The Little Shadows

The Work

Left with Madame Saborsky now that Victor was at training camp, late night was Clover’s only solitude. Lamp oil was dear, so she wrote to Aurora by moonlight at the barred window in Victor’s third-floor sitting room, once a nursery. The bed was warm, piled with feather beds and comforters, the linens heavy and smooth. Madame Saborsky had fine taste in fabrics, and wore gorgeous embroidered velvet drapery on her person too. The plank floor was bare and the damp could not be beaten back by the stingy supply of coals for the tiny fireplace, but it was quiet. Down in the cellar Madame would be sorting her hoard of marmalade and tinned beef, her treasure-store against the starvation she expected inevitably to follow war. Small stone crocks of goose-grease—which Madame used as face cream—lined up like soldiers.

It seemed disloyal to send her sisters a full portrait of Madame. Instead Clover wrote of Galichen. Even in vaude she had never met such a person.

A head bald as an egg, a pair of gimlet eyes—one hugely magnified by a thick monocle. He stares into one’s soul with that one moon eye. I creep about in terror, hiding in the skirts of Victor’s mother. Gali’s people put me to work washing stairs; but everyone about the place scrubs floors all the time. The one to pity is M. le Comte Filouski, who is detailed to Galichen’s own bathroom. I have never seen it, thank God, but the legends are horrific. ‘At times I have to use a ladder to clean the walls,’ he is supposed to have said. But I see how people are swept under Gali’s sway. He puts them through The Work in order to clean their spiritual houses, their soul’s rooms; and they say they are better for it.

Victor said I ought to call his mother Belle-Mère, but it sounds fake-French, like Les Très Belles: I call her Madame. She is unsteady in her spirits and keeps two or three of everything—the house is crammed with things she has collected. Her face puckers under a head of flat black hair, which she dyes herself with some walnut-juice concoction. I miss Mama. Is she writing on her slate yet? Please give her a tender kiss from me, and forward the enclosed note (which of course you may read!) to Bella.

To Bella, she wrote:

There is a variety theatre not far from here, the Gate. I watched the show with Victor before he left—it is vulgar but very funny. They don’t need any singers thank you very much no thank you, especially not ones with colonial accents, but I will keep trying to find some work. I hope your new car is exploding explosively and that you and Nando are headed straight for the Palace. A-oooga!

Love love

Your Clover


Black Thread

The strings on the back of Aurora’s neck tensed painfully when she sewed. But in this domestic life, she knew, it must be done. One summer evening, she went up to Mabel’s room to ask for black darning thread, and found Mabel sorting through a box of letters. On the uncluttered dressing table stood a photo of her Captain Graham, two ivory-backed brushes, and a limp dun hairnet: an inexpressibly sad collection. The young captain’s direct eyes stared from a wide, easy-natured face.

Mabel got up at once to find thread. Seeing Aurora’s eye on the photograph, she held out a page of the letter she had let fall on the bed. Aurora read:

… Tom is still in England, he was left in care of the horses, but—just on the q.t. between you and me May—he got ‘cold feet,’ savvy?

I am sorry I have not written you more. When we go into the firing line for eight days and get about three hours sleep out of every twenty-four, one gets dead all over nearly, and during all the hours whether asleep or awake, one has always to keep his eye skinted down his rifle barrel. It does get one’s nerves, some, but it’s all right—

‘This page is sad, the rest is more—well. I wish you knew him. You will someday.’ Mabel’s fingers refolded the flimsy page gently, her face lighted, shining.

Aurora experienced a dreadful pang of envy, seeing quiet Mabel transformed by love. She took up the spool of black thread to go. But Mabel, composed again, said, ‘Won’t you play for us instead? I can mend your things, if you will play. We get so little good music here, although the high school gives a charity concert from time to time.’

Happy to give over the needlework, Aurora fetched sheet music Bella had sent her, Paderewski’s Minuet and a book of Field and Chopin Nocturnes: suitable for drawing-room music, but a challenge to perfect. Mama sat by the piano, her head leaning on her left hand, the weak right arm abandoned in her lap, humming softly.

After that, Aurora played for them every evening once Avery was put in his cot. She played for him, too, as he lay sleeping right above the drawing room.


Words and Music

On his return to Qu’Appelle in late July, Dr. Graham came out to see Mama. He was a loose-jointed, surprisingly unkempt man with spiky hair that looked as if he’d just run his fingers through it; he had clever crow’s eyes and an air of tolerance.

After listening closely to what Aurora could tell him of Dr. King’s diagnosis, Dr. Graham spent most of the afternoon observing Mama, talking to her as if she would respond. He sat on her left side, chatting easily of Avery, who lay playing with a silver spoon from the old apostle set. When Dr. Graham moved to Mama’s right side she ignored him; but when Avery fussed and Aurora picked him up and sat close to Dr. Graham, Mama’s eyes followed the baby.

‘There, you see! The child will be a help,’ the doctor said. ‘You must use whatever interests her strongly to reawaken her desire to use this damaged side.’

Aurora told him she had been placing Avery in Mama’s right arm from time to time, to force her to hold tight; the doctor commended her and asked if she saw any improvement in Mama’s speech.

‘No, but—I don’t know if this matters—she can sing.’

‘I heard her humming to the babe, yes.’

‘But she sings in words.’

That did surprise him. Aurora sang, ‘O, don’t deceive me …’ and Mama, without seeming to think at all, joined in: ‘O, never leave me, How could you use a poor maiden so?’—the words quite clear.

Dr. Graham’s attention was truly caught, then. ‘Has she any other songs? Does she appear to know the meaning of the words?’

‘Sometimes,’ Aurora said. ‘The phrases she uses when she sings seem to fit what is happening. I have heard snatches of other songs, but this is the only one she sings all the way through.’

‘You must keep note! This may smooth the path of her recovery.’

Dr. Graham made other recommendations: to maintain natural speech with Mama, including her in their conversations as if she could answer, and not to expect too speedy a progress. ‘Try not to correct her, or grow impatient; the connection from brain to tongue has been broken and must be relearned. It may never be fully restored, I’m sorry to say,’ he told Aurora. ‘But we will expect the best. This singing business—I must write to King and some others …’ He looked again at Mama. ‘Have you tried her with drawing?’

‘She does not like to hold the slate,’ Aurora said. ‘But she can form letters still, very slowly. One or two words, no more.’

