The Little Shadows (59 page)

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
e
East 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.