The Little Shadows

The Wings

On the off-days in late December the girls had Christmas party engagements. They wore their tartan scarves and sang sentimental songs to please the crowds. Every ten dollars helped get them to Winnipeg; and it was instructive to see the telephone operator girls at their Christmas tea: pinched faces, higgledy-piggledy teeth, twisted stockings and thick eyebrows. Aurora thought how easily she herself might have been one of them, watching the performers with longing.

They’d worked out a dance number for a small area, pretty and flashy, and Mama (who always accompanied them to private parties, clad in forbidding black with an air of terrifying respectability) gave them notes afterwards: ‘Sloppy on the pirouettes, Bella, snap round. And make sure there’s something going on with your eyes, all of you. Dead-face, or thinking about your supper?’

Their last night at the Regina Theatre was December twenty-seventh, the evening before they were to leave for Winnipeg at last. Christmas revelries were over, and another blinding snowstorm made it a small house, half the seats empty. But it was payday, and on receipt of their buff envelopes, the artistes were cheerful. Verrall and East ran through jokes as they dressed, Verrall dabbing on the white makeup that let him appear more of a blister than he was.

The girls stood close together in the dark, waiting for the Scintillating Songsters to be through: Bella and Clover be-winged, Aurora wrapped in her silk kimono. The various silks clung to each other and to the girls’ limbs, giving off sparks in the darkness when they shifted. ‘Like the moth-girls in their cocoons,’ Bella whispered to Aurora, ‘all wrapped and furled inside themselves.’

The Songsters creaked through I Don’t Want To Play in Your Yard with unbearable archness, and finally ground to a halt and went off in applause so sparse it was almost silence. The lights went to black, the boy changed the placard to THE BUTTERFLY GIRLS, and the stagehand closest to them waved Bella and Clover on.

As he did so, his cigar stub, not quite out, caught on the edge of Bella’s wing.

They swept and swooped as Spring Song started, and the fanning motion of the wings fanned the little spark too, which almost wafted off on a burned scrap of silk, but then clung, the electricity of the air keeping it hooked.

The lower-trailing wing caught with a tiny whoosh. Bella spun, as the dance required, and the wings spun with her, and then both wings were burning.

She turned her head in a sudden animal panic, fumbling for the straps that held them on, tied tight round behind so that they would not fall off. She shrieked a tiny cry to Clover, not needed—Clover had seen and was chasing her, trying to close her arms around Bella’s wings to damp them down.

Then Clover’s wings caught, and the two girls stood for a moment on the spot-lit stage, stock-still, burning.

The stagehand had been watching his ropes but turned to see the flames, and the audience rose as one person, their shrieks louder than Bella’s.

Aurora grabbed the fire bucket, but it was only sand, and she did not know what to do with it. When she tried to bat at the fiery wings her kimono sleeves shrivelled up in a smoking ruin that she tore off and stamped into smoke before running back to help—but it was Verrall, running down to the stage, who did the only thing possible. In the clanking rush of the fire-curtain’s descent he grabbed the girls’ arms and dashed them backstage to the alley door—dislocating his shoulder as he shoved it open—and threw them out and down the steps into the snow, landing all in a squalling heap, Verrall shouting with pain, flaring bits of silk drifting like ash.

Snow fell blindingly around them, and the girls lay looking up almost peacefully into a whirl of whiteness, separate dots spinning down, small hisses as the separate flames went out.





9.

In One, in Two, in Three




JANUARY-MAY 1915

The Walker, Winnipeg

The Orpheum, Winnipeg

The Pantages, Winnipeg

Personal advice: let your conduct at all times be that of ladies and gentlemen. This same suggestion holds good while you are around the theatre, as the manager knows everything that goes on in the back of the curtain, even if he never comes back there.

FREDERICK LADELLE, HOW TO ENTER VAUDEVILLE





Bella leaned on the train window to cool her forehead. Burnblisters from where she’d slashed at the flames pained her right hand and arm, and she was edgy and sore with her monthly visitor as well. She hated that—something she’d wanted so badly to come; wasn’t that just a little sermon for you. Nothing was wrong, only that she was tired of being nervous. Pressed against the window-ledge, she ground her fist into her eye socket. Nothing was wrong; the theatre had not burned.

Clover sat upright, as still as the train allowed, a cold statue of herself to take away the heat of the fire from her hands, puffed and seeping. Perhaps—she did not know, after all—perhaps Victor was the kind of person who hated a scar.

