Blood and Circuses

girl.’

Dulcie did not seem at all cast down. ‘Stew again?’ she asked. ‘I dunno what you’d do if them sheep didn’t keep on dying of old age.’

Mrs T threw a tin mug with accuracy and venom. Dulcie ducked and caught the missile with effortless grace. Then she juggled it with a box of matches and a ladle. She tossed them back, one by one, to the old woman, who caught them easily. Dulcie backed away, taking Phryne with her.

‘She’s a good cook but she ain’t half got a temper. You stay out of casting range when she loses her rag, Fern. Even chucked a chopper, once, and missed the old man’s head by a whisker. He was complaining about having mutton stew ten days running. She told him to go kill a horse if he wanted a change of diet. She’s married to a clown, though. That always sours the temper.’

‘What, one of the Shakespeares?’

‘No, they ain’t married. They’re Jews. They don’t get married like us. No, Mrs T married Thompson, the acrobatic clown. He’s a great performer and he loves his dog, but he’s a real mean old cuss otherwise. Clowns are like that. They waste all their niceness on the audience. Then they ain’t got none left for the rest of us. All right, now, that’s the men’s tent. Instant dismissal if you’re caught inside it, no matter what the reason. Farrell told you that? This caravan belongs to Mr Robert Sheridan, the magician, he ain’t here yet. He don’t lodge with us common folk when we’re in town. Wait a bit. I have to deliver a message. Just wait for me here.’

Phryne felt in her pocket for a cigarette. There seemed to be no rule against smoking. She lit a gasper and drew in the smoke gratefully. She was feeling off balance. Deprived of her usual props and stays and allies, and having to speak with the accent of her childhood, she was losing confidence. No one seemed to like her, and she was used to being liked, or at least noticed. She closed her eyes.

A strong hand took hold of her scarf and pulled at it. She gasped, her eyes snapping open. The hand felt rapidly down her body until it reached her cardigan pocket. She let the scarf fall, grabbed for the hand and found she was holding an elephant’s trunk.

The end was soft, pinkish, and as sure as the grasp of fingers. She sighted up along it to a grey mass of body, tethered by one foot to a picket. Bright eyes in the plane of the face winked at her. Sail-like ears flapped.

‘Oh, you gave me such a shock,’ said Phryne as the delicate trunk curled around her wrist with a warm noise like a kiss. ‘My, you are big! What a huge creature you are.’ The elephant gave an absurdly small squeak, the sort of noise that should have come from a mouse, Phryne thought. It rocked from foot to foot. ‘What do you want?’ asked Phryne as the trunk began to quest through her clothes. ‘Oh, I see.’

There were three peppermints in her pocket, which she had brought to feed the horses. She was about to bring them out when the trunk curled back to the huge mouth and a noise like a concrete mixer offended her ears. The elephant had picked her pocket. ‘I wonder who taught you that?’ she asked aloud.

‘Rajah, you’re a bad girl,’ said a sharp voice. ‘You ain’t been doing that pickpocket trick on our own folk, not after I told you it was a low mean act.’

A tiny man with hay in his hair ducked under Rajah’s bulk and blinked into the sunlight.

‘I’m Fern,’ said Phryne. ‘I’m the new rider in the rush.’

She waited for him to snub her, as Lyn Bevan had, but the small man was too busy apologising for his elephant to concern himself with questions of status.

‘Billy Thomas,’ said the elephant keeper. ‘I dunno where she picked that up. Did it herself, maybe. Queer creatures, elephants. Sorry about that. I keep moving her picket back and she keeps movin’ it forward again. What did she get?’

‘Three peppermints.’

‘That’s all right. I gotta be careful. She’ll eat herself sick on fairy lollies, and what that does to her digestion don’t bear thinking about. An elephant with a belly-ache ain’t no laughing matter. You watch her from now on. Elephants don’t forget. Well, they don’t forget someone who has peppermints in their pockets.’ He ducked back under the canvas shade, pulling Rajah with him. Phryne could hear him hammering in the picket, to the accompaniment of a lot of cursing.

