They sat in a row to put their hair up in rags: Mama doing Aurora; Aurora doing Clover; Clover, Bella. Then the girls climbed into the big bed under the gold silk coverlet, last remnant of home, and Mama blew out the lamp. She lay along the end of the bed warming their feet and talking for a while, as she had always done, telling them stories of her life on the circuit and her miserable childhood in Madison, Wisconsin with Aunt Queen, who would hardly ever let her have a bath. Tonight she made plans for costumes and new songs and ways to keep the audience tacked to the edge of their seats, though the girls were only openers, until she had talked out her excitement and could rest. She ended: ‘One week with the Star Union, a good start with a good company—we’re on our way. Go to sleep, my clever girls, your dear papa is looking down from heaven on his daughters, with our little Harry in his arms, warm and peaceful and so happy to be together.’
She lay at their feet, murmuring of Harry’s blond silk curls, how his darling sweetness bound them together—and how she should have ate better while expecting, or not run the last bit uphill with the water pail that one day when she cramped up, or what other thing she had done to leave him so weak that the pneumonia could take hold and carry him off.
She let herself sigh and cry then, and they all lay still in the cooling room, frost creeping over the window like a blind.
But Clover could not sleep. It was funny how that stage name left her out. Belle–Aurora with a blank space in the middle, because she was the blank among them, really. Clover turned again in the bed, making the others turn, and put her arm over Bella this time, who slid backwards into Clover’s knees and thighs more tightly, warm under the gold silk. Mama had been right to bring the coverlet, though it had to be tied so tight to pack into the trunk every morning. They were getting faster at packing. Rags out of their hair, stays tied, stockings on, petticoats, skirts and waists, boots rubbed and retied—there was a complicated sequence to dressing, and the peacefulness of thinking about it let Clover drift away.
Moth-Girls
Later, when Mama tiptoed out to knock on Sybil’s door, Aurora woke. She lay curled beside her sisters, thinking of what they would do tomorrow, how it would go. Down the hall she could hear the women comparing money outside Sybil’s door before going down to the hotel bar by the back stairs, to get blissfully drunk on two of the last twenty dollars. The Italian Boys came down the hall and joined them as they went, so it sounded like to be a cheerful evening all around.
Wakened by the noise, Bella begged for a fairy story, as she used to when she was small.
‘You are on the boards now, too old for fairy tales,’ Aurora said. But she looked around the darkness for something to tell. Nothing, nothing—‘Well, there, under the windowsill, in the shadows, is a clutch of moth fairies’ eggs. They will hatch out soon into a little troop of moth-girls in feathery dresses, dancing in and out of the candlelight and trying not to get singed …’ Aurora felt Bella’s knees cosy closer into Clover’s, feet tucked under her bony heels; she spoke softer as Bella’s breath slowed, sinking to sleep again, thinking of moth-girls, or maybe that boy—Nando?—who flew round the room on a flagpole broom.
Aurora slid her arm from where it had gone numb under Clover’s neck and hugged her more tightly round her narrow waist.
They would do it in one and charm the house. They could do that, easy.
2.
First Night
JANUARY 1912
The Empress, Fort Macleod
… and there we were, not on the list.
FRED ASTAIRE
Snowlit wind, brilliant with ice-chips, swirled them along paths shovelled like tunnels through the drifts. Without the bunched baby-doll petticoats, the cold cut sharper. Aurora could feel it chafing to bright red the bare skin above her stocking tops. She breathed through her muff to keep her voice from freezing.
Clover held fingers over her eyes, leaving only a narrow slit to see through, as her father had said the Esquimaux did in the farthest North. A shorter journey to the theatre today because they knew the way—Clover had noticed that before. Or because she was dreading this a little, the band call and how that would be.
Bella walked through the snow thinking of Gerda’s trail to the Snow Queen. Except Bella and her sisters were glad to be trapped in this palace. They would sing and dance for their supper because they were the luckiest, and too bad for poor Mr. Konigsburg. Her boots said Konigsburg-Konigsburg crunching over the snow. She wondered what Julius and Sybil were doing, where they had gone.
