King of Everything
Jimmy returned to the boarding house that evening after supper. He found Aurora on the window seat in the back parlour. Clover, polishing her fiddle at the piano, wrapped it in a red scarf and left the room.
Jimmy stood at the door, looking at her, and then came across the floor.
‘She wants me to go back to New York tonight. There’s a sleeper—’ He stopped, and Aurora was glad. Too much between them, and between him and Miss Masefield. ‘I can’t—I can’t miss this,’ he said. ‘It’s the
Palace.’
Oh, well then.
‘New York is assured. She’s given me a contract for eighteen
months. At a thousand a week.’ His mouth closed at the end of each sentence, Aurora saw. Closed, like his face. She took up a cushion on the window seat. To give him room, he would think, but really to cover her middle where she had loosed her sash.
‘I’ve come back to pack,’ he said, not sitting down.
That too, she admired: that he could be so honest.
‘I owe her a great deal. Everything.’
‘Not everything,’ Aurora said. ‘You’ve given good service, over the years.’ That was cruel, she should not have said it.
He did not flinch, he laughed. That was a bad sign. ‘You know how to wound me.’
She laughed too, almost.
‘You
know better.’
He stepped to one side, and then back to face her. Unable, it seemed, to stand still. Impatient. She felt very patient, very old.
‘You know you would never—’
She wondered what he had intended to say. She looked up, but could not make her eyes focus properly on his face, to see what he meant.
‘You are always alone, even when we are most together.’
That was true. It was a fault in her, she knew it. ‘We might get to New York together,’ she said. It was all she would do, to beg.
‘In ten years! Or twelve, or never.’
‘There is something other than success.’
‘Not for me.’
‘Or a better kind of success, than riding the skirt of an old woman.’
Then he looked entirely miserable. Unfair of her. What else had she done herself? They were both cheap at the price.
‘The cab’s to come at nine,’ he said.
‘I will help you pack your things.’ She gathered her book and shawl, and went ahead of him up the stairs to his room, the third-floor front.
Everything is undone, she thought, watching him pile shirts into the leather suitcase he was so proud of. Eleanor Masefield had had it custom-made, with his initials in gilt. When he turned to the bureau, Aurora undid his mother’s silver bracelet and let it slip from her wrist down into the suitcase.
The case was packed. He set it on the floor beside his trunk, moved her back onto the bed and kissed her, and kissed her, and pushed her skirt up. In the lamp’s light his eyes were shining with tears.
‘This is what I am good at,’ Jimmy said. ‘Isn’t it?’ He rose up into her.
Then it was over and she wished she had not, not one more time. She pulled herself out from under his leg, tidied her dress as well as she could, kissed him and left the room.
The Eleventh
Clover looked up the train schedule to Montreal. To be on the ship sailing May fifteenth, she must leave Winnipeg on the twelfth. Three weeks. The eleventh would be safer. Even in May, a train could be held up by snow, going over the lakehead by Port Arthur. Or there could be trouble with the track.
Ever since Bella had demanded her own pay, Clover had got hers too. She had enough for a sleeper and meals, and Victor’s fifty pounds to spare at journey’s end. If she did not go in May, shipping might cease for the duration of the war.
Perhaps he meant her to stay with his mother, to look after her. Or if that did not work out, she was sturdy and could do many things to earn a living.
What she could not seem to do was tell her sisters, or Mama, her plans. None of them knew Victor like she did; they would think him mad, and her mad to leave. But Aurora was partnered with Jimmy and the new number would lift them into the big-time for certain, Clover thought. Bella could tag along, and there would be a baby to look after too, so that would keep Mama happy, and none of them would miss her.
The moment would come—must come—when even her sisters, who ignored the war as far as they were able, would see she had to go.
You Need That Pride
Mr. Walker agreed to see Aurora first thing in the morning, asking Dot to bring a cup of tea with an extra nod, which seemed to mean
call my wife!
For along with the tea, in very short order, came Mrs. Walker.
Aurora had had time to explain that she was without a partner and to offer the Belle Auroras as substitute for the first-act closing slot, which would now be empty; Walker waited for his wife to sit, and said, ‘Seems we’ve lost young Jimmy to Miss Masefield’s New York company, Hattie.’
