The Little Shadows

You’re What?

To Clover’s surprise and relief, Victor appeared to watch her brief monologue set-up. His thin length leaning on the door frame gave her a surge of joy—she hoped it did not show in her face. He must have walked in from the farm, and he looked as if the sun had done him good. She was through in a moment, only her entrance and exit requiring cues, and ran down to stand beside him.

‘Harriet’s sleeping, and your mama is coming in with them after lunch,’ Victor said. ‘Let me watch in peace.’ He clasped her hand, kissed it, and waved her back to work.

Bella’s Flying Machine was the big number. Nando had adapted the prop aeroplane to fit it onto this small stage. Without flies there would be some effects missing. ‘But it’ll still be a whizz-bang,’ he promised. At the run-through the propellers dropped off one by one in perfect time, as Bella chanted mournfully, ‘He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not—Oh dear …’

Another necessary modification was discovered in mid-rehearsal. While Nando cranked and adjusted, Bella filled in Clover and Aurora about their plans. ‘No point withering away outside the big-time any more—but Keith’s won’t book any act straight from the small-time now, even from Pan-time. You’ve got to have a whole new look to get in there.’

A wrench dropped out of the sky, retrieved by Nell Barr-Smith, who had designated herself Nando’s assistant.

‘The Flying Machine will be a step up,’ Bella said. ‘Nando has all kinds of ideas for really big-time, flying out over the audience, dropping candy bombs, you name it.’

Nando’s face appeared upside down, hanging from a wing. ‘Get me a roll of that cotton duck tape from the clinic, would you, Nell?’

‘But the thing is—’ Bella said, and then stopped.

‘The thing is, she’s not telling you the main thing,’ Nando said. ‘It puts a bit of a crimp in the Keith’s plan, for a while—I’m going to enlist.’

Clover looked at him, at Bella.

‘I’ve got to,’ Nando said, apologizing. ‘I want to go for a flyer. I figure they’ll take me. I learned how for the pictures—wing-walked and flew a bit. Best thing in the world.’

‘Hey!’

‘Excepting Bella,’ he allowed. ‘I’m going to enlist up here, Royal Flying Corps.’

Bella stared upwards. ‘It’s all butterfly, him and me,’ she told her sisters. ‘All bumble bee.’

Clover turned abruptly, and got into the wings in time. That was the place for crying, and she felt dreadfully sick as well—There, the fire bucket was waiting for her, like it had waited for Aurora in the old times.

Leaning over, retching as quietly as she could, her mind caught suddenly. Hooked like a little fish. Oh yes—oh yes, she thought. Counted back, could not remember—must have been in March, not since they left England—oh. Oh.

She straightened, and wiped her mouth with a prop-table towel.

There was no silence to keep, like last time, though. Victor was right out there in front. No need to wait to tell him; she was instantly, absolutely certain. She slipped out around the proscenium arch and climbed up to the seats where Victor sat, his head back, eyes closed.

‘You’re what?’ he said slowly, in the gentlest voice, when she told him. His still-dreaming eyes were peaceful and he reached up to touch her face.


The Point

They ought to be heading to Mrs. Gower’s luncheon. It’s only a country concert, Aurora told herself, and laughed to see Clover up on stage muttering through her monologue one last time.

‘An encore for the concert,’ Verrall said, gliding up with music in his hand.

Aurora protested that they would not need such a thing, but he insisted. ‘Oh, believe me, you’re going to need one. Here’s just the thing: you can be Colinette with the Sea-Blue Eyes, with Bella and Clover to back you. The ladies will put an extra dollar in the soldiers’ box once they’ve had a good cry—the gents will put in five. Do it in one, then we’ll open the curtains to reveal the assembled company, all bowing again like trained seals. Lovely!’

Mendel ran through it on the piano, a trilling beginning and a peaceful, lilting tempo. It would pull up tears, Aurora thought—not a bad thing, when raising funds for a good cause.

‘But there’s one rose that dies not in Picardy

’Tis the rose that I keep in my heart …’

She called Clover and Bella up to try it through with Mendel, keeping it very simple.

‘It ought to be a tenor,’ Clover said. ‘But to sing all together again—let’s keep it!’

