The Little Shadows

by Marina Endicott

  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.

  The Parthenon manager appeared be-hatted, a chewed cigar in his mouth. Bella thought he looked like a cartoon of a tough customer, except for his wide-apart pale blue eyes.

  ‘Mendel!’ he exclaimed sorrowfully, when Mama introduced herself and handed him the note, saying it was from Mendel at the Empress. He held it by one edge, doubtful. ‘Mendel sent you to me? Well, that’s a great thing, a great thing. To hear from a guy like that. He’s a trump card, Mendel.’

  He took out his cigar and stared at the letter, in some distress of spirit. Taken aback, Mama waited for him to recover from the shock. It seemed to Bella that he might be in pain. Was he weeping?

  He stretched his mouth wide, contorting his face like a baby, pulled one massive dirty hand over his whole bald scalp and down to hide his eyes, and shook his head, turning the envelope over in his other hand. ‘So what’s he think, I got a spot open?’

  Aurora put her hand through Mama’s arm and said gently, ‘Perhaps we could audition?’

  He seemed surprised all over again. ‘Well, that’s the ticket, but the thing is, I don’t make those decisions. I’m the front man, I’m the business head, but I don’t know beans about acts or booking ’em. I leave all that to Gentry Fox.’

  At that name Mama’s head rose, eyebrows arching up her forehead.

  ‘Gentry Fox is your musical director, your manager?’

  ‘Is he? I’ll hope to tell ya. Manages the hell out of me.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mama. ‘That puts a different complexion on it. I think
Gentry will see me, for old times’ sake.’

  While Drawbank disappeared, Bella tugged Clover to look at the posters on the wall for the coming attractions (VICTOR SABORSKY, MANIFEST ECCENTRIC! THE GRAPHOPHONE GIRL, A BOWERY ROMANCE), and the present playbill: SUNDERLAND & PETTIBONE’S EXCURSION OF SONG, SWAIN’S RATS & CATS, and MAURICE MACKENNA KAVANAGH, ELOCUTIONIST. After the break, the OLD SOLDIER FIDDLERS, CORNELIUS THE BUBBLE JUGGLER, and the pictures. A lean bill. Kavanagh, a famous Irish actor who toured in vaudeville between theatre engagements, was the only name on the bill they’d heard before. Only the pictures to close, too. It was a paltry kind of place, but Bella did not say so.

  They Do a Royal Tea

  Gentry Fox was the shortest man Clover had ever seen, shorter than she was by far. As if someone had pressed down on the head of a normal man, but some time ago, so he’d had time to get used to it.

  He had to look up, even at Bella, which he did with a sideways glint. ‘What—have—we—here?’ he asked, his voice both gravelled and silky.

  The girls stood in a line, not sure whether to proceed. He waved a hand, beckoning them to the stage, and they went stiffly down the raked aisle, not entirely sure of their footing in the thicker darkness of the auditorium. Mama patted Clover, who moved aside to let her through. She took two steps and stopped, perhaps afraid, Clover thought.

  But no. She had paused only to make a better entrance. Mr. Fox looked up, inquiring, when she did not speak—then, looking again, gave Mama a very warm, familiar smile. He laughed and bowed, and bowed again, coming forward as he bent and rose and bent.

  ‘Oh, my dear sir, you may recall that I have had the distinct pleasure of making your acquaintance before,’ Mama said to the little bowing man. Bowing now herself.

  ‘But of course, of course I recall,’ Mr. Fox said, murmuring and mincing. ‘With the greatest, my dear Flora, the greatest of pleasure.’

  Pleasure, pleasure. They were nodding dolls, bowing and re-bowing. Clover felt Aurora pull her close, then slide an arm behind to pull Bella into place.

  ‘And these?’

  ‘Oh, these! My dear Mr. Fox! You see before you—my daughters.’

  Dark eyes gleamed in his dark rumpled face, turning from one girl to the next. His squashed neck was supple. Inspecting Aurora. Then Clover, Bella. And back to Mama.

  ‘They are jewels,’ he said with great simplicity. ‘They sing? They dance?’

  ‘They do!’ Mama clapped her hands because he was so clever. ‘May we?’

  ‘Will you? Will they? Johnny Drawbank! Clear those hands away, if you will. Lights!’

  This was a much bigger stage, a much bigger theatre. Not a jewel box like the Empress; the floorboards not as clean beneath the dirty chairs, and the stage not clean either. Deep, though, and high—four long curtain-legs before the backdrop. Clover thought doing it in one here would be a pleasure, because the stage bowed outwards and left an acre of room in front of the great red curtain (its ragged bottom draggling on the boards, gold bobble-trim gappy and dimmed).

  Work-lights shone on the piano, and on the stage. As Mama and the girls climbed the moveable gangplank over the orchestra pit, on came the footlights, the gas flaring gently, and the stage became welcoming.

  ‘We’ll start with an old song,’ Mama said, twinkling down at Mr. Fox. ‘After the Ball,’ she murmured to the girls, and sat herself at the piano gracefully. Her little hands raised themselves over the keys, and paused, and then were off, playing with unusual care and a rippling dash—the conservatory glass, the palms, the tinkling waltz heard from a distance … They told the sentimental story plain, the way she had taught them, not as a tired tale but as if this were their Uncle Chum explaining his bachelor life to them. None of the girls could remember meeting him, but they all had affection for him, from this imaginary memory. It made Clover believe that Mama must have a soft spot for Chum too, after all.