‘Yes, that is usual—well, we shall see! I will keep her under my eye,’ he said.

Mama looked away from him and plucked with her left hand at her skirt until Aurora sat beside her, taking the fretful hand.

Dr. Graham came back across the fields for dinner that evening, bringing the schoolmaster, Lewis Ridgeway, with him. ‘He’s all alone,’ the doctor murmured to Elsie. ‘I knew you would not mind.’

While the men were smoking in the garden after dinner, Elsie whispered to Aurora and Mama that Ridgeway had had a disappointment in love. ‘His fiancée left at Christmas—she has taken a school in Weyburn. And nobody knows, my dears, whether she will come back at all—no one is certain why she left. I have heard it said that she was made unhappy.’

Mr. Ridgeway must be to blame if his fiancée skittered off, it seemed. Aurora listened to Mama singing under her breath: ‘Thus sang the poor maiden, her sorrows bewailing …’

‘Lewis can be a little daunting,’ Mabel said quietly. ‘But he is a good friend.’

Out of sympathy with ladies who talked secrets, Aurora played piano behind the gathering—Dr. Graham monopolizing Uncle Chum, with an occasional aside to Mabel; Elsie and Mama drowsing in their chairs.

Mr. Ridgeway seemed to attend to Dr. Graham’s conversation, but when Mabel brought in the tea tray he came to the piano as Aurora played the final quiet chords of a Field nocturne. He leaned down to say, ‘I can’t recall when I’ve enjoyed an evening more, Mrs. Mayhew. I like to listen to you.’

She looked up, one arm stretched in the lamplight to close the book. ‘I wish you could have heard my mother, before—She plays far better than I do.’

‘My musical understanding cannot reach to anything better than your playing.’

Made self-conscious, Aurora straightened the edges of the music.

‘Perhaps next term I could persuade you to play for my students?’

‘Certainly,’ she said. ‘If you would like me to. But perhaps my mother’s health will improve under Dr. Graham’s care, and you may yet hear her play.’

He nodded, allowing this as a serious possibility, then said, ‘I’m sorry to have missed the little boy this evening. He is very bonny.’

She smiled up at Mr. Ridgeway. She liked him, she decided, for his kindness to Mabel and his half-concealed unhappiness.


The Candy Habit

‘Pantages has taken a fancy to her,’ East told Verrall as they ran up the iron flights of stairs to their dressing room, Bella following like a puppy on a leash. ‘And Julius—’

‘A good name, but some nights you can’t get him onstage,’ Verrall said.

‘If we’ve got her, we’re flexible,’ East said. ‘If he’s good, we do the old hotel routine. If not, we do the golf.’ East opened the door to their dressing room and bowed her in.

Julius was in the armchair, a glass in hand. He looked up. ‘Ahh, my boys. And.’ He stared at Bella. ‘Oh no, no. No, no … I’ve had one or two over the eight, my dear,’ he said. ‘Can’t fulfill my—can’t manage—take her away, boys, don’t tempt me.’

Verrall blushed brilliantly and begged Bella to take no notice, but she found it horrible that Julius mistook her for a floozy. He’d never mistake Clover or Aurora that way, she’d bet.

East bustled about making cocoa while Verrall explained the deal.

‘Pantages is a famous highway robber. Thirty-two weeks is only to tempt us; you’ll see, the written contract will be for fourteen weeks. Six weeks to work our way out to the West Coast—then Pantages will hand us the choice of being cancelled and stranded, or taking a 25-percent cut in salary for the remaining eight weeks.’

‘But he can’t do that!’

‘He won’t do it to us,’ East boasted. ‘I’ll see to that! We’ll see our sixty weeks of work, because he likes us. And you, Pretty Baby—you’re the icing on the cake this year.’

Verrall said, ‘Pantages wants us—well, except Jay—to meet him for dinner after the show. He is generous, in his way, always ready with a bag of peanuts or—say, East, is that where you got the candy habit?’

‘Penuche?’ East asked, producing a crumpled bag.

Bella laughed and sang her chorus: ‘Oh I want a loving baby and it might as well be you, Pretty Baby of mine …’


Yawning

Uncle Chum and Aunt Elsie spent every August at their cottage at Katepwa, twenty-five miles up into the country on a long lake cut through prairie tableland. Aurora did not need more rest-cure, but thought the change might do Mama good. They drove out to the lake in Uncle Chum’s new toy, a shining bottle-green Ford motorcar. Aurora wondered again how well-off Chum was; so far she had not been able to engage him in serious discussion about paying for their board, and had abandoned the struggle.

Aunt Elsie sat with Mama, Avery between them, in the back seat; Aurora, the only one not afraid of the car, sat up front watching Uncle Chum slash the gear lever violently in all directions until something caught. She kept the laugh caught in her throat, feeling like Bella, and did not let it come streaming out.

Katepwa was a huddle of pleasant cottages set in stone-walled lots along the lakeshore. Mabel had gone up a few days before (when Dr. Graham was going to his own place) to air the cottage and lay in supplies. When the Ford pulled up, tea was waiting on the porch: a pretty table set with a white cloth, and Mabel smiling from the steps.

Mama gasped with pleasure, like her old self—Aurora felt a hard double-beat in her heart, frustrated longing to leave combined with certainty that she was doing the right thing. She wished her sisters could see Mama here. Another thing: whatever rift there had been between Mama and Uncle Chum, clearly he had no memory of it, and she was blessedly blank now too. Aurora found it a great relief that Mama had put down that heavy baggage of past grievance.

At Katepwa there was nothing to do but listen to Victrola records and play with Avery. The dollhouse kitchen was too small for more than Elsie and Mabel, and even those two spent as little time as possible on housewifely duty. The lake community visited all day, or canoed at a leisurely stroke up and down the lake. Mabel and Aurora strolled the lanes while Avery napped in the afternoon. Mabel got freckles on her nose and was distressed; Aurora told her they became her very well, and Mabel glowed, briefly.

After dinner the lake stilled, only the placid, plangent popping of fish breaking the surface. Chum did his fishing in the morning, but kept an ear open in the evening. On Saturday night, when a band came to play for the weekly dance, Chum grunted and paced down to the shore to watch the fish rise, as music slid over the water. Aurora and Mabel canoed out onto the lake, under the brightest full moon Aurora had ever seen. They talked about dropping in at the dance—and paddled home down the moonbeam instead.

