For the next couple of evenings, Gus sold boxes of Jaffas and packets of snakes, and helped Stewie and Mac with the props, as he had on his first nights with Zarconi’s. On Wednesday night, a woman in the audience bought three boxes and watched him a lot, even when the show was on and she should have been watching the acts. Something about her made him uneasy.
At the end of the show she came up and asked him what his name was and whether his parents were with the circus. When Gus told her about Doc and Nance, she asked to meet them. Gus left them to it and joined Effie in her caravan. When he told her about it, she peeked through the curtains and watched the woman drive off.
‘More bad omens,’ she muttered.
Two days later, Gus woke up to the sound of the mobile phone ringing. He stumbled off the couch and groped around on the bench for it.
‘Gus, sweetie, are you all right?’ said his mum, sounding small and far away.
‘Mum, it’s not Sunday. Why are you calling me? Is everything okay?’
‘I’m getting better all the time, honey. But what about you?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said, puzzled.
‘You’re not hurt?’
Gus felt his neck prickle with alarm.
‘No, Mum, I’m fine,’ he repeated.
‘Gus, I want you to put your grandmother on the line,’ said his mum, ominously.
Gus turned around to find Nance standing behind him in her dressing-gown.
‘She wants to talk to you, Nance,’ he said.
Nance took the phone while Gus wandered into the kitchen and pulled the fridge door open. He stared into it, pretending he wasn’t listening to what was being said. Nance sure wasn’t saying much, only occasionally trying to interrupt whatever his mother was saying on the other end. Gus had a bad feeling about the conversation.
‘You’re not being fair, Annie,’ said Nance. ‘You know what those busybodies are like. The boy’s fine, it was just a little fall.’
Gus could hear his mother’s voice, so she had to be shouting. He shut the fridge door and began to edge his way towards the door.
‘Well, we can’t hang around in Perth waiting for you to come for him.’
There was more arguing from his mother, and Nance looked flushed and distressed.
Gus kicked the dew off the tops of the grass as he ran over to the Cuelmos’ caravan. Effie was sitting on the bed with Buster in her lap, watching the morning cartoons. Gus leapt onto the bed beside her and Buster immediately jumped from Effie’s lap to his.
‘Traitor,’ said Effie, shaking her finger at the dog.
‘I think my mum wants me back,’ said Gus.
Effie didn’t say anything for a minute.
‘Does that mean she’s better?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘On Sunday, she said she’d meet me in Broome. She’s really tired from all the chemotherapy, and sick a lot of the time, so she’s in this hospice place. She thought once she was out of there, she’d come and get me. I don’t reckon anything much could have changed in just three days. Something else has happened. She’s heard news that’s got her riled. She’s shouting at Nance down the phone.’
‘It’s that nosy parker who dobbed you in. You can’t leave just because of that. Not yet,’ said Effie. ‘You have to come north.’
‘I have to go if she needs me to. And besides, things are bad with Doc. Ever since I told him I hated him, he won’t talk to me. I think he hates me.’
Effie rolled her eyes.
‘Grow up. He doesn’t hate you any more than you hate him. The pair of you are just too alike, that’s your problem.’
‘Me? Like Doc?’
‘You better believe it,’ said Effie.
From across the lot, Nance was calling for him. Effie hooked one arm around Buster and pulled him towards her.
‘You better go and sort it out,’ she said.
Gus reluctantly got up from the bed.
‘It would be good if you’d stay,’ said Effie.
Gus nodded and stepped out into the morning sunshine.
He stopped outside his grandparents’ van and listened to the murmur of voices coming from inside.
‘We can’t lose the boy now,’ said Vytas, pacing up and down the caravan as he spoke. ‘He and Effie, they are the best thing for Zarconi’s. Without the children, the show will not be the same.’
‘I don’t know, Vytas. The boy doesn’t add that much,’ argued Doc. Gus hung his head and wrapped his arms around himself, listening hard.
‘He adds young blood. Life blood! If we lose him, maybe Cas will send Effie away too. If you lose Gus, there is no one for Effie to be with in the desert. Already, Cas is talking about putting her in a boarding school here in Perth. He will send her to a convent. If the boy goes and then Cas and Effie, Zarconi’s will have no future!’ There was a crash as he slammed his cup down on the counter.
Gus peered in through the flywire and saw Doc sitting at the table with his head in his hands.
‘If Annie wants the boy back, he’s hers to take,’ said Doc.
‘Annie!’ snorted Vytas. ‘She does not know how we have changed him! You look at that boy – he came to us scrawny and weak. Now he is strong and beautiful. How can you let him go without a fight?’
‘Look Vytas, get off my back, will you? I’d do anything to keep the kid. He’s a little beauty, but I can’t keep him from his mother.’
‘If she is well enough to have him back, then she should come and get him herself. Then she would see he is born for the circus. Then she would have to come back to us too. I tell you true, Doc, you lose that boy now, you lose more than you know.’
Gus felt his heart pounding so loudly he thought everyone in the caravan could hear it. He was just about to knock on the door when Nance stepped around the side of the van.
‘Gus,’ she said, ‘I’ve been looking all over for you.’
She led him over to a bale of hay beside the horse float and they sat on it together.
