Madame nodded. ‘And even if they did,’ she said, ‘it would not be good.’
‘Why not?’ asked Blue.
‘Because everyone would see what a little tin-pot circus we really are.’ Gertrude’s voice was bitter. ‘They applaud because they ain’t got nothing to compare us to. But if they’ve seen the Mammoth …’ She shrugged her pretty shoulders. ‘The Mammoth has two rings. Six trapezes, not two. Tigers, lions, a high-wire act, a proper bandwagon with euphonium and trumpets, even monkeys in the menagerie.’
‘How do you know so much?’
‘Saw the pictures in a newspaper.’ Madame said newspapers were an extravagance. But often one would be left behind by someone in the audience.
‘No point even unpacking the Big Top,’ said Ebenezer. ‘Nor goin’ on to Goulburn as we planned neither.’
Madame nodded slowly. ‘We need to go where the railway doesn’t reach. Bilgola, Hunter Creek, Maracatta …’
‘They’re small,’ objected Ebenezer.
‘Enough is all we need. Bilgola is near Gibber’s Creek. There is a factory at Gibber’s Creek. A factory means wages. The Bilgola publican will pay us thirty shillings a night to stay in the paddock next to the hotel, as long as we have an hour’s intermission for the men to drink. Two or even three good stops will get us back near Melbourne.’
‘Mammoth’s been there too,’ said Ephraim gloomily.
‘Then we hope the memory has faded by the time we get there,’ said Madame crisply. ‘We will stay here a few days. The grass is good for once, and so is the water. Ginger, put out the rabbit traps tonight.’
Ginger grinned.
‘Bunny for dinner again,’ said Mrs Olsen resignedly. ‘And damper instead of bread.’
‘Better than no dinner at all. Is there firewood?’
‘Plenty around, Madame,’ said Ebenezer.
‘Good. Ebenezer, you go around the farms. Ask if they can spare a quarter of mutton, a case of apples, a sack of potatoes, whatever they have in exchange for visiting the sideshows. We will open them tomorrow. Ephraim, you will play the ghost in the House of Horrors, give the punters an extra thrill for their money. Mah and Gertrude, you will dance in the Freak Show tent. Take off two veils only. The men must pay an extra penny if they want you to take off more.’
‘You make us sound like night-club dancers,’ said Gertrude angrily.
Madame shrugged.
‘No parade with Sheba?’ asked Ebenezer.
‘No parade. Tell anyone who asks that we are resting, practising new acts. And that,’ said Madame, her sightless gaze moving around the circled watchers, ‘should be the truth. I want something new, from all of you, by the time we leave here. But for now we are just the sideshows, and when they come, you must be good.’
No one will come, thought Blue, as Madame made her way back to her caravan. Or hardly anyone. Maybe a few travellers might stop from curiosity. If we make five shillings, we’ll be lucky …
She followed Mah towards their caravan to get changed, then stopped as someone touched her arm. It was Gertrude. Blue looked at her, surprised. In all of the last year the girl hadn’t sought her out once.
‘Come to the circus with me,’ said Gertrude abruptly.
Blue blinked. ‘The Mammoth? But it’s gone back to Sydney.’
‘We can get the train. Please? I need to see what a proper circus is like!’
‘But you’ve been with the circus all your life.’
‘The Magnifico isn’t a proper one. Not like the Mammoth. I can hardly remember the one when I was small.’
‘Why did your mother leave it?’ asked Blue curiously.
Gertrude shrugged. ‘She won’t talk about it. I think they may have asked her to leave, after Dad died. She probably couldn’t give a show by herself, till I got old enough to join the act properly, and then Ginger. Did you know Dad was Spanish?’
Blue shook her head.
‘That’s why I’m so dark. I take after Dad’s side of the family. Señor Zamorano,’ said Gertrude proudly. ‘The greatest trapeze artist in the world. Well, will you come with me?’
‘Why do you want me to come with you?’
‘Because you’ve got enough money for the tickets,’ said Gertrude frankly. ‘And because I bet Madame wouldn’t let me go on my own. But you’re her pet. She’ll let us go if you ask her. Will you do it?’
Tigers, thought Blue, lion tamers and a high-wire act. Sydney. They could even stop at a café and have ice cream.