It was all excruciatingly boring. But restful. Aurora felt her breathing deepen, the muscles around her ribs loosening after years of tautness—as if she were unlacing her corset, as Gentry had ordered her to do so long ago. She thought of sending him a postcard, but did not want to sadden him with news of Mama’s infirmity.

Dr. Graham came to the cottage one morning to work with Mama again. After spending an hour watching her play with Avery on the lawn, he said that he was well satisfied, though they might not see the tiny gradation of improvement. But once in a while, Aurora did catch Mama lifting the cream jug with the reluctant right hand; if frustrated enough she might scrawl a few words on her slate. Avery called forth greater effort; when Mama was frustrated or tired and weepy, plumping him onto her knee would stem her tears. She sang to him all day long, branching out from Early One Morning to snatches of Last Rose of Summer, and Aurora could hear the lyrics becoming clearer.

Mail and the papers followed them up to Katepwa, a day or two late. A letter from Clover on the peculiarities of Galichen’s atelier was a galvanizing jolt of pleasure in the soporific haze. Aurora read excerpts to Mabel and Elsie as they sat playing honeymoon whist on the porch one rainy afternoon. Mama dandled Avery on her lap—her reluctant right arm put to work around his waist, keeping him safe.

Gali issues dicta. Yawning is the latest: on Monday at the noon meal (we take it at the atelier every day; one piece of bread per person and a ladle of thin soup) he came out of his sanctum and spoke: we must yawn! Breath frees the soul and body to work more freely, yawning signals the moving of the mind to a new plane of discovery. So no one must be polite (always a cuss word around here) and repressed, but yawn mightily all day long.

By Thursday I guess he’d had enough of our tonsils: the dicta was on the noticeboard in the morning. Yawning would not be tolerated—a yawn is the sign of a disengaged mind, tending towards sleep, and we were all in need of waking up! If we find ourselves about to yawn we are to bend from the hips and breathe deeply six times.

A letter came from Bella, too, and required puzzling through as if it were the Rosetta stone:

Verrall has bouhgt a typerwriter, the better to seem proffesional!! I am traelling with him and eEast now because Nando has gone to work in the movies. Hiw father maeoe him. made him. Nando s mother went off with a magician she used to know. that broke his heart then he had to go get horrible Joe from the san so he went. Also some man in New Yrok wanted him to go int the movies but Nando does not want to but he could take his dad there too so he went. But do not worry about the $$$ becaues I will get a third of E&V take now they’ve come over to Pantages because Mr. Pantages likes me. He is faft. He wants me to do the bumbble bee but I do not have the wings. I might do Pretty Baby in Seattle. Every body loves a baby that’s why I’m in love with you, Pretty Baby. tell mama I miss her is she alll rihgt?

xxxxXXXXXXxxxxx for you and mama and the little dovey-boy

YOUR LOVING B.

i like Avery for his name thats good

Did that mean Pantages was fast, or fat? The typewriter was no better than Bella’s handwriting. Disturbing to hear that Nando’s mother had run off—and impossible to tell exactly what was going on with Nando, but perhaps it was for the best. Aurora had not been entirely easy about letting Bella travel with Nando when she was so enamoured of him, and still so young. It was a comfort that East and Verrall were with Pantages now and would look after Bella. How lucky that Pantages himself had taken a liking to her!

Aurora took the baby upstairs, and thought as he nursed of the lively lives her sisters were pursuing—and how this long hiatus was dulling her own mind, making her unfit for work. Avery’s hair was growing in, bright gold. His fingers worked on her breast, muddling her thoughts, and they fell asleep together, as they did most afternoons at Katepwa.


A King of Vaude

Bella lay watching, in an unlucky tilt of the dressing-table mirror, Mr. Pantages’s heels pushing backwards against the polished bed-foot, his bandy legs in boots. He hadn’t even taken off his boots. Black pants flurried around his ankles, caught his legs, tangled them, all lard fatness and the wool serge wrinkling. And in between his gasping—a sow searching out something rotten. She did not believe that Mayhew would have been so piggy, but comforted herself that Mayhew was only a faker, not a true King of Vaude.

Pantages went ahhh! in one high-pitched squeal and then he slacked, he slumped, he pushed again, groaning and kicking the bed, and then he huffed, like the train engine coming into Paddockwood and stopping—you know that lurch is coming, and it comes.

Although it hurt more than she had expected, she did not make any complaint. All that lather and steam out of him and not a note from her.

That was that, then. Bella closed her eyes.

In the morning, waking with the sun spiking through a tear in the blind, her first thought was that she’d lived through it. How perfect a coincidence it was, that the sun would rise in that exact trajectory to blind her. Her eyes were sore and sandy from the night before. His leg was heavy over hers: girly-soft white skin, massive in the thigh, dwindling to a hard skinny shin. She supposed that she must love him or something, to notice that. But no, she hated him in fact and never wished to see his pasty face again. And she would have to smile or get cancelled, and she had East and Verrall to think of.

This was a no-good comedown for her. She was not the Belle Auroras any more.

She slid out from under Pantages—no reaction, he seemed unconscious rather than asleep—and padded into the marble temple of the bathroom, turning the brass lock. Mirrors filled the wall about the bath. This place had tone. Her body looked the same. If she pulled in her belly she could look quite pretty, rounded at the hip and bust but with a little bird waist, almost like Aurora. Perhaps she was going to have a baby now too; it could happen so suddenly. She felt stupid and also uncomfortable and did not want to identify exactly why. You do what you have to do, Mama had said. But where Mama had been was a vacant space Bella could not bear to think about. She sat for a while on the tiles in the clean morning light. It would be nice to cry.

Pantages took her to luncheon; then he flicked her on the chin and left, heading for St. Louis and San Francisco. What was the point, Bella wondered, if he was just going to drop her? Maybe she was not very good at that sort of thing, or she was not pretty enough.

Well, cat piss to that. She gave herself a good scolding, and decided to ignore how pretty or not-pretty she was from now on. She was different from Aurora, she never would be beautiful that way, but she could fool people into wanting her. The trick was not to let them follow through.

She had to write to Aurora, but she used a postcard, to make it short.

We are staying put here in Chi for a while loonger becasue Mistrr Pantages says so.