Mama’s tight, black-gloved hand was on the handle, but the door flew open of its own accord, and there was the Ninepins’ broom-boy, Nando Dent.
‘Mendel sent me to look out for you,’ he said, flat-planed face cracking into a creased grin. ‘Welcome, ladies!’
‘We are not behind time?’ Mama asked, anxious.
‘No, no, he wants to give you an extra bit, that’s all.’ Nando hurried them, still snow-dazzled, through the lobby, encouraging and clucking as if he were shooing chickens. He swung the inner door open, and the girls stopped in a clump—the velvet darkness again assailing them with its complicated smell and music. A little band assembled at the left in front of the stage was twiddling away: fiddle, clarinet, piano, one uncertain double bass. Another player, stretching his slide trombone to oil the long brass bones of it, inserted himself behind an array of odd percussion. Would they be heard over all that? Clover caught her cheek in her teeth and then let go. They were on their way. Her chest felt tight, and she could see the pulse jumping in Aurora’s tender neck. Bella did not seem at all affected.
‘It will be all right,’ Mama said, softer-toned. ‘You are very good girls and good performers, there is nothing to fret about.’
Her black hands pushed them in.
Bella skipped round the others and went first, Nando Dent bounding to run beside her down the slightly sloping floor to the small clear space in front of the stage. Half the chairs had been set up; part of the noise was the rest of them being crashed into place by a couple of skinny hands. Up on the stage Mr. Cleveland stood barking some order up into the fly gallery, then calling for ‘Silence!’
Which fell without delay, musicians and chair-movers milling around the house all stilled and expectant. Cleveland came forward to the lip of the stage and peered down, looking for Mendel. ‘When you are ready, Mr. Mendel, we may begin?’
‘Uno momento,’ Mendel called up from the piano.
Aurora watched Cleveland make his way down the moveable stairs and midway up the house to his station at a two-legged table propped on seat-backs, strewn with papers and props; a squat, ugly man sat scribbling there already and looked up to murmur something.
The musicians huddled around Mendel once more. Nando danced back and pulled at Mama’s sleeve. ‘Your sides? The band arrangements?’
‘Oh, mercy! I forgot. Here!’ Mama held out the worn piano music, and then (with a grimace, for she knew it betrayed their lack of experience) brand-new sides, on very crisp paper, for violin, woodwind and double bass. ‘But stay—is there a programme?’
He pulled one out of his pants pocket and bestowed it like a rose on the beloved, and Flora laughed and smacked at him affectionately, as if he were one of Arthur’s big-boy students. A nice boy, with easy manners and some thought for the feelings of others.
They took their seats in the front row, crowded with other artistes waiting their turn. Aurora, in the middle, held the programme so they could all see. A long slim booklet of flimsy pinkish paper, with Cleveland’s Empress Theatre on the front. She flipped over the pages, sifting through the rich black, decoratively lettered words, and finally—there—on the first page, all alone in a sea of advertisements, their new name:
THE BELLE AURORAS, ART SONGS OLD & NEW
So it must be real, Aurora thought.
‘Openers, yes, but we’ll work our way up from that, you’ll see!’ Mama whispered.
Pretty Little Gal
Aurora sat beside
Clover and breathed through a light commotion in her stomach. This was only the band call—nothing, nothing to worry about.
Mendel’s hand rose and the musicians dodged back to their stands, and they broke into a roistering little march, a lovely encouraging come-in-and-enjoy-this piece. Too soon for Aurora, Mendel’s hand rose again and the band straggled to a stop, the violinist a bit behind the others, having had his eyes closed. The musicians were dressed in tight old suits, the patina of long use on knees and sleeves. One, the trombone player, had a slight dusting of flour all down his right side, which he brushed at whenever he was not playing. Perhaps he was a baker the rest of the time.
‘Cut to … eight bars from the end,’ Mendel said. ‘Belle Auroras?’
‘Present!’ said Aurora, then blushed. Present, as if they were girls at school.
