One morning, walking alone down State Street looking in shop windows, Aurora heard her name called. Behind her ran Mercy of the Simple Soubrettes, from their first gig at the Empress: bright face and black-jet eyes. A wholly unexpected pleasure—off guard, Aurora reached out in happy welcome, and they embraced and laughed in the empty street. Mercy pulled her into a nearby café, and had them at a table with tea in front of them in a twinkling of her clever eye. The Soubrettes (now the Good-time Girls, not wanting to soil the name Simple Soubrettes) were booked for a two-week gig, to start next day—at the nearby Variety theatre.
The Variety was a burlesque house. Aurora had to school her face, not to let shocked pity show.
‘We only had the two weeks booked with Cleveland, and he let us go after that, the stinker! Then our Calgary jump fell through, and altogether we had a hole in the schedule—next Patty turned her ankle and we could not coach her to work round it, so we had to send her home to Spokane, which she does not like. And neither does my brother, of course. But it’s only for a little while, and there’s no denying that we get along faster without Patty. My brother says we’ll be on Pan-time soon with this
new look, since we’ve given the act a greater wow.’ Mercy bent to drink her tea, but could not repress a doubtful shrug. ‘Hope he’s right! But tell me, what’s this gossip about Fitzjohn Mayhew being at the Parthenon. I was never so surprised!’
Aurora was surprised herself, to hear Mayhew’s name said with such relish. ‘Why, what do you know of him? He’s come from Ziegfeld’s company, to take the reins after Drawbank was pushed out.’
‘Fancy!’
Something hidden there. ‘You know him?’
‘Oh, no, not to say
know
. One hears things, that’s all.’
Aurora waited.
‘I used to know a girl who knew him, as you might say. He left Boston in a hurry. And he came back PDQ from San Francisco, too. Not that
that
means anything—I think it was around the time of the ’quake. I don’t know—’ Mercy pressed her lips together into a pink pucker. ‘Have you gotten yourself mixed up with him?’
Aurora puckered in turn, twisting the little sapphire ring that Mayhew had given her. ‘I suppose it is mixed up. I am to marry him in May,’ she said.
‘No!’ Mercy laughed, loud enough to make heads turn among the café patrons. ‘You are quick off the mark! You one-up my friend—he never thought of marrying
her
. I’ll bet your mama had a hand in deciding it! Hearty best wishes for a prosperous union, et cetera—send me a card for the wedding.’
She and Aurora regarded each other across the table. ‘Where are your sisters?’ Aurora asked.
‘Dozing! Where are yours? Nice to have a jaunt without them, ain’t it?’
Aurora nodded, but was surprised to find it so. She had not been conscious of feeling crowded.
There was a silence.
‘All prepared for it?’ Mercy asked.
‘What is a French job?’ Aurora asked, at nearly the same time.
Mercy did not laugh, but took up the salt shaker. ‘Good thing to have up your sleeve, they like it very much. Hold firm, but not too
tight. I always think of a fry-pan handle, that’s about the right grip.’ After a quick look around, she bent over the table behind the menu and demonstrated the action. It was only as she proceeded that Aurora made sense of what she was doing.
‘Into your—mouth?’
‘It’s what they like,’ Mercy said.
‘Where did you learn it?’
‘Ship’s steward on our way over from Bristol, when I was twelve. Taught me all I know.’
Aurora had been half laughing, but she stopped then, truly shocked.
‘Don’t fret! It’s been a boon to me all this time,’ Mercy said. She set down the salt shaker and scrubbed at its head with her napkin. ‘It’s often good for a night off, when the other seems—well, a bit of a burden.’
‘Oh, good God!’ Aurora said.
‘Have you done It yet, with him?’
Aurora shook her head.
‘With anyone?’
‘Not—not fully.’
‘It hurts a bit, the first time. The thing is to be patient. And stay calm. It’s only natural, it’s what we’re built for. If you get lucky with the man, it can be a very good time.’
But that was not her consideration, anyhow, Aurora thought. She wanted to be expert, to bind him to her. The sentimental part of it was not necessary—Mercy was proof of that. And she did not wish to be a prude. ‘I will be brave,’ she said.