  ‘… oh, Uncle, please.

  Why are you single; why live alone?

  Have you no babies; have you no home?

  I had a sweetheart, years, years ago;

  Where she is now, pet, you will soon know.

  List to the story, I’ll tell it all,

  I believed her faithless, after the ball …’

  Watching the girl he loved being kissed, standing empty-hearted with two glasses of punch in his hands … How plaintive the old man became, and what a small, stupid thing to ruin someone’s life: ‘he was her brother!’ Then they were into the chorus again, waltzing in place to prove they could do it in one:

  ‘After the ball is over, after the break of dawn—

  After the dancers’ leaving; after the stars are gone;

  Many a heart is aching, if you could read them all;

  Many the hopes that have vanished

  After the ball.’

  Mama ended with a fading chord, well in keeping with the natural delivery of the song, and left a dainty hand poised in air for a moment as the girls bowed. Then she twirled on the piano stool, face out to the audience, to Gentry Fox. He rose from his seat in the front row with a hearty ‘Bravo!’ clapping his hands delightedly.

  Coming forward to the stage, he stretched out a hand to Mama as if he could reach hers, which not even a tall man could have, and she reached down to him without moving from the stool.

  ‘Lovely, lovely girls! Lovely to hear that old song again, so freshly rendered! And how well I recall you, my dear Flora—at the Hippodrome, was it not?—with that little number.’

  ‘Oh, Gentry, a hundred years ago,’ Mama said, blushing and bobbing. Bella laughed too, to see her so pleased. Clover looked at Mr. Fox with attention: a living clue to Mama’s old life. But beside her she could feel Aurora waiting, tense, and her own confidence drained away.

  ‘Now you must let me give you some lunch,’ Gentry said, taking out a card case. ‘Hand my card to the girl at the Grandon Hotel, they do a royal tea there … and thank you for warming an old man’s heart. You are visiting in the neighbourhood? With family?’

  Mama got up from the piano, her face fallen into a polite parody of her earlier happiness. ‘You have no work for my girls, then, Gentry?’ she asked—her voice sad, but her face remaining cheerful.

  ‘My dear Flora, they are young and charming, and I am inundated with acts. Between you and me and your eighteen best friends, this is a poor place I find myself. We have only seven on the bill—all but continuous, you know—three shows a day, a hardscrabble life.’

  ‘But what a training ground!’ Mama said lightly—still working, still arguing, however her words might be disguised as chat.

  ‘But such delicately reared girls, my dear Flora, could not be expected to—And my bill is full for this and several weeks to come.’

  ‘But I see you lack a closer,’ Mama said. Her last effort.

  ‘Oh, as to that, I use the pictures as a closer. Nothing beats a very old pictograph for encouraging an audience’s hearts for home.’

  ‘I bet we could chase them better, if we’re so bad!’ Bella called over the footlights at him, laughing at her own audacity.

  Clover pinched her quickly, but Gentry laughed too, darting a sharp look at Bella’s cheeky, lively face. But he still held out the calling card. Lunch, not life.

  Gentry

  ‘Well, thank you, Gentry, for seeing us. It was a piece of old times to find you here,’ Flora said, folding her music as if they hadn’t a care in the world, as if they were, in fact, visiting family and perfectly easy. As if they hadn’t spent twenty-three dollars on train fare.

  She and Aurora looked at each other, and she lifted her chin and smiled.

  ‘Off we go, then,’ she said. ‘But perhaps we had better return to our friends for luncheon, thank you all the same.’

  Aurora lighted down on the first step, lifting her skirt delicately over her tight-laced new boot. The second step, the second boot (and above it, a stretch of smooth white stocking). The third step, the fourth. ‘But, Mama,’ she said, smili
ng into Gentry’s upturned face. ‘I think I’d like some tea.’

  He held out his hand with the card again, and she took it, and then his arm, for help in navigating the last steps.

  ‘Thank you, Mr. Fox,’ Aurora said. She stopped to pull on her elegant mauve kid gloves. ‘And will you come with us? My sisters and I would love to hear how you and Mama come to know each other so well; how you come to be in this theatre, and what wonders you are working in this out-of-the-way place—we see your dodgers all over town!’

  Gentry blinked, but resisted, even though her eyes were so clear, their colour shifting from blue to green, a dark line around the iris. Beautiful, yes. The curve of her clear warm cheek and jaw ran enticingly into the hidden reaches of the neck, under that glossy pile of bright, ruly-unruly hair.

  ‘Alas, no, I shall be engaged all afternoon with wretched business,’ he told her sadly.

  Aurora gave him a beautiful smile, exchanged his arm for her sister’s, and walked up the raked aisle. The tiny waist of her jacket remained steady; below it the skirt swayed, its length tantalizing along the ground in an eddy of dust. The youngest one, the filly, hopped off the last step and sparkled at him, then dashed after the elder two.

  ‘Look at her, the darling! All legs and heels and promise,’ he said to Flora, before he could check himself. ‘But I am sentimentalizing. Time to retire to the country!’

  Flora took the steps without assistance, pulling on her own gloves, her music in its leather case beneath her arm, and at the bottom, bowed to Gentry. He looked at her soft face, brown curls at her brow. Still pretty as paint, even softened into middle age. A loving heart, if a silly one.

  She stepped down onto the floor, not wanting to tower above him more than she could help—for his sake as well as her own. A stroke of luck to have found him here. It could not be wasted.