They walked to Mrs. Gower’s, finding the spreading house packed full of every citizen of note from Qu’Appelle and Indian Head, with a few from Fort Qu’Appelle. Aurora stopped in front of a small shrine in the hall to show Clover the photo of Mrs. Gower’s son—a sweet face, serious and young, with the least tinge of Mrs. Gower’s popping eyes, and a faint irrepressible smile.

Their uncle found them there and told Clover about the boy.

‘Mont Sorrel,’ Chum said, putting an arm out to draw Lewis Ridgeway in as he came near. ‘He was aide-de-camp to Arthur Williams: taken prisoner, badly wounded. I knew Williams well, you know. He was an inspector in the Mounted Police before he went off to run the cavalry school. I’m told that Williams may still be alive, but rumours of war …’

‘Facts of war, this morning,’ Lewis said. ‘Two more boys from Fort Qu’Appelle killed. And word of a major offensive in July.’

Walking on, Chum and Lewis settled themselves on a sofa near Dr. Graham. The doctor sat with his head in his hands, Mabel beside him. He had delivered both the boys from Fort Qu’Appelle.

Aurora had taken Clover’s arm, and now bent her head to rest on her sister’s shoulder. ‘There’s nothing—no point, in any of it,’ she said. ‘We dance and sing, and all these boys go off and die.’

A plush bee mumbled out of the flowers on the mahogany table and floated, lost for landmarks in the indoor world.

‘Well, I don’t know why we ever thought there was a point,’ Clover said. ‘Dancing, singing, dying, that is all of it, I think.’

Victor lifted his head from the sofa. ‘You know better.’

The women turned to look at him. He had not spoken to anyone but Clover yet that day. After a moment he turned his head away slightly, and spoke again. ‘Perfecting it. Making it—realer, or less real.’

Aurora watched him struggle to find words.

‘I mean, the point is the point. To make the joke so perfect—’ Victor paused, eyes up on a line of reflected light dancing on the ceiling. ‘We are only pointing at the moon, but it is the moon.’

He saw Clover watching him, and lifted one hand into a sketched salute.

Aurora opened the glass door to let the bee drowse out into the garden. ‘I will go with you when you go,’ she said, leaning out into the summer day.





FINALE





JULY 1, 1917

Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan

And now we have come to the act that closes the show.… Many have only waited to see the chief attraction of the evening, before hurrying off to their after-theatre supper and dance. So we spring a big ‘flash.’

BRETT PAGE, WRITING FOR VAUDEVILLE





The lights outside the Opera House blazed, and inside, the lobby glowed with electricity of all varieties. The heat of the day had begun to cool, and the open windows let in a small occasional breeze, gratefully received by the audience moving slowly through the ticket line. Nell Barr-Smith peeked out from the clinic across the hall to count the people going in, but gave up when she saw them jumbled by the door, excitedly pushing. She went back to have Miss Peavey tie her sash, happy to have been allowed to keep her cherry ribbons, to have helped with the aeroplane and listened to the vaudeville people talk. To be one of them.

Then they were lining up, and the music which had been trumpety-trum changed to something more important, a march, so the girls’ feet began to move—but did not clump, since Mrs. Avery (Mrs. Arthur Avery, the dancing mistress, not Mabel’s Aunt Elsie) had whispered fiercely not to. White slippers, white dresses, like a graduating class, except better. Miss Frye raised an arm for complete silence—and opened the door. Through the back hall, down to the secret entrance by the Town Clerk’s office, up the little set of stairs into the wings. It smelled so good back here, half church, half (Nell blushed interiorly, to think the word) bordello. The music rose up suddenly loud and the curtains were swinging open, it was time. On they pranced, right behind Mr. East and Mr. Verrall, who were doing a nice little soft-shoe shuffle up in front, where they called it ‘one.’ ‘Jeremiah Jones, a ladies’ man was he, Every pretty girl he loved to spoon.’

The ridiculous Mr. East ogled each of the girls in turn while Mr. Verrall sang the tweedling story, and then it was their turn to burst into finger-wagging song. This was the best thing in the world! ‘That isn’t the girl I saw you with at Brighton—Who—who—who’s your lady friend?’

Mrs. Gower sat enthroned in her usual seat, two rows up, smack in the middle. In front of her, Miss Frye leaned over to whisper to her friend Miss North, down for the concert, that the Avery sisters knew Mr. East very well, ‘And they assure me that the stories are only publicity stunts.’