Aurora had closed her eyes, determined to sleep. She ached everywhere, and the bandages on her wrists chafed. Once they got to Winnipeg she would have to pull herself up into liveliness, to charm Mr. Walker into taking them without their props. Those beautiful wings, gone. They still had their white dresses and tartan sashes. They had Whispering Hope, Buffalo Gals, Danny Boy—what they’d started with, and what Gentry had given them. Yes, but they were much better now than they had once been. Almost singers. She breathed slowly and refused to worry. She thought of Jimmy, but stopped that as well. Her stomach was tight enough.

Beside her, Flora made lists of what must be done. Kimono silk found, purchased, painted, made up; or ought they to cross Poor Butterfly off? Her pencil hesitated. A smoky smell clung to their hands and clothes, unless that was an illusion. She had forgotten to ask Aurora what payment they would be getting at the Walker. Leaving her lists, she stared out at the snowfields going by, going by. Winter again, always winter on tour. Seeing the fields as she left Madison; seeing Paddockwood in winter, seeing Arthur lying face down, a black suit flung on the snow.


Real Snap, Real Vim

‘The Butterfly number was piquant, but we felt it had staled a little,’ Aurora told C.P. Walker with languid confidence, sitting in his spacious, high-ceilinged office—the first elegant manager’s office they’d seen. He pressed a box of bonbons on her, and when she refused, on Bella, who took two.

Mama leaned in and took a chocolate in dainty black-gloved fingers. ‘My dear girls are not a variety act, after all.’

Aurora gave Walker a modestly glowing look, inviting him into her confidence. ‘Gentry Fox, who has been so kind to us, has given me first trial of a number of new songs, which we have paired with old favourites to present a simple, evocative medley with an elegantly distinguished air.’

She wondered if she’d gone too far there.

But Mr. Walker smoothed his foxtail moustache and bowed, according them carefully gauged status: recognized artistes, strong pedigree, some standing on the circuit and the admiration of their peers. No fame, but perfectly respectable openers for the Walker Theatre.

‘Elegantly simple,’ he said. ‘I like the sound of that. I tell my artistes, the single most important job is to know your material. Pick songs to show yourself to best advantage, and you’re halfway there. The rest is smoke and mirrors—not actual smoke! No, no, our theatre, the finest playhouse in the Dominion, is absolutely fireproof.’ Perhaps he could smell the smoke on them.

They were to start as openers, in one, the next day.

‘I think you’ll agree, ladies, that the bill goes with a real snap and real vim,’ Walker said. ‘You’re a harmonious and delightful sort of an act, then we’ve got Pantalon & Pantalette, the Singing Comedics; Bee Ho Gray, the Lasso Man—his horse is a wonder and his wife’s a daisy too. The DeWolf Girls, they’re a classy Grecian statue act—tasteful, you know. Then intermission, then the play (except that’s done now); Nutt & Nuttier get off a lot of stuff that is mighty good—nothing to touch East & Verrall, though, who we have booked for a two-week stand but not till Feb-u-ary.’ He waved his hand at a large and gorgeously coloured poster, and they saw that the bill was filled out by a knife-throwing Spanish dancer, a French poodle act, and the headliner Rouclere, with Mildredism (‘thought-reading with no words passed!’).

‘Very nice, to be treated like artistes,’ Mama whispered to Aurora, as Walker escorted them to his office door. He patted Bella absentmindedly on her swishing rump as she went by—but impressed by his office and his chocolates, she only gave him a reproachful look.

‘Doors open at seven,’ he said genially. ‘Trouble begins at eight!’

They laughed as required and went through to the outer office. Two typists clacked in corners and a grey-crowned matron sat moored at Walker’s door like a battleship ready to repel all comers, her desk fenced round.

The matron spoke through her nose about their particulars sheet, press clippings, photographs ‘to be supplied in a timely fashion’—forestalled by Aurora producing these from her music case—and the vital provision of a telephone number as soon as that could be obtained from their lodgings. Aurora steeled herself to deal with this new hurdle.

But Jimmy Battle ran into the office, jumping the fence. Their friend. In a glow of high spirits he clasped each hand in turn, and told ‘dear Dot’ to cut the cackle. ‘They’re at Sadie Jewett’s, same as me, you’ve got the number in your wonderful files!’

He opened the gate and waved them out and down the stairs. They obeyed, tying scarves and pulling on gloves, laughing at the bustle he was producing and very happy to see him—lean and black-clad as usual, legs like long matchsticks, and always debonair.

At the street door Aurora began a proper thank-you, but he would not let her speak. ‘I’m on in two hours, replacing a man with the DeWolf Girls—we’ve got to get you settled in and figure a few things out.’ As they emerged from the stage door he bundled them straight into a cab, flipped a coin to the driver and called out the address. ‘Five in a hansom’s a tight fit, but I promise it’s only a few blocks,’ Jimmy said. ‘Which one’s the smallest: you could sit on my lap, Bella, if you’d like?’