They ran up the backstage stairs and found another stagehand waiting there, who cried out to Mendel, ‘In place!’ The band struck up the cantering march and rode it to a happy crash of cymbals—a brief pause—then the opening bars of the Whispering Hope intro began. The stagehand motioned them to go, go!—and on they went. The stage was dusty and dirty, but Aurora could see the marks painted to show where to stand to do it in one. They arranged themselves sufficiently ahead of the marks to let the curtains swing closed behind them, and (brushing down their skirts into pretty order) stood still, breathed in all at the same moment, and sang—
Mendel’s hand shot up on their third note, and the band stopped. Only Bella kept on singing, her wobbling voice echoing through the hall on An-gel … But she stopped when Clover’s hand pinched her waist, and clamped her mouth shut with one hand, and the little audience of performers laughed, kindly enough.
Mendel consulted his sides: ‘And then Bow-Wow—I thought we cut the Bow-Wow?’
Mama hastened onstage, explaining, ‘Well, my dear sir, Mr. Cleveland required a twenty-minute length, and without that number we come in just a trifle under eighteen.’
‘Better short than long,’ Mr. Cleveland intoned from the worktable, waxy face gleaming in the lamplight as he leaned forward. ‘Anyhow, Bow-Wow is Simple Soubrettes material. Clear the stage except performers.’
Mama’s gloved hand waved frantically at Aurora and she vanished back into the wings, where Aurora could see her shifting from foot to foot in a small circle, like a lost bee.
Aurora turned to Mendel. ‘Then we’ll go straight to Buffalo Gals, with Don’t Dilly-Dally after, and save Last Rose of Summer for the closer.’
Mendel considered, nodded, and made a pencil dash across his sheet. ‘On to it then, boys, bridge from last four bars of Whispering Hope, vamp until I sign you in to Buffalo Gals.’
The band struck up at once, sliding from sorrowful minor thirds into the jaunty Buffalo Gals. Aurora and Clover darted into promenade steps behind Bella, who did the first verse in speak-song, her funny voice perking up the place. The waiting performers lifted their heads in sudden attention when she squeaked out, ‘A pretty little gal I chanced to meet, Oh, she was fair to see!’
Mendel called out, ‘Last four bars—’ and the girls skated into their final positions, to sing, ‘… and dance by the light of the moon …’ They took it to their bow, and on into the intro for Dilly-Dally. Bella and Clover retreated, and Aurora moved up for her solo.
To demonstrate her professionalism, Aurora looked up to the lighting-booth window above the balcony and called out, ‘Now the follow-spot should move to me alone.’
‘I’m right here, you don’t got to shout,’ said the squat man sitting beside Cleveland.
Aurora went white. Amateur! She ought to have known that the lighting man would not be in the booth during band call.
‘I got your notes right here, anyways,’ he said. ‘I’ll follow you all right.’
‘Of course,’ she said politely, and bowed a little—even more stupid. ‘Very sorry.’
Mendel, pressed for time, swung the band on into the lilt and sway of Dilly-Dally, crashed it to a halt and skipped to the end, when the girls came back to stand together in a nice tableau for Last Rose. ‘When true hearts,’ he prompted.
‘When true hearts lie withered, and loved ones are flown.’ Aurora took the rising trill solo at the end of that, and then their voices subsided together into the peaceful sighing ending—‘Oh, who would inhabit this bleak world alone?’
‘And the bow—and off you go, girls.’ Dismissing them completely, Mendel turned to the band. ‘Wonder Dogs, no vamps, long set-up so we riff the whole of The Chicken Dance.’
Not Simple
Four girls, preening and fluffing, had taken over the dressing room: too-short white skirts, dashing slippers with no stockings, lips kissing air in the mirror. A thin older one, strong-looking with a sharp, vivid face; two pudgy ones with blonde curls; and a thin little one, whose mouth was pulled into a tight knot on one side by an old scar. She had sparkling eyes.
Mama had spread their own things over a bench in front of one of the mirrors, the only space left untenanted. She bustled importantly, hanging up tartan shawls and pulling tissue out of dancing slippers. Clover took the tissue and folded it along its original lines, watching Aurora take a few quick steps into the room as the strong girl, the oldest one, turned from the mirror to meet her. Aurora stared into her eyes.
