‘… your boot?’ That was Verrall.
Then East said more loudly, ‘
Hurts!
He wants to know if it hurts!’
More murmuring as Verrall shushed him, then a bump.
East said, ‘Does it hurt?’ and Verrall answered sadly, ‘He wants to know if it hurts.’
They tramped on down the hall.
White Feathers
Bella woke slowly in pale morning light. A noise outside gradually turned into sense—shovels catching from time to time as men cleared the boardwalk. It must be late; there was sunlight on Aurora’s hair, straying on the pillow beside her. A thousand colours, not just one gold: white and silver and caramel and pale, hardly ripe apricots, gleaming in the sun, the prettiest thing in the world. Her own hair was taffy-brown, dull and ugly.
Clover brought her porridge in the little flower-bottom bowl. ‘We let you sleep, but come, eat. We’ll have to climb through drifts today.’
When they left the hotel the sun was hung with sun-dogs, huge blinding brackets in the sky. The wind had died and glittering motes of snow stood suspended in air. Every branch, every twig of every tree and bush was furred and blurred with white feathers.
Too soon, almost, they were at the Empress. The same bustle and darkness, but Nando was not at the door to welcome them. They stood in the lobby to let their eyes adjust to the twilight, and saw a notice posted on the door,
NEW ORDER
, listing the order of acts for the day’s shows.
‘Now, look! Perhaps Cleveland has seen the light and placed you later in the bill!’ Mama said with satisfaction. She peered at the list but could not make it out in the dimness. ‘Clover?’
Obedient, Clover bent to the list, and found herself in a strange pause, not feeling as if she could breathe or had breathed for some time.
Opener, in one: Maximilian the Bird Magician
, she read. She ran her eye up and down the list, again, again. How could she say it out loud? Aurora and Bella leaned in to see.
They were not on the list.
Aurora felt it in her hands and feet, the coldness of the blood drained away. Bella in her stomach, a great swoop—it was her fault, it must be. Clover’s breath would not come. Mama jerked her head and blinked, to insist her vision re-form: but still they were not on the list.
The list swam away from them through the darkness as Mendel opened the door to the theatre, a metal weight ready in his hand to prop it open for air.
‘What does this mean?’ Mama asked him, without histrionics.
‘Sorry,’ Mendel said, not even pretending not to know. ‘Cleveland decided to make a change. You could find him in his office, but he’ll only tell you that.’
The four of them, young and old, looked at Mendel, at his wise pitying face.
‘I’m sorry. You’ve been cancelled.’
Aurora felt her hands as juggernauts, the weight of them threatening to sink her down through the floor. It was her, forgetting the lyrics—she had jinxed them at that very moment.
Bella cried, ‘It’s all my fault!’ and Clover said, ‘It’s me, not you. It should have been the Belle–Aurora duo.’
Mendel looked over his shoulder quickly, and said, ‘I understand it may have been the Mrs. who decided. Sometimes she does take a sudden whim.’
Mama somehow drew up her chin, her proud carriage returning. Small rapid tears were coursing down her cheeks, but there was no muffle in her voice. ‘Girls, it’s just the way it sometimes goes. We move on to the next gig, that’s all.’ She put an arm round Clover and one round Bella, leaving Aurora the dignity of the eldest.
‘If—’ Mendel hesitated, still holding the heavy weight. ‘If it’s not beneath you, I do have a pal in Calgary, in the burlesque house there. I could put in a word—’
‘Thank you, but no, not at all,’ Mama said.
‘No,’ Aurora agreed.
Schedules of trains, wagon rates, hotels, cartage fees, the fifty cents gone on supper last night riffled through Aurora’s head like a magician’s
deck of cards. They’d be broke in a week. In this snow it was unlikely they could get to Qu’Appelle so soon.
Mendel came out into the lobby, shut the door, and put the weight down. ‘I don’t know how you’re fixed, maybe you’re fine—but look—it’s nowhere near the money you’d get in burlesque, but I know Johnny Drawbank is hiring down in Helena, on the Ackerman circuit through Montana. I don’t mind tipping him onto you, you’re nice gals, a nice enough act, no reason you couldn’t shine down there. No guarantee, but I’d say it’s a good chance.’
Mama looked at him without gratitude. ‘I did the Death Trail, twenty years ago. I have seen the elephant down there, Mr. Mendel.’