Bella laughed and said no, thank you very much, she was quite well placed.

‘Break my heart,’ he said, making a very sad face for an instant. ‘Now, dear Mrs. Avery, are you well? I heard sad news of our poor old Sybil …’

After a few minutes comforting Mama, they pulled up in front of a dark brick house with a slim veranda. Mrs. Jewett was in the hall, a talkative lady with a false bang of yellow curls. Her boy took charge of the baggage, and Mrs. Jewett ushered Mama and the younger girls upstairs to see the two rooms she had set aside.

Aurora was left behind with Jimmy in the parlour-hall. She turned to the pier-glass, but did not lift her hands to take off her hat. Hidden by its brim she looked at him: unscathed. A little smoother, but the same. She was different now.

‘I’ve had some time on my hands,’ he said. He leaned on the tall newel post, arms gently crossed, one foot angled over the other in a graceful, athletic stance. Her blood rose in her throat. He’d been kind even long ago, when he danced to help her audition at the Empress—it was because of him that they had been hired, then and now.

He caught her eye in the long glass, and said, as if it didn’t matter a whit, ‘Working on a song-and-dance number—I need a partner. Might you be persuaded to join me?’

Aurora looked at him, charged with energy, bright in this stifling wood-panelled hall. An oblique bevel of the mirror seared his cheek with a scar of sun. She felt she knew him very well, and yet they’d only spent a few moments alone in these three years.

‘A week to rehearse, two weeks’ run. Walker will pay well for the number,’ he said, as if she needed convincing. He joined her in the pier-glass. The two of them side by side, a pleasing combination of light and dark, well-matched as to size and build. ‘Two hundred a week, he promised, if it looks good when we get it sorted out,’ he said. ‘Strong placement, too: second-to-last in the first half.’

‘What of Miss Masefield?’ The play was off, Walker had said.

‘She had an opportunity,’ Jimmy said, smiling at Aurora with warm understanding. ‘New York, a revival of The Degenerates, in which she had such great success some years ago. The cast was already filled, she had no need of another young man. And so!’

Aurora wished the story were otherwise, that he’d had the resolution to quit Miss Masefield’s company. But after all, she had not quit Mayhew. She raised her arms to unpin her hat, her face bent away. The velvet cuff of her walking-suit fell back, revealing a bandage on one wrist. The silver bracelet she had worn for some time now caught on the gauze.

Jimmy put out a hand to touch the bracelet, then the bandage. ‘What’s this?’

‘Oh!’ She tucked her hands back into the cuffs. ‘Nothing! A small fire, it was nothing. Only it burnt our props, so we are having to change our act.’

‘Poor hand,’ he said. He pulled her wrist gently out into the open, and kissed above the burn. ‘Will you find time to dance with me, though?’

‘I think so—but what about us?’ Us always meaning the three of them, she and her sisters.

Jimmy laughed. ‘Double acts come and go, sister acts are more rare. Never fear, Walker wants the Belle Auroras too. He’s a man of vision, pays top dollar for good openers.’

Remembering, she pulled the grouch-bag out of her bodice and ripped the loose stitching from its inner pocket. ‘Thank you for the loan,’ she said. Forty-seven dollars; she counted them into his hand. Then she said, ‘Now that we are quits, we can be partners.’


Brittle

East and Verrall, arriving on a later train, paid a call on the girls that evening. Verrall’s arm was in a sling, but he swore he only wore it as a ploy for pity, to save joining up. East brought a white paper bag of peanut brittle, as well as the rundown on who all was in town, or had enlisted: the cream of vaudeville was rising in Winnipeg, three of its theatres counting as minor big-time—firststringers abounded, with plenty of their old friends to round out the bills. Among East’s other news: the Elocutionist, Maurice Kavanagh, was starring in a play at the Pantages.

‘Kavanagh’s a furniture actor,’ East told them disgustedly. ‘Acquits himself well enough sitting down, but the moment he stands up, he’s a joke. Grabs the back of chairs, leans against the tables—rested against a wall last week and the flat collapsed. And he’s got his lines written all over. Nice bit of business, picks up the picture of his dear wife—except when you look close, you see he’s pasted his sides on it. Soused buffoon.’

‘No, East,’ Verrall objected. ‘Nobody would know. He speaks as smooth as velvet and he’s got grace, you’ve got to give him that.’