Mrs. Gower rapped Miss Frye’s shoulder for silence, and turned her attention back to the stage. The romping, rampaging girls went galloping along, scolding and laughing, and trit-trotted off the other side, subsiding as the curtains swung to and the music crashed on in a festive climax.

Finding the break between the front curtains, Mr. East stepped out into a beam of light as the curtains closed gracefully behind him. ‘Happy to welcome you all to this patriotic event, in honour and support of our troops overseas. All donations kindly accepted, gifts of knitted goods are always welcome. The recruiting officer could not be here, he’s dealing with a rush of business in Regina, but feel free to find him At Home in his salon there, any day from ten to four. I’m speaking to you, young fella!’ (Here East pointed with some ferocity at Chum.) ‘I’ll let you in on a secret. I’m going to be waving goodbye myself pretty soon—no, no, sadly they’ve turned me down. My feet, you know, so I’m stuck doing what I can to entertain, but my dear partner in crime, Mr. Didcot Verrall, is enlisting in the United States Army next week.’

Hearty cheers from the crowd as Verrall dodged out through the curtain break to doff his bowler with a shy grin. Mrs. Gower clapped, raising her hands to show her appreciation.

‘Huzzah! Yes, but I don’t know who will plaster my corns for me now … It may be some time before he sees these shores again, so let’s show him what he’s got in store for him in gay Paree!’

Music wound out again, a clarinet taking the lead, pinging chimes. East trilled, ‘By the banks of the Seine live girls so beautiful …’ And here came the lovely Saskatchewan girls, with a poignant refrain, ‘Flow, river, flow, down to the sea,’ and then more of the thrills of French life, absurd but entertaining. Mrs. Gower found herself keeping time with one heavily ringed finger.

‘When you live by the Seine you suffer awfully

If you refrain from enjoying, lawfully,

the sweet gay life in a gay sweet way …’

Backstage, Mabel watched Clover and Aurora put their heads together for a moment, humming quietly before their number. Mabel allowed herself to love, for a brief span of time, everything about them. Their grace, their children, their closeness. Their mother, broken as she was. Mabel wondered how Chum and Elsie would manage without them all; it was perfectly plain to her that Aurora would go with her sisters when they left. She did not know how she could bear it herself. They stood straight again, arms around each other’s waists, and then the music began. Clover walked out first—but Aurora turned to see Mabel watching, and sent her a wink and a blown kiss. Mabel waved, and Aurora flew onstage to join Clover in the fast-flowing duet.

At rehearsals they had sung in half-voice. And Mabel had heard Aurora sing many times over the last two years, in the confines of church or parlour, but she had never heard this soaring and reaching. The blending of the alto and soprano line was both exact and smudged, as if their two voices blurred into each other slightly, like the flow blue on Aunt Elsie’s good china. Mabel clasped her list and listened.

‘I know,’ Bella said beside her. ‘Aren’t they good?’

Mabel turned to her, tears threatening to overflow her eyelids. Bella handed her a hanky. ‘Take mine,’ she said. ‘I never need it.’

Lewis Ridgeway was behind Bella, next up, and it seemed to Bella that he was also moved. She had no second hanky—she hoped he’d keep it bottled up.

Mabel motioned Lewis to the podium that had been set up stage left, in one.

In the audience Miss Frye and Miss North gathered themselves to listen dutifully to the part of the programme that was good for you. Mr. Ridgeway opened his book, as they had seen him do so often in the classroom, and ran a finger down the page to flatten it. He began very quietly, his tone no different from the last song’s lonely finish, non ve, non ve …

‘The night is come, but not too soon;

And sinking silently,

All silently, the little moon

Drops down behind the sky.’

What a fine figure of a man he is, thought Miss Frye; it makes one proud. If one had to work for a man, which was inevitable within the scholastic profession, what pleasure to work for one so upright, so intelligent, and in whom stern justice was ever diluted by the milk of human kindness. She would have liked to repeat this to her friend Miss North, but thought it better to wait till the intermission.

‘There is no light in earth or heaven

But the cold light of stars;

And the first watch of night is given

To the red planet Mars.’

In the wings stage right, Aurora crept up to the first curtain-leg to watch Lewis reading. This had been one of Maurice Kavanagh’s selections, Longfellow’s mysterious Light of Stars. Lewis had none of the false, high-flown passion of Kavanagh. Instead he read with awareness of the war and the soldiers in the room, as a cool, measured directive.