Mrs. Walker, imposing in brown corded silk, pursed her full mouth and considered. ‘Well, that’s no bad thing in my opinion—you couldn’t marry the fellow, in your situation, and I had my doubts whether it was suitable to book the two of you, smelling of April and May and dancing so romantic, with you not even a widow. And beginning to show, my dear,’ she added, with a kindly glance that made bile rise in Aurora’s throat till she thought it must burst out into screeching.
What could she answer? It was no slander but perfectly true, and Mrs. Walker had every right to say so. She ran a polite vaudeville house and must guard its reputation.
Aurora would not look down, however, but met her eyes and refused the shame she was being so benevolently offered. ‘There
fore,’
she said, speaking low and careful, ‘you may be happier with the same pretty number performed with my youngest sister, as a child with an Eaton Beauty Doll. The dance is whimsical and charming and so is my sister, as you know, and I’m persuaded we can pull it off this very day, at the evening show at least, for Bella has watched rehearsals.’
‘You need that pride, to be a vaude artiste,’ Mrs. Walker said, approvingly. ‘To suffer through the constant trial of self and skill. You’re a nice little dancer, and so was he. I could see you making a big hit. But without him, no. Your sister in his place—no, not for us, not so soon after you’ve played.’
‘But we’ll still take the girls for that spot I’d mentioned, eh, Hat?’ Walker asked her. ‘Second-act openers, not next week but the week after?’
Prisoners in the dock must feel like this, Aurora thought.
Mrs. Walker looked sober. ‘I think we’ll have to wait on that, Mr. Walker,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure that without the balance of the romance we can fit in the sister act.’
‘We can do
Lakmé,’
Aurora said, and could have bitten her tongue out.
Mrs. Walker gave her a firm nod. ‘A little resting time may be just what you girls need,’ she said. ‘I’ll see her out, Mr. Walker, I’m going myself.’
Sweetness in Song
Verrall passed their door on his way to rehearsal call at the Orpheum, and heard Flora’s first shrieking. He shrank against the wall and would have snuck down the stairs in a cowardly fashion, but then he heard Aurora give one cry, and then there was a smash—‘Oh lord,’ he said to himself. ‘There goes the bureau mirror. Seven years’ bad luck.’
Taking his courage in both fists, he gave a timid knock upon the door, and when nobody noticed, opened it. As he’d suspected, glass lay sprinkled across the Turkey carpet, a glittering mound on the hearth tiles where Bella was sweeping it with the little broom and coal shovel. He ought to fetch East, really.
‘Trouble?’ he asked, in as nonchalant a voice as he could manage.
‘Only the usual ruin of everything,’ Flora cried. ‘A man too weak to break with temptation!’
‘It was a thousand a week she offered,’ Aurora said mildly. She was lying flat on the bed in a tangle of sheets, wearing her outside coat and the frippery blue hat that Verrall loved. Her boots, stuck out into the room, were still wet with snow.
‘He’s gone, is he? Well, good riddance,’ said Verrall. ‘I never liked him much.’
Hiccuping over the broken glass, Bella raised her head and said, ‘No, no, it is all that nasty actress. He could not refuse a thousand a week. She is like a mother to him, you know.’
Aurora cracked a laugh and sat up. ‘Verrall, could you take me to the Orpheum this morning? I met Martin once, with Mayhew. At least I can sound him out. I might be able to put it to him—’
‘If you are looking for a gig,’ Verrall said, ‘I am your man. Martin asked about your bookings while you was gone to points south! If you care to come along that would be sound management, but we must make a mile because East is already shouting from the door.’
Indeed they could all hear him, now that Mama had subsided into mere moaning.
‘I think you must sign up with our booking agent, Miss Aurora,’ Verrall said as they went down the stairs. ‘He does very well for us, and the portion that we pay him is repaid tenfold in extra dates.’
He wished he could say what was in his heart: that the doltish Jimmy was a fair way to a drunkard anyway, and of unsavoury habits, and everybody knew it to be so. But the cad had sloped off and what need, now, to hurt her more?
Earle Martin seemed to think he was stealing a march on Walker, snatching the Belle Auroras out from under his nose, and with a brand-new novelty dance as well. Their number would be filled out with a soldier song and (Aurora having a moment of inspiration) the sentimental favourite
Songs My Mother Taught Me
. Verrall remembered with approval that Martin had been very fond of his mother; he was damp in the eye by the time Aurora had run through it for him.