Bella glanced across to see how Aurora took this news of Kavanagh’s decline. Not well—a pity to still be overset by an old drunk not treating her with respect years ago, Bella thought. Looking suddenly quite sick, Aurora dashed out of the parlour.

‘Bit queasy these days, ain’t she?’ East asked Bella, in an interested way.

‘She’s always like that,’ Bella said, around a mouthful of brittle. East took the bag from her.

‘It’s Julius that has me worried,’ Verrall said. ‘Since—you know—since then, he doesn’t look after himself as he ought.’

‘He told me he’d found the cure for a hangover: continuous drunkenness. I thought that was rather good,’ East said. ‘Continuous vaudeville used to do the same for me.’

Mama had drawn as close to the fire as the chair would fit. ‘Sybil was my youth brought back,’ she said, into a little silence. ‘She always thought I was judging her, but I promise you, I was not.’

‘No, no, Mama,’ Clover said. ‘We know that.’

‘A good wife to Julius, a better wife than many.’ She fell silent again, and in a little while East and Verrall took their leave, recalling that orchestra rehearsal would come early next morning.

Bella and Clover walked Mama up to their chamber, finding Aurora already asleep there in the alcove bed. They helped Mama undress, and put her to bed. Bella crawled in beside her to keep her warm. She smoothed Mama’s hair with a gentle hand, watching the brown curls spring back, silver threads amongst the brown. Perhaps the man who wrote that song had been patting his mother’s hair, soothing her after some sad trial.

In the darkened room she listened to Clover moving about, tidying their things and putting on her own nightdress, linens rustling as she climbed in with Aurora in the alcove bed; then silence fell complete. This was a cozy room. Winnipeg was the best city they’d been so far. If only their act went well tomorrow, Bella thought. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and begged the world, the universe, and the Almighty to let them make a great thing of it here, to find success.


Still Mrs. Mayhew

In the morning darkness, Aurora and Mama debated which numbers, in what order, and what the girls should wear. On the ‘something glad/something sad’ principle that even the dreadful Cherry Sisters obeyed, they would begin with Buffalo Gals, a rampageous starter that would do nicely to cover latecomers and grab the attention of the house; then the fragrant Last Rose of Summer; and end with Danny Boy. Clover took Bella through the harmony again, correcting her impatiently, while Mama ran the iron through Aurora’s hair—and then the cab was at the door.

Their dressing room was shared with the two DeWolf showgirls, massive placid beauties who stood still and revolved on platforms; their ponies (smaller girls, who danced) made friendly greetings. The room was well mirrored, only two flights up; the hanging-space allotted for their costumes was if anything too much. Mama set out their things while they ran down for orchestra call. No hitches, in this smooth-running theatre. The fly-ropes ran like clockwork, the stage was clean as a whistle. The vast house, seating nearly two thousand, was a palace of white and cream and gilt. It was the most opulent theatre they’d yet played, so Aurora was interested to notice how soon it became like every other theatre: ordinary, home. Under their leader, Bert Pike, the orchestra boys were a cheerful bunch, famous for a long-continuing double-pinochle game. Even the backstage was warm, important in frigid January, and biscuits and tea were served behind the curtain before the matinee, a ceremony they hadn’t seen since the Empress.

Walker strolled about the stage himself, and bowed kindly to Mama. ‘Any word of Mayhew, by the by?’ he asked Aurora.

She looked up at him. ‘Would it matter, sir?’

‘Ha! Not to me, my dear,’ he said. ‘But it might to you.’

‘My understanding is that he has gone south, and will not be entering the Dominion again,’ she said, remaining very cool.

‘He mentioned an interest in Spokane,’ Walker continued, not pressing exactly.

‘I believe he did. But his affairs were considerably disordered after the ruin of the Muse, and I am not certain—’ She broke off, and then laughed. ‘To be candid, Mr. Walker, he found himself embarrassed before his creditors, and I doubt we’ll ever hear from him again.’

He took her elbow and said, ‘Well, well—you do right by the Walker, and I’ll do right by you, Miss Avery.’

‘Still Mrs. Mayhew, still,’ Mama corrected him. ‘Divorce being repugnant, and also, without Mr. Mayhew’s assistance, impossible.’

‘I intended only to use your daughter’s professional name, which I trust she has retained,’ Walker said smoothly.

Mrs. Walker had come down to greet the artistes as well, handsomely turned out in a brown walking dress with red velvet reverses; Walker introduced her to the girls and Mama.

‘No need, I’ve known Flora these twenty years, my dear,’ she said, extending her hand. ‘I’m Hattie Anderson that was,’ she said. ‘I remember you from the Hey-Go-Mad Girls—you were the loveliest thing I’d ever seen, all pale blue and cream lace.’

