Aurora laughed. He was quite old, probably thirty. Long thick eyelids under very dark brows. He liked her extremely. Everybody did! She was beautiful, at least this one evening.
‘Will you?’
‘Will I?’
‘Be my Beatrice, lead me through at least the first circle of this Inferno of a town.’
She laughed again, but said, ‘How can I? I know it no more than you do.’
‘Accompany me and we will root out its terrors together. At least, eat supper with me,’ he said. ‘Mrs. Burday has promised a supportive meal, to restore the overextended nerves.’
In the stair-hall beyond, Mama paused by the newel post. Aurora could certainly use a good supper. If she should take the fancy of an artist as well-established as Kavanagh!—although it was not entirely clear whether he was on his way up or down. What harm could come from it when she was right here in the same building? She craned her neck back, holding the newel, and nodded to Aurora.
‘Well, if you have no other company,’ Aurora said.
She gave a hint of a bow and sat opposite him at the table, then reached her arms up and made a small show of taking off her hat. They had laid out too much on clothes when they were starting out, and after all, what was the point in a black velvet hat if you did not make use of it?
Mrs. Burday made no difficulty about bringing another plate. ‘There’s plenty, I’m sure. The potatoes is fresh fried up, the shin left over from suppertime. You’ll want a glass of milk,’ she told Aurora, making her very angry.
When supper had been disposed of, Mr. Kavanagh sat on, seeming in no hurry for his bed. It was after midnight, but he was into his stride, telling Aurora about his engagements in the legitimate theatre—his Alving in Ghosts, and how Belasco wanted him for Chicago, and (in a generous nod to her sex) discoursing on the art of elocution as it pertained to females. ‘The penetrative quality of every woman’s voice may be improved,’ he told her. ‘Elocution can hardly make women orators; it cannot confer intelligence or discrimination; but it can tune that disordered instrument, the body.’
Abruptly he stopped, pulling out his watch. He stood, and commanded, ‘Come!’
Aurora gathered her coat and mantle and stabbed her hat into place, trying not to disorder her hair too badly. ‘Where?’
‘Do you care? I asked for Beatrice, and the Underworld awaits!’
Virgil led the poet through the Underworld, not Beatrice, Aurora thought, but she did not complain. They went a long way over icy paths, down empty, snow-packed streets to wherever he was going. He did not talk much, trotting her along like a prize calf to market, but at last they came to a square, brick-built house on a corner of State Street, snow cleared from its edges and gaslight gleaming from the windows, music sending fronds of spring out into the winter darkness.
‘Just a private party,’ he said at the tall black door, as he knocked. ‘Jenny won’t mind that I’ve brought you.’ Bullying through the crush of backs and arms, Maurice introduced her to a high-cheeked woman who seemed the hostess. Older than Mama and taller, almost stern-looking, in an elegant ruby silk dress, with dark coils of hair piled on her head.
‘Make this little bird welcome, Jenny. She’s dancing up at the Parthenon, she and her sisters, new to the boards but she’ll learn.’
‘A dancer! You’re in good company here, my dear, we were all dancers once—but those days are past and it is much more respectable here than formerly.’
Aurora gave her a hand, not certain this was correct, and said, ‘Aurora Avery.’
The woman laughed, but not unkindly, and took her hand, then tweaked her elbow, fingering the billowing flannel sleeve.
‘You’re a pearl, all right.’ The ruby dress split as she swayed, revealing inner slashes of pale peach-fuzz velvet. ‘Now, Maurice, you find her a cup of the punch, and tell Ricardo to fetch you the usual; if you’d rather something stronger, my dear Miss Avery, say what you want, I’m sure he’s got every kind of liquor. We haven’t gone Temperance here, not yet!’
Aurora bobbed her head to thank her, and at Maurice’s pressure on her arm went into the shifting noisy crowd, musicians adding their own noise. Although Aurora kept drinking the punch (and found herself very thirsty) and nodding her head, she quite often had no idea what was being said to her. She felt very happy to be here, to be a woman in the world.
