2

The moment they walked through the doors to the beer garden, Hilda regretted her promise. The large room was crowded and Bonny, Dorondera and Jurano attracted immediate attention. The only other performers in the space were the French acrobats, who were gathered in a corner, their backs to the Germans, smoke rising above their heads. They had removed the wings from their backs and wore them now folded and slung over their shoulders like empty white satchels.

A mesh of hands reached immediately for Bonny and Jurano, smearing the ochre markings and turning their chests white.

‘Give the performers some space, please,’ Louis said.

Jurano smiled only when a jolly-looking German bought him a beer from the roaming waiter.

A man wearing a top hat reached for Bonny’s boomerang, unhooking it from his waistband.

‘How throw? Show?’ the man asked.

Bonny declined the beer being offered to him and reclaimed his bar’gan. He demonstrated to the man in the top hat the angle needed to cast the hunting tool, clearing a space in the crowd with the sweeping action. Jurano, meanwhile, drank liberally from his stein and took another offered drink while Louis’s back was turned. Holding the stein in the air, Jurano began to dance, a fusion of his own style and a comic European one. Hilda laughed and turned to Dorondera, whose attention was on a woman who was standing behind Bonny and reaching for his hair.

‘What is she doing?’ Dorondera asked in Badtjala.

Before Hilda could put a stop to it, the woman had used a small pair of nail scissors to take an inch-long lock of Bonny’s hair.

‘Don’t tell him,’ Hilda replied.

A dark-haired, well-built man interrupted and bowed to Hilda and Dorondera. He introduced himself in halting German.

‘My name is Eric Perouse,’ he said, looking at Dorondera, then at Hilda. ‘From Paris.’ He had kind eyes, the same startling blue as the sailor Johann’s. ‘I enjoyed your performance,’ he told Dorondera, waving his hand in the air and moving his body to emulate her dance. ‘It was very beautiful. And the singing. Very, very beautiful.’

‘Danke,’ Dorondera answered with a small chuckle.

He appeared surprised and pleased. ‘You speak German?’

‘A little.’

‘But not French?’ he asked. He appeared transfixed.

‘No, she does not speak French,’ Hilda said.

‘Pity.’ He walked the few paces to the band and, after a brief discussion, returned with a violin. ‘I am a musician myself,’ he said, and, looking into Dorondera’s eyes, began to play.

Hilda, taken in by the man and his musical ability, was shocked and ashamed to see Jurano mocking the Frenchman behind his back. The crowd laughed as Jurano’s arm soared quickly left and right, and his eyes, from time to time, closed. The Frenchman, seeing the double act, only smiled, which made Hilda admire him even more. When the waiter passed again, Jurano held out several coins from his pocket.

‘A token from Carl Hagenbeck’s Thierpark!’ the waiter guffawed, holding up the token Jurano had tried to pay him with. ‘I’m sorry, but this is not money.’ The waiter laughed again and passed around the trinket.

Jurano reclaimed the token and inspected it before angrily throwing it on the ground, an act that only caused the gathered crowd to laugh harder. As much as Jurano liked to joke, he loathed being ridiculed. Hilda scanned the room for Bonny but could not see him. Her father was talking to a wealthy-looking German couple. Why was he not taking care of his guests?

The Frenchman paid the waiter for two flutes of champagne and handed them to Dorondera and Hilda. Hilda drank hers quickly, aware her father would disapprove, and turned a blind eye when Dorondera did the same.

The band switched to a waltz. To Hilda’s surprise, Monsieur Perouse held out his arm to Dorondera, easing the wallaby cape from her shoulders and passing it to Hilda, along with Dorondera’s empty champagne flute. Hilda tried to be pleased for her friend, rather than jealous. She remembered teaching Dorondera to waltz on the beaches of K’gari, humming the tunes as they went. Perhaps, Hilda considered, she had always known this moment would arrive.

A smile broke on Dorondera’s face and, as angry as Hilda was over the treatment of Krao, and Jurano having been paid in tokens, Dorondera’s joy was infectious. Christel would have been happy to see it.

Hilda glanced across the room to her father, who was still in conversation with the German couple. When she looked back, the Frenchman’s arm was about Dorondera’s waist and he was leading her in the dance. The audience stepped back to allow the unlikely pair space, the women tittering behind gloved hands at Dorondera in her possum-skin costume and the Frenchman in his fine suit. But Dorondera did not notice the mirth. She was returning the Frenchman’s smile and shadowed his steps with a proficiency that took their audience by surprise. The crowd’s humour quickly turned to a confused and, for some, a grudging admiration.

Hilda’s father turned towards the commotion.

‘I think that’s enough, Dorondera,’ he called in Badtjala.

But Dorondera continued to twirl and spin, defiantly laughing as she grew ever more confident in the dance to the astonishment of those looking on. Louis’s gaze fell on the two empty champagne glasses in his daughter’s hands, and he walked quickly to her, Castan suddenly at his side.

Hilda saw her father meet the Frenchman’s eye, and the performance came to an end, Monsieur Perouse reclaiming Dorondera’s cape and draping it once more around her shoulders.

‘Eric Perouse,’ the Frenchman said, announcing himself to Hilda’s father. ‘Société d’Anthropologie de Paris.’

Hilda shivered. So, he was a scientist, too, she thought. She turned away from him, disappointed with herself for not better protecting Dorondera.

Finally, Hilda spotted Bonny re-entering the beer garden through the exterior doors. He was in the centre of a group of female acrobats and looked to be enjoying the attention. One of the women had her arm around his back. To Hilda’s surprise, Bonny was wearing a set of white angel wings, unfolded and ready for flight. One of the male acrobats had also donned wings, and Hilda observed one of the troupe’s female performers applying bright lipstick to him. Just feet away, the reporter from the newspaper was furiously scribbling notes.