CHAPTER 10

A passing bird might have seen us thus: a great desert of sand and scrubby hillocks, a mail-coach track. Two carriages with hired drivers, drawn by four horses; three full-sized men; one smallish man; two little men; and a gliding jellyfish of many colours, consisting of four overlapping parasols draped with lightweight shawls, petticoats and skirts, loosely sewn together and dangling almost to the ground.

But I saw nothing of this, for within our moving tent all was dim. We had ended our Tasmanian tour and had taken the steamer back to Melbourne, and now we were en route to Adelaide — the hard way. Mrs Bleeker and I held aloft the parasol handles, one in each hand, and peered ahead between flapping veils at the track, while Lavinia and Minnie walked between us. We had constructed our makeshift harem to hide the ladies from the glaring eye overhead. On our third day of crossing the desert, the troupe planned to travel thirty miles to Coolootoo station. The ladies could have ridden on the coaches, but had volunteered to walk some of the way to save the horses. Sometimes we paused to pass around the water bottle and shake the sand out of our boots and stockings, and from time to time we regrouped so that I had the support of the sisters’ hands under my elbows. Sometimes, when their arms brushed against Belly, I felt a ripple.

Mr Hutchings, the proprietor of the mail coach, had come twenty miles to Melbourne to advise Mr Bleeker not to try to cross the desert between the settlements of western Victoria and South Australia. ‘You cannot travel more than twelve or fifteen miles in a day,’ he had told us all. ‘Your horses will be up to their middles in sand. You will have to carry provisions and feed for them and pass the night in your coaches. It will be blistering by day and freezing by night.’

Mr Bleeker had explained again that the troupe needed coaches and horses in South Australia. He would send the two miniature ponies and the walnut barouche by sea, but for the rest to travel the same way would be expensive and would delay our visit by a week. All our schedule would be thrown out, and that would cost us more.

Mr Hutchings had stared at us from red-rimmed eyes. ‘There’s nothing out there. Just bark sheds every twenty miles, where we keep the relays.’

‘All we need is pluck,’ Mr Bleeker had replied, and a cheer went up.

Pluck we had in plenty. Especially Lavinia, with her determined merriment. ‘Isn’t this like washday?’ she cried, catching at the edge of a sheet of lace that brushed her nose.

‘It’s stifling in here,’ said Minnie. ‘And you all walk so slowly.’

‘We mustn’t overtire Mary Ann,’ said Lavinia.

‘I am fine,’ I said, ignoring the pain in my back, arms and feet, my throbbing head, my dry mouth and throat, the sweat collecting in every crease of my body. What was the desert to me? I was safe in the ladies’ cocoon.

‘You must keep your strength up,’ said Lavinia.

This was as close as she had ever come to talking of the pregnancy and, despite Mrs Bleeker’s presence, I grew bold.

‘Mrs Stratton, what will it be like for me in the New World?’

‘That is not a question you should ask Mrs Stratton,’ said Mrs Bleeker.

‘No, that is quite all right,’ said Lavinia. ‘Mary Ann, you cannot imagine the delights that await you.’ Her voice slowed. ‘In Bridgeport, Connecticut, you will see Iranistan. It is Mr Barnum’s ethereal dream. Pillared and trellised, rimmed by satyrs, surmounted by Turkish towers, minarets, a grand central dome. Lit by its own private gas works, every room with a bath and hot and cold running water.’

‘It is a house?’

‘And what a house! But wait until you see his museum. What is your fancy? Giants, grizzly bears, dioramas of the Creation and the Deluge, industrious fleas? You will refresh yourself with oysters, ice cream and champagne. You will stroll in the roof garden, listen to the brass band. You will marvel at the fountain with its hundred jets. And at night, everything is as bright as day. You will lean from the balcony and see fireworks. And up, past your head, will rise a huge illuminated balloon.’

My ears buzzed. I had grown huge and round, I glowed, I floated, rising over ranks of chimney pots. Then two ruffians in beards and red shirts tugged at a string tied to my ankle, and I began to descend.

