Poesy Swift
The next day, I sat alone in the forecastle, watching the coast as the steamer churned its way north. Tilly and Valentine found me there.
‘This air, it’s so sticky, don’t you think?’ said Tilly. She lifted her petticoats and flapped them into the wind.
‘Tilly!’ I cried. ‘You’ve got no knickers on!’
‘It’s delicious,’ she said. But Valentine shook her head. ‘You won’t like it when we’re ashore. Your thighs will stick together when you walk.’
I covered my ears. Those two could talk about the rudest things.
As we steamed towards the town of Batavia we passed hundreds of small islands. Some were no more than a single palm tree standing up out of the sea quite by itself. When we passed through the entrance to the harbour, Batavia came into view. Dark green hills dotted with elegant mansions rose on either side of the town. A rickety boat pulled alongside the steamer and we all squealed when we discovered we were going to take the journey ashore in a sampan.
Batavia was nicer than Surabaya had been but people still stared at us as we travelled through the town in open carriages. As we rode into the central square, Freddie Kreutz pointed at an odd tower set into a well in the ground.
‘That’s where the Dutch execute prisoners,’ he said with spiteful glee. ‘They take them underground from the court house and then . . .’ He made a slitting motion with his fingers across his throat and a horrible gargling noise.
Max laughed and put his hands around Freddie’s neck. ‘Now, you are my prisoner . . .’ Then the two of them were wrestling with each other on the floor of the carriage and all the girls had to raise their feet up onto the seat. I pulled my skirts over my knees and shivered at the thought of men having their heads chopped off under the ground while above them people were promenading with their parasols in the tropical heat.
Outside our hotel, we clustered in the shade of the verandah. For some reason, we weren’t allowed inside. Mr Arthur stood at the counter, arguing with the manager, while we waited. Daisy and Flora kept tiptoeing over to the door, peering into the cool darkness of the foyer and giggling. The boys sat on the edge of the steps scuffing their feet in the dust and we girls flopped on benches, fanning ourselves with our hands.
It was almost too hot to talk. I wandered across the verandah and stood behind Charlie and Lionel, watching over their shoulders. They were doing a trick with a shiny silver coin. Charlie had it in one hand and then, as if by magic, it passed through the skin of that hand and into the other.
‘See, it’s easy,’ said Charlie, handing the coin to Lionel. ‘You have a go.’
‘I still can’t see how you do it. You’re not showing me properly,’ said Lionel, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He glanced up at me. ‘You should go away, Poesy. Magicians can’t let other people see their magic.’
‘But Charlie’s letting you watch. He’s teaching you and you’re not a magician.’
‘That’s different. He’s my brother.’
‘Please, Charlie,’ I said, jumping down from the verandah to stand in front of the boys. ‘Show me too.’
‘Lionel can show you. Go on, Leo – give it a go.’
Lionel scowled as he fiddled with the coin, passing it clumsily from one hand to the other until finally he lost control altogether and it slipped out of his hand and landed in the dirt with a plop. The sun bounced off the image of the King’s head and I picked it up.
‘Can I try?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Lionel. ‘Girls don’t do magic.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Charlie. ‘She probably won’t be able to work it out.’
The coin was slippery with boy-sweat, and warm from Lionel’s hand. I shut my eyes, picturing the movements that Charlie had made. In my mind’s eye I could see exactly what he had done.
I took a deep breath and laid the coin on the palm of my left hand and then ran my right palm over it. The first time, the coin stayed there, but on the second try I managed to ‘palm’ the coin away so my left hand was empty. I looked up at the boys for approval. Charlie smiled, but Lionel’s face grew dark. He scowled at Charlie.
‘You’ve showed her that before, haven’t you? You two are trying to make me feel stupid. I don’t have to stand for that.’ He turned away from us both and stomped into the darkness of the hotel foyer.
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ said Charlie.
‘You can hardly say that’s my fault!’ I said, handing back the coin.
‘Don’t be cross, Poesy. Lionel was right. Girls aren’t supposed to learn magic. It’s against the magicians’ code.’
He looked both serious and stupid in equal measure. I couldn’t help but laugh. Suddenly, he laughed too. ‘That’s the last time I let you close to me when I’m doing a trick.’ Then he reached up behind my ear, and when he drew his hand away he was holding a coin.
‘That was clever,’ I said.
‘I’ve been practising. Mr Arthur said that if I get really good, maybe I can do a magic act next time we stage a revue.’