‘The star of the unconquered will,

He rises in my breast,

Serene, and resolute, and still,

And calm, and self-possessed.’

If she had heard this five years ago, she wondered, instead of Kavanagh’s excesses, before she’d married Mayhew, what then?

Lewis’s profile as he looked up to the audience was straight and definite. His ordinary purity made her wish, for a moment, that she had met him then. But Avery—no regret or reforming of the past was possible if it denied her Avery.

Ignoring the stodgy poetry, Nell Barr-Smith ran to the back of the auditorium to be ready for the Flying Machine. Having worked on it, being backstage, she knew just what they were doing behind the curtain as the music played and the audience visited. So many people! Mrs. Gower’s extra two rows had not been enough, and thirty or forty people were standing at the back. But Nell wriggled through as the music came twirling into a cyclone and the curtains were opening.

Clouds and blue sky were revealed, then trundling through the clouds, making a remarkable sewing-machine noise—there came the plane! Nando had told her (he was so kind!) that it was a Red Albatross, a biplane, single propeller. It only had two blades, really; they’d added more propeller blades just for the daisy joke.

It was a pleasure ride at first. Nando had brought along a picnic basket because he was going to propose. He handed things to Bella: a sunshade (inside-out, whoops! whipped backwards, and gone), a dozen boiled eggs, a waggling string of sausages, long sticks of French bread—they all went flying backwards and yipes off the end of the plane. Bella grabbed the tablecloth to wrap around her, since her hat had flown off long before. Nando would turn and steer a little in between each thing. Finally he brought out a large bottle of gold-foiled champagne. He shook it to boast a bit, took hold of the cork, and the bottle blew off and out onto the wing of the plane.

Sausages were one thing, but he couldn’t lose the champagne. He made Bella sit up front and fly, wearing the goggles he’d been using. They wrestled hilariously on the top of the plane to change seats, Bella nearly coming out of her dress, oh my goodness! Mrs. Gower wouldn’t like that, but Daddy was laughing so hard he’d choked. Bella got the goggles on every way but right; at one point she landed head-down in the cockpit, flying with her feet.

Nando, meanwhile, inched out onto the wing of the plane—all this time they’d been swaying and fidgeting their clothes as if they were in a high wind—forward, forward, and then the plane dipped, dipped, until he went slithering down to the end of the wing—and grabbed the bottle just as it rolled slowly off. He lay back on the wing and took a big glug from the bottle.

The hectic music and the way Nando and Bella played with each other made it all go by so fast—Nell wanted to see how they did the bit where they lassoed the tail with Bella’s sash to pull her backwards to get the blue velvet engagement-ring box. When they were chasing each other over and under the double wings because she was so mad at him for losing the ring and Nando lost sight of Bella—that was priceless—her feet dangling in air so you were really dizzy, but he saved her, and she kissed him and they were going to fall—oh, it was the best thing Nell had ever seen and it was—it was over.

The curtains swirled shut and in a minute Bella and Nando peeked out through the split, her head way on top of his, and out they came for a bow, another and another. Then the intermission music swelled and the lights came on … Oh, run—she was on to help with tea!

The noise and swelter and the startlingly good tea provided by Mrs. Gower’s army restored the fractured spirits of any who had been frightened by the aeroplane, and the audience sank back into their seats, ready for a little peace and quiet.

But the curtain opened only to an empty stage—perhaps too quiet. Offstage, a fiddle started playing Minstrel Boy, and Clover came on in a plain dark dress with a tartan scarf.

‘The Minstrel Boy to the war has gone,’ she sang in a gentle, thoughtful tone. ‘In the ranks of death ye’ll find him. His father’s sword he hath girded on, and his wild harp slung behind him.’

She paused, unwound her tartan scarf from her shoulder, and pulled it into a shawl around her neck, tucking it into her belt to become a suddenly belligerent fishwife.

‘My son has gone for a soldier,’ she called out, an ugly drunk. The horror of that sacred word soldier combined with drunkenness kept the hall entirely silent. She staggered, caught at the chair-back, and missed.

She grabbed it on the second try and hauled herself up again, joints creaking, dizzy.

In the audience, Victor made himself breathe out. He was afraid for her.

