Part 4 (2/2)

'A sea-nymph,' said Mr Burton.

'A mermaid,' said Lin Chung.

'Isn't she absolutely beautiful?' asked Ruth of Jane. Jane nodded. She would never be as interested in clothes as Phryne was, but she knew an effect when she saw it. Phryne shone with a moonlight gleam against the blue and green, like the mermaid to which Mr Lin had likened her. The paillettes glinted when she moved, as though she were shedding drops of sea-water. Ruth thought that she looked even more beautiful than the heroine of her latest romance, A Fisher Maid.

Phryne perched on a chair to allow Mr Butler to distribute gla.s.ses of his gin c.o.c.ktail, a drink which 'promotes ease and elo-quence, Miss Fisher, while avoiding any sense of excess'. Phryne had asked which ingredient took away any extravagance in the drink and he had replied with a definitively straight face, 'That would be the lemon juice, Miss Fisher.' Whereupon Phryne had given up, reflecting that every religion has its mysteries.

Jane found that by carefully aligning herself with one of Phryne's many mirrors, she could gaze on Mr Burton without seeming to stare, and was lost to fas.h.i.+on thereafter, even forgetting to drink her orange juice.

Which didn't mean that Mr Burton hadn't noticed. He felt the avid eyes and traced their source. He said, 'Miss Jane?' and she blushed.

'What would you like to ask me?' he enquired calmly. 'Don't be concerned. I am used to being an object of interest in any gathering.'

Jane gathered her courage and looked him in his highly intelligent, dispa.s.sionate eyes.

'I beg your pardon, sir,' she said. 'And I wasn't looking at you as though you were an object. But I am curious. I want to be a doctor.'

'A useful attribute for a doctor. I have achondroplasia, which is an inherited abnormality. Characteristic of this disease are the short limbs, and therefore short stature. The skull vault and clavicle, and the facial structure, are also r.e.t.a.r.ded in devel-opment, giving this dished-in appearance.' He ran a stubby, powerful finger along his tip-tilted nose. 'But I am as strong as a taller man with a much lower centre of gravity and lighter body. This gives me advantages as an acrobat: thus.'

Mr Burton, still holding his gla.s.s, executed a perfect somer-sault, coming down into his sitting position again without spilling a drop. Phryne and Ruth laughed and clapped. Jane said, 'Thank you! That was wonderful. And I promise not to ask any more questions. Really,' she protested, when Ruth nudged her.

'You are with the circus?' asked Lin Chung easily.

'Dwarf heaven, they call it. Where else can the Small People be at home in a world of giants?' Mr Burton smiled. 'There I met Miss Fisher.'

'Are you still with Farrell's?' asked Phryne. 'How I remember falling off Missy every day! My bruises had bruises.'

'But you did learn to do a handstand on a horse's back,' he reminded her. 'Also, you found out who was trying to ruin the circus and you freed an innocent woman from prison. Everyone sends their love,' went on Mr Burton, allowing Mr Butler to refill his gla.s.s. 'Farrell himself, Dulcie, Wallace and Bruno, Samson, Doreen and Alan Lee, the Catalans, the Shakespeare brothers-you recall the clowns.'

Phryne did. The memory of making love in a caravan to a man with a painted face loosened her joints, but she took a sip of her drink and a deep breath.

'And it took two days to get the tar off your skin,' put in Dot, who had noticed this reaction and was distracting attention from Phryne. 'Not to mention them awful clothes. Filthy places-beg pardon, Mr Burton.'

'No offence taken,' said Mr Burton. 'They are filthy places indeed. But fascinating. I miss them. When my thesis is accepted I will go back on the road. My caravan is presently in my college's stable, as is my gallant steed Balthasar. He is appre-ciating the rest. One of the students takes him out for a sedate ride every day in Royal Park and the university has the best gra.s.s. But to return to what I was saying, they all hope that you will come to a performance when they get back to Melbourne in December. They want to express their grat.i.tude for saving the circus.'

'Just a good investment,' said Phryne, waving her cigarette dismissively.

A lesser man might have said, 'Bah!' Mr Burton shot Phryne a sharp look and said in a voice loaded with more irony than an ore truck: 'Oh, indeed, Miss Fisher. An investment.'

Then he leapt to his feet as Eliza came in.

Phryne had warned her sister that if by any means-word, look, intonation, drawn breath, squint, raised eyebrow or avoidance of gaze-she conveyed any disapproval of Mr Burton she, Phryne, would give her sister, Eliza, a clip over the ear which would take a week to stop ringing, and referred to their mutual childhood for proof of her competence in ear-clipping. Eliza, who had seemed subdued during this speech, had agreed rather listlessly to be good.

Eliza wore a c.o.c.ktail dress in a drab shade of brown and a bunch of silk pansies on a headband, and she carried a bound book. She had dragged her hair back into an unbecoming bun and walked as though her feet hurt, which indeed they might, due to her refusal to wear sensible shoes. She allowed Mr Burton to kiss her hand without a blink, smiled at the company, and took her seat next to the girls. She accepted a c.o.c.ktail from Mr Butler, gulped it down, and accepted a refill which also vanished with disconcerting speed.

