The girls stood close together in the dark, waiting for the Scintillating Songsters to be through: Bella and Clover be-winged, Aurora wrapped in her silk kimono. The various silks clung to each other and to the girls’ limbs, giving off sparks in the darkness when they shifted. ‘Like the moth-girls in their cocoons,’ Bella whispered to Aurora, ‘all wrapped and furled inside themselves.’
The Songsters creaked through
I Don’t Want To Play in Your Yard
with unbearable archness, and finally ground to a halt and went off in applause so sparse it was almost silence. The lights went to black, the boy changed the placard to
THE BUTTERFLY GIRLS
, and the stagehand closest to them waved Bella and Clover on.
As he did so, his cigar stub, not quite out, caught on the edge of Bella’s wing.
They swept and swooped as
Spring Song
started, and the fanning motion of the wings fanned the little spark too, which almost wafted off on a burned scrap of silk, but then clung, the electricity of the air keeping it hooked.
The lower-trailing wing caught with a tiny whoosh. Bella spun, as the dance required, and the wings spun with her, and then both wings were burning.
She turned her head in a sudden animal panic, fumbling for the straps that held them on, tied tight round behind so that they would not fall off. She shrieked a tiny cry to Clover, not needed—Clover had seen and was chasing her, trying to close her arms around Bella’s wings to damp them down.
Then Clover’s wings caught, and the two girls stood for a moment on the spot-lit stage, stock-still, burning.
The stagehand had been watching his ropes but turned to see the flames, and the audience rose as one person, their shrieks louder than Bella’s.
Aurora grabbed the fire bucket, but it was only sand, and she did not know what to do with it. When she tried to bat at the fiery wings her kimono sleeves shrivelled up in a smoking ruin that she tore off and stamped into smoke before running back to help—but it was
Verrall, running down to the stage, who did the only thing possible. In the clanking rush of the fire-curtain’s descent he grabbed the girls’ arms and dashed them backstage to the alley door—dislocating his shoulder as he shoved it open—and threw them out and down the steps into the snow, landing all in a squalling heap, Verrall shouting with pain, flaring bits of silk drifting like ash.
Snow fell blindingly around them, and the girls lay looking up almost peacefully into a whirl of whiteness, separate dots spinning down, small hisses as the separate flames went out.
9.
In One, in Two, in Three
JANUARY-MAY
1915
The Walker, Winnipeg
The Orpheum, Winnipeg
The Pantages, Winnipeg
Personal advice: let your conduct at all times be that of ladies and gentlemen. This same suggestion holds good while you are around the theatre, as the manager knows everything that goes on in the back of the curtain, even if he never comes back there.
FREDERICK LADELLE,
HOW TO ENTER VAUDEVILLE
B
ella leaned on the train window to cool her forehead. Burnblisters from where she’d slashed at the flames pained her right hand and arm, and she was edgy and sore with her monthly visitor as well. She hated that—something she’d wanted so badly to come; wasn’t that just a little sermon for you. Nothing was wrong, only that she was tired of being nervous. Pressed against the window-ledge, she ground her fist into her eye socket. Nothing was wrong; the theatre had not burned.
Clover sat upright, as still as the train allowed, a cold statue of herself to take away the heat of the fire from her hands, puffed and seeping. Perhaps—she did not know, after all—perhaps Victor was the kind of person who hated a scar.
Aurora had closed her eyes, determined to sleep. She ached everywhere, and the bandages on her wrists chafed. Once they got to Winnipeg she would have to pull herself up into liveliness, to charm Mr. Walker into taking them without their props. Those beautiful wings, gone. They still had their white dresses and tartan sashes. They had
Whispering Hope, Buffalo Gals, Danny Boy
—what they’d started with, and what Gentry had given them. Yes, but they were much better now than they had once been. Almost singers. She breathed slowly and refused to worry. She thought of Jimmy, but stopped that as well. Her stomach was tight enough.
Beside her, Flora made lists of what must be done. Kimono silk found, purchased, painted, made up; or ought they to cross
Poor Butterfly
off? Her pencil hesitated. A smoky smell clung to their hands and clothes, unless that was an illusion. She had forgotten to ask Aurora what payment they would be getting at the Walker. Leaving her lists, she stared
out at the snowfields going by, going by. Winter again, always winter on tour. Seeing the fields as she left Madison; seeing Paddockwood in winter, seeing Arthur lying face down, a black suit flung on the snow.
