CHAPTER 9

The music that lured me was a simple étude I had played with my pupils, but here the notes flowed in a way I had never mastered. At the centre of the empty floor squatted the piano, and Franz Richardson possessed it while chaff swirled around his knees. Mr Bleeker had arranged to have a piano brought over on a cart from Oatlands’ largest public house for the day’s performance. Later in the day, the troupe would improvise a stage, for there was no theatre in this town, a scattering of sandstone houses and barns dropped onto the green Tasmanian plain.

As I stood in the doorway, he looked up and smiled at me, and with a jolt I felt very well, for the first time in weeks, and full of energy. Perhaps it was the elixir Mrs Bleeker had given me; or perhaps it was crossing Bass Strait on the steamer Tamar, a journey that had reduced the ladies to bundles of misery. I had loosened their stays, raised their heads and given them water, held them as they heaved into tin buckets. Then I had wiped their faces and sat and fanned them with their own fans. It was as if my sickness had passed into them and out the portholes, to be lost in the strait.

Oblivious to the chaff storm, Franz seemed too large for his instrument, like a full-grown man trying to ride one of Rodnia’s miniature ponies. He narrowed his eyes, peered at the notes. Was he too vain to wear spectacles? He had much to be vain about. Abruptly he broke off playing, patted the seat beside him on the long stool. ‘It is most good of you to come, Mrs Carroll. I must learn a new piece, and you can turn the pages for me.’

That melodious voice again, only the faintest American accent. Should I sit down alone with this man? But it was part of my duties. So I sat, arranging my shawl over Belly. I always wore my shawl in those days, even when the weather was warm.

Franz embarked on a jaunty tune and I watched again the russet hair, the pale skin, the green-apple eyes. The chaff rose and settled on my skirt.

‘The good folk of Oatlands have been pouring their ale on the strings,’ he said, relapsing into disjointed chords. ‘I never thought when I left the conservatory that I would be sitting in a stable at the ends of the earth playing Walking down Broadway.’ He gave a short laugh, lifted his hands. ‘Good piano hands, d’you see? Broad, with long fingers. Thumb loose in the socket. A good spread.’ His right hand sprawled across the keys. ‘Here, you try.’

Hesitantly I picked out a few bars of a piece from The Well-tempered Clavier.

‘Bravo, Mrs Carroll. Nature has not blessed you with a good spread, yet you manage very well.’ He placed his cool professional hands over mine: I told my racing heart he was being a good teacher. His trim white nails extended over several more keys than I could reach. ‘Mr Liszt is the great master of the spread. There have never been such hands; he has taken plaster casts of them. His secret is that he has almost no webbed material between the fingers.’ He picked up my hand, splayed my fingers. ‘You are not so lucky. Your hand is a veritable mermaid’s.’

‘They called me Froggy at school.’ I made myself laugh. ‘I don’t think you can have seen a mermaid, Mr Richardson.’

‘I have seen the Feejee mermaid in Mr Barnum’s museum. Her hands are nothing like as pretty as yours.’

I frowned, withdrew my hand, then worried that by taking it away I had made the fleeting touch important.

‘Don’t think me impertinent,’ he said, ‘I merely admire fine hands when I see them. But what happened to your wrists?’ He was looking at the red marks where my captors’ rope had dug into the flesh.

I mumbled something about tight cuffs.

He smiled. ‘It is such a pleasure to have you with us, Mrs Carroll. It is most beneficial for the troupe — and for the General and his lady, of course. And I enjoy your assistance’ — he gave me a swift glance — ‘and your company.’

And I enjoy yours, I wanted to say, but could think of no ladylike way to say it. ‘It is beyond beneficial for me to be with the troupe, I assure you.’

‘I was sorry to hear of your bereavement, and I fear there is no way we poor entertainers can lighten that load. But we can help you pass the time.’

Why did he address me as if I were a bored lady? Was this mockery?

‘If we are to share a seat,’ he went on, ‘you might call me Franz.’

‘Franz,’ I said softly. ‘A beautiful name. Is it German?’

‘Oh, I am entirely Yankee, I assure you. My parents gave me a rather dull name. I changed it in honour of my hero and my dreams. You know, once I dreamed of a solo career.’