Mama pinked with the pleasure of being remembered, and although unable to repay the compliment, thanked Mrs. Walker with a nostalgic and flourishing curtsy.


Black-and-White Puzzle

The street in front of the theatre was crowded with carriages and cars by evening. Dressed for the first number, Clover wrapped herself in her shawl and ran outside for a breath of cold air. She heard the jingle of sleigh bells even through the jostling, jockeying street noise, and watched a red cariole sleigh drive up, the coachman bulbous in buffalo on the high front seat. He handed his passengers out onto the marble walk in front of the theatre and helped them slip out of their own buffalo robes; jewellery glittered on the ladies as they emerged from the dull brown cocoons.

For a faint instant Clover missed her butterfly wings. She had felt very graceful in those wings. Now she was a dull brown ball of misery. But must shake that off, for the performance. She made her way down under the house and up to the dressing rooms, with a brief detour to the convenience—where she discovered a streak of pink on her underclothing and let out a soft gasp of relief, staring past her knees to the solved black-and-white puzzle of the tiled floor.

‘Clover?’ Aurora’s voice came through the cubicle door.

‘I’m here,’ she answered, almost cheerfully.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes! Yes I am quite all right, I just—my visitor came. I will hurry.’ She ought not to have given way to the relief, but Aurora did not seem to notice.


Warmer, Sweeter

The house held the electric hum of a good night beginning. In the wings every rope was taut, all the hands alert. None of them with a cigar. As she checked herself, Aurora saw Bella checking—dear Bella, who could have been burned so badly, and was so brave about her poor arm and shoulder. But the music was changing. Aurora watched Bella gird herself to forget about fire and danger and just be joyful. Easy enough, on a night like this, the closest to big-time they’d yet worked in vaudeville—easy to be an opener. And there was the tune, and away they went.

‘A pretty little gal I chanced to meet,

Oh, she was fair to see …’

Dancing behind her, Aurora thought that Bella was fair too—conscious of the brightness that she could command, letting it beam out to all the lovely people who had come, who were as happy to see her as she was to see them. Her heart visibly overflowing from pleasure into glee, Bella danced for her sisters and joked with them and enlisted them until they all stamped the Buffalo Gals stomp, and danced by the light of the moon.

The audience turned from their coat-arranging and coiffure-touching; they ceased to chatter and kiss and whisper, turned their sunflower faces up to the girls, and let themselves be carried away by nothing complicated, nothing effortful, just the enjoyable treat of a nice girl, clowning to make them laugh.

Quick change into their white dresses, and Mama had their garlands to hand—they were ready to fly back out even before the applause had stopped from Buffalo Gals. Aurora put out her hand and gave Clover’s a clasp, wondering about her words in the convenience—she had not thought that Clover and Victor—but, no time. They danced on with the intro to The Last Rose of Summer.

Offstage right, and there was Mama waiting with Clover’s tartan sash, her fiddle, Bella’s sash—those two turned smartly and went back on—and Aurora’s sash. ‘Well done,’ Mama whispered as she slipped the sash past Aurora’s glimmering hair. ‘In very good looks tonight, my dear girl!’ She gave her a kiss and Aurora walked into the light, as the low-voiced violin began its strain.

‘Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling

From glen to glen, and down the mountainside …’

She had not seen him before, but as she reached the end of the second verse she looked straight into Jimmy Battle’s eyes, where he leaned against the arched entrance to a box. Since he was there, she sang to him, giving him a gift of fitting love, however separated by time and luck and cowardice and greed—none of that mattering.

‘And I shall hear, tho’ soft you tread above me

And all my dreams will warmer, sweeter be …’

Behind the violin she could hear Clover holding the line for her, deepening down so that she could rise, and she turned the lamp of her attention on every person in the audience, letting each of them know how she loved them, and always, always would.

The room was still for that ineffable instant before the applause began. Then the orchestra struck up the Pantalon music, and the Belle Auroras were done.

C.P. Walker visited their dressing room before the intermission, to say he’d heard open sobs from the audience during that last number, and to suggest that they might better work in two, with more room for their pretty dancing; he’d push Bee Ho Gray’s set back into three.

‘And future dates along our circuit into February or March, if your schedule will suit? I’ll have my girl draw up an extension for you to sign tomorrow,’ Walker told Aurora.

With a genial wave, he left them. Aurora smiled at his little girl, who had tagged along at his coattail and waved her hand too. Her coat and leggings were of curly Persian lamb, and she wore red boots.