Maurice fell into animated argument with several different people who of course she did not know (though some of the orchestra members were familiar, moonlighting from the Parthenon); she was hard put to keep up with him as he moved from place to place. The room was smoky, hot after their cold walk to get here. Wherever here was. Suddenly weary, she thought of leaving, but found she could not reconstruct their route in her mind, and into the small hours, now, she would not be safe, wandering the streets to find the hotel.
She tried to be patient, but Maurice’s conversations were full of names and people she did not know, consisting of highly coloured stories that left out all details. ‘Jerry did, God-damned hound—nobody’s fault but his own, we told him that—never saw her again nor wanted to …’ in quick exchanges along the same lines with several different sets of men.
The women did not do much talking, but some were beautiful, and they wore dazzling dresses and jewellery. Aurora stood by a massive mahogany pocket door, tucked in, her punch-glass held carefully out of the way. It was delicate crystal with thistles etched upon it, and she feared to break it.
Almost Empty
Bella poured hot milk into the bread, feeling Clover’s careful eye upon her lest she scald herself or spill. Mama had taken off her boots and sunk upon the sofa, feeling every inch of her years, she said, so Bella had gone down to the kitchen to get the milk while Clover combed Mama’s hair out and rubbed her temples with a dab of perfume to help her aching head. The scent bottle was almost empty. Papa had given it to Mama for Christmas before … all the rest of it. Bella did not like the smell. She leaned over the bowls, warm sweet bread sending a curl of comfort to her nose. Aurora’s lustreware bowl sat clean and empty on the dresser, but she’d be having something lovely downstairs, and probably cake. She was taking a very long time over supper.
Mama waved away her bowl, saying, ‘You eat mine, Bella dear. You jump around so, you need the extra.’ Clover shook her head, though, so the two girls helped Mama to sit up and Bella pressed the bowl into her hand.
‘Look how nicely Bella has made it, Mama,’ Clover said. ‘All stirred smooth for you.’
So Mama opened her eyes and exclaimed over the perfection of the mixing and how her own mama had made it for her while touring long ago, and wasn’t it lucky that they were cozy in this nice hotel. But after a spoonful or two she leaned her head on the arm of the sofa and let damp trails of tears fall down her cheeks.
Bella put the bowls on the dresser and brought the gold silk coverlet; Clover took Mama’s stockings off and tucked her feet under the warm folds. The girls let her lie quiet while they undressed themselves in silence, and got into bed.
A lively evening is often followed by a sad ending, Bella thought, staring through the darkness at the paler rectangle of the window.
A Fool
‘Hot in here,’ Kavanagh said in Aurora’s ear. She turned quickly and he gave her a loving, slow-growing smile that took in all the details of her face and hair and hat. ‘Still got that hat on? Let’s take you up—we’ll find the cloakroom or something of the sort.’
The stairs were crowded too, and dark, though all the wood shone; dark doors lined the upper hall. In the first chamber, two people sat on the edge of an iron bed, the woman on the man’s lap with her legs quite bare. Aurora looked quickly away. Maurice backed her out and closed the door with exaggerated care, and swung his arm out dramatically to open the next door, like a genie conjuring up a robbers’ cave.
Nobody there—a small stuffy room with garments heaped up on the bed and couch; no lamp lit. He pushed the door farther open and manoeuvred her inside, no
t that she resisted.
Once inside the darkened room he cupped her chin and cheek in his hands in a well-practised fashion and tilted her head up. He missed her mouth when he bent to kiss her, smearing her eye, and then pretended to have been planning all along to plant kisses around her face, murmuring broken love-notes as he did so.
But her mind, which had been confused and unthinking, suddenly became a clean open space: He is a fool, she thought. Well, that was not a useful thing to be thinking. She returned his kiss, tipping her head so his mouth, smelling of rum and pastilles and tobacco, met hers. He seemed younger as she kissed him. She touched the cleft in his chin.
‘You’re a beauty,’ he said. He wrapped an arm around her waist, and the hand on the arm circled around her breast while the other fumbled with the hooks on her bodice, but he soon gave up and merely mashed her chest in his hand, the other hand brought into play as well, lurching her into the wall, first, then to the couch covered with dresses. The fabric beneath them shifted and slid—they were going to flump onto the floor, but Aurora hoisted him up as well as she could. She did not know whether to stop him or go on, and found that she did not even care which, but she was uncomfortable.