Mercy looked at her and grinned. ‘Ho, yes, you will be!’ she said. ‘Ain’t we all.’
My Man Famble
Back from Missoula, Mayhew began work on his melodrama. After running lines with Aurora in every spare moment, Clover sat in the empty house to watch the first rehearsal. Aurora was Miss Sylvia; East became the theatrical producer Fibster
Malverley, ‘a handsome demon,’ and Verrall oiled on and off in the minor part of Malverley’s agent, Flink. Sybil was given a brief but poignant role as Miss Sylvia’s white-haired mother, who spent much of the play visible through a window, tied up and gagged.
MALVERLEY:
Of course we can wait for your dear mother—what can have detained her?
(aside)
Perhaps it was my man Famble and his blackjack!
(to Sylvia)
We are honoured by your presence. Can I give you a glass of ratafia?
SYLVIA:
I do not know what ratafia is, sir.
MALVERLEY:
Oh, it is a mild soft drink.
(aside)
Along the lines of Madeira or Blue Ruin …
East enjoyed his villainy hugely, chewing with relish upon his moustache as he inveigled the innocent miss into a state of drunken compliance and made his hideous assault, against her maidenly protests.
MALVERLEY:
It is entirely your own fault for enflaming me, Sylvia. My heart has been yours since first setting eyes on you. Let me call you—my Own.
SYLVIA:
(blushing)
Please, sir! Unhand me, I beg of you!
MALVERLEY:
(aside)
She maddens me! But her
beaux yeux
will not make me marry her …
Knowing the play as well as Aurora did by that time, Clover was leaning forward in her seat, mouthing the lines, when she felt a touch on her arm and Victor Saborsky sat down beside her.
He was back! She jumped and would have shrieked, but he caught her arms and stopped her mouth with a kiss. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, in a barely audible tone. ‘I am back—we are reunited—but first, what is this appalling tripe they are playing on the stage?’
Clover explained, filling him in on the plot so far, and settled into the crook of Victor’s arm to watch the rest, as if it were a private
showing just for them. In the end it was revealed that clever Sylvia and her mother had planned the encounter themselves; Sylvia gave Malverley knock-out drops and robbed him of the papers which would have compromised her mother. Nonsense, yes, but Clover thought Aurora did a beautiful job of conveying the pure-minded maiden who was so put-upon by the Producer, willing to give up even her Virtue if that could save her Widowed Mother.
Going down to the dressing rooms to help Victor unpack, Clover murmured that she found it quite impenetrable that Mr. Mayhew would be interested in staging a melodrama that so closely resembled his own life—except he did not seem to have a Man Famble.
Victor suggested that perhaps Mayhew did not see the similarity. ‘We have not always nose-past acuity,’ he said, beginning a set of pull-ups on the dressing-room door.
She laughed, and he dropped down to the floor to kiss her. She blushed.
‘I love that you blush when I kiss you,’ he said. ‘But you have no need.’
‘I know! I do not know why I do it. Because I am so happy!’
‘Reason enough,’ he said, reaching to kiss her again.
But Aurora and East came running down the stairs, arguing about a bit of business with the ratafia glasses. Clover straightened her dress as Mayhew followed the others down.
‘We’ll put it on the bill at the beginning of May,’ he told Aurora. ‘Just time enough for a new gown for the beautiful Miss Sylvia.’
Aurora laughed and turned, arms in air, to show off the exquisite dress she wore: a float of embroidered lawn, pin-tucks and lace that Clover had helped her pick from the dressmaker’s shop. ‘Will this not do?’
‘No, no,’ Mayhew said, seriously. ‘Your opulence in dress is your stock-in-trade, my dear. Never underestimate the importance of being well turned-out. For a woman especially, variety in dress is a necessity. Order one in ivory peau de soie. When that’s done we’ll put the melodrama on the bill, and not before.’
