The Little Shadows (68 page)

The placard boy came back with four bottles of beer, and a cable that had been forwarded for Bella. She opened it and laughed. ‘Boys,’ she announced, ‘you’ll have to pause one more time on your way to Minneapolis—we’ve got another gig.’

The Sweet Gay Life

Aurora watched the concert plan race like a riptide, once word came from Bella that not only she, but the famous comedy duo East & Verrall would donate their time to the cause. East sent a long telegram to Aurora, detailing what they’d need and what they’d bring with them, including a roster of musicians he promised to vouch for,
travel only
to come off the top of receipts (East was always practical). Band call was arranged for the morning of July 1; he and Verrall would arrive the night before, with Bella et al. A package came on the train with songs and music, new things East and Verrall had picked up on their travels—a George M. Cohan, written for the U.S. entry to the war in April, which East thought should be a company number at the end. ‘Big finale, use all the kiddies, and the soldier-happy old ladies will shell out’ was how he put it. Aurora planned to phrase it more circumspectly to Miss Frye and Mrs. Gower.

Clover and Aurora put their heads together over the bill, and showed it to Victor when he came through the empty dining room. ‘Not
Danny Boy,’
he said. ‘Too hammer-nail now.’ So they cut that and replaced it with their true favourite, the limpid
Per Valli, Per Boschi
. As they worked they sang, in a trickle of sound that was very pleasing to them both.

Miss Frye was staggered when they took the proposed concert bill in to her at the lunch-hour next day. ‘This is!
Far
too—! East & Verrall!’
She wiped her mouth with a hanky. ‘I saw them in Regina in ’09. Are they
particular
friends of yours?’ Clover assured her that the stories of East and his thousand young ladies were merely apocryphal, publicity stunts in fact.

‘It’s rude to take over like this,’ Aurora told Lewis, keeping the paper close for a moment. ‘I think it’s the pleasure of performing together again that has taken wing.’

She placed the bill before him.

DOMINION DAY CONCERT

Lewis cast a cool eye down the sheet, and laughed. ‘A nine-item bill! You’ve turned our concert into polite vaudeville, Mrs. Mayhew.’ His own name caught his eye. ‘A recitation?’

‘I know you are a skilled elocutionist,’ Aurora said, seeing that he was pleased. ‘A valuable addition to the bill, if you could favour us.’

He bowed his head and said he would be honoured. ‘I may choose my material?’

‘Of course, you will choose best.’

‘And you’ll want to work with the girls beforehand?’

‘Yes! They’ll be wet rags by the time we’re finished with them. We’ll start this afternoon, learning the words and music—in a one-off revue like this their number should be more than just an opener.’

She saw that he looked blank, but it was not worth explaining.

Mabel met Aurora and Clover outside the school and walked with them to the Opera House, saying, ‘I hope it’s not too Machiavellian, but I’ve asked Mrs. Gower to take complete charge of the tea—she’ll be in here redirecting the numbers if you don’t keep her busy.’

‘Perfection.’ Clover gave Mabel a quick, surprising kiss. ‘But you are going to help
us
, not her?’

Taking Mabel’s other arm, Aurora agreed. ‘Mrs. Gower can’t have you. We need you for backstage mistress, if you are willing.’

Mabel was perfectly willing, and they went inside to measure and make more lists and wait for the high-school girls. By the time Aurora and Clover had driven them through an hour of singing practice and a strenuous hour of dance, all the little faces were red and puffing. Nell Barr-Smith gave a wild hoot at the end of one successfully executed set of steps, but the other girls were too winded.

‘We’ll have to bring Mama in tomorrow,’ Clover said. Aurora was interested to see that Clover often realized better than she what Mama could do, not being used to thinking of her as negligible. Clover had left Harriet in Mama’s care quite happily, for example, though she never left Harriet with Victor. It seemed to be doing Mama good.

Next day Mrs. Gower came by the theatre midway through rehearsal to announce that tickets had sold out, and they were going to add two more rows of seats.

‘Nobody will be comfortable,’ she said. ‘But it’s all in a good cause.’

The girls came trooping in for their first run-through, so Mrs. Gower sat and watched. ‘Sprightly does it,’ Aurora called. Twenty spines lifted, twenty chins came up.

‘Hello! Hello! Who’s your lady friend?
Who’s the little girlie by your side?
I’ve seen you with a girl or two
.
Oh! Oh! Oh! I am surprised at you.’

Mama pulled at Clover’s sleeve, whispering, ‘Knife, steel!’ Clover executed the brushing movement of the entrechat more crisply—and the girls obediently sharpened up their motion.

‘Banks of the Saskatchewan
, please,’ Aurora called, and the girls fluttered and regathered stage left. ‘This will be a very quick turnaround, you’ll have to be on your toes—’ She played the intro and they were off, dancing during the tenor’s verse, which Clover sang for now. East would do a lovely job of it.

‘By the banks of the Seine live girls so beautiful
It gives one pain to remain quite dutiful
And yet I’ve sworn by the stars above
Throughout my life to reserve my love
,
for the girl by the Saskatchewan, the girl by the
     Saskatchewan.’

At one end of the upright piano Lewis stood watching, with Miss Frye nodding her head gaily in time to the swooping music.

‘Lovely,’ Aurora called, as Clover gave the girls a round of applause for getting all the way through the steps. ‘We’d better take one more run at
Hello, Hello
, please.’

Miss Frye, recalled to the world, said, ‘Oh! The bandage-rolling is due to begin at five, and we’re in their space—I’ll just start setting up the tables.’

‘Hello, hello, stop your little games
,
Don’t you think your ways you ought to mend?’