‘If I’ve took a drop too much that’s the cause of it. My own boy, gone to the war already,’ the old woman said, with a sobering effort. ‘Not old enough to let him go. He sang so sweet—I live in fear, sir, I can’t bear, but needs must, you know, needs must, needs must, and no work here for him to—’

She broke into ugly weeping.

‘I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier!’ She fumbled with her shawl, and stood upright again. ‘I’ll fight anyone who says I did!’

Hunched, she bustled twice around invisible flights of stairs and flung open an imaginary door. ‘My best room, saved for you,’ she boasted to her imaginary boarder. ‘Isn’t it spacious!’ A great bumping noise: ‘Oh, watch your head, there, that’s a nasty crack.’

In the wings, Mabel stood very still, holding herself tightly in check. As she was always in check, she thought, except with Aleck. The old hag showed the client round the room, boasting, disguising flaws. The cans at the bed-legs: ‘Well, you know, it’s a particulous convenimence to have the cans already there, and I won’t have the boarders using the po-po for the keeping away of bugs!’

That got a laugh, surprising in this straight-laced town, Mabel thought. Perhaps they’d already been shocked into submission.

‘Lights out at 3 a.m. and everybody goes back to their own room! Iron-clad, no deviagation from that one.’ But it was no good, the prospective boarder was leaving. ‘Well, go then! Who needs you! But needs must, you know, needs must, and there was no work here for him to—He always liked my pie …’

The boarder relented—his weak will and small stature almost visible, as the landlady took his money and watched him go upstairs to the room. She turned away, with a rackety jig as she fingered the cash and tucked it away, and turned to them again, to speak as if to a fair judge. ‘There’s no word can ease a mother’s grief. Only the knowledge that my boy was not alone, that he was one of all those tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, who are doing what they believe to be … That he had good company out there! He wrote to me, you see, although he was never one for writing, and he says, we strive together, that’s what he says. I’ll see you again, dear Mother, that’s what he wrote.’

‘Somebody must go,’ the old woman said. ‘But oh, my boy.’

Mabel stood against the proscenium arch, just touching it. Clover had spoken to her beforehand, had asked her please not to listen, but she could not bear to miss it. In the audience, a woman began to sob. Mabel hoped it was not Mrs. Gower.

Ferocious again, the old Irishwoman straightened and stepped up one stair, shouting, ‘Supper six sharp, for them as can mind their manners!’

On second thought, Mrs. Gower can stand it, Mabel told herself. She has good company here.

Miss Peavey and Miss Frye were sitting directly behind Victor Saborsky, having changed seats during the fruit-basket-upset of the intermission. Miss Peavey leaned over to congratulate Mr. Saborsky on his wife’s mastery of the monologue form, which made him duck his head; Miss Frye then leaned forward to confide. ‘What I want to know,’ she whispered, ‘is about your experience of the hospitals—Miss Peavey is our district nurse, and she will certainly be enthralled.’

Victor could not answer. He shook his head stiffly. The air seemed to be full of eyes. He got up and limped along the row, and went backstage instead, where he belonged, to find his wife.

Miss Frye was not much taken aback by Mr. Saborsky’s behaviour; everyone knew him to be suffering from shell shock. But Miss Peavey whispered that they ought not to have presumed to speak to him about his war experiences. Chastened, Miss Frye sat back to watch as the curtains unfurled—and there was lovely Mrs. Mayhew and such a very handsome gent with shiny shoes. The music for the Castle Walk number was enchanting.

Lewis Ridgeway sat beside Dr. Graham, watching Aurora dance with that negligible jackanapes. She had thrown off her disguise tonight, and he saw her more clearly now, in company with her sisters. Not in any sense the wife of a superintendent of schools. All evening he had hovered on the verge of saying to himself irrevocable words. He had been puzzling over what an honourable person ought to do, but there was only one answer. The men he most admired, Chum and Dean Barr-Smith, had seen active service. Victor Saborsky was entirely admirable too—even the comical Mr. Verrall was going to sign up. It seemed they had all beaten him to the punch. Miss Frye would make an adequate principal while he was away. He could discover for himself what Aleck Graham knew, and all those other men. If he came back, perhaps things would look different all around.

The frail, exquisite grace of the dancing made ripples of breath go through the audience over and over. Bella whispered to Nando that Jimmy was better than he’d ever been before.