LOVE YOUR BELLA


The Tiny Knot

Clover managed to get hired as a dancer in a revue at the Tivoli: the show was not merely shabby but off-colour, a tired old Saucy Soubrette kind of gig. But she made a friend of the sole remaining comic on the bill, a wizened fellow named Felix Quirk. Perhaps because he reminded her of Julius, she told Quirk that she wanted to try her hand as a monologuist, and he offered to call a few pals and get her an audition. He was a haggard but functioning drunk who had been rejected for service. The theatre, indeed the whole of England, was full of drunks, to Clover’s eyes. The streets as she walked home after the theatre were lousy with semi-conscious men, often in khakis, tottering from lamppost to lamppost, or being herded up drunk and disorderly by the police van. They were never troublesome to her, and the money was vital, because Victor’s pay was small and he could not send them much.

And because Clover found that she was going to have a baby—in January, as well as she could count.

The chorus girls were cheerful in the dressing room, toasted by the reeking gas fire where they dried their washed-out stockings. After the heat and the noise, the silent walk home through dripping streets was a pleasure, but Clover often found herself tired and lonely. She could not tell Victor her news in a letter, and would not tell Madame or Aurora until he knew. The tiny knot of the baby inside her clutched and stretched, and she sometimes sang to it as she walked along. The London streets were dark with the Zeppelin blackout, yet she felt perfectly safe. She watched for a vast, ghostly shape moving through the skies, but never saw one. Only the great searchlights quartering the sky, and craters the bombs had left.

The baby was so much in the forefront of her mind that she almost told the gnome-like Felix Quirk as they were strolling away from the theatre one evening. But just then, in the grip of some necessity, he dodged into a public house for a quick snifter of brandy, leaving her to make her way home alone.

No. Not alone, for the child went with her.


Hole in the Heart

Late in September, Lewis Ridgeway invited Aurora to give a piano concert to the senior high-school girls. Remembering how she had longed for lovely clothes at that age, she wore the blue grosgrain afternoon gown with a linen jabot, and her best shoes; the half-mile walk would not ruin them. Mr. Ridgeway had asked for a mixed repertoire; she would sandwich two nocturnes around MacDowell’s To A Wild Rose, which the girls could play themselves. The brass zip on her leather music case ran smooth and cool. She missed working.

As she left the house she passed Mama standing on the porch with a watering can for the stone jars of marigolds. ‘O, who would inhabit, This bleak world alone?’ Mama sang, eyes fastened on hers, desperate to convey a message.

Aurora pressed a kiss on her cheek, and told her Avery was in his cot with Mabel writing letters beside him. Her present strategy was to expect Mama to understand, to be perfectly capable, as if that might make her capable.

Mr. Ridgeway was waiting for her at the entrance to the brick high school. The school suited him—it was an oddly significant building for such a little town. Walking down the glossy-floored hall they passed several empty classrooms. She glanced into yet another large bare room, and he gave a sudden smile. ‘Yes, we have the facilities for a music room. Mrs. Gower has donated an instrument I think you’ll enjoy.’

He ushered her through the last double doors into a pleasant open hall with folding wooden chairs and, on a raised dais, a vast black concert grand.

Aurora went to examine the piano. The high-school girls trooped in, taking their seats with decorum, and Mr. Ridgeway introduced Aurora as a seasoned concert performer.

Feeling a ridiculous blush rise to her cheeks, she turned to the girls to say, ‘My sisters and I toured in vaudeville for several years …’ Then she fell silent, alone onstage, missing Clover and Bella—as if her arms were gone, whole portions of her body. What could these girls know about vaude, the real life and ordinary beauty of it?

Taking herself in hand, Aurora bowed and began. Halfway through the Field nocturne she wished she’d thought to turn the piano, so she could see the audience. The audience. Even a handful of schoolgirls was worth working for—it was not vanity or shallowness of mind, it was the desire to do one’s best by the music, and to—to elevate the listeners, or simply delight them.

She turned from the piano after Wild Rose, to find several of the girls in tears. ‘It’s exquisite!’ said a cherry-ribboned girl—Nell Barr-Smith, the Dean’s daughter. ‘But does it have words, could you sing it?’ And the others cried yes, yes, please.

Grateful and surprised, Aurora altered her plan and instead of the second Field piece gave them Last Rose of Summer, a capella. After singing it under-voice all these months to encourage Mama, it was a pleasure to let her full voice out—but a pity to do without Clover’s mourning violin.

She sang, enjoying the song’s frank sentiment and the long afternoon light streaming in the tall windows. At the end, smiling down at the flowery faces, she sank into a formal curtsy, one hand over her heart, to please them. The girls came in twos and threes to thank her and make shy compliments.

As the room emptied, Aurora was left alone on the dais, packing her music away.

Mr. Ridgeway regarded her from his position by the windows, twenty feet away. Happy to have been able to play for the girls, she began to thank him for inviting her, but he waved a hand. They stood silent for a moment.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said, his look too direct for light conversation.

‘About what?’

He turned his head away, then fixed his eyes on her again, across the room. ‘You must know already, your voice is—you are—beautiful.’

Aurora was not shocked, exactly, but entirely surprised. She stared back at him, not smiling, unsure herself what to say or do.

Hurrying footsteps sounded in the hall: two tall girls rushed in with a bucket of blackboard erasers. ‘All clean, sir,’ the taller girl said.

The spell was broken, and Aurora picked up her hat and music case.

‘Don’t go, Mrs. Mayhew,’ Mr. Ridgeway said, his voice very dry and scholarly. ‘Miss Frye will want to see you about the Christmas concert.’

The girls said goodbye to her again, and to Mr. Ridgeway; he made a show of ushering them out and then turned back to Aurora. ‘I should correct myself—’ He shook his head, raised his hands. ‘I cannot apologize. It was an observation of fact.’

She walked home deep in thought, conscious of a terrible appetite. Not for Lewis Ridgeway, who was so odd and angular—but for some flare of excitement. Maybe she was perfectly frozen, and never would love anyone. There were women like that, pathologically cold—one heard about them. She had not been cold with Jimmy, but was never his, not really. Not the way Clover was Victor’s, unquestioningly, her whole heart open to him. Or Mabel, with her Aleck. For a moment Aurora wished very badly to have that. Perhaps one could be wholehearted with Lewis Ridgeway. Except that she was still married to Mayhew, so there was no point in thinking of—And she did not want to think of it, any of it. Better to be alone.

Not alone; with Avery. She could be whole in heart there. A hole in the heart, perhaps that is what she had.