‘Beauty, beauty,’ he kept saying, and she thought that really, an Elocutionist ought to have more eloquence at his disposal. But he was very handsome, and she recalled the mastery with which his voice had teased the meaning from Browning and Longfellow.
A quick rap at the door, and Jenny came into the room, skirts swirling, bright velvet visible and invisible. She took in Aurora’s confusion and Maurice’s heavy-lidded glare at the interruption, and spoke only to Aurora, her tone pitched as if they were quite alone.
‘You shouldn’t be here. You go on home, now.’
Aurora stood. She pulled at her skirt and smoothed the waistband. She straightened her hat, turning her face away to give herself time for breath.
To Maurice, Jenny said, as if she knew him very well, ‘Out, you! Take this little girl safe home and then I might let you come back. You’re a twister.’
He laughed and overbalanced, crashing into the nightstand but not quite to the floor. Then was up again, still laughing. ‘You heard her, my dear, take me home safe, and then perhaps I will be let back into Paradise.’
Aurora looked at Jenny’s strong-boned face, at her clean skin and long eyes. Old enough to be her mother, but seeming young and full of energy, and she gave back look for look, so that without the least bit wanting to, Aurora decided she was right. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you, ma’am, I had best be leaving.’ She took Maurice’s arm and steered him to the door, saying, ‘They will be looking for me at home, sir.’
The Playbill
Clover could not quite sleep: the Parthenon playbill ran through her head continually, so that at one moment she was haunted by fascinated fear lest Julius cause another scene or be injured by the vast Miss Sunderland; at another, in an almost-dream, the rats and cats were the ones who fought. Aurora had been too long with the Elocutionist, some page of the programme said. Another page, and there was Mama, left alone in the world. Clover could not turn the next page because there would be her father lying on the front walk with the dark stain seeping under him, so she riffled back through the pages to Julius, to Gentry calling out from the back of the theatre.
She struggled to wake. The room shaped itself around her: the leaning square of mirror tilted over the dresser, the coal-fire’s last ember in the stove, a small mountain of Mama on the sofa. Montana. From Paddockwood to Prince Albert, to Regina, to Calgary, to the Empress in Fort Macleod—now Helena. Clover pushed out of bed and stood. Her feet gripped the linoleum, one hand on the rough sheet still. No Aurora.
Across the room Mama lay uncovered, the coverlet fallen to the floor. Too slippery. Clover took the wool blanket off the bed, easing Bella’s fingers from its edge, and tucked that around Mama instead. She laid the coverlet gently over Bella and stood a moment longer, silent in the dark room, before she made herself climb back into bed.
In Drink
Aurora hurried along beside Maurice as he straggled through silent frozen streets, seeming to know the route more as a horse knows the stable than as a thinking man. She put her hand through his arm, as his hands were shoved into his topcoat pockets, and took the longest strides she could. She feared that if their pace slowed he would forget what he was doing. She had many times seen men in drink, and it did not seem to her that he was too far gone, compared to how Papa had been once or twice, let alone Mr. Dyment from the land office, but she thought he might walk ahead and forget she was with him. From time to time she spoke; he did not seem to hear.
At last she spied the Pioneer on its corner, a block ahead, and felt some relief. Just then Maurice dodged away from her into a dark entryway, the cobbled tunnel to a yard behind a store. She stopped and moved towards him, but he flung out a beautiful white hand.
‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘Nature must be answered!’ and then she saw his arm braced against the bricks and understood that he was relieving himself. Hot piss made a curl of steam in the air. She felt more tired than she had for a very long time. And they had a lesson with Gentry in the morning.
‘Sweetness? My beauty? Girl?’ Maurice’s voice came out of the passageway in a stage whisper, and she realized that he did not know her name.
‘I’m here,’ she said.
‘Come, come,’ he said.
