The Little Shadows

by Marina Endicott

  But Mayhew raised an imaginary hat to her, not smiling, and she looked away, putting a hand across the table to ask Mama if she would like a soda water.

  The night wore on, and the talk turned to the war, and to despairing, at least from Gill. Not Walker, who seemed a sensible man: ‘Oh, war will be bad for vaudeville, take it from me—but we’ll do better in polite vaudeville than the burlesque houses will, when their audiences disappear. My wife reminds me that when the men go off to war we’ll still have the women and children, anxious to forget their troubles.’

  Already, Aurora considered, they were seeing this very thing at the Muse.

  ‘Unpleasant bully-ragging in Europe,’ Julius pronounced, peering from his fug. ‘Weeping sore, can be lanced. Strike hard and sharp.’

  How Julius loves to look wise, Aurora thought. But she had begun to despise everyone. A darkness had slid over the world.

  True Pain

  The party broke up around four without anything secured, as far as Aurora could see. They were the last to leave the dimming Shasta. Mayhew’s flourishing signature on the bill, and a fat tip in bills pressed into the maître d’s hand, seemed to console the staff.

  The elevator struggled up, first to Mama’s floor to let her totter out, then to theirs, doors clanging as they shut and opened, even though Mayhew put out a gloved hand to damper the noise.

  ‘You seemed to get along very well with Walker,’ he said, throwing his gloves on the table in the hall. ‘He’s hired Julius. Did he boast? Given him dates in Winnipeg as well, the remainder of the year. Shows his lack of discrimination, I suppose.’

  Mayhew was jealous; Aurora had had to turn down her lamps at dinner. Irrational, since he’d been using her to sweeten the table; and now it likely meant a sleepless night while he railed at her misbehaviour and then took her with some force. Sometimes that was good, the race of it making her blood thump, but tonight she was unaccountably tired and only wanted sleep.

  He came to take her cloak and held her, his fingers pressing underneath her arm so as to leave no bruise visible onstage. He was never entirely blind to practicality.

  ‘You’re hurting me,’ she said, gently pulling away. You had to be careful not to escalate things, with Mayhew.

  ‘Oh, it’s a world of hurt,’ he threw at her, and crashed the cloak onto the table as he stalked into the parlour, ignoring the lateness of the hour and the sleeping tenants below them.

  Turn it aside to something else. She went to the piano, and lifted the keyboard lid as if she would play to soothe him.

  ‘How much did you give Julius?’ she said lightly.

  ‘I paid him back. He’d lent me a century—told his wife it was only fifty.’ The electric candles at the fireplace went on. Mayhew pushed with his boot at the half-burned log in the grate, and bent to light it again.

  Aurora’s index finger touched a note, a note, a note. Very softly. ‘With sixteen months’ interest?’

  Mayhew cracked a laugh. ‘No! Only Julius’s self-interest. The hope I’ll hire him again someday.’

  She sat on the piano bench, where he could not comfortably follow her. Every inch of her body was weary and sore, and she had a strange taste in her mouth.

  Mayhew turned from the fire. ‘I’m taking Les Très Belles off the bill,’ he said abruptly, with no softening introduction. ‘You’ll be the better for a transformation of some kind. Get involved in another vaude house, perhaps—you can work with Walker, or Gill.’

  ‘Why?’ She bit her lip. She knew why, all the reasons.

  ‘Give the Muse’s audience a goddamned rest, for one thing,’ he said.

  Aurora turned her head to see his face in the firelight.

  He stayed by the mantel, staring back at her. ‘You can take a break for four months. I’m working on the Spokane deal. We’ll see how that pans out. In the meantime, you’ll have to economize,’ he said, closing the subject. He poured another whiskey and headed for the bathroom.

  Four months—stuck in the apartment with nothing to do, and with less money! The collapse must be closer than she’d suspected. And she did not see how the Spokane deal could possibly come together.