‘Look, Gus,’ she said slowly, taking one of his hands. ‘That lady who was here a couple of days ago. She’s just doing her job, checking you’re being looked after and all but she tracked down your mother and started asking questions. It’s really put the wind up Annie and she’s worried about you something shocking. She’s saying she wants me to send you back to Melbourne right away.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Gus.
Nance slumped a little and looked away from him. Her hand suddenly felt small in his. She looked tired, the lines of her face deeper and there were blue shadows under her eyes.
‘Just talk to your mother and sort it out with her. You do what you feel you want to do – what you reckon is right for you, right for Annie,’ said Nance. She handed him the mobile phone and walked away, climbing wearily back into her caravan.
Gus stretched out on the hay bale and stared at the blue sky. The mobile phone felt warm in his hand. All he had to do was dial his mum and his old life would be his again. He could go back to sleeping in a proper bed, living in a real house, going to school and mucking around with his old friends.
There was a scuffling noise on the ground beside him and suddenly Buster jumped up on to the hay bale and started licking his face. Gus sat up and pushed the dog off but Buster wasn’t going to be got rid of so easily. He started yapping, jumping madly around the hay bale, and making little charges at Gus’s feet.
‘Get out of here, you evil mongrel. I have to make a phone call,’ said Gus. But Buster went right on barking, his ears erect, his pointy tail wagging furiously. Gus scooped the dog up, tucked him under one arm and held his snout.
‘That’ll fix you,’ he said. To Gus’s surprise, Buster didn’t wriggle but lay close against him. He could feel Buster’s heart beat, a warm, insistent rhythm. Gus dialled his mum’s number with his free hand.
‘Mum, it’s me.’
‘Gus, darling. Has Nance told you about coming home?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, I’ve just spoken to Kate Spanner. She said she’d be happy to have you stay with them for a week until we can sort something else out.’
Buster had started wriggling and a small growl reverberated through his body. Gus looked down into the dog’s brown eyes and frowned at him to be quiet.
‘Mum, I’m not coming back, not yet.’
‘But Gus…’
‘You said Broome. You said you weren’t well enough and you needed more time.’
‘I’ve changed my mind. I think it’s best if you come back.’
‘No. I’m staying with the circus. Everything is okay. I’m doing fine. Stop worrying about me and just get better. We’ll meet in Broome, like you said before.’
‘Are you sure about this?’ asked Annie, sounding defeated.
Buster was wriggling so much Gus could hardly hold on to him. He started to whine. ‘Yup, I’m sure.’
‘Gus, are you positive?’
‘I said yes. I’ve gotta go. We’ll talk Sunday. Bye.’
‘Bye, darling.’
Gus let go of Buster and the dog leapt off the hay bale, growling, and pawing at the straw. Suddenly, he dived between Gus’s ankles and pulled something out from between the bales. A snake writhed and twisted in his jaws and whipped around as he shook it furiously. Gus jumped back onto the hay bale and let out a shout.
Cas came running over, spade in hand, but the snake was already limp in Buster’s jaws. Buster kept on growling, a low guttural noise in the back of his throat. Cas knelt down and gently prised his mouth open, taking the long speckled snake from him.
‘Dugite,’ he said, holding up the metre-long body by its tail. ‘You’re a lucky boy, Gus. They can be very aggressive and deadly as well.’
Gus swallowed hard and Buster wagged his tail and looked pleased with himself.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Effie, coming up behind Cas and looking from Gus to the snake.
‘Buster just saved my life,’ said Gus, kneeling down to pat the dog.
‘That’s no big deal,’ said Effie. ‘That’s just the sort of thing Buster does! What I want to know is are you staying, or are you going?’
Gus spent that night in the Cuelmos’ caravan. Effie hired a couple of videos and the two of them sat on Cas’s bed with Buster between them, eating takeaway pizza. Buster had a pepporoni pizza all to himself as a reward for saving Gus.
It felt like a holiday, not having to pull up stakes by the glare of the floodlights and move on in darkness. They’d only played to a small audience that night, but Doc thought once people knew they were around, the big top would be fuller. They’d spend a week on the site and then move across town to play the suburbs on the northern beaches. Cas suggested Effie and Gus might want to do a week at a local primary school, but they both said they’d work much harder at their correspondence course if he’d let them off the hook.
‘So you talked your mum around,’ said Effie, picking the salami off the top of her pizza and feeding it to Buster.
‘Sort of. She said she’d think about it. I’ve got until Broome.’
‘Well, I hope she doesn’t get better too quick and come and get you early.’
‘That’s a horrible thing to say,’ said Gus.
‘No it’s not. Look, this circus needs us.’
‘Seems like you need me even more.’
Effie screwed up her nose as if she’d just smelt something repulsive and punched Gus hard in the arm.
‘You should be in a boxing outfit, not a circus,’ he said, rubbing the spot where she’d hit him. ‘I only meant, without me, you’d wind up in a boarding school. I heard Vytas telling Doc.’
‘Is my dad crapping on about that again? He’d have to drag me to the place kicking and screaming. If that’s the truth, you better stick with Zarconi’s, ’cause if I wind up in a convent and go totally nuts it will be…’
‘All my fault!’ said Gus.