Dulcie returned and Phryne called excitedly, ‘Dulcie, an elephant just picked my pocket!’

‘Oh, yair, that Rajah. Nice old cow, otherwise. But she dearly loves lollies and Billy won’t give her more than a few. So she steals ’em. Come along. There’s the jugglers’ caravans. I live there with my partner Tom. Next to us is the Cat’lans. I wish they were further away.’

Phryne caught the eye of a slim, dark man. He was sitting in the sun mending a pair of much-worn sequined trunks. He did not smile but scanned her with black eyes. She did not know what language he spoke, so she ventured on French.

‘Bonjour, M’sieur.’

Dulcie dragged at her sleeve. ‘I told you not to have nothing to do with them foreigners!’

Phryne pulled away. She had been pushed around more than she was accustomed to lately.

‘Jour,’ said the man, smiling a brilliant smile. ‘Mademoiselle Agata! ’ he called into the tent. ‘Quelqu’un qui parle francais! Someone who speaks French!’

Agata emerged, a thin woman holding a suckling baby. She beamed.

‘Aaro? Si? I tant! ’ She addressed Phryne directly. ‘Vous parlez francais? Et voila—ca me fait plaisir. Do you speak French? What a pleasant surprise!’

‘Vous faiters partie du cirque? Are you with the circus?’ asked the man.

‘Oui, je suis ecuyere . . . Et vous? Yes, I am a rider,’ said Phryne. ‘What do you do?’

‘Nous sommes des equilibristes. Nous avons perfectionne le castell—la pyramide humaine. We are balancers. We have perfected the human pyramid,’ Agata broke in eagerly. ‘Vous devez venir vous voir. Nous sommes en troisieme lieu a la liste, Mare de Deu. You must come and see us. We have third billing.’ Phryne found the woman hard to follow. She seemed to be thinking in another language. The accent was harsh and definite and she had never heard it before.

‘Bien sur. Mais d’ ou venez-vous? But where do you come from?’ One thing she was sure of. ‘Vous n’ etes pas francais. You aren’t French.’

Agata laid the baby over her shoulder and patted its back. It was small and dark and it burped resoundingly.

‘Non, senyoreta, nous sommes Catalans. Nousautres aimons mieux parler le francais que le castillian. We are Catalans. We would rather speak French than Spanish.’

Her husband interposed, seeing Phryne’s difficulty. ‘Je doute fort que vous parliez le catalan. I doubt that you can speak Catalan.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Les autres nous appellent les etrangers. The others call us foreign. Il n’y a que le nain, M Burton, qui parle francais. No one else can speak French, except for Mr Burton the dwarf.’

Agata laughed. ‘Un homenet bien enseigne. An educated little man.’

Aaro agreed. ‘Un petit bonhomme bien savant,’ he said. Phryne wondered if he was being ironic. Savant also described a performing flea. Then again, there was certainly something of the performing flea about the amazing Mr Burton. ‘Voudriez-–vous nous faire le plaisir de souper avec nous? Perhaps you will like to dine some time?’

‘Je veu bien. Je vous en remercie. Thank you, I would be delighted,’ said Phryne. ‘Bon, je dois partir. Mon cavalier s’ enerve. I’d better go. My escort is becoming nervous. Je suis bien contente d’avoir fait votre connaissance. A bientot. How delightful to meet you.’

‘Adeu,’ said Agata. ‘Petite cavaliere?

’ ‘A bientot,’ echoed Aaro.

‘You ain’t foreign, are you, Fern?’ asked Dulcie suspiciously.

Phryne laughed. ‘No. I learned—’ Oops. She had to think fast. ‘I lived in Collingwood when I was a kid. Went to school there. I picked up a bit of the lingo. Enough to get along. Come on. What’s over there?’ She pointed to a row of steel cages under a canvas awning.

‘Lions. We gotta be careful. Mr Burton said the lions was upset and an upset lion ain’t nothing to fool about