  Her trailing skirt caught on a carpet tack as she went to the bedroom—and when she pulled, it ripped. Another thing to fix. Mama would do it. The dressing table was tidy, Annie and Berthe had been in that afternoon. They would not be able to afford to have the maids every other day. Once a week, perhaps, at first, and then once every two, and then there would be a stiff little meeting where she handed them an envelope with a generous present for their service and a ‘thank you very much, no thank you,’ as Sybil would say.

  Pulling out the velvet stool, she sat, bone-tired, took her hair down and ran the brush through it. It would be pleasant to braid one’s hair for bed again, but Mayhew liked it loose. She took off her necklace. They were not diamonds, only brilliants. The glass laid over the fine wood of the dressing-table surface bothered her, she wanted to touch the wood. She ran a finger along the bevelled edge, careful not to cut herself.

  Mayhew came from the bathroom with a damp face, scrubbing it with a towel. He shaved before bed, a custom he’d acquired from some fancy-woman so as not to scratch her delicate skin. Aurora was grateful enough, although she had not liked to hear him tell the story. He often talked of former lovers. She had none, of course. But she’d known better than to mention Maurice Kavanagh or any of the boys from the old days. No reason on earth to mention Jimmy Battle. Mayhew’s dignity was fragile.

  She switched off the dressing-table lamp. Mayhew lay on the bed in his shirt-sleeves, waiting for her. He liked her to be naked in the bed and she had become accustomed, so that it was no longer anything odd, to let her peignoir drop away.

  The moon fell in the river windows. Sounds floating up from the street below. Pieces of him were worth loving: his acumen, his energy, his definite, positive stance. But he was not honest, and never aimed for anything but the progress of Mayhew.

  His hands moved over her like brick hods, one hand bigger than her breast pulling it, sliding downward, smearing the shape. She was cold, and wanted the comforter, but he lay sprawled across it, surveying her body in bands of moonlight that fell over the white bed. She arched her back when his hand moved lower. All she had to do was magnify the small responses that her body made. But she was tired, deep inside, of all this work: trying to please him by day and by night.

  ‘Your mama had better watch the drink,’ he said, as if he had only just now thought of it. ‘I won’t put up with that, I’ve told you so.’

  Aurora lay still, not answering, Mama being a subject that could go either way.

  His hand pulled heavier down her, moving into the cleft of her legs, pulling and pinching there the way he liked to do, feeling or fondling. He believed she would like it; maybe some woman in the past had told him so. She did not like anything, any of it. The spell that could come over her and make it all right was not working this night; her mind was too full of thinking.

  She supposed they had been cancelled again, in fact. Taken off the list.

  That thought made a vast lump in her chest, too hard, so she pushed it away. After a moment’s stroking and pulling he unbuckled his cummerbund, awkwardly, then sat up to the edge of the bed to pull it away and unbutton his trousers.

  ‘I won’t take her to Spokane if she’s in that state again,’ he said, casually, in the brief pause between one trouser-leg and the other. Speaking as if she wouldn’t care at all what was done to Mama. He flung the cummerbund into the corner, where his evening shirt lay crumpled. ‘She’s an embarrassment, in public.’

  Aurora turned in the bed and found her peignoir with one hand; stood and pulled it on in one motion, not able to talk without at least that shield.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I said!’ He laughed at her ferocity. ‘I’m not taking her. And the way things look, we’ll be off sooner than later. The girls can come, but you’ll have to ditch Flora.’
>
  And for how long could the girls come? She must pull her wits together.

  ‘If we’re to shake this boondocks dust off our feet we can’t be travelling with an old harpy—I’ll tell you what, she and that Sybil hag get along so well, give her to Julius, he can have a hareem.’

  Aurora’s arm jerked as if she might hit him, but Mayhew was fast. He grabbed her hand as it came up, and he laughed. ‘I won’t put up with a drunk! Making a fool of herself, and of me.’

  ‘Don’t say that! You don’t mind the drink in Julius, or your pals—or yourself.’

  ‘I’m not supporting them to the tune of a hundred a week.’

  Little enough, for headliners, she wished to say, but she could not fight with him. It was not safe to do so. She could not cajole him when he was close to anger. And he had drunk a great deal himself.