‘Like Mr Heller the Prestidigitator at the Theatre Royal?’

‘Ah, Mr Heller. Did you know he played the piano for Mr Liszt when he was twelve years old?’

‘He is a wonderful pianist.’

Franz shrugged. ‘Yet see what he has come to. A mountebank with a box of tricks and bullets in his teeth, playing funny medleys and a thumping Anvil Chorus so the hoi polloi can join in with their boots on the floor.’

‘The General was very taken with him. He loved the shooting trick.’

‘I want something better than that,’ said Franz. ‘Recitals on stage before the crowned heads of Europe. World tours. People pursuing me in the street. Women sobbing at my feet.’

Was he mocking himself now? ‘You are not so far out,’ I said. ‘You are on a world tour, people shout in the street and crowd to the shows.’

‘But not to see me. To hear the crashing chord when a little man falls on his behind.’ He brushed the chaff off the keys with his sleeve, closed the piano lid. ‘You would not believe it, but I was the outstanding student of my year. Everyone predicted a glowing future for me. And then I was wronged. I do not believe any man was ever so wronged.’

‘Wronged?’

‘I do not speak of it, I let it lie deep.’ He slumped on the piano lid, his face in his hands. ‘What does the world care? So I am cheery and obliging, but it glows still, a coal in my heart, it will not be damped down.’ Now his voice was dark and thick, choked with feeling. I almost reached out to take his hands from his face. Then he rubbed his eyes and looked up at the rafters. ‘I fell back on teaching young ladies the piano, and together we would mangle Autumn Leaves or Lightly Tripping. I am sure you know all about that.’

I grimaced. ‘I never want to hear another scale again.’

He laughed. ‘Yes, and I never want to see another young miss fidget and twirl on the piano stool and smear toffee on the keys.’

‘Oh yes. I had such a student, Matilda. She was a minx. Whenever I reprimanded her, she said she would tell her papa, and he would be displeased with me.’

‘And was he, the terrible papa?’

I frowned and folded my hands. I must be more careful: he made me feel I could tell him anything.

Franz cleared his throat. ‘And you taught other subjects? Poetry? The English poets, I suppose. Keats? Tennyson?’

‘Very little poetry. I know only Cowper and Gray. And a Shakespeare sonnet or two … But pray continue your story.’

‘Ah, the young misses … Of course I hoped even then to do better. I had a patron, a wealthy widow. I called her Madame. I handled some business for her, I escorted her to operas and recitals and afterwards she would peer at me through her jewelled lorgnettes and say, “You can do better, Mr Richardson, we must arrange your debut.”’ I laughed at his imperious quaver. ‘And I would shake my head,’ he continued. ‘Secretly thrilled, poor praise-starved beast that I was, at her flattery.’

‘So did she arrange your debut?’

‘Yes, a small recital at her house before New York’s most eminent critics. And then — you will scarcely credit this — I was wronged. Again.’

‘But this is a dreadful tale,’ I cried out. ‘Who wronged you, and what did they do to you?’

Franz frowned, closed his eyes. ‘It is painful still.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. You are kindness itself to listen to my tale of woe. Let me tell you the outcome. There was no recital. Madame dropped me, my students’ parents dropped me. It was only thanks to the kindness of Mr Bleeker that I found employment with the General’s troupe.’

‘So it has been hard for you.’

He shrugged. ‘I have seen the world, I have spent years braving danger and hardship, playing music that makes Lightly Tripping seem like a work of genius, upon primitive instruments, for people whom the world regards as oddities. But they are honourable people, and I have not abandoned hope … What about you, Mrs Carroll? Have you been wronged?’

Mrs Bleeker’s words about Franz came back to me. He rescued Mrs Stratton from an alligator in a swamp. I imagined Franz hurling stones at a row of yellow teeth. Surely he would be a better rescuer than Robert ever was.

‘I don’t know if I have been wronged,’ I said. ‘That is for others to judge. But you have made me think of the time my brother came and took things away.’

And so I told the story to Franz, to the point where Robert sent me away to school. I tried to be fair, explaining how generous he had been, how he had paid to send me to an excellent school for young ladies in London. But I could not resist adding that I had to stay at school during the holidays: ‘I was too loud.’