He almost laughed. ‘It’s not so bad these days. No more storefronts. Theatres, every one a plush-seat house. They’re building brick, sprouting up all over. Keith’s is looking to purchase in Great Falls, that’s how far it’s come. You’d be with the same artistes for a couple of months, they tour together through there. Down into Montana, Idaho, the Dakotas, but not rough like it used to be. Half-pay weeks, I know—but it’d be good training and a good start.’
The girls had heard Mama’s account of the Death Trail, its privations and indignities. Mama had turned her face into Clover’s shoulder, pretending to comfort her, to try to regain composure.
Watching the brown swirl of her mother’s hair, trained into a respectable chignon, Aurora weighed the likelihood of Qu’Appelle, how it would be there when none of them knew Uncle Chum (and when Mama felt true hatred for Papa’s family, possibly with some cause). As far as Aurora could see at this point, the only alternative was to return to Calgary and try to get taken on as domestic servants. That might easily be a fate worse than the Death Trail, and anyway it would take too long. They’d be starving at a soup kitchen before then.
Now Aurora touched Mendel on his sleeve, and smiled into his melted-chocolate eyes, because he was kind, and because it would help that he liked her.
She said, ‘Yes, please, yes. If you could give us a note for Mr. Drawbank, that might ease our way.’
3.
The Death Trail
JANUARY–FEBRUARY
1912
The Parthenon, Helena, Montana
Apply to the manager of some obscure Vaudeville or moving picture house, and obtain an engagement, even if for a very small salary, and at the conclusion of the engagement you will find out your weak points, if any … Do not feel ashamed because you are compelled to make such a humble beginning, as a great many professional acts do this very same thing when they have something new and untried. This is what’s called breaking in an act, or hiding away.
FREDERIC LADELLE,
HOW TO ENTER VAUDEVILLE
T
he beauty of the snow faded as they went south—blown by the constant wind, leaving fields bare beneath a light dusting of white. The world was the colour of their old dog Tray, dun and white. Bella’s eyes itched, remembering Tray. She and Papa had found him, lying by the tracks, as if asleep—and then so plainly not asleep, but gone. She hated the train they were on for Tray’s death, for Papa’s, even Harry’s, without rational cause. Then, more sensibly, she hated herself for not being better in the act so that they could have stayed in Fort Macleod for the whole week and gone with the company to Crowsnest, with Nando, who was her sweetheart now. She hated being cancelled when she thought of Nando but it also made her laugh secretly, to think of him.
‘I have a little cat, I’m very fond of that …’
she sang into her beret.
It would take all night to get to Montana. The girls sat propped in their seats, bolstered with packages and bandboxes, the trunk safe in the baggage-man’s care. Aurora tried to calculate how much he would expect for its return. Would a nickel be enough, for a straight journey without a change? If only she knew more about the ordinary business of being in the world, in cities and trains.
She was learning, though. She had gone straight up to Cleveland’s office after Mendel told them they were cancelled, to get their pay for the one night. Mrs. Cleveland was on her knees in the auditorium scrubbing again, but it would not take her long to scramble up and come after, so Aurora had made it quick: ‘Only the one night, we’ll take $30.’
Her upright bearing, or her cool stare, must have made it seem a good idea to comply. His flat-pouched eyes never leaving her face, Cleveland had forked out three ten-dollar bills. By rights it should have
been $25. Being cancelled was a terrible blow, but she was extremely glad to be away from that shocking hypocrite.
And
a coward, and a bad judge of performance, she said to herself, not proud of getting the money out of him, but relieved to have it in Mama’s grouch-bag, since train tickets to Helena had taken all the rest. She leaned her forehead on the cracked green leather to stare out the window above the frost.
Amateur-night, amateur-night
, the clacking wheels said, but riding over a siding the rhythm altered, and she made it turn into
we-will-be-better
.