  She let the lace peignoir drift apart, and put a hand on his arm. ‘I’ll speak to her, Fitz. She’d had a terrible fight with Sybil, and she’s not feeling up to snuff these days, that’s all.’

  ‘Send her to grass, with that uncle of yours in Saskatchewan.’

  ‘I can’t do that, she wouldn’t go. She needs us to look after her, you know that. She couldn’t do without Clover and Bella—’

  ‘Send them too!’

  But he did not mean that. He saw her realize it, and he flung his trousers at the chair behind him, angry again, silver from his pockets spinning along the floor.

  ‘Time for her to pack it in, the old cow!’

  She shoved at his bare chest, at the grey wool and sunken paunch revealed in the cold moon—her temper suddenly lost, she felt a fierce need to make him lose his, and to hell with everything.

  ‘She’s no older than you! Time for you to pack it in? If you can’t manage—’

  He pushed her back into the bedclothes then with all his power, slamming her head down, hands on her neck and crushing her into the sheets, and she remembered that she had no strength at all, compared to him; there was nothing she could do. She did not panic, but waited, effort drained from her muscles. Thinking done with, pride useless. But she’d said what she thought, there was some virtue in that.

  He stopped, and released her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I do not mean to hurt you.’

  She lay still, pushed down into a nest of linens. Her eyes were slow to open.

  ‘Poor darling girl, poor girl,’ he said, as soft as the wind outside. ‘Forgive me. Poor dear sweet girl, I love you so, and I torment you. You are a precious girl, my dearest one, don’t fear me.’

  Finally then she put her hand on his arm, and raised her head so her neck was open to him, submitting. Tears ran out her eyes and down the side of her face, but she did not cry out loud.

  Later, she heard him speaking. She was almost asleep, not certain whether he spoke to her or thought her dreaming.

  ‘I love beauty,’ he said. ‘I wanted to do beautiful things.’

  Bella’s bee wings had never got mended—I will do them tomorrow, she thought.

  Legerdemain

  Nobody at the Muse knew what caused Mayhew’s patience to snap, but it was done. Bella stared at the new order-list that had been pasted on the lobby doors in the morning: the Knockabout Ninepins were moved to opener. A grievous insult for an act with the Ninepins’ years of experience in the big-time. Not to be borne. Everyone was scared and silent in the dressing rooms, wondering what Joe Dent was likely to do.

  What he did was simple enough: he took an alarm-clock onstage with him, set for twelve minutes, and when it rang, he stopped the act without finishing the routine. Mrs. Dent and Nando stopped too, frozen in their window frames. Then they all walked offstage. The audience tried to clap, unsure what was going on; they had been only half attending, as usual with the opener, and the brief patter petered out.

  There was a long blank silence, on an empty, lit stage, before the boy rushed out with OK Griffith’s placard and his music started up.

  That was the end of the Knockabout Ninepins at the Muse.

  Up in the booth, Bella was beside herself with rage, so angry and frightened that for the first time in recorded history she was unable to speak. By the time she got back to the dressing rooms, Joe had the whole family packed up and out the back door, a feat of legerdemain that would have taken masterly planning—so he must have known they’d be done.

  Late that night, Nando sent a note to the Arlington to tell Bella what was happening.

  Found a booking, so it’s the Flyer south for us. We’re off to the small-time in Spokane, a place Dad knows well. Ma not so pleased to leave the Muse and she remembers the last place we was at in Spokane, where we had to put the bedstead legs in cans of kerosene to stop the bugs invading nightly.

  No hard feelings, tell Mayhew. He’s a hard man, but Dad’s head is harder than anything.

  Spokane is just till November, then we’re booked straight to Christmas, so don’t be blue. Up to Winnipeg in January, two weeks at the Pantages, fine old Pan-time.

  See you in the funny papers, and don’t forget that you are my, and I

  your sweetheart,

  N. DENT

  Bella declared secret war on Mayhew from that moment.

  And he was making Aurora miserable too. In the morning, as soon as Bella was sure Mayhew would have left for the Muse, she went up to the top floor to get her bee wings, leaving Clover to wake and dress Mama. She found Aurora still in the bedroom, her head down on the burl maple dressing table. Still in her nightgown, cloudy hair in a bad tangle.