Real Snap, Real Vim
‘The Butterfly number was piquant, but we felt it had staled a little,’ Aurora told C.P. Walker with languid confidence, sitting in his spacious, high-ceilinged office—the first elegant manager’s office they’d seen. He pressed a box of bonbons on her, and when she refused, on Bella, who took two.
Mama leaned in and took a chocolate in dainty black-gloved fingers. ‘My dear girls are not a
variety
act, after all.’
Aurora gave Walker a modestly glowing look, inviting him into her confidence. ‘Gentry Fox, who has been so kind to us, has given me first trial of a number of new songs, which we have paired with old favourites to present a simple, evocative medley with an elegantly distinguished air.’
She wondered if she’d gone too far there.
But Mr. Walker smoothed his foxtail moustache and bowed, according them carefully gauged status: recognized artistes, strong pedigree, some standing on the circuit and the admiration of their peers. No fame, but perfectly respectable openers for the Walker Theatre.
‘Elegantly simple,’
he said. ‘I like the sound of that. I tell my artistes, the single most important job is to know your material. Pick songs to show yourself to best advantage, and you’re halfway there. The rest is smoke and mirrors—not
actual
smoke! No, no, our theatre, the finest playhouse in the Dominion, is absolutely fireproof.’ Perhaps he could smell the smoke on them.
They were to start as openers, in one, the next day.
‘I think you’ll agree, ladies, that the bill goes with a real snap and real vim,’ Walker said. ‘You’re a harmonious and delightful sort of an act, then we’ve got Pantalon & Pantalette, the Singing Comedics; Bee Ho Gray, the Lasso Man—his horse is a wonder and his wife’s a daisy
too. The DeWolf Girls, they’re a classy Grecian statue act—tasteful, you know. Then intermission, then the play (except that’s done now); Nutt & Nuttier get off a lot of stuff that is mighty good—nothing to touch East & Verrall, though, who we have booked for a two-week stand but not till Feb-u-ary.’ He waved his hand at a large and gorgeously coloured poster, and they saw that the bill was filled out by a knife-throwing Spanish dancer, a French poodle act, and the headliner Rouclere, with Mildredism
(‘thought-reading with no words passed!’
).
‘Very nice, to be treated like artistes,’ Mama whispered to Aurora, as Walker escorted them to his office door. He patted Bella absentmindedly on her swishing rump as she went by—but impressed by his office and his chocolates, she only gave him a reproachful look.
‘Doors open at seven,’ he said genially. ‘Trouble begins at eight!’
They laughed as required and went through to the outer office. Two typists clacked in corners and a grey-crowned matron sat moored at Walker’s door like a battleship ready to repel all comers, her desk fenced round.
The matron spoke through her nose about their particulars sheet, press clippings, photographs ‘to be supplied in a timely fashion’—forestalled by Aurora producing these from her music case—and the vital provision of a telephone number as soon as that could be obtained from their lodgings. Aurora steeled herself to deal with this new hurdle.
But Jimmy Battle ran into the office, jumping the fence. Their friend. In a glow of high spirits he clasped each hand in turn, and told ‘dear Dot’ to cut the cackle. ‘They’re at Sadie Jewett’s, same as me, you’ve got the number in your wonderful files!’
He opened the gate and waved them out and down the stairs. They obeyed, tying scarves and pulling on gloves, laughing at the bustle he was producing and very happy to see him—lean and black-clad as usual, legs like long matchsticks, and always debonair.
At the street door Aurora began a proper thank-you, but he would not let her speak. ‘I’m on in two hours, replacing a man with the DeWolf Girls—we’ve got to get you settled in and figure a few things out.’ As they emerged from the stage door he bundled them straight into a cab,
flipped a coin to the driver and called out the address. ‘Five in a hansom’s a tight fit, but I promise it’s only a few blocks,’ Jimmy said. ‘Which one’s the smallest: you could sit on my lap, Bella, if you’d like?’
Bella laughed and said no, thank you very much, she was quite well placed.
