Joseph still watched her. She met his gaze. ‘Would you still take me to this doctor friend of yours in four years’ time?’
‘Four years? Why wait that long? I don’t understand.’
‘Please. Just promise you won’t speak of this to anyone.’ They had given up any pretence that she wasn’t the mermaid.
He looked at her steadily. ‘I promise,’ he said at last. ‘How long is the circus staying here?’
‘We move on tomorrow.’ She could tell he’d hoped to see her again.
‘Where to?’
‘We’re on the road to Gundagai.’ It was the answer they always gave. It was even true in a way. All roads eventually led to Gundagai or any other place on earth, though of course Madame had ordained that the Magnifico Family Circus would never actually go to Gundagai again.
‘I haven’t been there. They say the river’s lovely. Look, my name is Joseph McAlpine. I’ll write it down for you and my address — my home address, as well as Dr Gregson’s in Sydney, in case I’m not living there when you write to me.’
When you marry that flash tart of yours, she thought. Joseph scribbled on a page of a notebook, then held it out to her. ‘You can read?’
‘Of course I can read!’ She fought down the indignation. His assumption that she was illiterate was reasonable. Fred could read and write well, but the Olsens could hardly scribble more than their names. She didn’t know about Ephraim and Ebenezer.
‘I’m sorry.’ He smiled at her. ‘Sorry for this afternoon, sorry for thinking you might not read. Sorry I can’t help you now. But don’t forget. Please.’
‘I won’t forget. How did you recognise me anyway?’
‘The way you move. No, I don’t mean from the scars on your legs,’ he added hastily. ‘You disguise that well. I’m amazed you can dance as well as you can, from what you’ve told me. No, just the way you turn your head. Your smile.’ His eyes met hers. ‘I’ll never forget your smile.’
He broke the gaze and turned at a huffing sound behind him. The elephant stood, watching them both consideringly, as though to say, ‘You’ve given her enough attention. Look at me, now.’
Joseph stared at her in wonder. ‘She’s so tame. Can I pat her?’
Blue nodded.
Joseph reached over and stroked Sheba’s leathery hide. Sheba accepted it, her trunk curling in case carrots or squashed flies might be involved. ‘She feels warm!’
‘You expected her to be cold and stuffed, like the grizzly bear?’
‘Bears,’ he corrected, smiling.
She didn’t contradict him. ‘On hot nights we give her another bath, after the show. She loves it.’
‘You have a bathtub big enough for an elephant?’
Laughter gurgled before she could stop it. ‘Of course not. Ginger throws buckets of water over her while I rub her with a soft broom. She washes herself too, sucks up water in her trunk and squirts it all over. Over us too sometimes.’
‘I’d like to see that.’ His voice held laughter as well.
Sheba stepped over to her water trough, as though she had understood him, and dipped in her trunk.
‘Sheba! No!’ Sheba had never bathed herself while she wore her red cloth blanket in all the time Blue had known her. A dripping elephant blanket would look ridiculous in the finale!
Sheba gave her a glance. Blue almost thought that she was grinning.
Bluuurt! The water squirted to one side of the young man, almost, but not quite, wetting his jacket.
Joseph ducked automatically, then stared. ‘Did she know what we were talking about?’
Sheba gave a snort that might almost have been a laugh. She picked up a trunkful of hay. Blue hesitated. ‘Maybe. She understands words like “walk” and “bath” and “carrot”. She’s memorised her act too. And she plays jokes. She hid Ebenezer’s — the ringmaster’s — top hat once. We found it under her hay.’
‘Someone else might have put it there.’
She shook her head. ‘We all swore we hadn’t. And we don’t lie. Well, not to each other.’
He looked at her shrewdly. ‘But to others?’
‘Not really lying. Showmanship. Stories. People want to believe. So we let them.’
‘With flying fairies and blonde mermaids?’
She couldn’t let him know that the lies were sometimes much more than that. A whip cracked in the Big Top. The music crackled to life again. ‘You need to go if you want to see the next act. The Boldini Brothers truly are incredible.’
‘No, er, showmanship?’