‘Mercy,’ the girl said, holding out her hand.
‘Oh! Aurora Avery,’ Aurora said. She took the narrow hand, held it for a moment.
They were enemies, they must be, Clover thought, but they had a brightness in common. Mercy laughed and looked away.
‘Simple Soubrettes?’ Mama asked.
‘That’s us. Fifth up, right before the break. Bring ’em back alive, Cleveland says.’ Mercy laughed again, immoderately. Like a boy’s, her voice was deep and hoarse.
The larger blonde turned from the mirror and asked, ‘Dumb act?’
‘Not dumb!’ Mama was quick to refute it. ‘The Belle Auroras, a selection of simple airs to recall tenderer years gone by.’
‘Not simple,’ the blonde said, puzzled. ‘We’re Simple Soubrettes, so you can’t be.’
Mercy turned her back to the mirror, hands on the big girl’s shoulders. ‘Old songs, that’s all they mean, Patience. And this,’ she said, tapping on the prettier blonde girl’s arm, ‘is my sister Temperance, and the little one is Joyful.’
Clover folded another sheet of tissue, a chirp of laughter in her head—such ridiculous names for flip-skirted foamy dancers.
Mama said, ‘Plymouth Brethren?’ and the older girl, Mercy, nodded.
‘A great escape for the lot of you, then,’ Mama said, nodding too. ‘My aunt, not by blood, was Plymouth Brethren. She wanted me to be renamed, but Thankful I was not. Clover, you carry on here while I run back to the hotel to fetch the pincushion. I knew there was something I’d left behind, and ten to one we’ll need it.’ Wrapping a scarf around her neck, she was gone almost before the words were out.
With the same brisk command, Mercy said, ‘Joy, go show that youngest girl where the necessary is and how to do the latch stage right so you can get back in. Mrs. C. will not have shown them.’
Of course she hadn’t, thought Clover. Nobody’d said a thing about the arrangements.
Scampering Mice
Bella was very glad to go exploring. She wanted to see the Nando boy again, so she ran up the stairs with Joy like they were scampering mice. In the theatre the Living Statuary (willowy ladies and men in scandalous skin-coloured clothes) were setting up their props in three, on the last slice of stage. The backcloth showed an Italian courtyard in clumsy perspective. The girls sidled to the rear of the stage where a door stood inched ajar, latch hooked back in the jamb and a cloud of cold white air curling in.
Joy whispered, ‘Someone’s out there already, see, so that’s useful too, then you don’t wander out and have to wait there freezing. It’s a two-hole biffy, but only if you go out together—nobody knocks if the door is shut. People are very cultured here.’
The biffy out the back of the schoolhouse and teacherage had four seats, and was only too often chock full of girls. Bella had no interest in seeing another. When they were famous she would only ever have an indoor toilet, ever. ‘But I thought it was stage right?’
‘This is stage right,’ Joy said.
But it was on the left, on the side that their dressing room was on.
Joy laughed, the scar-knot lifting her cheek, even her eyelid. ‘You have to think of it from onstage, not from as if you was watching. It’s from our eyes that they named the two sides, because we’re the simple ones!’
The Belle Auroras were not simple. Even if Joy and her sisters might be, in their saucy skirts and no stockings. ‘Aren’t your bare legs awfully cold?’ Bella asked—then she and Joy both laughed, because it was such a silly, mean thing to say.
‘Bone-chilled! But in the show when it gets so hot, when all the people come, I’ll have to flap my skirts for air,’ Joy said. She tugged Bella’s sleeve to pull her behind a velvet curtain, so a stone plinth could be rolled on for the Living Statuary—stone in appearance only, Bella realized, because the stagehand was pushing two and pulling another on a string.
‘This change is taking too long,’ thundered Cleveland out of the darkness.
Everyone onstage jumped. Music crashed in, ending the underlying murmur that had been Mendel talking to the band. Joy and Bella clutched each other behind the curtain, trying not to shriek because everything was so funny, especially the men suddenly moving very quickly, like toys wound too tight.
The Little Shadows Page 4