The Little Shadows (62 page)

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!’

Yellow Custard

We are proper tour poeple now, one week in each. Verrll says we weill get sixtie 60 weeks of worrrk. And there are 11 theatrees in Caliofrnia alone. So no holiday for mine.

Remember the Tuslers? The older brother is back on the circit, he’s a gag weihgt-lifter now. Dosnt say what happened to the other one.

That was all Bella could stand to write about him. The smell of cold crumbling earth in the root cellar tumbled in her mind with the hotel sheets and the violet aftershave on Mr. Pantages, and her own shabbiness
of spirit. The Irish girl’s face outside in the snow, her dress so badly torn. Her blood-smudged thighs. It must have been the Tussler who hurt her. Now he was hurt and gone from vaude or maybe dead, his brother never said. Or else it was this older brother who’d done it, and then the wrong one got hurt. But the younger had hurt her, had hurt Bella herself.

One night as she was racing down the iron stairs for her turn, the older brother grabbed her arm and planted a sucking kiss on her neck. Not even enough time to hit him—her intro was starting! She yanked away and he let her go, laughing to see her stumble down to stage level. At the curtain’s edge she found herself doubled over, arms around her stomach, which was on fire. She tried to think about Nando instead—but thinking of him made her so angry and miserable her stomach got worse. Biting her arm hard enough that the teeth-marks stayed for days, she went on.

Verrall placed himself between her and the tough any time he could manage. And of course East knew. Bella told them that she meant to put him out of business, and after Verrall had gently shrieked, East suggested pulling the old pie gag on him: ‘No physical damage, but it does a fellow’s reputation a world of hurt, and gives some satisfaction to the pie-dealer.’

Bella thought there was quite a list, actually, of people to whom she’d like to deal a pie. But the Tussler would do to begin with.

When East brought up the subject of free dates, the Tussler rose like a fish to the fly. ‘I know a beautiful gal,’ said East. ‘Buxom! Lives with her father, but he’s a trainman, works nights. Bring her a custard pie and she is yours for the night.’

The Tussler was more than willing, and next day a custard pie sat waiting on his dressing table. After the second show, East led him down dark alleys and round a few corners, circling to give the others time to get in place; slavering for the girl as he was, the Tussler did not notice. East carried the custard pie, just being naturally helpful.

He stopped at a side door and up they went into a stairwell lit by small gas lights—dim, rather than dark. East handed off the custard pie to Bella, who stood hiding in the shadows by the door.

East and the Tussler climbed the narrow stairs, and as they neared the top East called out, ‘Annie, Annie! We’ve brought pie!’

At that cue Verrall, waiting up above in a riotous grey beard, leaned over the banister and shouted in a heavy Ukrainian accent, ‘Zo! You would ruin my Anna? I kill you!’

At that, Bella hurled an old mason jar at the brick wall beside the Tussler. Exploding violently, it echoed in the dark stairwell like a shotgun blast. The Tussler skedaddled down the stairs three at a time. East and Verrall reached the bottom just in time to see Bella, lurking at the door, sploosh that custard pie into the Tussler’s terrified mug.

East had twigged the cops to the gag, and they were posted at the corner in time to see the Tussler streak through the streets shouting for help, face yellow with custard, two eye-holes dragged through the mess with his thumbs. They said it was as good as a show.

Bella was so grateful to East for helping her to snapdragon the Tussler that she kissed him. He tightened his arm around her waist and with the other hand offered her a small white sack of sherbet candy.

She was everybody’s baby—but not the Tussler’s.

Gilt Wings

The ten days of Victor’s leave stretched very long, chiefly because he could not sleep in the bed Clover had so carefully prepared. He lay down gratefully on the laundered sheets after tea, burying his nose in the down pillow, and was unconscious within seconds. But every noise of the baby woke him; every time Clover moved to her, he started upright. He took to walking the streets at night, sleeping in fits and starts during the day. He said he needed to get back into good condition and the walking would do him good. But he was white and silent in the mornings, never seeming fully asleep or awake. London was dark all day long, it seemed, the atmosphere plagued by fog, or rain too listless to fall. Air, water, darkness—no distinction.

Clover was dancing again at the Vaudeville, in a middling revue. If only Victor could have seen her monologue act! But there was one
lovely number, a flitting fairy dance to
Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen
, and she had gilt wings.

On his third night home Victor saw the show and came to the dressing room in a seething rage, declaring it beneath her and demanding that she quit. She guided him down to the stage door laughing, thinking he was playing. Out into the alley—it was only there under the lit sign that she saw he was serious. She laughed again, for how absurd it was.

‘It’s not the Palace,’ she said, ‘but it puts coal in the fireplace!’

He fired up, blazingly angry. ‘What am I to do about the coal? Should I desert?’

Now Clover was angry too. ‘How can you ask that? I said nothing to deserve it.’ That sounded like the quarrels of her parents’ marriage. A black pall smothered her own spirits.

They walked home in silence. Clover took Harriet from Madame and left Victor to sit by the fire with her—the fire itself now in some unwanted way a reproach to both of them.

He did come to her in bed. He was always silent there, now; Clover did not feel able, either, to speak the soft besotted things they had once said.

Before returning to the Front, Victor was summoned to an audience with Galichen; he and Clover presented themselves as required, Harriet at their feet in a basket. Gali pronounced himself satisfied with Clover on eugenic grounds, congratulated Victor on his devotion to the cause of freedom, and reminded him to make certain to do his scales every day. He presented Victor with a handwritten chart of strengths and weaknesses, not unlike a school report card, and kissed him gravely on both cheeks, much moved.