‘Tilly says we’ll never do a revue again. Not after what happened in Surabaya.’
Charlie shrugged. He was funny like that. He never liked to talk about anything that he thought was gossip or start an argument, not even with Lionel. Not like the Kreutz brothers. Mr Arthur was always having to pull Freddie off Max or Max off Freddie. They were like two bears that set upon each other without the least provocation.
As we waited outside the hotel, Max and Freddie began to shove each other restlessly. The little girls began to whine. Why weren’t we allowed inside?
Mr Arthur strode out onto the verandah looking haggard and called all the grown-ups into the hotel foyer. A few minutes later, Miss Thrupp scurried out and began flapping her arms, shrilly rounding up children and making us march into the street. Everybody grumbled but Miss Thrupp wouldn’t say why we had to leave in such a hurry. She wouldn’t even let us wait for the carriages to return.
The few bags we’d brought with us from the steamer were loaded onto another cart and we were all forced to walk back along the dusty roadways to the waterside again, as if there wasn’t even time to wait for carriages. As we tramped past the fish markets towards the dock, Tilly sidled up to me and grabbed my arm.
‘Did you hear?’ she asked. ‘Cholera – it’s been through the hotel and they’re not letting anyone stay ashore.’
The stink of the fish market suddenly seemed horribly rank. ‘Cholera?’ My stomach lurched and my limbs felt weak. ‘Why didn’t Mr Shrouts warn us?’
‘He sailed straight to Singapore – that’s what advance agents do. They travel ahead of us for most of the tour.’
She spoke in such a snappy tone that I lowered my head and decided to keep my thoughts to myself.
‘I don’t want to go ashore in Batavia ever, ever again,’ she said. ‘I can’t wait until Singapore. At least it’s a British colony. Really, the Dutch aren’t like us. They simply aren’t like us at all.’
I couldn’t see that the Dutch were very different or what that had to do with cholera, but it wasn’t worth saying that out loud with Tilly in such a huffy-puffy mood.
We scurried towards the sampan as quickly as we could, jostling to get on board. Mr Arthur stood by the ramp and handed the girls onto the old boat one by one. When Ruby Kelly nearly lost her balance, he caught her in his arms and lifted her gently on board. She blushed a little but she didn’t thank him.
‘Did you see that?’ whispered Tilly, more to Valentine than to me. ‘Did you see how Mr Arthur was with Ruby? Perhaps Ruby’s given him ideas.’
‘Tilly!’ I said. ‘How dare you talk like that about Mr Arthur!’
Then she laughed, long and loud. She took my hand and kissed the back of it, as if to placate me. ‘Mercy, Poesy Swift. That wasn’t meant for you. You have such jug-ears! But why shouldn’t he like Ruby? He was jealous when she was flirting with those sailors. That’s why he boxed her ears.’
‘No, that’s not right. It was because she hurt Miss Thrupp.’
‘Mr Arthur isn’t what he seems, Poesy. He’s a married man. They say he has two children. Somewhere. But he gives all the girls ideas. Even I used to fancy him once, when I first joined up.’
‘He doesn’t give me any ideas,’ I said hotly. ‘Besides, he’s a grown-up and we’re children. He’s old! How can anyone fancy him?’
‘That doesn’t mean a thing,’ piped up Valentine. ‘Lots of girls have older men fall in love with them. Men can’t help themselves.’
She put her face close to mine, talking in a hurried, breathless way. ‘When we danced for Mr Carnegie in New York City, I think he fancied me. Mr Carnegie, that is, not Mr Arthur. But with Mr Carnegie, it was more fatherly. Perhaps he would have liked to adopt me. You know, that’s probably why he sent money for the Northcote Library. He sent flowers backstage too. They were addressed to all of us but I was the lead that night in The Girl from Paris. Of course, Mrs Essie wouldn’t let me meet him. There’s always a sign on the stage door when we’re touring, saying that no one’s to meet the children, in case they’re not proper, but sometimes when you look down into the audience, you know the gentlemen fancy you. It happens all the time.’
‘But Mr Arthur isn’t in the audience. Mr Arthur – he’s like an uncle to us, isn’t he?’
Tilly narrowed her eyes and shook her head at both of us.
‘You are adorable, Valentine, but sometimes you say the most fanciful things. While you, Poesy, you are simply a baby.’
I looked out at the smooth blue Java Sea and hoped I would never grow up.