If I Had You

Sufficiently energized by success, Mama roused herself from her lethargy to help with the choreography for Jimmy and Aurora’s double act.

Walker had given them a new Irving Berlin, If I Had You—a silly, inconsequential ditty, but Berlin was the best of the Tin Pan Alley men, and Walker had an ear for the populist choice. ‘Berlin’s good for the average theatre-goer, you see—not the highbrow nor the lowbrow, but that vast intermediate bunch that is the soul of our market. Not the high end, those overeducated twits, nor the low, subnormal, jazz end. His public is the real people, the people I want in my seats.’

Mama sent Aurora and Jimmy around the room a few times to see how they went together. His arm on Aurora’s back trembled, but they waltzed with discipline. Clover, watching, admired their upright carriage as well as their grace, and thought it fitting (but a little worrying, too) that neither smiled once. She wished Aurora could take it more lightly.

‘Yes,’ Mama said, stopping them. ‘I think—yes. Make it very clean, very plain. That chassez at the end, let’s develop that, but we’ll work it into a one-step. Smooth gliding, never lift your feet from the floor, Mr. Battle. And, Aurora my dear, hitch up your skirt six inches—we’ll make you go backwards the whole way round.’

The first time through Aurora nearly stumbled once or twice, but Jimmy caught her and Clover saw how quickly she adapted. He was a good leader: within a very few minutes Aurora relaxed to trust in his propelling. Mama insisted on military precision in the steps, declaring that the audience’s pleasure would be ruined if they allowed laxity to creep in. ‘Up on your toes the whole time, Aurora, to make the backwards runs work. Now we can add a little skip at the turn,’ she called. ‘A flirting flip with the outside leg, I think, but keep it fairy-dance, not folk—first you, Aurora.’

She did dance like a fairy, Clover thought. Her delicate ankles, her pointed shoe flung out like a narrow white petal, the tiniest sideways tilt of her head as they went round, as if she had heard, but was ignoring, a distant bell. Her relentless backwards motion was fascinating, too—Jimmy a sleek black ghost to guide her.

‘The arm a little higher than usual, Mr. Battle,’ Mama said. ‘Yes, that gives the whole a nice I don’t care flair that will serve very well.’ She turned back to the piano. ‘Maintaining detachment, clasp closer, I think, Mr. Battle. After the first round you should seem glued.’

They danced around the room again, and Clover was shocked to see the difference that instruction made. Jimmy’s black leg knifed right into Aurora’s white skirt; her skirt swirled and entwined him. The closeness of their lower limbs combined with the stillness of their sober faces gave the dance a curious airy thrill, compounded when they began to twirl and Aurora’s pointed foot flicked up once, around once, and on the third swoop gave a charming waggle to the side.

‘Light, light, chest up, chin up, all easy even when it’s tricky—it’s the style of it that will carry you through,’ Mama said. ‘I must say, dear Jimmy, you were born to dance with my girl. She’s a bit of thistledown, with you to lead.’

Clover could see, when Aurora bent to refasten her shoe, that she was not feeling much like thistledown—it must be exhausting, running backwards all through the dance. But she stood up again with a smile, and as they circled the room, clasped tightly together, the twirling tightened and tensed to the point where they were simply spinning, their two feet planted as one foot, as if Aurora rode on Jimmy’s feet the way they used to dance with Papa. Swing, swing, again, a full turn in only two steps, rotating around and around full-out at the climax of the dance. Mama stopped playing but continued singing the hokey little tune, and turned to give judgement.

‘Yes,’ she said at last, breaking off and clapping her hands. ‘That will be quite the thing. I expect you will kill at the Palace.’


The Walk

Mama decided Aurora must have a new frock for the number, and sent Bella and Clover haring all over Winnipeg to dressmakers for the right weight of white lawn: ‘Something with a sheen, nothing too transparent—it must float, you know, girls.’

Late at night she swept the bedroom floor carefully and cut out dress pieces. Bella hated the sound of the scissors creaking and clacking on the floorboards. Mama stitched away by day and night: peering at the sketch she had made, from time to time sighing or giving a small shriek when a sleeve turned out to be sewn in backwards. Aurora tried on the basted version, early one morning: it was a marvel. A suggestion of panniers, wide three-quarter sleeves so that it had a country air: a china shepherdess. The skirt, almost hobbled, rose quite ten inches off the ground, showing Aurora’s graceful ankles and shins and her delicate white-heeled dancing slippers. She looked like an illustration from a fairy tale, Bella thought.