Better and Better

Do you remember that time when you were sick backstage—that must have been the baby coming!—and I did Mrs. O’Hara? Well, I have been earning a bit of money doing monologues like that for the Gate variety theatre near here. Most of their comics have gone to the Front and they are starved for artistes. Good to have a jingle of coins in my pocket although Gali is kind and so is Madame. (But I think she is a little mad.)

Clover had taken to writing to Aurora in snatches—never able to sit long enough for a whole letter. Her mind was nervous and her body could not settle. Still no news from Victor. That was to be expected in wartime, but she wanted so badly to let him know her own news. Tying her apron above the small firm bulge of the baby, she longed to tell Aurora, to ask her about the tight feeling and whether it was all right to be so terribly sleepy all day long.

Clover went to beat carpets in the garden, a useful and therapeutic occupation, but found she had to sit down on the dead grass—crouch, really—and pant for a while. It was uncomfortably animal.

Through the window she could hear Victor’s mother in her bath, quietly chanting Coué’s auto-suggestion trick, ‘Every day, in every way, I am better and better.’ It was not really allowed. Gali did not approve of other gurus. When she visited the astrologer, Madame wore a mysterious grey veil as a disguise. Clover gave a hiccuping laugh and felt the baby inside her jump, and laughed again. To keep herself from worrying about Victor, she was working on a monologue character called Madame Scrappati. Victor would not mind her using his mother’s eccentricity, even in the unlikely event that he was able to see the show.

The baby turned a somersault and kicked her hard in the ribs, and Clover determined to be more cheerful, more courageous, for its sake. Fear would hurt the baby. How brave Aurora had been, dancing right to the minute of Avery’s birth. She could do that. Getting up, she danced gently in the garden, stretching her arms out to the view of Wormwood Scrubs prison. Better and better, she sang to the baby inside her as they twirled.


Every Unspoken Wish

In Seattle, Bella got a new song by Irving Berlin, which brightened the November gloom. Pantages sent the song from San Diego in an envelope marked, BELLA AVERY ONLY, which she supposed was nice of him. Very silly, no sentimental bilge-distilling—Gentry Fox would approve. She thought of writing to tell Gentry so, but she did not have his address and he’d always liked Aurora best anyway. It was a lovely song, a girl explaining the hidden charms of her new boyfriend, and Bella knew just what to do with it: all her own surprise, a little measure of shock, a dab of relish and a bit of a laugh, more at herself than him.

‘He’s not so good in a crowd, but when you get him alone

You’d be surprised,

He doesn’t look very strong, but when you sit on his knee,

You’d be surprised!’

She was enjoying herself until she realized she was singing about Nando: ‘But in a Pullman berth, you’d be surprised!’ The song was a big hit. Rather than giving her a blue envelope for the innuendos, Kleinhardt, the manager in Oakland, put her second-to-close in her own slot and changed the handbills that very week, with a paycheque all her own as well as her third of the E&V take.

Her grouch-bag was groaning, though she sent half of everything off to Qu’Appelle. Aurora wrote to say she had opened a bank account in Indian Head for a rainy day, and had wired money to Clover, and that Bella should be sure to buy herself nice things for ordinary as well as new costumes as required. Bella did need a new dress for the number, and she had the perfect thing made up. Mama would love this dress, she thought, and she had a photo taken to send to her: demure white lace, only six inches off the ground, with pink satin shoes and sash: a wallflower’s dress, in which she could suddenly transform to a girl who has had every unspoken wish fulfilled, along with some she didn’t know how to pronounce.


Mme Scrappati

Not trusting the British audience as she did the houses back home, Clover used herself, in the role of a naive traveller new to England, to introduce her monologues. She did Mrs. O’Hara regularly, and developed others: a gawky ballerina and an aging opera singer (a very free portrait of Miss Sunderland from Gentry’s theatre). Madame Scrappati went over best—though Clover thought it would not work at home, being a portrait of a type only seen in England.

Last week I met Madame Scrappati, an eccentric lady who teaches the violin to any number of unpleasant children, walking down Portobello Market. She carried an enormous basket, and from it fished a mutton bone for a dog that came whining, a penny for every poor waif she met, and a large bar of doubtful chocolate, which she offered to me. I proposed a cup of tea instead.

Having sketched Madame Scrappati’s basket and movements, Clover transformed into Madame herself, sweeping a vast magenta velvet, marabou-edged stole about her shoulders as she turned to nestle herself, her draperies and her basket into an imaginary inglenook. Dearest! she began, in a breathy, overexcited voice: a hint of gin, polyglot phrasing, and every odd usage she was learning from the atelier.

I have had the most profound session with La Sombreuse—opening the stars to me in all their power and influence. But perhaps do not mention her to the dear Vicar, for he is not in sympathy with the esoteric wisdom. Of course you and I do not credit astrology, but one cannot help finding the accuracy quite astounding! La Sombreuse warns of a conjunction, Neptune the trickster and warlike Mars. She sees real possibility of international conflict!

And then a rapid tour through various vultures of clairvoyants and charlatans, until:

Oh, darling, I will be late for my Tarot reading: Signora Esmeralda, a genius of the mystical cards—her pack was passed down to her from Ahasuerus and Sheba, and she has the most fascinating insights … But do not tell the dear Vicar, cher amie … (Donning a grey veil, she totters off.)

It went over well, but audiences had little else to amuse them, with most male artistes gone to the Front. In Victor’s regiment there were four former variety artistes—Victor had once sent her a cartoon featuring himself, drawn by Bairnsfather: a private juggling grenades to the mixed entertainment and horror of his troopmates. ‘It was only tins of bully beef,’ Victor wrote at the bottom of the cartoon. ‘I would not care to waste a good grenade.’

Felix Quirk was the last remaining comic at the Tivoli. His withered arm was skilfully hidden, and his upper-class accent might even have been his own. He went Clover’s way after the last show, heading for Notting Hill, and walked a different route with her each evening, introducing her to London’s geography. When he changed to the Vaudeville Theatre down on the Strand, he got Clover a few weeks’ engagement there so they could continue their walks. He made a pet of her, calling her the Little Canadian. But Quirk was a more dedicated drunkard even than Julius, and Clover reserved herself a little too.

One night they came upon a line of ambulance carriages along the street. Clover asked what they were waiting for, and Felix pointed up the street to St. Pancras station, far distant. ‘Wounded soldiers returning from France,’ he said. ‘Brought in at night, so the public does not panic at their numbers.’