It had been more than a year since she’d eaten ice cream.
‘Can Mah come too?’
Gertrude shrugged as if she didn’t care what Mah did.
‘I’ll ask Madame,’ said Blue.
Chapter 19
The air inside Madame’s caravan was composed of heat mixed with greasepaint and rice flour, gardenias and the strange perfume that was perhaps the essence of Madame herself.
‘Well?’ demanded Gertrude. Her fingers twisted nervously. She really wants this, thought Blue. The silence stretched.
Madame stared into nothing. As though she is listening to someone we can’t see, thought Blue. At last the old woman nodded.
‘You may go tomorrow. But you will take Fred with you. It is not respectable for three young girls to go alone. Fred will find out the train timetable.’
‘Thank you, Madame.’ Blue exchanged a delighted glance with Mah. Gertrude said nothing, but her fingers stilled.
Madame bent down and pulled a small tin out from under the bed. She opened it, then held out three ten-shilling notes. ‘It is good for performers to see other acts. But you do not have to use your last two pounds. The circus will pay for the tickets. Belle, take these.’
Gertrude flushed. ‘Why does Belle get to keep the money?’
‘Because she is used to handling money and you are not.’
Blue glanced at Gertrude. In the year she’d been with the circus the only people who had spent any money were Ebenezer, who bought petrol, and Mrs Olsen, and that was just to buy the peanuts and lollies at the nearest general store, to be resold at intermission at marked-up prices, the groceries and Sheba’s hay, or the money orders at the post office to pay for Madame’s herbs sent up from Melbourne. In fact Blue had never handled more than a few shillings that her father had handed her to buy fairyfloss, or a ride on a merry-go-round, before she’d had the ten pounds from Uncle Herbert. But she thought it best not to tell Madame that.
‘You will all stay together. Do I have your word on this, Gertrude?’
Gertrude hesitated. ‘Yes.’
‘I want to hear truth in your voice.’
‘Yes!’
‘You will go straight to the show. You will not speak to anyone, especially men. Is that understood?’
‘Yes, Madame,’ said Mah.
‘After the show you will go back to the train station and stay in the waiting room where it is well lit until the milk train arrives.’
Milk trains ran just before dawn, to pick up the milk from the stations along the line. If the circus finishes at ten, thought Blue, we’ll have to wait about five hours.
‘Buy a return ticket at the station here. The station guards in Sydney will let you sleep in the waiting room if you show them your return tickets.’ Madame nodded to herself. ‘You three will all be girls this time. No wigs. Punters expect strange clothes and wigs in a circus, and greasepaint too, but in the city they attract the wrong attention. No rouge, no lipstick. What is respectable at the circus is not proper in the city. But tell Fred he is to put on the blond moustache. Mrs Olsen will give you dresses. Now off with you. And Belle?’
‘Yes, Madame?’
‘I do not know how much the Mammoth tickets cost. But whatever is left you may spend as you wish. Some supper perhaps. But take sandwiches too.’
‘Yes, Madame. Thank you!’
‘Enjoy yourselves,’ said Madame. It was an order.
The train rattled its way through the countryside, white steam and black
smoke trailing behind it. Paddocks with horses, paddocks with sheep, apple orchards, the sudden darkness of a tunnel and then erupting into light once more.
It was strange to see so much country pass and change so quickly. Blue had travelled across south-east Australia in the past year, but mostly at night. She had seen little except the paddocks they camped in.
The train chuffed past a stationmaster’s house, stained with heat and years, limp garden beds of petunias and boxes of dusty geraniums, the children lined up along the fence, waving at the train.
Gertrude put her head out the window and waved back, as though she was Glorious Gloria waving to her audience. She flopped back onto the hard second-class seat opposite Mah and Blue, her eyes bright. ‘We’re going so fast!’
It was so obviously the first time she had been on a train. Maybe she’s never even been on a tram either, thought Blue. It was the first time she had sat in second class. ‘Careful putting your head out the window. You don’t want a smut on your face. Or your clean dress either.’
They were pretty dresses, white and trimmed with lace, though with old-fashioned waists instead of the new straight-up-and-down look. Blue’s had a high collar, to hide her scars. The three girls wore patent leather shoes too, slightly cracked with age. Blue’s shoes were a size too big.
