India Dark (9 page)

‘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.

18

THE INQUISITION

Poesy Swift

We were only eight hours out of Batavia on our way to Singapore when one of the crew collapsed. I was playing chasey with the little girls and we all saw him fall. He was one of the coal-shovelling men who stoked the engines. He came staggering onto the deck and collapsed right in front of us so that Daisy nearly tripped over his body. She let out a squeal. The man was black and sooty with coal dust, sweat was running in rivulets across his face and he was twitching, almost like Yada when she fitted. Dr Whitehead came running and Miss Thrupp hurried us away from the man.

Half an hour later, there was a meeting of all the passengers in the dining hall. Dr Whitehead announced that the stoker who had collapsed had died of cholera. Miss Thrupp and Eloise both gasped and clutched their babies, and all the girls began to talk at once. Mr Arthur had to stand on a chair and shout at the top of his voice to make us quiet down.

‘There is no need to panic, ladies. I presume none of you have been mingling with the crew. This man would have caught the disease because he stayed ashore in Batavia while we returned safely to the ship. But I want everyone to stay in their cabins until Dr Whitehead gives the all-clear. We will suspend rehearsals until such time as the good doctor deems it appropriate for us to mingle again.'

As soon as the announcements were made, Miss Thrupp burst into tears and ran from the dining hall. Mr Arthur turned his face up to the ceiling and sighed.

‘Eloise,' he called. ‘Please go and assist Miss Thrupp. She hasn't had much sleep, it seems.'

‘And who, may I ask, has?' said Eloise. Her baby was only a month older than Timmy Thrupp. She handed Bertie to Eliza and stood with her hands on her hips, facing Mr Arthur. ‘Can't you see, Arthur? She's frightened. But she's not the only one with a baby, or a cross to bear. You can't keep all these kiddies locked up all the way to Singapore.'

‘I don't
want
to lock them up,' he said, exasperated. ‘But they can't mingle with the crew or any other passengers. God knows what will happen if one of them comes down with cholera.'

We were given a list of instructions. We must keep ourselves clean, wash our hands, drink only tea, avoid the passengers who weren't in the troupe and keep to our cabins until we were notified by Eloise or Miss Thrupp that we could go to the dining hall.

Tilly and Valentine hooked arms and went off to their cabin in a hurry. I looked across at Lizzie and felt my heart sink. I knew she hated being shut up in the cabin. She was always going up on deck in the evening to watch the sea, or sending me out so that she could have time to herself.

In our cabin, the air was like warm soup. I pushed at the porthole, but even with the window open I felt as though I could hardly breathe. Eliza lay on her bunk with a wet flannel over her eyes.

‘Has this ever happened before, when you were touring?' I asked.

‘People have got sick before. In Manila, Tempe got some tropical sort of fever and I had to take her part. But we were never quarantined. I'm glad I'm with you, Poesy. Imagine if we were stuck in a four-berth cabin with Ruby and that lot.'

‘Don't you like Ruby?'

‘Do you?'

I didn't answer because I wasn't sure how I felt about Ruby. She was one of the prettiest girls in the troupe – no one could compete with her honey curls and dimples – and she had been kind to me. Once, during a rehearsal, she offered to help me with some dance steps. Mr Arthur had been rather wry about it, saying it would have been nice if she could show the same courtesy to her little sisters, but I'm sure she helped them too occasionally.

It wasn't Ruby that worried me but her two best friends, Tempe and Clarissa. All three girls were seventeen but Tempe was their leader. When she looked down her nose at me I felt uncomfortable inside my own skin, and even if she smiled at me, my teeth were set on edge as if I'd eaten something too sugary.

As for Clarissa, there was nothing sweet in her – she was like something sharp and pickled that left a dry, startled taste in your mouth.

It was odd that I should have been thinking about them at that moment. I was thinking about Clarissa in particular when there was a knock on the door and there she was, as if I'd conjured her.

‘Come and visit us, Poesy,' she said, taking my hand and drawing me out into the hall. ‘You must be lonely all by yourself.'

‘I'm not by myself,' I said. ‘Lizzie's here.'

Clarissa didn't say anything but she raised one eyebrow and pulled the cabin door shut, leaving Lizzie to her rest.

She kept a firm grasp of my wrist as she led me down the hall to the big cabin that the older girls shared. I tried to twist my arm free but she kept a resolute grip.

‘I'm rescuing you, you stupid creature,' she said, shoving me through the door of her cabin.

Tempe and Ruby were sitting on a bunk, looking flushed and frowsy in the equatorial air, their bare feet making a row of twenty neat pink toes. They'd stripped down to their petticoats and were taking turns fanning each other with little Chinese paper fans. Clarissa made me sit on a chair opposite them, as if I was on trial. Then she peeled off her outer clothes as well and lay down on the empty bunk above them.

‘We need two things from you, Poesy,' said Tempe. ‘We need you to tell us what Eliza and Mr. P were doing on deck together late last night. And we need you to be our agent and do a little bit of snooping for us.'