‘I miss the museum,’ said Minnie wistfully. ‘Not the grizzly bears or the fleas. All New York society comes there, Mary Ann.’

‘You mean all the young men come there,’ said Lavinia.

‘What of it, Vin? They know how to charm a girl. Not like these rude Australian rustics. All gape and guffaw.’

‘What do you expect, with your skirts so outrageously short?’

Minnie groaned, pushed out of the tent, forged ahead. Her arms swung, her bonnet ribbons whipped back in a sudden wind.

‘She must go her own way,’ murmured Mrs Bleeker.

Lavinia sighed. ‘If we were surrounded by fire, she would go into its heart.’

‘She would go into other hearts than that,’ muttered Mrs Bleeker. Lavinia frowned at her, and she tightened her lips.

Gradually Minnie faltered. We overtook her and she retreated beneath our shade, red-faced and panting. Flies spotted the back of her dress.

‘Now you have tired yourself,’ said Lavinia. ‘You should take your medicine more often, Min.’

‘Everything burns,’ Minnie said in wonder. ‘Even the wind.’

‘Ladies, be thankful,’ said Mrs Bleeker. ‘This is the Antipodean winter.’

We were not thankful. We had passed two nights on the coaches, huddled together in blankets, our breath frosting, longing for the sun we had hidden from during the day. Now, we walked in silence, battling with hot wind that threatened to turn our parasols inside out.

Then the wind died, and I ventured again: ‘Mrs Stratton, we were talking of my future in the New World …’

Mrs Bleeker gave me a nudge, but Lavinia began to talk. ‘A great bay window with tapestry seats.’ Her voice was low, crooning. ‘Mahogany panelling. A suite of armchairs upholstered in red velvet. Everything made to scale. In the window recess, the miniature piano presented by Queen Victoria. By the fireplace, the Chinese firescreens presented by Mrs Lincoln.’

We were walking past a skeleton, a cow spreadeagled in despair. I closed my eyes and imagined the cool rooms of the doll’s house the Strattons planned to build in Middleborough, Massachusetts. ‘Upstairs, five bedrooms. The small brass bed with the crowned canopy, and the carved mahogany bed presented by Mr Barnum. And the darlingest nursery. Peach-blossom wallpaper. A crib draped in apple green.’ I tried to conjure up the baby in its apple nest, but all I could see was a hump of green coverlet.

‘One door in the nursery will be wallpapered,’ Lavinia continued. ‘A peach will be the door handle. Trompe l’oeil. It will open onto your room, Mary Ann.’

‘Will it be big enough? Will I fit?’

‘Of course you will, silly.’ Lavinia patted my elbow.

‘You can’t have peaches and blossom on the tree at the same time,’ said Minnie.

The lace sheet in front of my eyes fluttered clear, to reveal a manly figure striding ahead of us, jacketless, swinging red-striped arms. I called out: ‘Franz.’ He stopped, turned, and I beckoned to him. A darkness blocked the way outside our hide. Then the light shifted, and green eyes peered through a lace sheet. At once I was confused: why had I summoned him?

‘How are you, ladies?’ He was looking at me. ‘The General is concerned for you.’

‘We are all very well, thank you,’ said Lavinia. Minnie tilted up her chin. ‘Fighting fit. We have faced grizzly bears, remember. A bit of sand is nothing.’

I extended one of my parasols, and Franz ducked gratefully into its shade, brushing my shoulder. Lord, how tall and broad he was. The tent was suddenly full of his Crimean shirt of red-and-white-striped cotton and its vigorous man smell.

‘Are you very weary?’ Again, he turned to me. ‘Do you have enough water? Would you prefer to ride on one of the coaches?’

‘We don’t need a ride,’ said I. ‘But thank you — thank the General — for asking.’