No one in the street. The moon lay on snowy ruts and drifts impartially. She stepped into the shadow, keeping to the opposite wall from where he had been leaning. He opened his topcoat and folded her inside it, keeping her warm, and she found she was fond of him, of his looseness and greatness and strength, however fallen and come low. He kissed her again less clumsily, his mouth cooler after the long walk. With one hand he kirtled up her skirt and then, pinning the gathers between their two bodies, he nudged a knee at her legs to open them, and then his fingers touched her under there, opening her there, pushing through her legs to touch all through her, beneath her drawers along the silky tops of her legs above her stockings, and the feel of that hand on that skin was one of the things she was looking for, she thought, or perhaps she should push him away, she could not tell. After that first soft sweeping his fingers shoved into her too strongly, so he hurt her, and she did not know how to tell him she did not like it. His eyes were closed. Then he paused, pressed against her fiercely, paused again, and said in a reasonably sober voice, ‘Your mama will be waiting. We must go.’
Once he had stopped pushing against her she could be kind in her thoughts towards him, and she supposed that they would continue like this, only not outside in the cold but in some rose-petal-strewn hotel room in Chicago or New York, where it would somehow be easier, or once she could get it right, all right.
He stood waiting for her to shake her skirts down and did not look at her, nor speak, the rest of the block to the Pioneer. Mrs. Burday had left the side door unlatched for them and he pushed her up the stoop and swayed on the doorstep.
‘Lovely child,’ he said. ‘Lovely Silence.’ She looked at him, puzzling out his face to see what his expression was: nothing but a smile there, and a quirk of the eyebrows.
‘Wicked Jenny was right. But I’ll make her sorry for that!’ He shut the door and she could hear his feet clumsy on the steps, then making off down the street.
Upstairs, Mama woke from where she had been curled on the sofa, and asked in a clouded voice, ‘Aurora? Did you have a good supper? You were an age down there. I hope he entertained you kindly and was not … I meant to come down and—but I dropped off …’
‘Oh, it was fine, Mama. Mrs. Burday gave us shin of beef and fried potatoes, and when we’d eaten we went for a walk.’ Enough to make Mama sigh and sleep again.
Clover sat up and watched her as she took her clothes off in the moonlight. Being Clover she did not ask anything, but Aurora lay down beside her and was very grateful for her thin arm around her for comfort. After a while she whispe
red, as if answering, ‘I do not know. I think it was a bordello he took me to. The punch was delicious. The room is going round the bed, or the bed going round me, oh …’
She felt like a ship on an ocean of shame.
Before she slept she thought of Jimmy Battle, and felt the arch of bone inside her pelvis as she turned over in the bed to lie farther away from Clover. The spread of that bone, how her hips had opened and were waiting for women’s work. Not children, she did not mean that, but the pressure of a man, however that would be. She would not expect love, because that was a weakening thing, but passion would be useful in her art.
Innermost Heart
Drops of water raced down the dark window as Bella opened her eyes. She put out a finger to touch one drop, splitting it into two pearls that ran onward to the sill. It was not a thaw, but the hip-bath steaming in front of the stove. The sky was still dark, it must be early. They had let her sleep till last again. She stretched under the gold coverlet, taking up the whole bed luxuriously, and rolled her head to see who was in the bath: Clover, her thin back bent, each nub of bone raised like a long set of knuckles, running down her spine.
Bella watched Clover stand, hugging herself as the water drained off, steaming in the cold air, hip bones a-jut and every side rib visible. Mama put a sheet around her. Aurora poured another kettle of hot water into the hip-bath. Clover bumped up into bed and under the coverlet, and laid her cold feet against Bella’s legs so that Bella shrieked softly—and was shushed by Aurora, mindful as they always had to be of the sleepers in rooms beside theirs. The walls were thin as cardboard. Even with the steam and the stove it was too cold for Bella to be happy about taking off her nightgown, but it had to be done, so she stripped and stepped into the water. Once she had scrubbed herself she braced against the lip of the bath and Mama and Aurora poured water over her head, soaped her, and took the suds out in a towel. They rinsed her hair with bathwater and then twice with new water, with vinegar in it for shine, but that was very cold, and then she stood and they helped her out to stand shivering on the linoleum in front of the stove until, wrapped and warming like a loaf in a napkin, she could get back under the coverlet while Aurora and Clover laced their corsets. Aurora said, ‘Tighter, tighter,’ and Clover pulled. Aurora had a beautiful corset: cut-away hips and a short back, made of French coutil with écru lace trimming and pale blue ribbons. God only knew what it had cost, Mama said. It was from the Queen of the May costume.
The Little Shadows Page 11