’d be in big trouble if anyone found out. Nance sent me in to get a ledger that she needed when we were doing the take for the night, and I found the tin and had a quick flip through the photos. There were heaps of your mum – some of other acrobats who’ve been with the circus, but mostly of your mum.’
‘Do you reckon we could get into it again?’
‘I don’t know. We’d really cop it if we got caught.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Gus. ‘If it was a photo of your mum, you’d want to see it, wouldn’t you?’
Effie looked out across the river. It had grown dark and there was only a thin strip of orange light beyond the dunes on the opposite bank.
‘Yeah, maybe,’ said Effie in a flat voice.
‘What happened to your mum, anyway?’ asked Gus.
‘She died,’ said Effie.
Gus didn’t know what you were meant to say when someone told you something like that. It hadn’t occurred to him that she could be dead. He didn’t know anyone who had died or even about anyone who might have.
After a while Effie took another deep breath and said, ‘I’ve got a little picture of her next to my bed. But it’s kind of depressing, because now I can’t remember what she really looked like. I can only think of her as being like in the photo, but I have a bit of me that rem
embers her as more sort of lively than the photo can tell. Like the photo has got in the way of my remembering her properly.’
Gus nodded. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean. I can’t keep my mum’s face in my mind. She sort of floats around inside my head, which is good and bad. If I had a photo, it would really take over and maybe that’s all I’d be able to see.’
They were both silent for a while as the night settled down around them.
‘So what happened to your mum? Did she have cancer or something like that?’ he asked.
‘No, it was an accident, but I hate talking about it.’
Gus thought about this. It seemed everyone had something that was hard to talk about.
‘Let’s swim instead,’ he said. It was dark but the water that lapped around their ankles was warm and inviting. Gus didn’t even bother to take off his T-shirt. He slid off the end of the jetty and stood in the waist-deep water.
‘C’mon, Effie.’
She stood up, a black silhouette in front of him. Behind her the night sky was bright with stars, and the starlight glimmered on the river’s surface.
‘It’s a bit spooky,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t swim in rivers at night – they’re full of snares and stuff, and up north they’re full of crocs.’
‘We’re not up north and it’s fine,’ he replied. ‘We won’t go in deep. C’mon.’
Effie splashed into the water and little white sparks flew into the air.
‘Whoa, weird,’ said Gus. ‘Did you see that?’
‘What was it?’
‘I don’t know.’ He slapped the surface of the water with his hand and sprays of light leapt into the air.
‘Look at our feet,’ said Effie in wonder.
When they moved, specks of light whirled in the water.
‘It’s some sort of phosphorescent stuff,’ said Gus. ‘Wow, wouldn’t you love to see Kali mucking around in this. She could blow it out her trunk – it would look fantastic.’
They scooped handfuls of the water into the air and shrieked as the silver light fell around them. Gus dived underwater with his eyes open. Flickers of bright light swirled around him. It was so beautiful it made him hurt with happiness.
Zarconi’s Magic Flying Fish Page 9