‘There’s showmanship. But they really do exactly what you think they’re doing.’ Except they’re not a man and a boy, but the woman and the girl you last saw as harem dancers. ‘Then there’s the magician.’ She gave him a wry grin. ‘Now that is all just showmanship — a magic wand that turns into a bunch of roses and a rabbit pulled out of the ringmaster’s top hat.’
‘Stuffed, I presume,’ said Joseph.
‘A real one wouldn’t hold still long enough. Then after that there’s the Galah.’
‘A bird? What does it do?’
‘Sorry. It’s a sort of family joke. It should be gala. The gala closing act, but we call it the Galah. All of us performing at once.’
‘Sheba too?’
‘Especially Sheba.’ Blue patted Sheba’s side. The elephant flapped her ears towards the shadow.
‘You call them your family,’ said Joseph slowly. ‘But they’re not really your family, are they?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You don’t speak like them, to begin with. You did when we first began to talk. But not now.’
She flushed. He saw too much. Normally she tried to flatten her vowels, to lose her upper-class accent. It was easy when she spoke to someone who had a cockie accent too. But she’d forgotten as she spoke to Joseph tonight.
‘Belle! This bloke botherin’ you?’ Blue hadn’t seen Fred arrive. He strode around the side of the Big Top and shoved Joseph roughly on the shoulder. ‘This ain’t no place for members of the public.’
‘Fred!’ She couldn’t understand his sudden belligerence. ‘He wasn’t doing anything!’
‘Take your hands off me.’ Joseph’s voice was cold. The two young men eyed each other.
‘Don’t you go bothering our women, soft city boy,’ said Fred quietly. He raised his fists.
‘He wasn’t —’ began Blue.
Joseph raised his own fists. ‘I’m not soft and I’m not from the city and I’ve eaten better men than you for breakfast.’
‘Stop it!’ cried Blue.
Suddenly a long grey trunk tugged Joseph’s arm so abruptly he fell back into the straw.
Fred laughed. ‘Lord Muck, eh? We protect our own! Now get … gluurrp …’ A hard jet of water knocked him into the hay, soaking him from head to toe.
Blue giggled.
‘It’s not funny,’ spluttered Fred from the hay, heaving himself and his wet clothes up.
‘It is! You look ridiculous. And so do you,’ she added to Joseph. ‘This isn’t a boxing tent.’
Sheba rumbled approval.
All at once both young men grinned, though each carefully didn’t look at the other.
‘I’d better go,’ said Joseph. ‘If she decides I need a bath too, I might leave a water stain on the leather of Andy’s precious car.’
‘It isn’t your automobile?’
He shook his head. ‘My brother’s. He lent it to me to impress Hilda. I don’t think today gave her exactly the impression I’d intended,’ he added wryly.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m not. Good evening, Miss … I don’t even know your name.’
‘Her name is Belle Magnifico.’ Fred hovered damply and protectively again.
Joseph lifted his hat to Blue. ‘Goodbye, Miss, er, Magnifico. Don’t forget.’
‘I won’t.’
Fred waited till Joseph had vanished around the side of the Big Top, then turned to Blue. ‘What wa
s that blighter doing here?’
‘He wanted to pat Sheba.’ Blue wasn’t sure why she lied. No, not a lie, she thought, just only part of the truth.
‘He was flirting with you! We don’t flirt with outsiders. Remember what Madame says.’
‘The circus must be respectable.’ Blue parodied Madame’s accent.
‘What was it you was supposed to not forget anyway?’
She grinned at him. ‘I’ve already forgotten.’
And his grin matched hers, all anger forgotten too. ‘Like that, is it, princess? Good-oh. I’ve got the surprise for you.’
A violin, she thought, so I can play with Ephraim. ‘Where is it?’
‘Here,’ said Mah, as she walked out of the shadow of the caravans.
Chapter 15
The world shifted, a breeze from the past, cold among the scent of greasepaint and sewage.
‘Mah!’ Blue looked at Fred, then back at Mah. She wore a dress that was strangely familiar, blue linen, creased from the journey. It’s an old one of mine, she realised. Discarded by Mum over two years ago as too small when my new summer dresses arrived. That suitcase is one Mum used to have too.
‘Mah! What are you doing here? I thought I’d never see you again! Are you all right?’ The words tumbled over themselves. Blue stopped and hugged Mah fiercely. Mah’s bones felt small but tough.