‘Wearing the same clothes makes you look like sisters,’ Mrs Olsen had said, as she threaded a blue ribbon into Blue’s hair, then Gertrude’s and Mah’s.
Blue supposed it might, at a casual glance anyway. They all had black hair, though hers was dyed. Gertrude’s skin was naturally darker than hers and Mah’s, but they were all so tanned from days out of doors that no one would notice unless they looked carefully. Both Mah and Gertrude had brown eyes too. But their features were different: Mah’s fine face with its oriental eyes; Gertrude’s face broader and stronger.
Fred had been outfitted in a laboriously starched and ironed white shirt. Mrs Olsen had sweated over the fire as she heated up the iron again and again, but the smooth stiffness helped hide the frayed bits at the collar and cuffs. He wore the circus’s one good pair of men’s shoes, and pressed grey flannel trousers. His bleached-blond hair was neatly oiled. He could never have been taken for their brother, but Blue supposed he could easily be the boyfriend of one of them.
Gertrude patted her still-short hair into place. ‘What’s a smut?’
Blue took her handkerchief from her belt and wiped Gertrude’s cheek. She showed her the black soot. ‘This is. From the engine’s smoke. You can even get a burn from a cinder if you’re not lucky.’
Gertrude touched her cheek in horror. Thinks she might end up looking like me, thought Blue.
‘You look pretty,’ Fred said to Blue softly, as Gertrude shut the window. He always knew when she began to feel hideous again. He let his slow smile wander from her to Mah and Gertrude. ‘You all look bonzer. I’m goin’ to be with the best-looking girls in the whole of Sydney.’
Blue looked at Mah and Gertrude, staring out their respective windows. Both had the straight carriage that resulted from regular exercise, the sort of poise that teachers of deportment strained to teach the more indolent of their wealthier pupils. Yes, they’re beautiful, thought Blue. Maybe I am too, with my scars covered. And Fred is handsome.
She looked out the window again. They passed a factory, its smoke darker than the train’s. She thought fleetingly of Laurence’s factories. Mine, she thought, or partly mine. It hadn’t really sunk in till now. It had always been Willy who was going to take over after Dad. Blue rarely even saw the factories, except for the Christmas parties where she and Mum handed out presents to the workers’ children. Grandpa must be turning in his grave to think a girl might manage the factories.
Could she? There must be another manager now. Maybe she’d only ever get the income. Suddenly she wanted to see the factories again, and the offices too. They were a link to her family. But there was something more.
Factories were … interesting. A challenge like the circus, and for a well-brought-up girl, almost as foreign. Could she ever learn enough to manage them, like Dad had done? Would she even get the chance? Four more years, she thought. What then?
The houses out the window were closer together now. It was strangely fascinating to glimpse bits of other people’s lives through kitchen windows, the curtains open as though they didn’t realise that the train passengers could see in, as well as the dog panting on a back verandah, and vegetable gardens with cabbages, leeks, spinach, the tops of beetroots and carrots.
The houses huddled as though they were afraid, probably of the landlord demanding the rent, thought Blue, thinking of the stories of evictions she had read about in the paper. Then all at once, for a flash, there it was, just as she had seen in the newspaper photographs. Furniture, piled on the road, four policemen struggling against six burly men in the faded pants and shirts of the unemployed, a child, wide-eyed, sitting on the sofa, holding a doll, a woman’s face torn between anger and terror …
… and then the tiny tragedy was gone, the train huffing past a greengrocer’s shop, with boxes of cabbages on one side, and crates of apples on the other.
‘Did you see that?’ whispered Blue.
Mah nodded, her face white.
‘Bloomin’ coppers,’ said Fred. ‘Ain’t none o’ their business if poor sods can’t pay their rent.’
‘Not our business either,’ said Gertrude, as the train arrowed into another tunnel. The outside world vanished in smoke and darkness.