'We were talking about the circus, Miss Eliza,' said Mr Burton.

'Do you work in a circus, Mr Burton?' asked Eliza. Even her voice had lost its 'haw-haw' edge. Phryne thought her greatly improved. 'I thought that my sister said that you were a scholar.'

'One can be both, Miss Eliza. I am completing my doctorate of philosophy at present, studying the literary depic-tions as opposed to the real social conditions among the poor.'

'I don't quite follow,' confessed Eliza. Neither did Phryne. Lin Chung shook his head. Both young women looked blank. Mr Burton explained.

'Well, for instance, if the ladies will forgive my breach of taste, authors who write about prost.i.tutes always follow d.i.c.kens' lead in saying that they come to bad ends, suicide and so on-you will remember Little Em'ly and her cry of ”Oh, the river!” Admittedly d.i.c.kens saved Little Em'ly's life and sent her to Australia, a favourite literary device for removing inconvenient members of the cast to a place where No One Will Know.'

'Still is,' put in Eliza unexpectedly, starting Phryne on quite a novel train of thought. But Eliza had always been the good daughter, she told herself. Stayed in the manor and did the flowers. Went to the hunt b.a.l.l.s. Poured tea for the county. Had memorised Debrett.

'Indeed,' agreed Mr Burton. 'Whereas most prost.i.tutes stop being prost.i.tutes when they have, for instance, paid off their debts, saved enough to open a business, accepted a proposal of marriage, got diseased, educated their children, divorced their husband, inherited money or decided to move to another city and get a straight job. Prost.i.tutes do not kill themselves at a greater rate than the general population. But what is even more curious is, from d.i.c.kens onwards, the authors know that they are not depicting the truth. If they have done any research at all, actually talked to any of these women, they know that they are just people, and have all the varied motives which people have.'

'Then why doesn't someone write a realistic book?' asked Phryne.

'Because no publisher would publish it,' said Mr Burton.

'You are right,' said Eliza, gulping down her third c.o.c.ktail. Phryne glanced at Mr Butler, who made an almost impercep-tible movement which might have been a nod. The next c.o.c.ktail for Eliza would be plain orange and bitters. 'Look at Beatrice and Sydney Webb. They wrote the truth about the conditions of the working poor in London and they had to establish their own publis.h.i.+ng house to get it released. None of the nice people who owned and rented out those dreadful buildings, running with rats, wanted to know what state they were in.'

'And that's regrettable but not unexpected,' said Phryne.

Eliza leaned forward in her chair and said earnestly, 'I've seen them, Phryne! Terrible. Pigs wouldn't live in them. Rats and . . . er . . . bugs. So filthy that no scrubbing could ever clean them.'

'And you have seen them?' asked Phryne, with a delicate hint of disbelief. She wanted this new Eliza to keep talking. Eliza flushed a little.

'I have! I went with Ally, Alice, I mean Lady Alice Har-borough, we...I mean, she was starting a housing mission in the East End. Those houses were a disgrace. Even the ones owned by the church, Phryne!'

'What's a housing mission, Miss Eliza?' asked Ruth. She knew all about houses which could not be made clean by scrubbing. She had spent her childhood scrubbing them.

'One buys a house,' said Miss Eliza. 'One of the awful ones, to start with, because they're cheap. Then one hires otherwise unemployed men to clean, replaster, sewer, plumb, wire for electricity, then paint and tile and so on. There are a thousand details and they have to be right. The people are people, not animals. They like nice things. Everyone likes nice things, don't they?' Everyone nodded. They liked nice things, that was agreed.

Eliza had entirely shed her affected accent and in her voice one could hear a faint echo of Collingwood and Richmond. Phryne found this consoling. Perhaps Beth had not gone forever.

Eliza continued: 'Then one rents the rooms to people. They pay less than a commercial rent but they agree to keep the place clean and in repair-and they do, they really do.'

'Of course they do,' said Ruth. 'If they went from one of those bone-dirty houses to a nice clean house, then they'd keep it clean. It's not hard to keep new houses clean. But not old ones, eh, Jane?'

'No.' Jane looked down at her hands as if momentarily surprised to find them clean and soft, with neat short nails, instead of the grimy claws they had been. 'Not even possible, I think. No matter how much you scrub.'

Mr Burton seemed enlightened and was about to comment when Phryne signalled him to remain silent.

'So one repairs one house,' commented Phryne. 'There is a lot of the East End, Eliza, and all of it frightful.'

'One has to start somewhere,' retorted Eliza. 'With the rents from the first house one buys a second, and so on. Ally- Lady Harborough has seven houses now, a whole street. It was the only street which didn't get typhoid last year.'

'And you work with this charitable lady?' said Mr Burton. 'That is good of you.'

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