It took twenty minutes to walk down the line. The wounded were brought out on stretchers, and a few walking, accompanied by nursing sisters and orderlies. Their faces were the colour of the stones; the darkness kept Clover from seeing their eyes. She saw them in dreams, though, after that night.


What’s One to Do?

As he had promised, one November afternoon Dr. Graham came to see how Mama progressed, driving his open car. Beside him sat Lewis Ridgeway, so muffled up against the dust and chill that Aurora could not make out his expression.

The doctor asked after Mama; Chum collared Ridgeway and took him into his study for a chat. Aurora was glad not to have to enter into polite conversation. She and the doctor went to the sitting room, where Mama was engaged in building block towers with Avery.

Mabel came out of the kitchen, gave Dr. Graham a quick embrace, and offered tea; the doctor sat at once to help with the blocks, telling Aurora that she might go about her business. So Aurora slipped her coat on and went out, telling Aunt Elsie that a walk to the post office would do her good. Not—she told herself—avoiding Mr. Ridgeway.

The air outside had a clean, cold bite. Smoke rose in spirals from burning leaves as the townspeople cleared their gardens for the winter. Everything smelled of winter, making Aurora long for snow. It was just past four o’clock, time to walk out and back before dark.

But she had not gone past the end of the drive before she was hailed, and turned to see Ridgeway striding after her, his long overcoat slashing through the air.

‘May I walk with you?’ he asked, wanting permission, it seemed, after their strange conversation at the schoolhouse. She looked at him. His narrow face did not show emotion easily, she thought; or perhaps he had no easy emotions.

‘If you wish,’ she said, laughing a little at her own cowardice.

He made no attempt to take her arm but suited his step to hers, and they progressed along the empty road.

‘No snow as yet,’ she said, after a silence of a few minutes.

‘No.’ He turned his head at her gambit. ‘You are not usually a conventional conversationalist, Mrs. Mayhew, and I like that.’

‘If you wish, I will keep Silence, like in the library.’

‘I hope not. But—here, have you tried the path through the copse? It is smooth and clear.’

They veered to the left and entered a little wood that stretched out from the edge of town, poplars and scrub willows. Most of the leaves had fallen, soft-cracking underfoot; an early moon showed through bare branches. She waited for him to speak, glancing at his profile as they walked. He had a defined head: strong forehead and nose, sharp jaw and chin. She found it impossible to tell where his intellect left off and his human-ness began.

‘Your husband left you?’ he asked. Abrupt, in that quiet grey place.

‘Yes.’

‘My fiancée left me,’ he said.

There was a pause. ‘Yes, I’d heard that,’ she finally said.

‘What’s one to do?’

Not an idle phrase, she thought, but a real question. He sounded still desolate.

‘I’m sure your case is quite different,’ she said, seeking to comfort him. ‘Mine had gone bust, you know, and considered my mother and sisters excess baggage. I did not know about Avery yet, so he did not desert his child—but I have no way of finding him, nor any intention of doing so.’

A relief to be able to tell all this without emotion. She had not told Uncle Chum the full story. ‘My husband was dishonest in every way,’ she said. ‘Not an honourable or admirable person. But I will find something good to remember about him, to tell my son.’

‘My—Miss Parker was honest enough,’ Ridgeway said. ‘Quite brutally so.’

‘I am sorry,’ Aurora said.

He laughed, lessening the intensity of the exchange. ‘Eloquent, in fact! But perhaps it was for the best,’ he said.

And that was all. Through the little wood, they emerged into the open and saw Uncle Chum’s Ford coming towards them, weaving its way tenderly along the ruts, to save her the walk.

‘Kind of him, but you know he very much likes a reason for an outing,’ she said. ‘Good night, Mr. Ridgeway.’ She stopped herself from saying thank you.

He said it instead. ‘Thank you. I will see you—oh, soon, I expect.’

The Ford stitched up the road to the post office. While Chum filled her in on the smallest details of Lewis Ridgeway’s antecedents and credentials, she thought about his face, so distinct in the moonlight.


Gas

The long silence was explained in letters brought for Clover and Madame by a London Territorial home on leave: Victor had been gassed at Loos. They were in his own handwriting, which Madame took as a sign. She was phlegmatic. Her astrologer had warned of catastrophe averted.

I am sorry to have kept it from you, but it was our own gas, blown back over the lines. It’s a shame you should be worried—I was convinced that it would be easier for you both if I could reassure you that I am perfectly well again, rather than sending one of the tick-cards. The headache was the worst of it, I was never as badly off as many. Their coughing was the continuo at the hospital, their yellowy-green faces floated upside down, beseeching, heads hanging off stretchers to get some relief.

The doctors bled me! I was under the misapprehension that bleeding was a medieval sort of treatment. They kept us warm with good blankets and hot-water bottles, a nice change from the trenches, and after a course of saltwater vomiting, I’m pronounced fit for light duty again. I’ll work at the hospital this month, and be back at the Front as soon as winking. If I’d been sent to hospital in England, I’d have had some sick leave. Only I can’t wish for leave when things are so desperate here. Perhaps you have heard some of it.

The Prince of Wales came to visit the Guards, tell my mother, I forgot to put it in her letter. They would not allow him near the Front, too dangerous, but he ordered his car to stop near Loos and while he was trying to get closer to the trenches to see the men, his car and driver were blown to bits.

Unable to bear leaving him in ignorance any longer, Clover wrote to Victor by return, telling him that he was to be a father. Within the week she received the warmest of letters in return, promising faithfully that he would return safe, and wishing her to take every care, as he would too, so that they could be the most fortunate and loving parents since the world was made. It was a letter in Victor’s old manner, his old poetic voice. She remembered him leaning over the edge of the Parthenon roof in Helena, shouting into the snow, ‘Children! This is your mother!’

Clover wrote immediately to Aurora and Mama (asking Aurora to gauge whether Mama would find the news distressing) and to Bella. She requested their best advice—but felt she needed none. She had passed the uncomfortable sickish part, and was feeling stronger than ever in her life.


9, 10, 11

Joyful from the Soubrettes was at the Pantages in Spokane, posing in scanty clothes as a magician’s assistant. In a happy reunion, she and Bella told all their sisters’ tales, including Mama’s stroke and Clover’s defection to England. East had tried to find Mayhew when they hit Spokane, but apparently he had not stayed in the city more than a month before he’d lit out for parts south with a dancer called Estella, or Elvira, and even in the small pond of vaudeville, nobody had heard of him since. Good riddance, Bella told Joyful.