Suddenly Blue realised she’d never hugged Mah before. One doesn’t hug servants, even ones you love, except one’s nanny.
Mah allowed the hug. ‘It’s so good to see you, Miss Blue.’
Blue stepped back and stared at her. Miss Blue? That girl had gone. ‘I’m Belle. Or Blue. Not the Miss bit anyway. Mah, how did you get here?’ She looked at Fred. ‘Where did you find her?’
Fred grinned. He looked like he’d pulled the world’s greatest conjuring trick. ‘At the railway station.’
‘I came on the train,’ said Mah.
‘But how … why …?’ Blue stopped as Ephraim gave her a sharp ‘be quiet’ signal from over by the gramophone. He put the needle down on the record as Gertrude and Mrs Olsen slipped down the caravan steps and ran into the tent as the Boldini Brothers.
There was no time to talk now. As soon as the trapeze act was over, followed by Ephraim’s short magic act, she had to be in the Big Top for the Galah, dressed as the mermaid. Blue lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I have to change. Will you still be here when I get back?’
‘Of course. Fred’s got to change for the Galah too.’
Blue stared. ‘You’re speaking …’
Mah still hadn’t even smiled. ‘Proper English? People don’t like it if a Chinese girl speaks better English than they do.’
Who was this girl? Had she ever really known her? ‘Mum and Dad weren’t like that.’ Blue kept her voice soft.
‘That Mrs Huggins was, especially when your mum let me share some of your lessons. You get enough slaps on the ear, you learn not to sound uppity.’
‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Blue inadequately. ‘Her arthritis was bad. That’s why she was snappy.’ And she didn’t like what she called foreigners either, she was forced to admit to herself.
The girl who had saved her life, who had emptied her chamber pot day after day, watched her with strangely familiar eyes. ‘I … I am glad you are safe, Blue. I missed you.’
It sounded odd to hear her real name again. ‘I really do have to change, Mah. You’ll still be here, after the show?’
‘Yes,’ said Mah.
Fred said, ‘She’ll always be here. She’s goin’ to be a member of the circus now.’
Ebenezer’s whip cracked. The audience burst into ferocious applause. The Boldini Brothers would be bowing inside, triumphant.
‘What! But how …? Does Madame know?’
‘Madame knows everything. Marjory’s me baby sister.’ Fred gave a final grin, and sprinted to the caravan to change.
Marjory? Fred’s sister? But there was no time for explanations now. She hugged Mah again, felt hesitation again, then a brief hug in return. She shuffled as fast as she could into Madame’s caravan.
Blonde wig, a touch of the greasepaint over her scars, a slightly browner face paint — mermaids must be suntanned — and a little glitter on her cheeks and forehead. The skin-tight silk top … She was just finishing fastening her tail when Fred knocked. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes. Come in.’
Ephraim followed Fred into the caravan. He was in his Boffo costume, red mop wig and all, big and loose and easily donned over his regular clothes. Fred was dressed as a pirate, in ragged canvas pants, bare chest with painted ‘tattoos’, a pirate hat, patch and a moulting stuffed parrot tied onto his shoulder.
The glass tank sat on its trolley on the sandy soil by the caravan steps. There was no sign of Mah. Blue wondered if she was in the Big Top, seeing the rest of the show, out of the way of the real work backstage.
The glass tank was about six feet long and a yard wide, filled with water. It had been Fred’s idea, though some of what had remained of Blue’s original ten pounds had paid for it when he found it for sale in a junk shop. A mermaid on a rock was all right for the Freak Show tent. But the Galah had to be truly splendiferous.
Blue shivered as they lowered her into the water. She rested her hands on the glass at the far end, to keep her head and wig out and dry for the entrance. Then Ephraim wound up the gramophone for the music.
Ginger and Gertrude — Tiny Titania and Glorious Gloria — already sat astride Sheba’s neck. Even now, Gertrude’s beauty in the spotlight still gave her a small shock each time she saw it. Gertrude was pretty even in a boy’s shorts and shirt. But somehow she seemed to absorb the glow from an audience. Madame and Mrs Olsen stood — a fortune-teller and a harem dancer — on either side of Sheba.
‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, for the last time tonight …’ Ebenezer’s voice rang through the camp, ‘the amazing, the one and only … the Magnifico Family Circus!’
One, two, three … Sheba knew the routine as well as any of them. On the first beat of music the elephant began to plod slowly and evenly into the Big Top, with Ginger and Gertrude still sitting on her neck. Madame and Mrs Olsen strode in on either side.
One, two, three, four … Gertrude stood, her legs apart and slightly flexed. Ginger stood too. One, two, three … The boy — or fairy — vaulted onto his sister’s shoulders. She held his feet as Ginger raised his arms next to his wings, almost as if he was flying.
Ephraim, as Boffo the clown, followed, walking the first few steps, then pretending to slip and cartwheeling over and over. Fred gave the gramophone another quick wind, then began to pull Blue’s trolley.
Blue took a deep breath. She let go of the rim of the tank and plunged her head under the water as they entered the ring, her hair in a cloud behind her, the necklaces sagging, the red and blue glass shining in the electric light.
Someone screamed. Someone always screamed. The mermaid in the Freak Show tent was a game of pretend — the customers pretended, even to themselves, that the mermaid, the grizzly bear and the two-headed calf might be real. But a mermaid actually swimming underwater! Kids clambered down to the ringside for a closer look.
Blue imagined Gertrude forcing herself to keep smiling, up on Sheba’s back. She had been the star of the show before the arrival of the mermaid, the only one who drew gasps from the audience. She was still the circus’s real performer. Blue’s act required timing and practice, not skill. The audience might not even have fallen for it, without Gertrude’s all-too-real daring on the trapeze earlier.
But in the Galah, at least, Blue was the star.
Her lungs were almost bursting. She carefully blew the air from her lungs, a series of bubbles above her, then pressed her lips to the hollow glass breathing tube, and took a deep quick lungful. It would have been easier to breathe through it the whole time. But that would have broken the illusion. You couldn’t suck air and smile. She moved back from the tube, smiling again, wondering who watched her: Ma
h, the young man Joseph, the pregnant woman with the hopeful eyes …
Ephraim tumbled outside, unnoticed, as the audience stared at the mermaid, to wind up the gramophone again, before tumbling back in …
‘Harrup!’ called Ebenezer. He cracked his whip.
Sheba’s trunk came down. Madame put her foot on it and held one hand up to Gertrude.
‘Har … rup!’ Madame stood astride Sheba’s back while Sheba lowered her trunk for Mrs Olsen.
Now all four stood on the elephant, Madame and Mrs Olsen leaning out hand in hand with Gertrude, steadied by the young woman’s strong hands. Ginger slowly bent down and put his hands on Gertrude’s shoulders. He rose again in a graceful handstand, waving his pink slippered feet in the air.
‘Harrup!’ Ebenezer’s whip cracked again. Boffo the clown gave a final somersault, then leaped up onto Sheba’s back, sitting facing her tail.
The audience giggled.
Another leap, and Fred the pirate sat on Sheba’s head, keeping his legs carefully away from her eyes.
The music scratched to a crescendo. Blue flung her head with its wet streaming wig out of the water and took a deep gasp of air, then pressed her hands down hard onto the base of the tank.
It had taken her months to do this, to gain not just the strength but the coordination. Damaged legs made it hard to balance too. But this only had to work for a few seconds.
Down … up! The mermaid’s tail rose straight out of the water, scattering droplets as she waved it in the air, her head still underwater.
Gasps, another scream. Unnoticed, Ephraim slid down off Sheba and ran out to turn off the lights and to wind the gramophone once again.
Darkness fell like a blanket. Blue lowered her legs down, holding onto the edge of the tank, her head in the air, gasping great lovely breaths of air, her wet wig sticking to her back.
The lights came up. The music was different now, a gay polka as they circled the ring, Gertrude, Ginger, Madame and Mrs Olsen astride Sheba, Fred pulling Blue’s tank, then Ephraim and finally Ebenezer, all of them smiling and waving, waving and smiling, then out into the night, leaving the applause thundering behind them.
It was the loudest applause Blue had ever heard.
Down the Road to Gundagai Page 13