‘We’ll bill it as Belle Auroras: Sweetness in Song,’ Martin said, blowing his nose horribly on a dirty handkerchief. ‘In two.’
The Orpheum was no kind of class, and the floors were grimy, but on the snowy sidewalk outside, Verrall was rewarded with Aurora’s quick, fervent hug, and a kiss on his hollow cheek.
Bella’s New Car
With the Ninepins also booked in at the Orpheum the chance was too good to miss: Nando had decided it was time to test out the exploding car sketch. With his mother’s doleful
blessing (she took a few weeks off to lie weeping in bed, eating chocolates), he and Bella worked non-stop on effects and banter.
Clover loved the new sketch. She watched it every show, seeing new bits of invention and precision each time. Bella had grown into her comic self so brilliantly. She and Nando were a perfect match, Clover thought; she also thought, with greater comfort, that it was
they
who would hit the big-time after all, now that Jimmy had decamped, and carry Aurora and Mama along with them.
The Orpheum stage was massive, made for stunts, but even so, when the rippling curtains opened in three, the crowd gasped to see Nando and Bella driving their flivver on from the wings (pulled by stagehands with a hidden rope, while the glass-crash man made a tolerable engine racket on his machines). An automobile, onstage!
Hinky-dinky cacophony music travelled along with them, a jaunty outing on a summer day, Bella enjoying the sun and the breeze. ‘Hold my head scarf for me, Tommy!’ she begged in pretty flirtation. She had just rearranged her tumbling curls when the car’s motor coughed and spat.
They lurched forward again, then the car coughed again, and stopped.
They sat, Nando staring blankly, until Bella said, ‘Do something! Talk to it!’
Nando got out and lifted the hood, and disappeared into it, feet waggling. A moment later an ominous sputter like a fizzing ginger-beer bottle (exactly like, in fact, since inside the hood Nando had been shaking one like crazy) finished with a terrific explosion and a flash (as he lit the flashpan), and Nando (having hooked himself onto the flying-harness) was blown backwards away from the car, blackfaced and flailing, and fell
clump
onto the ground.
Bella shrieked and hid her eyes.
Nando wiped his face with his kerchief, then realized it was Bella’s pink scarf, now blackened. He made a great show of hiding the ruined scarf.
Regaining some courage and human decency, Bella exclaimed and jumped out of the car and rushed to him, applying first aid in the form
of blown kisses (no actual kisses being yet permitted onstage, even at the relaxed Orpheum).
She sat him up, and he fell down.
She stood him up. He fell forward, flat on his nose, except that she caught him in the nick of time, and they both fell sprawling in a very improper attitude (so that Clover caught her breath, hearing Sybil say, ‘Begs for a blue envelope!’)—and were up, next instant, Bella giving the cheekiest dimpling wave to the manager in the booth.
Nando dusted himself off and thanked Bella, but no, thank you
very
much, she was just a woman and he could fix the ding-danged car himself. He rustled in the trunk for a tool box, pulled out a gigantic wrench, and made his way round to the front of the car, legs rubbery from the explosion. He made his legs such instruments of comedy: stiff and limp at once, unpredictably non–weight-bearing, expressive both of excruciating pain and irrepressible gaiety. Just watching him walk round to the front of the car Clover could see why Bella was so fond of him.
The headlight fell off in his hand.
Oh! It was
hot!
He hot-potatoed it, tossed it up in the air, bright and fragile and dangerous. Bella, leaning forward to give helpful unwanted advice, caught it
—ouch!
She juggled it delicately, carefully (Clover knew how hard she had worked at that juggling) and tossed it back to him; he whipped it back, like a badminton birdie. They volleyed it twice, and then, being burned again, Nando gave it an angry smack and it smashed into the stage. The sugar-glass took forever to make each morning, Mrs. Dent standing fretting over the stove.
The front bumper fell off with a
clang
. Nando caught it up, handed it to Bella, and the back bumper fell slantwise with an ominous creak—he rushed to it and something exploded at the front, giving Bella instant blackface. She opened her bright eyes at the audience and leaned back over the car, in time for the radiator to spray out a jet of water and wash her face, till she jumped back, dripping.