Central Station was — big, thought Blue. Even bigger than Spencer Street Station. Passengers walked purposefully to different platforms, women in fur tippets mingling with girls in faded floral dresses, barefoot boys with others in neat sailor suits. But the men here all wore suits, or at least a jacket, hat and tie. Blue supposed any able-bodied man who didn’t have the money for his train fare would be trying to sneak under the tarpaulin of a goods train instead of being in here, paying for a ticket. She was glad Madame had paid Fred’s fare. He might have jumped the rattler safely a dozen times, but almost every newspaper she was able to find and read spoke of men injured or dying as they jumped off moving trains before a station.
Guards blew their whistles; the rabbitohs yelled their wares, holding up roast rabbits in brown paper bags. Next to one wall a man juggled three oranges behind the sign I’m doing this for my wife and four children. Blue longed to give him a penny, or even sixpence, but she didn’t know how much the tickets to the Mammoth might be. Perhaps when we get back, she thought, if he’s still there.
For the first time since she had known her, Gertrude looked almost timid, gazing around at the sheer size of the buildings, the complexity of shops and streets outside. ‘How do we get to the circus?’
‘Taxi,’ said Blue.
Mah smiled. ‘We catch a trolley-bus.’
Three hours later they sat together in the cheap seats towards the back, clutching each other’s hands, all enmity forgotten. For the Mammoth was amazing. They had wandered for hours among the menagerie, the monkeys chattering in cages, reaching out for the peanuts that the customers bought in little white bags from the peanut cart, the lions with tangled manes, prowling back and forth, as though a hundred lengths of their tiny cages could make up for the loss of an African plain to roam on, a bear sitting in an even smaller cage, staring at nothing. Blue dashed tears from her eyes, thinking of Bruin’s ferocious gaze. That is how a bear should look, she thought. Fierce, or happy, or … or something. Anything but the dejected ruin before her.
The sideshows were better, although they didn’t waste their money on trying to throw a hoop over a block, or shoot the ducks that bobbed along in a line at the back of the marquee, or lob a ball at a coconut.
‘Fixed,’ said Fred shortly, then, as Blue looked at him enquiringly, ‘I worked the sideshows back before Madame got herself that new Big Top. Them shotguns have crooked barrels, and the blocks are too big for the hoop.’
Even the clothes of the
people milling around them were fascinating. Most wore much the same as they did: faded frocks long out of fashion; trousers that had been taken up and let down; and shirts with collars turned to hide the frayed edges. But there were men in black or grey and blue suits too; men in satin waistcoats; women in silk or linen dresses that finished daringly just above their knees, showing silk stockings and good leather shoes that matched the colour of the frocks, long strings of dangling pearls, pearl earrings, gold bracelets … Blue smiled to herself, wondering if any of the jewellery would have caught Sheba’s eye.
The cheapest tickets cost three shillings each. A ringside seat cost a whole guinea. They found a spot in the front of the cheap seats, then moved when a woman in a big purple hat blocked their view, then moved again when a man built like a dunny sat in front of them. At last they found seats looking over the heads of children, and simply stared.
The ring was at least six times as large as theirs, thickly spread with fresh sawdust, with two hinged places on either side so it could be divided into two smaller rings. The barrier between the audience and the performers was painted alternately with cowboys and Indians and jungle scenes with an unlikely miscellany of tigers, hippopotami and giraffes, each scene fresh as if they were regularly touched up, not even a few of the inevitable scratches that happened when the equipment was regularly dismantled and put up again.
The circus began.
No dimmed lights to create an atmosphere here. The Mammoth Circus began with noise: a German marching band, distant at first, so the audience rose in the seats with anticipation. Oompah oompah, in they marched, the band all in formation, in blue shirts and flowered braces and dark brown leather shorts, with red socks and neat brown boots below.
A bandwagon followed, trimmed in green and gold, carrying Negro musicians in red-and-white-striped uniforms playing trumpets and trombones.
The ring was so big that the band and bandwagon were only halfway around when the first of the horses appeared: sixty of them, counted Blue, each one pure white, each with an equestrienne in a pink camisole and frilled pink skirt sitting sideways on its silky white back; then ten elephants, every one of them more than twice the size of Sheba; clowns, leaping and somersaulting, assorted small dogs with jewelled collars or ruffs at their necks cavorting around them; the ringmaster, his brilliantined hair and moustache shining in the footlights, proper footlights, not just four lights hauled up on pulleys …
Down the Road to Gundagai Page 18