The Soubrettes were scattered, Mercy in Australia with a theatre company, and Tempy out at the farm, where she had married a fellow who didn’t mind keeping Patience. Joyful whooped when she heard of Aurora’s baby—and now Clover’s, to come! After three or four glasses of sloe gin, Bella confided that she was quite afraid of being caught that way herself, especially now Clover was expecting too, and Joyful taught her about counting days.

‘Have you had your womanly time since?’

Bella nodded, not shy with Joyful. ‘Last week.’

Joyful nodded too. ‘You’re likely good, then. You take from then, from the first day, and count nine. Then you stay away from men—well, or give them only a French—for ten days, then you’re mostly good for eleven days. Doesn’t always work, but you can find a woman to help you. Mercy has special tea if you get a scare, if your visitor don’t come.’

Nine, ten, eleven. She could do that. Bella started to mark off the days, using a carmine stick to smudge the day she started and counting nine, ten and eleven from there each month. She crossed her fingers that Pantages would not come at a bad time. He did not like it when she was on her monthlies; she could pretend to be, as long as she was reasonable about it, and get away with a French job or only canoodling.

So really she was hardly bothered by him. It was all right. When he gave her an extra present she sent the money to Aurora and asked her to send half to Clover, for the baby.


A Blanket from the Fire

In late December Clover ran out of work, the pantomimes taking over every variety stage. It was time, anyway; she was already much bigger than Aurora had been with Avery, and could only do Mrs. O’Hara and Madame Scrappati, whose costumes were loose round the middle.

Felix Quirk sent tickets to his panto. Madame sang along with the words on the screen let down from the flies, ‘Keep the home fires burning …’ Clover sat hard as stone while the cheery patriots sang. Patriotism had burned out of her when Victor was gassed.

The last month went very slowly. Madame never seemed to worry about things but held that providence or the stars or Gali would provide—indeed, just before Christmas a large bank draft came from Qu’Appelle, so they had both heat and light, with plenty over for food. Although Clover had debated going to a lying-in hospital, wounded men were flooding all the wards, and she felt so well that she delayed making any arrangement. In the end, well into January, the baby was born at Galichen’s atelier—choosing to come in the middle of the night. Clover woke in a pool of water, hit by a wave of pain so shocking that she cried out for Madame, who came with spritely haste and gentle shrieks. Not daring to take time to fetch help, she wrapped Clover up and took the mountain to Mahomet the instant the wave had passed, hurrying her out to the street and down the area steps to the atelier’s kitchen.

The little girl was born on the well-scrubbed kitchen table, Madame exclaiming and Heather Jakes doing the work. Heather was a closed-faced woman. They had often met in the atelier kitchen, or crossed on the stairs, but during the long violence of the birth pains Clover came to love her. Not a talker, but her hands were sure and strong and she held Clover’s knees, from time to time giving some useful direction: ‘Hold off now, no pushing—a bit longer, but it won’t be more than you can stand.’ And because Heather Jakes had said so, it was not. But bad enough.

When the baby was born finally and Clover was lying still, holding the miraculous creature and not in pain any more, Galichen came to the kitchen to look her over, and the child. After close scrutiny he pronounced his satisfaction, gave permission for it to live, and dedicated it to the moon. Clover would have laughed, if she’d had the wind. His one magnified eye glared at her, and winked, and then he left.

Heather Jakes brought her a blanket warm from the fire, the kindliest thing Clover had ever felt. She was so tired. In case she died, she said to the women, ‘Her name is Harriet, Harriet Avery—tell Victor.’


Luna

Snow heaped up around the stone house to the windowsills, a succession of blizzards keeping Qu’Appelle people more or less housebound in the first months of 1916. But mild spring air sent everyone searching for companionship. By April, dinners and teas filled the calendar, and Aurora watched the social life of the little town creaking to a start again.

Mrs. Gower was the queen of Qu’Appelle society, and a determined organizer. Her son was serving as aide-de-camp in Belgium; Mrs. Gower took war-work seriously. She and Miss Frye from the high school instituted bandage-rolling (in competition with the ladies of Indian Head) at the Opera House on Saturdays, and the Avery women were summoned to the first session. Do bring Mrs. Arthur Avery as well, and your niece, the invitation read, in flourishing peacock ink. And any little items you can spare for packs for our brave soldiers. A remarkably long list of those little items was attached, from tooth powder to warm socks to candy and cigars, if any. As well as the worsted socks they had knitted all winter, Aunt Elsie began obediently to gather whatever Chum could be persuaded to give up.

Since they were all going, Aurora brought Avery as well, a great consolation. In the shut-in months he’d grown from baby to child—walking on strong legs, talking when it suited him. He had acquired a thoughtful, considering air. His flaxen hair fell into curls that begged for stroking, but he shrugged away too much petting, and liked to be his own man. Aurora saw some of Mayhew’s good qualities in him, in fact: independence, enterprise, the habit of command. He was a loving boy, and very good company unless enraged.

A photograph had arrived in February: Clover holding her tiny daughter Harriet. Aurora had shown it to Mama and Avery, the explanation as incomprehensible to one as the other, it seemed; but Mama still carried the photo with her from room to room. As they walked to town Aurora tried to imagine what Harriet would be like—what elfchild Clover and Victor had combined to make.

April sun warmed the steps of the imposing brick Opera House, companion building to the high school. The Dean and Nell Barr-Smith were arriving too; Avery knew them well and greeted them with warm embraces, which set all the parish pussies vying for kisses of their own. It was a happy afternoon, doing useful work in company with the ladies of the town. Aurora enjoyed watching Mabel in her element, moving among the women to gently encourage their efforts and smooth their frictions. Tea was served: crustless sandwiches and fancy cakes on tiered plates, courtesy of Mrs. Gower. Aunt Elsie was asked to pour and accepted the privilege; under the table her built-up black boot showed, turned sideways in a dainty flop over the smaller shoe.

Aurora found herself swept by an eddy of women into a safe backwater beside a screen, where she stood holding Avery, glad to have his weight for anchor.

On the other side of the screen, Mrs. Gower sat discussing the success of the day with Miss Frye. ‘I believe we have every lady in the town,’ Mrs. Gower congratulated herself, her booming voice perfectly audible even in this noisy room.