Flora woke from a doze and looked around the jouncing carriage: Aurora, Bella—where was Clover? Oh, here, sleeping beside her, almost invisible under the ulster but keeping Flora’s right side cozy and sheltered from the window’s ice. She had been dreaming of the girls when Bella was tiny—in Medstead, it must have been, one school before Paddockwood. Dreaming of Arthur, not yet succumbed to melancholy, blowing bubbles into bright sun to propound some scientific principle to his class. They ought not to have moved from there, but bubbles do burst, no matter how carefully one touches them. Now back to the States—Flora’s drowsy mind veered off from failure and drifted to her daughters again: dear Clover who would never leave her; Bella, the darling girl; her first-born Aurora whose beauty and talent must shine through and take the girls to the top regardless of stupidity in high places or vicissitudes so far, and never burlesque, not for her girls. Talent would out, cream would rise, a thousand a week quite soon.
Afterwards they slept, leaning on each other’s shoulders as comfortably as they could; then Bella changed seats to lay her head on Aurora’s lap. Even in the dusk, and later in clear, moon-relieved darkness, Aurora could see the hills marching south along with the train track, how they folded, alternating patches of shadow and pale moon-grey, until the folds gradually turned into mountains. When the train shifted on the track she saw her reflection in the window in the darkness—her face looked beautiful, but that was just the angle, and the darkness. She could see herself better in the crooked mirror of Clover’s and Bella’s eyes. They saw her true face, not this train-window beauty or the stage-makeup looks, and kept her from thinking too much of herself.
‘My sweet friend Sybil went on the burlesque for a while,’ Mama had said earlier, in the peace of the evening train. ‘I went too, once, when we were broke. If it looked safe, she would toss her garters into the audience and they’d throw money back—once in a way she’d leave off her stockings, but that got her a night in jail in Dubuque. Of course she wasn’t charged as Sybil Sutley: if she’d played under her right billing, her value on the medium-time would have been lowered, you see? Many people did it from time to time, went to burlesque when the wolf was at the door. We don’t look down on them for it. You do what you have to do to get by. She went under the name of Saunders, Saucy Saunders.’
‘We should have tried to stay in Paddockwood,’ Clover said, before she thought.
‘How can you say so!’ Mama took her up quickly. Clover looked away. ‘You’d rather have the life of a farm woman? Ought I to have looked about for a farmer? You know I would have done it if I’d thought it for the best.’
All three girls shook their heads quickly. Mama had not been good at the ordinary work of householding in any of Papa’s teaching posts. Even in Paddockwood, where they’d lasted four years.
Mama made delicious macaroons, if they could get coconut. If they had eggs—if the chickens had not all died. Aurora gave a quick hoot of laughter, but bobbed her head at Mama to apologize, because she was no kind of good at all that herself and she completely
loathed
chickens, spiteful creatures who pecked at each other’s corpses while you were trying to pluck them. Clover had a light hand with pastry, Bella made fudge. But if the choice was worry and turmoil and travel, or staying in one place forever with the chickens and the milking pail, Aurora was happy to be on the train.
Was He Weeping?
At Helena, the train station was plunked in a grim field. One good sign: the wind brought dodgers floating, flapping round their ankles, over the train platform. Bella picked
at one and said ‘Look!’ The flimsy slips advertised Ackerman–Harris’s Parthenon Semi-Continuous Vaudeville, ‘
fun and frolic, melodeon and concert saloon.’
Left to blow around the streets and sidewalks instead of handed out, dodgers were even cheaper than handbills, but it was good to see that the Parthenon existed.
‘An omen!’ Mama exclaimed. ‘I believe our luck is turned, my chicks.’
They used the ladies’ waiting room to pull themselves into proper order. Mama had packed the flowered waists carefully at the top of the trunk to keep them pressed overnight. ‘Perhaps an extra wrinkle or two, but we won’t repine,’ she said, taking off her ulster in the freezing waiting room and beckoning Clover to help her hold it up across a corner so that Bella could change. Then Bella held it carefully for Clover, who was quick as lightning; Bella knew how she hated to be vulnerable in a public place, however deserted. Aurora went last, and they used the flat-steel mirror nailed to the station wall to tidy their hair. Even Mama was careful, arranging the curls of her fringe, and using the rouge-box first on the girls, delicately—‘Roses blooming in the snow!’—and then on herself.
They asked the lonely stationmaster to show them the way to the theatre, leaving the trunk ‘to be called for,’ and set off through windblown emptiness to find the tallest-fronted buildings in town, Mama exclaiming at the beauty of well-established architecture and how this was more like it, a city with scope for great performances, and other observations calculated to console them for being firmly on the Death Trail now.