India Dark (33 page)

We were so close to victory, I couldn't bear the thought of Poesy spoiling things. For all those interminable weeks, as the weather grew hotter and hotter and Mr Ruse grew more haggard and we waited for the trial to end, we had managed to stick by our stories. If Poesy withdrew her statement now, it could make the trial drag on even longer. The Butcher would never win but we would sweat for weeks to come if she didn't keep her mouth shut.

I watched Poesy carefully as Daisy climbed into the witness box. Because Daisy had told her story so many times to so many audiences, Mr Browning had convinced the judge to allow her to give evidence before the whole court, rather than interviewing her ‘in camera'. She looked so small as the little gates swung open and a court officer lifted her into the witness box. She had to stand on a chair to be seen over the railings.

When Daisy began to speak, Poesy did the most irritating thing. She covered her ears with her hands and shut her eyes, just like a wretched monkey. She couldn't have drawn more attention to herself if she'd screamed. I grabbed her arm and twisted it hard. I wouldn't allow her to spoil our triumph.

58

THE WAY BACK

Poesy Swift

Dirty-minded. Mr Arthur said dirty-minded people had made us lie, but I was the one with the dirty mind. I wanted to forget everything and everyone. I wanted to forget myself.

I'd fled from the court with no plan, no idea of where I could hide. I ran through the flower bazaar, deeper and deeper into Blacktown.

I skidded to a stop at the entrance to an old hall that had its doors flung open wide. A dark-skinned coolie carrying a hand of bananas stared at me as he trotted along the street with his load, as if I was something peculiar. An emaciated cow stopped beside me and began feeding from a pile of old flowers. I was out of place and out of time. Inside the hall, there were great crowds of women in brightly coloured saris kneeling together and men in crisp white jackets. A ceremony was in progress and two children sat beneath a canopy while a crowd of grown-ups gathered around them. Then I saw Prem and I knew that he was the one I was looking for. I knew it must be the auspicious day of his sister's wedding. I knew why I was there. It was
kismet
– my fate. I could see Prem, standing with his parents and his sister. Or was it his wife? It made my stomach do a strange turn.

I walked up the steps of the hall and stood in the doorway, casting a white girl's shadow. A few people turned to see who was the stranger and one was Prem. I think he tried not to see me but I waved frantically. He looked alarmed and excused himself from his parents. He was dressed in a beautifully tailored Indian jacket but he had some strange ritual markings on his forehead.

‘Is something wrong, Miss?' asked Prem.

‘Don't call me, Miss. You know I'm only Poesy.'

‘Miss Poesy?' said Prem. ‘What has happened?'

‘I've run away.'

‘What have you run away from, Miss Poesy?'

‘From myself,' I said lamely.

Prem glanced over his shoulder and I knew I should let him go back to the ceremony. Growing up was too hard, too full of difficult choices, yet Prem seemed so sure of what he would do with his life. If only he would tell me what to do with mine. ‘I'm sorry, Miss Poesy, I have to go back to my family.'

I could feel Charlie next to me before I could see him. I could sense his presence.

‘Come away now, Poesy,' he said. ‘You can't expect Prem to help you.'

And of course, he was right. We weren't Lilliputians at all but wayward Gullivers, shipwrecked and dependent on the locals for our livelihood. Very soon, we would have to go home. Back to our own families.

‘You're too impulsive, Poesy,' said Charlie, as he led me through the twisting lanes, back to the red towers of the High Court. ‘You only make things worse for yourself. You can't go running around India on your own.'

I stopped in my tracks and stared at him. ‘But you do.'

‘I'm a boy. The rules are different for boys.'

‘I wish they weren't.'

‘You can't wish the world into being with your thoughts, Poesy.'

I watched the curve of his neck as he stomped off ahead of me. Since our night beneath the banyan tree, everything had changed. Charlie wasn't comfortable with me any more. We were still friends but something had shifted.

‘I can still wish we could go back to being like we used to be,' I called after him.

He came and stood in front of me, his hands in his pockets. ‘We can never go backwards, Poesy.'