At breakfast, East told Bella that the Ninepins had arrived, booked for three weeks at the Orpheum, and her pleasure at this treat made her feel kindly towards her sisters, who had recently been difficult to live with—for perfectly good reasons, she understood. Aurora was an angel of grace and beauty, well deserving of Jimmy, and Clover was her darling and would always be so, however cross she became because Victor wanted to enlist.

The war was on everyone’s lips. Another Canadian contingent of soldiers was being raised, but really Bella did not see that it concerned them. They were not citizens, they were of the vagabond company. No one would expect an artiste to enlist. East and Verrall (of complicated citizenry, but brought up in New York) were debating going to Australia for a prolonged tour they’d been offered: at least, East was debating it. Verrall waffled. Whereupon East clapped his hands and said, ‘That’s it, then—we’ll get Julius to come join us for the Pantages dates, and run down into the States. Meanwhile, let’s take Bella for a walk down to Mrs. Howell’s to see her kid.’

Bella ran for her coat; there was time before orchestra rehearsal.

The wind had died down, and she pranced along with the two men, liking herself as a bright robin between two crows. In Mrs. Howell’s parlour (an icebox, stiff with old horsehair furniture), they found Nando at the window, himself as always. Bella flew to him and jumped into his arms, as happy as she could ever remember, and they kissed—it was delightful, his nice mouth, and their two chests glued together. Mrs. Dent coughed and Nando took Bella’s hands to push her gently away, grinning as if he was the broom-boy, the day they first met. He winked at his mother, and leaned forward to kiss Bella again.

Bella gave her hand to Mrs. Dent, and asked after Joe.

‘We’re here alone,’ Myra Dent said, lips hardly parting over dark-edged teeth. Her hair had paled from ash-yellow to ash-grey. She took Bella’s offered hand, and her eyes closed.

‘Dad’s off in the sanatorium,’ Nando told them all. ‘Last month down in Philly it got to be too much, and he saw it himself, so we signed him into Clifton Springs. It’s only a couple of months.’

East sat on the sliding horsehair beside Myra Dent and patted her knee. He pulled a box of lemon drops out of his vest pocket, then stuffed them back in, perhaps feeling it was not the right moment. ‘All the better for it,’ he promised. ‘Every time I go myself I’m glad I did.’

Bella was not sure she believed that East had been to a sanatorium, but Myra let up a little on looking like Death had come for them all. Bella considered it was a very good thing for Joe Dent to dry out; perhaps then he would stop lambasting his wife so badly—Bella could not credit how women did stick with brutal husbands. Like Mrs. Black in Paddockwood, covered with bruises, but would not hear a word said about Mr. Black, even when Papa had offered to help her. ‘He is not hard on the boys’ was all she said, in a saintly way that made Bella feel uncomfortable.

Verrall had perched himself on the piano stool, more crowlike than ever. ‘But, pardon me, but—how are you to continue the Ninepins?’

‘Yes, we was fussing about that,’ Nando said. ‘I’ve had an offer to make movies, but that’s low class and the pay’s to match, no point in slumming. A solo number’s in the works, a trick wagon that breaks apart, only Dad never liked the idea. It is a bit fussy with the props.’

Nando’s mother lifted her face, as if reminded of something. She had the prettiest blue eyes. ‘Nando, I meant to say, they’ve brought the auto back.’

‘Well, that’s one good thing!’ Nando jumped up and grabbed Bella’s arm to pull her out the door, leaving his mother to East and Verrall. ‘Let me take you out for a spin—you’re warm enough dressed—we have our own flivver now, just like Misery Mayhew. I’ll deliver you to the theatre in style, I promise you.’

Bella did not know how much of Mayhew’s downfall Nando knew about. Perhaps nothing. She wondered what to tell him. He had not grown taller but had a different stride, a sort of maturity that surprised her, maybe from his father being gone. He helped her climb into the cushioned leather seat of the bright green runabout (an open car, its black cloth hood pulled up against the winter), then cranked the engine six or seven times till it caught. He jumped in beside her, worked the pedals, and they set off through the snowy streets.

‘This is very nice!’ Bella exclaimed, bouncing a bit to test the seats.

‘An ’08 Model T, a treasure, good as gold, needs a little adjustment from time to time. Just got her back from the blacksmith; he’s been fixing the bumper and a few other things …’

There was a terrible grinding noise, and the motion stopped—and something sprang hissing from the hood of the car and flew up into the windscreen. Bella screamed.

‘No, no! Nothing to fear!’ His face still blank as a doormat, Nando jumped out again and went round to fasten the hood-cap back down. The windscreen had a crack in it; Bella did not think it had been there before but did not like to point it out.

He jumped back in, released the handbrake and started the car forward again.

‘She’s a beauty, we—’ Another bang. Stuttering from the engine.