‘That is monstrous. Why, you are the quietest, sweetest-natured little lady. Were he not your brother, I would call him a —’

‘Hush, Franz.’

‘Please forgive me, I should not have said that. And when you left school?’

‘Mr Robert offered me a post as governess. But it did not … come about.’

‘Poor little mermaid. How was it there was no one to save you?’ He had chaff on his shoulders, in his hair. ‘But of course someone did save you: the estimable Mr Carroll.’

‘Yes.’ I could think of nothing more to say but lies. There was a long silence.

‘Let me play you some real music,’ said Franz. He lifted the piano lid, closed his eyes, his fingers rippled. The notes floated, cascaded, and a softness rose from deep in me, way below Belly, until it prickled behind my eyes. At last Franz broke off, his hands suspended, and a fading chord hung around us. ‘That was a little Liszt, Mrs Carroll.’

‘You might call me Mary Ann. Everyone else does.’

‘Liebestraum, Mary Ann. Love’s dream.’ He rested his splayed hands on his thighs, and I thought of the hands of Matilda’s papa, warming themselves pink at the drawing-room fire. Then I looked away, across the floor, as if the notes would still be drifting with the chaff.

‘It is important to have dreams,’ Franz said. ‘But our lives need more solid foundations. I am glad you will be well provided for — though I daresay signing all those documents was very tedious.’

‘Documents?’ I stared at him. ‘I have signed nothing. Why, should I have?’

‘What, nothing?’ Now he seemed surprised. ‘But in Mr Barnum’s employ, it is usual … I must have misunderstood. No matter. What you have is a gentleman’s agreement, then.’ He smiled. ‘And you can’t get much more gentlemanly than the General.’

‘Yes, of course. But I confess, you’ve worried me a little.’ I tried to laugh at my foolish worries. ‘Should I ask for documents, I know so little of these things …’

‘I am quite sure that will not be necessary. As long as you are content with their plans. Tell me, what will happen to you and …’ His eyes ran over the folds of my shawl, and I tingled as if he were touching me. I told him what Mrs Bleeker had explained, and my options: to stay with Charlie, his wife and their child; or to go out on my own, with a generous settlement and my pick of prospects.

‘And what will you choose?’

‘Once the infant is well established, I will take the settlement and go out on my own. They won’t need me, and I shall be free.’

Damn my red cheeks. What a thing to say to an unattached young man, he must think me a brassy widow prospecting for her next husband.

‘Ah, freedom. Independence,’ said Franz. ‘I hoped for those things too once. And I do have prospects. Perhaps, one day …’ He glanced sideways at me, and my heart began to race again. Then his eyes dropped. ‘But you know, most of the time, I just tickle the keys. That’s what they want.’

Cock crow, grey light, and I lay on a pile of grain sacks, stiff and sore and itchy. No one in Oatlands could provide us with an inn or beds. I had gone to my makeshift pallet with my head full of Liebestraum, but the music had soon faded, and I had lain awake, feeling again the lurches of the wain, smelling the hay, turning the questions over.

Now I made a memorandum in my head. Item One: Ned was a troublemaker. He might have hired ruffians to get me out of the way because I had spied on his games with George, stopped his sabotage of Charlie’s speech.

Item Two: More likely something to do with Belly.

Item Three: Would George try to spite Charlie by stealing away the mother of his child?

Item Four: If Lavinia had a baby to care for, she might retire, and the tours would end. Was Mr Bleeker so devoted to raising money for Mr Barnum that he would see the child as a threat to the show?

Item Five: What if I had underestimated Minnie’s skittishness? What if she was so set in rebellion against her sister that she could rob her of an infant?

Item Six: Could I rule out anyone? What of Franz Richardson, or Rodnia Nutt? I could not summon up even the shadow of a motive, but who knew what really went on in a man’s head?

Item Seven: Back to Ned. He had told me I could make a mint. So could he, if he kidnapped me and sold me to those that would pay very handsome. But why was Belly so valuable?

Item Eight: Perhaps there was no adoption plan. Perhaps Mrs Bleeker had spoken only to comfort me, before they tried to dispose of me. Perhaps they would try again.

It seemed so unlikely. And yet I had dreamed of unseen hands peeling me open from ribs to groin and yanking out a raw, bleeding lump. I shivered, groaned.