Back at the Castle Hotel, before I even began to climb the stairs, I could hear the girls hooting in the dining room, celebrating the end of the trial. No one was in any doubt as to what the judge's findings would be. I stood alone in the bedroom and looked at the detritus of our weeks there.

On the table by the window were some postcards the others had been writing home.

Dearest Mother,

A few lines to tell you everything at last. I would have
told you before but feared you would fret. The company
is broken up. Mr Arthur and Eliza are getting away
to America. Percival has been a pig to us and the way
he has banged some of us about is awful. His talk was
disgusting. He mocked at us and said we couldn't get
away for two years. He behaved like a cur when the men
were about and had nothing to say. We all simply danced
for joy about it all. Mrs Quedda and Miss Thrupp the
matron are now in charge of us and they are good to us.
Don't worry. I shall be with you soon.

Your loving daughter Tilly Sweetrick

And that was the sum of it. Everything and nothing on the back of a postcard. I read Tilly's card again and again and realised she told no lies. The court had already appointed Miss Thrupp as our guardian, though no one would listen to her, and Lo was back with us again too.

I was just laying the card down when Tilly walked into the room.

‘Reading my private letters?' she said.

‘I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything.'

‘You never seem to “mean” half of what you do, Poesy. But thank goodness you're back,' she said tartly. ‘Lionel's come back too, you know. The Butcher dumped him on the steps of the hotel before speeding off to Pondicherry with Eliza in a new motor. Mr Ruse says he's going to race after him, but I can't see the point. It's not as if Eliza wants to be rescued and that's the truth!'

I flung myself down across my bed and picked up my book. I didn't want to listen to any more of Tilly's truths. Inside the cover, Yada had written a note to me and I traced her handwriting with my fingertips.
To my darling Poesy, in
the hope that after travelling the world, she will discover the
beauty of her old familiar home.

I hadn't looked at those lines for months but suddenly I understood them. I flicked through to the final pages of
Gulliver's Travels
, searching for the bit where Dr Gulliver wrote about the end of his journey:
‘Every traveller, before he were
permitted to publish his voyages, should be obliged to make
oath before the Lord High Chancellor, that all he intended to
print was absolutely true to the best of his knowledge.'

To the best of my knowledge, the truth was twisted and tangled into knots that I could never unravel. There was only one thing of which I was certain: I was ready to go home.

59

ESCAPING LILLIPUT

Poesy Swift

I didn't fit inside my skin any more. On the outside, I looked no different to the girl who had sailed away from Port Melbourne nearly a full year earlier. Inside, I was someone else.

We spent ten days in Colombo, singing the same old songs over and over again. We'd scraped together half the fare but we were running out of audiences. Finally, a steamer company offered to let us travel with them at a discount.

When the ship passed through the heads of Port Phillip Bay, orange and blue light shimmered on the surface of the water. We all crowded onto the deck and watched the city light up as darkness fell. The great ships in the dock at Port Melbourne shone like palaces as we steamed past them. We hung over the rails, each of us anxious to be the first to see a familiar face. On the pier, a crowd of dark figures massed. Some of them sat on bollards, their bodies dim outlines, hunched with the weariness of waiting.

Above the noise of escaping steam, I heard Freddie and Max shouting triumphantly from the bow, ‘We're home!' Then from the stern came the cries of Daisy and Flora and the other girls. It was as though they all cried out in one voice. ‘Oh, my darling mummy!'

The people on the pier jumped up and down, clapped their hands, waved handkerchiefs, brandished umbrellas and called out all at once so you couldn't know whose family they were from.

Our little black French steamer was only a shadow against the lights of the
Orvieto
, but the mothers reached out as if they could recognise their lost children in the darkness.

The girls at the stern broke into a chant, ‘Oh my mummy, my mummy, my mummy, my mummy,' even though Daisy and Flora barely knew their mothers, Rosie and May were orphans, and Myrtle's mother beat her at the drop of a hat. Their voices wove in and out of each other, like birds swooping across the black water.

As we drew closer, we could see policemen running along the edge of the pier to prevent the mothers from falling over the side into the murky water. The women rushed along the edge as if they couldn't endure waiting any longer.