‘But a bit of a flatfish, don’t you think?’ Nando said. He was happy now that the tilting of the wings had gone without a hitch, and his head was mostly full of ways to make the plane do more, when he had the chance of a really big theatre, like the Palace or Ziegfeld’s or—or when he would be able to fly a real plane. His head went into cloud.

Bella ran down to change into her white dress for They Didn’t Believe Me, leaving Nando to his dreaming. She had stripped to her corselette when the door handle turned. Hearing Jimmy’s voice she ducked down behind the screen, onto the little cushioned stool for putting shoes on.

‘Just a little—a very little something,’ Jimmy was saying.

Aurora thanked him, paper tore, and she said, ‘Oh, Jimmy, what a kind memento.’

Not the thing a lady says when she’s over the moon, Bella thought. Through the hinge-crack in the screen, she saw Jimmy lean forward and kiss Aurora’s cheek, and his arms go round her, but Aurora was out of that very quick. You could take lessons from her, Bella thought.

‘I made the wrong choice,’ Jimmy said, in a heartfelt, legitimate-theatre voice—the younger lover in that seabird melodrama! Bella almost laughed. ‘I know that now,’ he said.

‘Yes, you did,’ Aurora said, and she was laughing. ‘But it was very nice to dance with you again.’

She’s over it, Bella thought. That’s for certain.

‘Actually, I’m going up to Keith’s in the fall, you know, in a play with Ethel Barrymore. But I’m thinking about the pictures, I’ve had a couple of offers.’

Bella found it hard to listen to his blather—East and Verrall were on, she wanted to see them.

‘Anyhow, that bracelet’s more worth keeping than the old one, and it comes straight from me to you with no hard feelings,’ Jimmy said. ‘Say a fond adieu to Bella for me … It’s been a great gig.’

He took himself off as cleanly and neatly as he’d done everything else. It seemed he had erased himself, had become nothing but a handsome escort.

‘Makes you a bit sad,’ Aurora said through the screen to Bella. ‘When you think how lovely he was when we first met him.’

‘Let’s go up and watch old East and Verrall,’ Bella said, jumping up to pull on her frock. ‘They only get better, you know.’

They crowded in backstage with all the others who wanted to see the number.

East had failed at his golf lessons many times, and Verrall, finally losing his temper completely, had whacked him over the head with a club that rebounded and hit his own head, bringing up a lump the size of a golf ball under his hat. In fact it was a golf ball. Verrall pocketed it thoughtfully.

East, glaring at him, said, ‘There are times when I wonder if it wouldn’t be better for us to part.’

‘No, no,’ said Verrall. ‘I’ve got my temper back now. Let’s turn to the book I brought for you, in my desperation: Launcelot Cressy Servos’s Practical Instruction in Golf.’ Here, Verrall evinced a Moment of Discovery. ‘Oh dear, I seem to have brought the wrong manual.’

‘What have you brought?’

‘The Art of Flirtation. How to make a lady fall in love with you, for ten cents,’ Verrall said.

East hooted. ‘A lady fell in love with me once and it cost me five-hundred dollars.’

‘That’s because you didn’t have this book.’

Always in favour of saving money, East decided he did need flirtation lessons after all, and they settled down to work.

Mrs. Gower was laughing so hard already that Miss Peavey expressed a fear, to her other-side neighbour Miss North, that she might take an apoplexy.

But Verrall was giving a hands-on demonstration. ‘Just to teach you how to flirt, I am going to take a walk through the park. I am a beautiful woman,’ he said in a fluting voice.

East, puzzled, said, ‘I thought you were a gentleman.’

Verrall was patient. ‘No, no, just for an example, I am a lady. I will walk past in a reckless way, and make eyes at you.’

East would have none of that. ‘If you do, I will smash up your face!’

‘No, no, it’s pretend. When I make eyes at you, you say something. What do you say?’

‘Ten cents?’

Verrall moaned, but persevered: ‘Now I’m the lady, I am coming. Get ready.’ He did a glorious walk around the park, worthy of the sultriest of box-hall girls, melted along in front of East, dropped his handkerchief and swanned away.

East shouted after him, ‘Hey! You dropped something.’

‘I know, I know!’ Verrall hissed back. ‘I’m flirting! Pick up my handkerchief!’

But East was proud. ‘I don’t need any. I got one of my own.’