Enough brooding. I rose, fetched water for the ladies.

We spent the morning packing to move to the next town, Green Ponds, a place with no piano. Franz had persuaded Mr Bleeker to buy the Oatlands piano and take it with us, and it was his task to supervise the loading onto a baggage coach. When I passed the knot of men, I saw a flash of auburn hair and heard the creak of ropes and much swearing.

The troupe ate a luncheon of cold boiled beef and potatoes around a battered deal table brought out onto the gravel. Beyond the few buildings stretched vast oat fields and endless ranked clouds. Franz was still battling with his piano and did not join us. Charlie was morose and silent, and retired early. The usual bunch of children watched us with grave fascination. George pretended not to notice, but every now and then he flung bits of bread in their direction, and they competed with the pigeons to get it.

Mr Bleeker read out the names of our Tasmanian destinations: Green Ponds, Brighton, Richmond, Hobart Town, New Norfolk, Hamilton, Bothwell, Longford, Deloraine, Launceston.

‘Full of chaff, the lot of ’em,’ muttered Ned. He was cradling an animal skin in his lap as if it were a pet. He would not let it out of his sight. Before Mr Bleeker had arrived at the table, he had told George it was a rare hide from a Tasmanian tiger and he planned to send it to a collector in Ballarat. ‘I’ll make a mint, the doctor is mad for such odd critters.’

George had sniffed at it, scratched the hair. ‘Smells rare, boyo, but how d’you know those stripes aren’t painted on?’

‘Musgrave’ll know it’s the real thing,’ said Ned. ‘We send letters back and forth — he’s keen as mustard.’

So Ned had done deals behind Mr Bleeker’s back after all, even though he hadn’t gone on our visit to Athena Hall. Had he made a secret visit himself? What else might he be saving for the doctor?

Mr Bleeker was saying something about a tight schedule. ‘Mustn’t get behind. Have to catch the steamer back to the mainland on the 27th. Must be in Adelaide by August 8th. May have to cross the desert to get there in time.’

‘We can manage a desert crossing,’ said Lavinia calmly.

I looked up at the pale sun, felt the cool breeze, and then I heard hoofbeats from beyond the yard. Rodnia was exercising Zep, cantering up and down the flat. I had scarcely seen him since the day in Ballarat when I had thought to rescue him from his horse. Now he rode high on the bay’s back with his legs tucked up, like a jockey, but with more strength and bulk, and it seemed he and Zep were both part of some great beast of silky tan. As they wheeled, he caught my eye, and raised one hand.

When we were about to depart, Rodnia approached me and beckoned me to join him on the box seat of one of the baggage carriages. If I could not ride with Franz, I decided, Rodnia would make a pleasant companion.

As the convoy lumbered out onto the road, the folk of Oatlands cheered and waved their hats. Dogs yapped and darted under the wheels. Rodnia clicked his tongue. The little walnut barouche was strapped into place on the platform behind him, and he sat on a sack of straw that made him as tall as me in my seat. He had cleaned his boots.

‘Nero and Sultan,’ he said, indicating the two brawny beasts in the shafts. ‘Not like Zep. No brains. Prodigious pull.’

‘I am sorry I didn’t come and let you teach me how to make Zep wild, Mr Nutt,’ I said. ‘I never had a moment.’

‘They work you too hard.’

True enough, I thought, but it would do no good to complain of it. ‘Didn’t you say Zep came from a circus?’

‘Yep, and so did we. Mr Lillie’s travelling circus and show of wonders. My brother was fifteen then. Tiny George Washington Nutt, the Smallest Man in God’s Creation. Along with Zoltan the Hungarian Equestrian, Sigmund the Living Skeleton and a Sapient Bear that never got a name.’

‘And you?’

‘I didn’t have a name neither.’

We rode between hedgerows, but Rodnia was back in New Hampshire, under flapping canvas. His gruff voice grew softer as he looked out over Nero and Sultan’s bobbing heads.