We were close enough to make out their faces now. It was easy to pick the Kreutzes standing in a family group, their broad, blonde faces staring up at the approaching steamer. The biggest Kreutz brother put his fist in the air and yelled out ‘Oi!' and then the whole family started shouting at the boys at once and I could make out not a word of it.

‘They only charged us half third class,' yelled back Max and Freddie. ‘And yes, we've got all our clothes.'

Flora let out a squeal of excitement when she recognised her mother, who had come with a crowd of people.

‘Mummy, Mummy, this is a French steamer. I can talk French now.
Passez-moi du pain
.'

‘Where's my mummy? Oh where's my mummy?' cried Daisy in a tearful voice.

‘She's coming; she'll be here soon,' shouted a voice from the pier. Suddenly, a figure pushed to the very edge of the dock, nearly tumbling into the water. A policeman held the crazy woman back and Daisy, crying and laughing called, ‘I thought you wasn't come. Oh, my mummy. Keep near the gangplank, or I might lose you.'

I'd written to Mumma and Yada telling them not to come to meet the ship and saying that one of the adults would see me home. I didn't want my family to see me with the Lilliputians, to see what I'd become. Once, there was nothing more that I wanted to be. Now I thought of my bed in Willow Lane, of lying down to rest alone in my own room and the familiar smell of the old horsehair mattress. I imagined my old button-up boots under the bed. I would never fit into them again but I was determined to fit back into my family.

For an hour as the steamer berthed, conversations rippled up and down the pier, even when only snatches of each sentence could be heard above the noise of the port.

I found Charlie standing with Lionel on the far side, staring out to sea.

‘Is there no one waiting to meet you?' I asked.

‘Our Ma's probably down there somewhere, but Lionel doesn't want to bump into any of them reporters,' said Charlie.

‘I think I'll wait in our cabin,' said Lionel, slipping away from us and into the darkness.

Charlie and I stood in silence, our arms on the rail, listening to the cries of the other children and their mothers. Slowly, he reached out and hooked his little finger through mine.

‘Will we see each other again?' I asked.

‘Maybe. Maybe not. Me and Leo will sign up with another touring company. We won't stay in Melbourne. What about you? Williamson's juvenile company, the pantomimes, any of that lot would have you, Poesy. You're good. You know that, don't you?'

‘I'm never sure. The only thing I'm sure of is that I don't want to be an actress. I want to help people, Charlie, really help them, not just entertain them.'

Charlie laughed. ‘I don't want to entertain the punters either. I want to fox them and astonish them and bamboozle them. That's what I want.'

It was good to part with a smile, rather than tears.

As we all gathered to disembark, Tilly sidled up to me. ‘No one's come for you, have they, Poesy? Don't worry. I'll sort you out. You can ride with me and Ma back to Richmond.'

But the last thing I wanted was for Tilly to take charge of me. I could see Mrs Sweeney, talking to a reporter and pointing at Tilly as if she was the evening star, newly risen. As Tilly waved, I slipped under her arm and made my way to the edge of the Lilliputians.

Then I saw her – a little old lady crushed at the back of the press of people had tied her handkerchief to the point of her umbrella and was running along the outskirts of the crowd, flourishing a signal of welcome. It was Yada. My wonderful, crazy Yada with her love for truth and all the right thoughts.

The regular gangway was too steep for many of the mothers so a safe passageway had to be constructed while the women cried out and shouted at the steamer. As soon as the way was clear, the families charged, pushing past the policemen and reporters.

Mrs Sweeney led Tilly and some of the other girls to talk to the men from the press but I pushed through the crowd in search of Yada. I didn't want to hear what stories Tilly would tell. Nothing anyone said would ever be the whole truth.

Between the facts of the trial, there were so many things that could have been said, so many other truths. There was a baby buried in Allahabad and two little girls dancing naked on a balcony in Bombay. Lionel with his broken puppet in Surabaya, Ruby mesmerised in Calcutta and Tilly sleeping beneath a soldier's greatcoat in Meerut. Eliza weeping in her kimono on the beach at Pondicherry and Charlie and me kissing in the darkness beneath a banyan tree in Adyar. There was more than any one of us could ever tell.