Gumballs
The older brother of the Tusslers was called Walter Middleton. Bella knew the name of the younger brother now too, but she refused to use it, even in her mind. Every show, at the end of their turn, the younger Tussler was there in the wings staring at her, and she remembered again the slam of his fist, those ham-knuckle bones. When he was hit onstage, or fell down the trick-collapsible stairs, she felt hot pleasure. Even so, she would have left it alone, hating herself for the mousey way fear made her behave; but then he began to bother Xiang.
The Chinese girl was unknowable—they had no common language, and her father required her constant presence both offstage and on—but Bella loved her straight-across bangs and mincing, dress-hobbled step. Before Long Chak Sam’s act, Xiang carried a red lacquer tray of assorted magician’s props upstairs. She wore big-soled black slippers with a divider between the toes and cotton socks that split her toes to match, and they were not easy on stairs. Perhaps wearied of worrying Bella, the Tussler started lying in wait for Xiang during the intermission. He had prop-work to do himself, clearing up the clattered furniture their act left splintered about the stage, and would engineer it so that he finished just in time to arrive at the top of the stairs as Xiang began to climb from the bottom. He’d have something large and awkward in his hands, wooden slats or a drawer, and would slip, stumbling down as she was going up. It was loud and terrifying, but he was very practised at falling; his wood slats were aimed with skill into Xiang’s painstakingly arranged tray of props, scattering them. The first time Bella happened to see this, she was frightened enough to leap to help, although she usually avoided being within twenty feet of the Tussler. He scrambled up, pawing at Xiang’s dress, and made as if to do the same to Bella, except that Bella fled back into their dressing room. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Xiang fly to the top of the stairs as if by magic.
It happened again at the next show. And again, and again. Afraid to tell her sisters what had happened to her, Bella could not tell them what was happening to Xiang; but she could not leave it as it was. She woke
one night from bad dreams and lay in the dark, cold even under Clover’s arm. He would have to be stopped.
She had no poison. Oil on the dressing-room stairs might kill him, but the Tussler was very good at falling. Oil on his collapsible stairs would kill only him, but the brothers checked their set-up before every show and would certainly notice oil-slick. For a moment she thought longingly of the bright spears of broken glass in the glass-crash box—but could not bear to imagine how it would cut her hand to use one to kill the Tussler.
Mattie could not help, he was just a boy. Verrall was so fearful of any trouble that he would only clasp his hands and beg her to take no notice. East was more of a firebrand but did not care for anybody but Verrall. No point in asking him. Maybe Aurora could get Mayhew to fire him? But she’d have to tell Aurora why, and no matter how she scolded herself she found she could not bear to speak of it, of the shame of being hit.
She needed Nando from the Knockabout Ninepins. She thought with pleasure of Nando dropping the gumballs that his wicked father danced and fell on later. Victor Saborsky had returned—maybe he could help somehow, he was good at elaborate machines. But she was shy of him, of his formal speaking and his intense, un-ironic energy. It was as if he could only speak to one woman in his life, and that was Clover. It was tiresome also because Clover was so mad in love with him that she was in a daze, a dazzle-ry, distracted and prone to fits of slight bad temper, unlike herself. And Bella could not bear her to know about this, anyway.
What would be the worst thing for the Tussler—humiliation during a show? To be injured, to lose confidence—to be afraid, to see how that felt. Except maybe that was why he liked to do it to her, because he already knew himself.
Les Trois
The theatre was warmer during the day, now that spring had come, and a good thing too, Bella thought: their costumes for the peasant number of
Les Très Belles
were cut scandalously low, and high. Mayhew came to watch the girls go through their
paces. He wore the astrakhan-collared coat, though it was a little too warm outside, and in Bella’s eyes he looked the perfect impresario.
They’d started rehearsing by singing
la-la-la
because they did not know how to pronounce the French words properly, but Victor spoke French, and had coached them till they were at least comfortable, if not entirely accurate. In fun, Clover and Bella had begun larding ordinary conversation with eus and
entrezs
and carrying on as if they were actually French, which pleased Mayhew so much that he insisted they ought to keep it up always. ‘No need to inform the press of your nationality—ah, but I forgot! You are true
Canadiennes
—we merely stress the Frenchity of your native land.’