‘You do indeed look well,’ he said, keeping his eyes on me. ‘And your tent is a wonderful device. Very fresh and cool. Very inviting. What a pity I must rejoin the menfolk.’ He smiled at me, nodded to Lavinia and Minnie and Mrs Bleeker, jammed his hat over his brow. We women huddled together and slowly Franz backed out of the tent.

As he left, the lacy fringe in front of my eyes, all tattered and clogged with sand, slipped away, the parasols collapsed, and the desert light struck me. The veil of the temple has been rent, Father would say. Franz had rent the veil. Fragments of ladies’ fripperies danced around my shoulders, coiled in the sand or were whipped away by the wind into a scrub-dotted nothing. Franz was a way off at the carriages, shouting at the men; the sisters were tottering in circles; Mrs Bleeker was running after a taffeta shawl that floated just out of her reach. The horizon shimmered and boiled. With a slow thrill, I recalled that I had been the one who had beckoned to him, extended the parasol, invited him in. I plucked a slip of organza from my shoulder, turned my face to the relentless sun. Did it get so hot in the New World? The door was waiting, beyond the velvet armchairs and the miniature piano and the Chinese firescreens, and one day I would open it and step out, slim-waisted, in a new white dress, and there would be no veils, and already I could almost see who was out there waiting for me.

Then Mrs Bleeker was shouting at me and pointing at the strewn finery, and I ran to pick up the pieces. Lavinia and Mrs Bleeker chased them too, backwards and forwards in the sand. Only Minnie, usually such a blur of movement, stood stock still. Was she sunstruck? Then I noticed she was staring at me, and I felt a strange whirring in my ears. The whirring of Mrs Bleeker’s inexorable sewing machine.

We repaired the tent and moved on. The sand followed us as we approached Adelaide. At first I thought we would escape it. We saw gum trees, flocks of white birds, geese rising from a lagoon, shade and a little green for the eyes. At Woods Well we stayed at a small adobe house on a plateau overlooking the bay, and a Scotswoman gave us kangaroo steak and hot scones. As we left the house a huge red kangaroo passed nearby, clearing fifteen feet with every bound. We skirted the shores of Lake Meningia. Then we took a ferry across the Murray river to the miserable village of Wellington, where we were to spend a night, and the sand caught us. It piled up to the windows at the front of our inn, and at the back it brushed the roof.

All this time, as we moved about, I had been between the sisters, Lavinia and Minnie valiantly supporting each elbow. Now Lavinia and Charlie went out for a stroll as the sun was setting, and Minnie retired to the parlour. In the darkest room, Mr Bleeker sat on the floor, wrapped in a blanket, his spine pressed against the wall. His wife sat in a pool of lamplight over her sewing machine. I lay on the floor with my back to them, my hair unpinned and unplaited, propped up with cushions and covered with blankets. I had been trying to help Mrs Bleeker but could not keep my eyes open, and had been ordered to rest. Exhausted as I was, I could not sleep. My face and feet glowed, an ache laced my ribs, I felt the weight of the sand piled to the windowsill outside like a giant hourglass.

Mr Bleeker was breathing heavily, muttering. ‘Pickaxe? Fork? Tea strainer? Needle? Bludgeon?’

The sewing machine stopped its chatter. ‘Silly dear, you have had too much sun on that bald spot of yours.’

I waited for him to chastise her once again for using the hated nickname. But he just sighed and said: ‘If only I could talk to Mr Barnum. He’d tell me which tool to be.’

‘You’re not a tool. You’re a very fine manager. You have accomplished the journey you were told it was madness to undertake. Everyone is well and in high spirits. We have eaten fat pork and pumpkin for dinner. The horses have all survived. By tomorrow we should be in Adelaide. And you have saved the company six hundred pounds. Let us leave poor Mary Ann in peace and find a place to bed down.’

The light shifted. I opened my eyes to shadows trembling on the whitewashed wall. Mr Bleeker in his blanket cast a shade like a giant bug in a cocoon, and I thought of that other cocoon which had borne myself and the ladies across the desert.