‘And Mrs. Mayhew’s dear little boy!’ Miss Frye trilled. She had succumbed to Avery.

‘Mrs., hmm … A vaudeville dancer, I hear—flamboyant. Elsie Avery is a saint to take those two in. I’m told the mother is quite addled in her wits.’

Until then, Mrs. Gower’s dominance had amused Aurora. But the word addled sent a hot poker through her chest.

She broke from behind the screen and cut through the tea line, still absurdly long, to find Aunt Elsie sitting at the head. Elsie sent up a pheasant-flurry of dismay when Aurora said she was walking home—Aurora held Elsie’s plump hands to stop the flow. ‘I want to, dear Aunt. Avery will enjoy the walk and it won’t take us twenty minutes.’

Outside the Opera House, Avery squirmed to be let down, and Aurora bent to set him on the sidewalk. They all thought her no better than she should be, practically divorced—if she was ever married at all, she could hear them saying. And not without cause! She was a woman of low morals, as they defined these things; Mayhew’s desertion had left her in an impossible position, at least to civilized society.

Avery’s eye was caught by a swelling of green, a crocus leaf in the bare earth by the churchyard wall. They bent together to look at how it grew, Avery’s finger tracing along the hairy stem. A careful boy, he was not one to grasp at things, but tested first. Aurora breathed in the delicious decay of last year’s grass and the green scent of this year’s growing, and ceased to fret.

As they crouched there, Lewis Ridgeway came running down the schoolhouse steps across the street. He paused when he saw her there with Avery, and after an instant’s hesitation, came to join them.

‘Have you escaped from the hive?’ he asked.

Aurora laughed. ‘I am a bad bee.’

He looked at her with curious fondness. ‘You are no bee, you are a luna moth. You are in the wrong purlieu, that’s all.’

She thought perhaps he was flirting with her. Not wanting that, she stood and said in a comradely way, ‘I don’t know what a luna moth does, but I did work hard for the first half.’

‘It is pale green, long-winged, a nocturnal creature that always seems to be dancing. Unsuited to this climate, in fact.’

Aurora looked at Lewis. His whole being seemed to live in his skull: bright eyes and sharp angles, demanding and dissecting. He had a gift for appreciation. She remembered saying long ago to Mayhew, we are the same. To Jimmy, too. Maybe if she stayed here she could be the same as Lewis—intelligent, perceptive, sure.

A general locust noise rose from the Opera House door, tea-full ladies going back to packages and bandages and ordering each other about. Aurora picked Avery up, needing to walk. Leaning his head on her shoulder, he studied the crocus he had finally picked.

Lewis kept step with her, but did not speak until the sound receded behind them. Then he asked, ‘What will you do with your life?’

She laughed at such a ridiculous question, out of the blue; shifting Avery to one hip, she shook her head and looked down at her feet passing over the boardwalk.

‘This is not for you, this buzzing parish world.’

‘Is it for you?’ she asked.

His face grew serious. ‘I believe it is. I am a schoolmaster bone-deep.’

‘Did you know my father was a schoolmaster too?’

‘I knew. Did you admire him?’

‘For his learning, I suppose—but more for his wilder nature. He was a great gambler and a minor drunkard, and kept my sisters and me very well amused. But he did not have a happy life.’

‘So Chum has told me. Melancholy is a scholastic deformation.’

She could not afford melancholy, herself. Children were too important to allow one to entertain maunderings about the purpose of life. You do what you have to do, Mama had said. What she had to do was keep Avery safe. And keep Mama from sinking.


Ladybug

February had come in like a polar bear; in France, soldiers froze to death frequently. Even into March, Victor was not able to get home to see Harriet. But in April he wrote:

I put in for leave this week end, but with the best intention in the world they can’t grant passes freely—we are the first line of defence now. I am longing to see her. If I get a pass shall arrive 3.30 or 4—not issued till Saturday p.m. and until then may be rescinded … but I am always with you, and now with her also, my beloveds.

Knowing he would not come, overcome with knowing it, Clover wept so much on reading this letter that the baby’s soft brown ringlets were soaked. She could not work out whether she was crying for herself or Victor. Then, recalling her vow to be more courageous for Harriet’s sake, she stopped and settled her back to the breast. Madame made a great show of not having noticed the sobs, only brought a cup of chamomile tea and kissed her cheek.

Clover walked to Victoria with Harriet in an ancient perambulator Madame had unearthed from the basement. It had been storing onions, but worked very nicely once the wheels were oiled. The noise at the station was fierce—trains toiling in and out, soldiers walking about or lounging with blank stares, faces sharp and worried even here in safety.

She wheeled the pram around the platforms and back into the arcade, and saw—Victor!—detach himself from a bit of wall and come towards her. A gas mask dangled from his rucksack. She could not bear to think about gas.

‘But it’s not even three, you’re early,’ she said.

He folded his thin, real arms around her.

They were vaudeville people, they were used to separation.

She kissed him, his caved-in cheek, his tunic collar, his hand, again and again.

He pressed her away, at last, saying, ‘This, I take it, is the offspring?’ Clover nodded, suddenly worried that he might not like Harriet. He turned and bowed before the pram to introduce himself. ‘Miss, I am your father,’ he said.

Clover undid the snug shawl wrapping, so Victor could see Harriet’s flower face peeping through the wool. ‘Has the baby been eating onions?’ he asked, leaning closer.

Her eyes opened, bright as blue glass, with a crazy expression as she tried to focus on his face. She reached out a hand and caught at his long nose.

‘None of that!’ he said. ‘You are to be a dancer, not a vulgar comic. May I take her out?’ It seemed both odd and correct that he should ask permission. Clover nodded.

As if picking up a glass bauble or a ladybug, Victor lifted the baby up into his arms, where she lay quite contented, only kicking a little with her strong legs. ‘You see? Dancing on air already.’

Victor seemed all right, but as they began to walk Clover swiftly realized that he was not. New grooves showed in his face; at every step he seemed to ward off something invisible. She slowed the pram and looked about for a taxicab, and waved. ‘You must rush home to see Madame,’ she said, pressing a ten-shilling note into his hand. ‘She has been so kind, do her this favour—she would love to have you to herself for a little while.’

Victor stood wavering on the street, then made a face and climbed into the cab.

She bent to kiss him. ‘Harriet will have her airing, and I’ll make a good tea. Don’t let Madame take you to the atelier, it will be thin soup and marge, and I have tinned ham!’