The Little Shadows (70 page)

BRETT PAGE,
WRITING FOR VAUDEVILLE

T
he 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.’