  Bella picked up the comb and began to work through it. Having to be gentle made her calmer, and she told Aurora about Nando’s letter, including the bit about Nando having no hard feelings. ‘But I do!’

  ‘Fitz is in trouble, Bell, it’s not—it’s not his real nature, to ditch them that way.’

  ‘What trouble?’ She pulled the comb through another long unknotted section.

  ‘Oh, too many things to say.’

  Aurora bent her head to let Bella reach the last of the tangles, and to rest her forehead again on the cool glass protecting the wood. She spoke from within the dark shade her arm and head made. ‘He left a hotel bill as long as your arm in Helena, for which both the Placer and the Ackermans are chasing him, and another in Calgary only half paid. All those dinners.’

  Bella whistled. She let the ends of Aurora’s hair curl around the comb, satin once again, and patted her neck.

  ‘You comb so well, with your light hands,’ Aurora said, turning her head to kiss Bella’s wrist. ‘He says it is perfectly justified, that everything was for the betterment of the theatres, even the wedding. All press is good press—you know what he says.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Yes.’

  In the grey morning, rain drenching the windows, the bedroom was ugly, untidy. Tangled sheets on the floor. Bella began to set things in order again, ready for the maids to clean. She watched her sister lift her head and stare into the mirror, blank eyes making a cold assessment of her face; at least it was not the dumbstruck tragedy mask she’d been wearing when Bella came in.

  Aurora opened a little pot and added a tinge of purplish ochre to one eyelid. ‘The thing is, he is not a scrupulous person.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I think he will make us all do a bunk in the night. Don’t tell Clover, it would make her unhappy.’

  Bella nodded, coming to have her own eyes done. She spat into the little pot and stirred, then held out the mascara stick and leaned forward so Aurora could do her lashes.

  ‘Hold still,’ Aurora warned. She took the pin to separate the clotted lashes. ‘He is not precisely bad,’ she said, in a light, objective tone as she pricked and dabbed. ‘He just does not operate under the same code—he was trained by Ziegfeld, and he goes on the way they do there. For these Ackerman circuit types to be slandering him is pretty rich.’

  ‘They can’t slang anyone more than they’ve been slanged themselves,’ Bella agreed. She kept her head as still as marb
le.

  Rain

  Rain made the rooms at the Arlington cold, so that early October felt like November. Clover lit the gas fire and made tea before waking Mama. At first waking, as usual, Mama came back from the distance of her dreams, eyes moving frantically under tight-closed papery lids. ‘Mama,’ Clover said gently. ‘Mama, here is your tea.’

  She watched as Mama’s eyes opened, rolled, trying for focus. She reached for a sip of tea and then pushed the cup away and turned back (bedsprings squeaking like a thousand baby mice) to catch at her dream, murmuring in a slurred, furred voice, ‘One more minute …’

  Fire within, rain without, suited Clover’s mood. She sat at the window, rereading a letter from Victor about Galichen, the guru Victor’s parents had espoused. How he demanded unthinking obedience from his followers, and often gave them ridiculous or conflicting orders ‘to set their orderly brains at odds, so they might wake from what he calls their sleep.’ Once, Gali had made Victor’s parents the floor-washers at his tall, thin house in Ladbroke Grove, a part of London. The stairs there were steep, five pairs of rackety narrow flights, ten landings to the attics—where they found Galichen waiting with freshly muddied boots, in which he stomped and slid downstairs so that they had all to do again. There was some lesson in there, but Clover decided she was too asleep, or too sensible, to see it.

  There had been no news since the enlisting letter.

  Mama stirred again in the bed and propped herself up on one pointed white elbow, smoothing a hand across her chest. She stared at the rain-smeared window, her hair crazy with curl-papers from the night before, half of them come undone.

  ‘I’ve irritated poor Fitz,’ she confided, picking at her lip with one unsteady hand. ‘I must go in today and see if I can mend our fences … Bees in the caragana, and a stone leaning sideways in the churchyard. Collapsed because of the rain, it had flooded out the grave, you know. That would mean a change of scene.’