‘What a pleasant thing it is to take a drive,’ Bella said, gamely.

‘Shut up!’

‘How can you speak so unkind? I was only being pleasant!’

‘Nothing pleasant about it. Someone’s got something that matters to them and you make jokes. You’re no different from your brother-in-law.’

‘He’s not my—’ Well, she supposed he was, technically speaking. ‘At least—Sybil said he was married already anyway, and never married Aurora at all! Besides, he’s run off to the States and took everything we had, and left Aurora high and dry, so he’s no more your enemy than he is mine.’

She ought not to have said all that. Not even Nando ought to know about the other wife. And poor Sybil was dead—Nando probably had not heard that, either. A cold finger of guilt crept up her neck. She turned her head away from Nando, who appeared to have paid not the least attention to all this news, but was swearing and attempting something complicated with the levers. The car limped along another few yards and then coughed and stopped, unpleasant-smelling steam curling in a weak spiral from the engine. Or perhaps it was smoke.

They sat in the cold, the silence.

East and Verrall, walking to the Orpheum for their own rehearsal call, passed by. East called, ‘Get a horse!’ Verrall gave a frivolous waggle of his glove, still careful with his hurt shoulder.

‘Go piss yourselves,’ Nando called back.

‘Thank you very much for your considerate offer,’ Bella said. ‘I will walk with my friends. I see that they are going to be on time for their call and I fear if I stay with you, I shall not be.’

‘Stay where you are.’ Although he was as angry as she’d ever seen him, Nando’s face stayed flat and calm, as if he didn’t care at all what she did—even after kissing her, and being happy.

Bella cried, ‘Ugh!’ in exasperation and gathered her skirt, but Nando put out a quick strong hand and held her down.

Violent in her indignation, Bella stood up and smacked into the cloth hood. With a dreadful tearing noise her head went right through the roof. She pulled at her hat brim and sat down again, a ripple of hysterical giggles beginning in her chest.

She tried to keep it in. It was nothing to laugh at, the ruin of poor Nando’s car.

But then he smacked a hand on the steering wheel and started to laugh himself. ‘Your hat!’ he said. ‘I think it is worse off than the roof.’

There! She knew he was lovely. It was just his father being off in the sanatorium that made him grouch at life. Perhaps he would kiss her again.


Beneficence

After only a few days, sewing had to be interrupted on Aurora’s frock, when Mama came down with a crushing headache. For several hours she blinked and scrubbed at her blurring eyes and made herself continue, trying to finish the long seam, but at last could sew no longer. Only Clover’s gentle fingers stroking the papery eyelid skin seemed to help, and poppy syrup. Mama was loath to use laudanum because of dependence, but nothing else would do. She begged Clover to sit watch. She had a horror of being heard in a snore, which laudanum could produce, but her eyes were drooping, and her mouth too. ‘Please, please do not leave me! If I should be noisy—Aunt Queen, you know, was a trumpet-major for snoring, and I cannot bear to—But I must be still for a little.’

Clover did not, naturally, tell Mama that she snored most nights, but doled out the drops with care and sat quietly, reading papers left by other boarders in the dining room, till Mama drowsed off and ceased her murmured complaints.

War news dominated the papers. Clover studied the map of the fighting line in Flanders and made herself read every word, trying to imagine the reality behind the accounts. The Germans had declared British waters a war zone, and anyone sailing to England would be at peril. She refused to think further about that.

Mama stirred and said in a fretful voice, ‘Clover? You won’t leave me, will you?’

‘I am here, Mama. Go to sleep.’

‘Thank you, dearest—you won’t leave, though?’

Nothing could truly reassure her, not since Papa’s death. Perhaps the fear was even getting worse, lately. ‘I am here, sweetheart,’ Clover said. She opened the dividing door, so Mama could see her from the bed, and be calm.

The German dead: 971,042 ‘not counting Bavarian, Saxon, Wurtemberg and the naval lists.’ A million dead! How could that be true? But it was printed there, in the war diary. Every day as they walked to and from the theatre they saw groups of soldiers, natty in olive drab. More and more racing off to the Front.

Clover had a bump of patriotism, inherited from her father, that made her weep during the anthem. She had always mistrusted it. But it was impossible not to cheer the bravery of those honourable officers, and the Tommies slopping through muck, cocking a snook at the vile Prussians. Clover ran her eye down the columns, hurrying through accounts of sinkings and torpedoings. The first Canadian soldiers had been killed. Her cold foreboding was warmed by pride in Victor’s need to be part of this enterprise, however great the cost. He was the best of men, best in the world.