‘Break my heart,’ he said, making a very sad face for an instant. ‘Now, dear Mrs. Avery, are you well? I heard sad news of our poor old Sybil …’
After a few minutes comforting Mama, they pulled up in front of a dark brick house with a slim veranda. Mrs. Jewett was in the hall, a talkative lady with a false bang of yellow curls. Her boy took charge of the baggage, and Mrs. Jewett ushered Mama and the younger girls upstairs to see the two rooms she had set aside.
Aurora was left behind with Jimmy in the parlour-hall. She turned to the pier-glass, but did not lift her hands to take off her hat. Hidden by its brim she looked at him: unscathed. A little smoother, but the same. She was different now.
‘I’ve had some time on my hands,’ he said. He leaned on the tall newel post, arms gently crossed, one foot angled over the other in a graceful, athletic stance. Her blood rose in her throat. He’d been kind even long ago, when he danced to help her audition at the Empress—it was because of him that they had been hired, then and now.
He caught her eye in the long glass, and said, as if it didn’t matter a whit, ‘Working on a song-and-dance number—I need a partner. Might you be persuaded to join me?’
Aurora looked at him, charged with energy, bright in this stifling wood-panelled hall. An oblique bevel of the mirror seared his cheek with a scar of sun. She felt she knew him very well, and yet they’d only spent a few moments alone in these three years.
‘A week to rehearse, two weeks’ run. Walker will pay well for the number,’ he said, as if she needed convincing. He joined her in the pier-glass. The two of them side by side, a pleasing combination of light and dark, well-matched as to size and build. ‘Two hundred a week, he promised, if it looks good when we get it sorted out,’ he said. ‘Strong placement, too: second-to-last in the first half.’
‘What of Miss Masefield?’ The play was off, Walker had said.
‘She had an opportunity,’ Jimmy said, smiling at Aurora with warm understanding. ‘New York, a revival of
The Degenerates
, in which she had such great success some years ago. The cast was already filled, she had no need of another young man. And so!’
Aurora wished the story were otherwise, that he’d had the resolution to quit Miss Masefield’s company. But after all, she had not quit Mayhew. She raised her arms to unpin her hat, her face bent away. The velvet cuff of her walking-suit fell back, revealing a bandage on one wrist. The silver bracelet she had worn for some time now caught on the gauze.
Jimmy put out a hand to touch the bracelet, then the bandage. ‘What’s this?’
‘Oh!’ She tucked her hands back into the cuffs. ‘Nothing! A small fire, it was nothing. Only it burnt our props, so we are having to change our act.’
‘Poor hand,’ he said. He pulled her wrist gently out into the open, and kissed above the burn. ‘Will you find time to dance with me, though?’
‘I think so—but what about us?’
Us
always meaning the three of them, she and her sisters.
Jimmy laughed. ‘Double acts come and go, sister acts are more rare. Never fear, Walker wants the Belle Auroras too. He’s a man of vision, pays top dollar for good openers.’
Remembering, she pulled the grouch-bag out of her bodice and ripped the loose stitching from its inner pocket. ‘Thank you for the loan,’ she said. Forty-seven dollars; she counted them into his hand. Then she said, ‘Now that we are quits, we can be partners.’
Brittle
East and Verrall, arriving on a later train, paid a call on the girls that evening. Verrall’s arm was in a sling, but he swore he only wore it as a ploy for pity, to save joining up. East brought a white paper bag of peanut brittle, as well as the rundown on who all was in town, or had enlisted: the cream of vaudeville was rising
in Winnipeg, three of its theatres counting as minor big-time—firststringers abounded, with plenty of their old friends to round out the bills. Among East’s other news: the Elocutionist, Maurice Kavanagh, was starring in a play at the Pantages.
‘Kavanagh’s a furniture actor,’ East told them disgustedly. ‘Acquits himself well enough sitting down, but the moment he stands up, he’s a joke. Grabs the back of chairs, leans against the tables—rested against a wall last week and the flat collapsed. And he’s got his lines written all over. Nice bit of business, picks up the picture of his dear wife—except when you look close, you see he’s pasted his sides on it. Soused buffoon.’
‘No, East,’ Verrall objected. ‘Nobody would know. He speaks as smooth as velvet and he’s got grace, you’ve got to give him that.’
Bella glanced across to see how Aurora took this news of Kavanagh’s decline. Not well—a pity to still be overset by an old drunk not treating her with respect years ago, Bella thought. Looking suddenly quite sick, Aurora dashed out of the parlour.