The girls stomped and wagged their fingers and had a hilarious time scolding Clover, then scurried in a swirling fan around her to carry her off.

Aurora began to fold the music away. Lewis put an arm over the piano to hold the sheets open. They looked at each other.

‘Do you know that I—’

She waited to hear what he would say.

‘I would give the world—if your circumstances were different,’ he said. ‘Or mine.’

‘Yes,’ she said. He had such a pretty brick house. She touched his hand lightly. ‘I know you would.’

‘How do we know love?’ he asked her.

Another of his difficult questions. She did not know the least thing about love. When she looked back, it seemed that she was always happiest alone. Not pretending, not folding herself small to fit in someone else’s grasp.

The girls were laughing, clanging the folding legs for the bandage tables into place. Clover gestured from the door to say she would walk home ahead rather than wait for the car. Her eagerness to return to Victor plainly showing.

Aurora brought her attention back to Lewis. ‘I think we know, already, the ones we love. It seems that people—recognize each other. Perhaps one just has to be patient.’

San Fairy Ann

Having no community duty, Clover walked back alone from the Opera House in evening sun, thinking of the chattering girls and the women winding bandages like tiny shrouds. Thinking too of Victor’s dream, which had woken him many times in terrible fear—that he was mistaken, that these corpses he was burying
were not dead. Somehow their not being dead was more fearful. Burning of the bodies … He spoke only in fragments about it, and had only spoken twice, but she thought he had the dream often.

Tiny green bugs danced in the golden air as Clover walked. Her shadow fell very long, stalking into the fields beside the road. Perhaps she would still feel patriotic about the war if he had not come back a ghost. How could the eloquence she loved so much be gone? His romantic gall, his openness in declaring love—which had let her be open too, for the first time in her life.

At the door Elsie met her with a shushing finger: the children were already in bed, she whispered. Clover went up, making no noise.

Victor sat at the edge of the bed, talking quietly to the children to let them go to sleep. These days he could not seem to stop his hands from fiddling. He was stroking Harriet’s hair with one hand and playing, playing with the old prop compass in his other hand. Harriet’s eyes had half closed; in the cot Avery lay staring at the eastern wall, striped with long strands of late sun.

‘San fairy ann
, they say out there. When my mother speaks in French, Harriet, you hear her say that:
Ça ne fait rien
. It matters nothing. But San Fairy Ann, she’s another thing altogether. She hovers over the world, sometimes sighing and sometimes laughing a little in her sleeve. Once long ago, San Fairy Ann went walking in a wood in France, where every leaf had fallen, but it was not winter. Bare trunks of trees stood up in serried rows and San Fairy Ann wound her way between them, looking for a lost child. That child’s name was Harry—don’t worry, Harriet and Avery were safe at home, being looked after by their mamas, but Harry had gone adventuring into the world, to find their three fathers, who had disappeared some time before.’

Close to sleep, Harriet’s breath was given up, as Gali said to do in his breathing work. Gentry had said that too, years ago, Clover remembered.
Let the breath fall in, give it up
. Avery’s eyes left the bars of light to watch his uncle’s face, grave in the twilight.

‘San Fairy Ann has a compass too—but hers can point to more than North. She set her compass for Harry, and the needle wobbled and
wobbled, winding round until she bent her wrist and the arrow could point down. So then she knew that Harry had found some sign of his father, had gone into the maze of tunnels underground, where his father wandered lost and alone.’

Clover backed away from the room, going slow and light, so the wide plank floor did not creak. She felt light-headed, and a little sick. But she thought Victor had been working to make the story not frightening.

When Aurora and Mabel came back, Clover tugged Aurora’s sleeve, pulling her sister out with her for a last breath of air. They walked around the loop of the drive, grasshoppers leaping at mad angles from their feet, and talked over the concert, less than a week away. Their skirts, shorter these days, still flowed around their knees in the wind that rose off the grass. At the end of the drive they turned.

The warm house lay in front of them, windows rosy in the darkness.

Aurora said, ‘Don’t you think you could stay here for a while? A year, for Victor to get better—Uncle Chum asked me to tell you that you’d be welcome as long as you like.’

‘On charity? We haven’t got much left, after the trip. I’ve got to find a gig soon.’

‘There’s plenty of money in the Indian Head account. I haven’t needed anything but a little for Christmas presents. We could take a little house.’

‘I don’t want to live on Bella either! But it’s not the money. It’s—needing to go. Some people are citizens, and some are nomads, I think. We’ll be glad to be on the move again.’

Aurora did not try further persuasion.

‘Come too,’ Clover said. ‘When we leave, why don’t you come?’

Quiet

The coyotes were loud that night. After the excitement of the day it took some time for the house to settle. When it was quiet at last, and they were all in their beds, the ki-yi-ing
started outside. Clover listened to Harriet breathing, tucked between them in the bed.

Victor lay rigid, not asleep. She did not dare to touch him.

Tired from long rehearsal, Clover drifted into a waking dream, then deeper into sleep. When she woke, the first faint light was coming in the window. Four o’clock, perhaps. The coyotes were so close, at first she thought they must have wakened her.

Victor was not in the bed. She lay still, not yet thinking.

She heard a rifle shot, and the coyotes’ yipping ceased.

Then everything was quiet.

Another minute she lay there. Then she thought, well, it would be quiet. If he was dead, there would be no more noise. I would lie here thinking how quiet everything was.

No conscious movement—but she was down the stairs and out onto the veranda, and there in the pale light saw Victor lying on the grass. Like a war memorial, the rifle on his chest with one hand holding it. Her mind looked for Papa’s black suit, and the blot of red opening out on the snow.