Mrs. Gower’s mirth passed from merry to alarming at that point, and Dr. Graham leaned over to lay a cautious hand on her pulse.

In three, the little golden moon was being set up for Bella and Nando to sing in front of. ‘I’m not a singer like that fellow’s a dancer,’ Nando said. ‘It’s not too late to bow out—you could do my verses.’ Bella thumped his arm. Then, remembering the time she’d punched his eye, asked how long it had stayed black.

‘Never went black at all,’ he said stoutly. ‘Or not for more than a month.’

‘I hope it was embarrassing when you went to the sanatorium to get your dad, looking like another candidate.’

‘Very funny,’ he said, and the music was beginning, and they were on.

Now this was the sort of thing that she loved, thought Elsie, sitting comfortably in Chum’s lee. ‘How wonderful you are …’ That’s the way she could imagine Chum talking to her, if they’d met when they were young. Not that it mattered, they didn’t have to say things to know them. ‘They’ll never believe me, that from this great big world you’ve chosen me …’ It would make Chum laugh if she told him that, but the reason these nice songs worked was that they told the truth, a certain kind of truth. ‘All I know is I said yes, hesitating more or less …’ But she had not needed to hesitate for an instant of course. Except for their dear baby’s death, she was the happiest of women. And lucky, too, not to have had to worry about Chum while he was still in active service. Clover’s face broke her heart, too often. This little Bella now, she was in the best of spirits. But she too looked as if she had been through the wars, overlaid now with the air of having been struck lucky that Elsie expected her own face showed. Faces gave out so much.

Chum’s elbow squeezed her arm, and she gave a little pressure back.

At the last verse Nando Dent stood forward, and Bella turned her face away, suddenly grief-stricken. Was it acting? Elsie had heard that he was going to enlist.

‘Now this is the verse they’ve been singing, over in France,’ he said, and stood to a casual attention. ‘A bit of a joke, of course, to keep the spirits up:

‘And when they ask us, How dangerous it was,

Oh! We’ll never tell them—no, we’ll never tell them,

We spent our pay in some café,

And fought wild women night and day,

It was the cushiest job we ever had …’

Chum bent his head down to hear his wife’s whisper, as the curtains floated inward. ‘Aurora tells me Clover’s worried about poor Victor—she wants to leave tomorrow—and Aurora is going with her, to help with any—well, to see that they are all right.’

‘She told me too,’ Chum said. ‘I said we’d be happy to keep Flora, if that’s to your mind?’

‘Well, of course,’ Elsie said, a little doubt in her voice. The music was growing. ‘Will she want to stay, though?’ she said, close to his ear, but he was a little deaf.

The music blaring up had caught him—very martial, you could see the arousal in the faces around. His own heart strained upward to meet it. An American song, Clover had said. Be a useful recruitment tool. ‘Tell your dad to be glad that he had such a lad …’

That fellow East was good at his job, sawing along up there, with all Canadian girlhood getting in his way.

So were his nieces, good at their jobs. Watching this, knowing that they’d pulled it together from scratch, he saw they’d have to go. That Bella was a minx, sorry not to know her better. If he and Elsie kept Flora, the girls would have some reason to come back.

It would leave Mabel lonesome. Not everything could be fixed.

The audience was up and clapping, and the company assembled on the stage, a hullabaloo all round. It would be good to get home after all this. He reached for his hat but Elsie stopped him—oh, an encore. He sat back down, obedient to her hand.

He’d done very well for himself there. He’d advised Arthur not to marry, he recalled. If anyone had advised me like that, I’d have punched his lights out, Chum thought now. Advised him most strenuously not to marry Flora, of all people, no better than she should be, and very unlikely to be faithful to him. Temperamental to the point of throwing doubt upon her sanity. Had he said that to Arthur? He did remember offering him a thousand pounds in English money not to do it.

But she had raised these girls, and without much help from Arthur by the sounds of it. He’d be glad to give Flora a home. Elsie liked her very well, and Mabel did too.

Her pretty girls, singing together up there—some fluffery, but it had got to Elsie. Tears in her eyes. He was the luckiest man in the world: conscious that he was saying the same thing every moderately happy husband had said in the history of human interaction. Content to do so. The rose that I keep in my heart …

The crowd was applauding again, up on its feet in its animal way. Through the open windows of the hall some cool air blew.