‘Mr Lillie, he was always bellyaching about my brother. Said Tiny George was rude to the punters. Said one gent wanted his money back because George had done a thing before his wife he’d blush to name. George said all he’d done was slip off his coat and weskit and shirt to show them the hairs on his chest because she sneered he was a half-grown boy. “Why, Mr Lillie,” he cried, “what would you have me show them?” So I told Mr Lillie I’d learn my brother manners. I asked George, what’s all this bull about hairs on your chest? You know what he showed me? A sticky chest wig. He’d got fur off the Sapient Bear and stuck it on with gum.’

‘Your brother is a very funny fellow,’ I said. ‘But what did you do?’

‘Ran errands. Fed and groomed the horses. Bound the Hungarian to Zep. Propped up, pulled down canvas and poles. Scoured saucepans. Lured the Sapient Bear into its horsebox. Scrubbed mushy apples and poo out of its cage. I was good at everything, except stopping George.’

Rodnia began to tell me of an idea George had had for a new act. His purpose was to make me laugh at George’s antics, but I was laughing at Rodnia’s way of telling the story. He sat up straight, his tone solemn, and then such voices sidled out of him: George’s squeaky tenor, the slurring drunk and the rude boys in the audience, Mr Lillie’s growls when he found out about the act and stopped it.

‘So it was only a matter of time,’ Rodnia said. ‘The word went out, and Mr Bleeker found us. There was a lawyer powwow for months, but I always knew we’d end up with Mr Barnum. The thirty-thousand-dollar Nutt, they called George. That was what Mr Barnum paid for him, with me thrown in.’

The horses had ambled almost to a standstill. Rodnia sat up, flapped the reins, and they picked up pace. ‘I heard you rescued the show one night,’ he said. ‘Pulled the curtain before my brother had a chance to disgrace the General. That was well done.’

‘But I don’t suppose I pleased the Commodore.’

Rodnia laughed. ‘He’ll get over it, and you’ll be the last person he’ll blame. My brother is not a bad man, ma’am. Just bold and mischievous. And a mite prone to bad influence.’ He frowned and fell silent.

I did not need to ask him where the bad influence came from. ‘Do you mind me asking what happened to your leg?’ I said.

‘Fell from the trapeze.’

‘Were you an acrobat?’

‘Not me. I put up the apparatus and tested it for Miss Emmeline. She was the trapeze artiste, a dandy one.’ His cheeks were a little red. ‘I had this trick. I’d jump from one hanging rope to another and catch it. Just my own private thing, nobody ever saw it. But that day … My mind wandered off, and I missed.’

‘You should have performed in the circus.’

‘I’m not made to perform. I’m not made for a lot of things.’

I could not bear the wistful note in his voice. ‘You’re a funny fellow too, Mr Nutt, in your quiet way. Why don’t you perform with your brother?’

‘I take it very kindly you say that, ma’am. But that’s not my job — I’m the big brother. D’you have brothers or sisters?’

‘Seven of them. But I only knew one.’

We fell silent, and Rodnia lit his clay pipe, cupping it against a side wind. The convoy had spaced out, and we were in a dense stand of eucalypts. Branches crowded over our heads.

‘Which one did you know?’ said Rodnia.

I explained to him how I had met Mr Robert. Strange, that only a day before I had told the same story to Franz Richardson, but this time it came out differently. I looked at Rodnia’s attentive face, told him of the days I had spent caring for Mother and Father when they had the cholera, and as I spoke I became proud of my childish industry.

‘God in heaven,’ he murmured.

‘It was not so bad. I didn’t have time to think. I thought I would beat the cholera with soap and eau de Cologne.’

Rodnia smiled. ‘There you are. Rescuing again.’

‘But I didn’t rescue them.’

‘Men aren’t always as tough as we think,’ said Rodnia, watching me closely behind his pipe. ‘And women are sometimes tougher than we think.’

‘But I was telling you of my brother …’ The trees were thinning out: we were entering oat fields again. I told Rodnia of my second argument with Mr Robert, in the headmistress’s study, the day I left school and he left me. It took a long time to tell. At last I fell silent, my throat hoarse and my hands trembling as I waited for Rodnia to speak. Why had I poured out such long stories of Robert to Franz and Rodnia? Why had I not spoken to Mrs Bleeker instead? And why was Rodnia so silent? Did he think me an ungrateful hoyden?

Rodnia frowned, opened his mouth, then stuck his pipe between his teeth and puffed like a steam engine. Behind us came the thud of hooves, the rattle of wheels.

I looked over my shoulder. The other baggage carriage was gaining on us. Ned sat on the box, Tasmanian tiger skin at his side, giddying up his animals, and behind him loomed a pile of trunks and a canvas-shrouded piano shape. The road was wider here and as Ned attempted to pass, Rodnia dropped back and waved him on. As the carriages rode abreast, I looked past Ned’s bowler and saw Franz perched beside him on the box seat, his coat collar turned up round his ears, a cigarette in his gloved left hand. He would not leave his beloved piano. He balanced a leather satchel topped by a notepad on his lap and was busy scribbling. He looked up briefly, then stared with utter astonishment at me. I smiled, waved, and Ned smirked, touched two fingers to his hat brim. I tried to shout a greeting, but the horses and wheels made too much noise. Franz glowered at me, then at Rodnia, then back at me. The way his eyes flickered suddenly reminded me that Rodnia was a man who came up to my armpit.

At Green Ponds, Rodnia drove his carriage into the stableyard of the little inn where we would stay the night. Not even a dog was about. We were the first of the convoy to arrive: Ned’s carriage must have gone to the theatre to unload the piano and stage props. Nero and Sultan stood, damp flanks heaving, as Rodnia jumped down — always agile, despite his limp. He rolled up his sleeves: there was a line across the strong forearms where the tan stopped and a mysterious paler skin began. He reached out a hand to me. ‘Careful. Remember you’re the goose.’

I took his warm hand, stepped down, rested against the carriage wheel, watched a flash of cockatoos overhead, heard a great screeching, and then the scrapes and thumps of Rodnia as he climbed onto the canvas-shrouded baggage.

‘Why won’t the General and his lady talk to me about the baby?’ I said.

‘They’re mad for smaller and smaller men,’ Rodnia muttered, loosening the ropes. ‘Think it’s like breeding ponies.’ His words seemed more like a private meditation than an answer to my question. ‘Smaller and smaller. At the birth, the midwife must wear opera glasses. His first cradle is a tumbler. They must use a magnet to find him in the bedclothes, an ear trumpet to hear him cry.’

‘I beg your pardon, Mr Nutt?’

‘Rodnia, please … That’s how my brother was when he was born. Or so they said. A bab who could up and crush mosquitoes in his fists like Hercules crushed the snakes.’

Something in his nonsense made me think of the way Father had tested me on Scripture, and I could recall the page of the Bible, the thin paper and velvet bookmark, and almost, but not quite, the words.

‘What are you saying, Rodnia? Is it about the adoption?’

He had climbed up on the luggage pile, his back to me, bare arms level with the top of my head. Muscles rose like waves under his skin. I reached out and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned his head slowly towards me.

‘Tell me, please,’ I said. ‘What exactly do they want from me?’

‘A little bab.’

He held on to the ropes with one hand and reached towards me with the other, as if about to do a circus trick. The sinews stretched on his bare arm, the low sun haloed the gold-brown hairs. I thought he would seize me, crush me to his leather vest in a wrestler’s or a lover’s embrace, and I shook with something I had not felt when Franz had put his manicured hands over mine at the piano.

Rodnia’s hand hovered and stopped an inch from my hair. ‘What exactly d’you want from them?’ he said.

‘Freedom. Independence. A chance to have whatever I want.’

‘You’ll get that.’ His voice was gruff, dismissive. He dropped his hand, and I felt suddenly ashamed of the way I had tapped his shoulder.

‘I must go and get things ready for the ladies.’

Rodnia nodded, turned back to the ropes. A flap of canvas came loose and the horses snorted. ‘Hey there, Nero, Sultan, I’ll be with you in a mo.’ He spoke softly. ‘We want you tractable, don’t we? But it don’t do you good to be too tractable. Wears you down, takes away your spirit.’

When he had told his circus stories, I had admired his will to do anything in the world for his little brother. Now I thought that if Tiny George asked him, Rodnia would hire ruffians to kidnap a young woman, bundle her up on a wain and take her God knows where.

I began to walk away, and he shouted after me: ‘No one says a word against you, ma’am. And if they did, I wouldn’t let them.’