On the Moon
Bella lay in the upper berth, behind cloistering Pullman curtains, and looked at the Belle Auroras publicity photo she’d stuck into her dressing-case lid, now that she and Nando had a new set.
Clover: straight nose, narrow face soft-rounding at the chin. Patient eyes. Too frail to travel alone. Only of course she would stay with Victor’s mother or that mad guru. Victor! Who could stand to live with his oddness all the time? He was like oysters: interesting, but not for every dinner. Unlike Nando, her daily bread. Fitz Mayhew had been rib steak, underdone; and Jimmy, champagne.
The cable from Aurora was tucked under the photo. Bella fished it out and read again:
CANNOT LEAVE MAMA YET. CARRY ON WITHOUT ME.
WRITE SOON.
Was that a promise that Aurora would write soon, or an order: write to me soon? Bella had answered by return, wiring money as well. But no letter had found her yet. The train wobbled on through the night, without her other souls, her sisters. How can one live all alone? Nando was no help, in a state of perpetual nerves about his dad.
Too hot in this berth. Nando’s mother in the berth below did not like the window cracked, and would fret if Bella turned over too many times. Myra had turned out to be considerable trouble: wistful and stubborn, only wanting Nando. Her ethereal face masked a hungry spirit, and no friendliness on Bella’s part could satisfy her. Nando was kept on the hop all the time, and Bella too—if she would not do to talk to, she served very well to fetch tea and run baths in the hotels.
Bella stared up at the dented ceiling cloth, feeling straitjacketed in the berth. Maybe Joe was kept in one of those canvas jails, in his sanatorium. If Papa had gone to the san when he was so ill, he would have been, because he was non compos mentis, the doctor had said. But Mama had kept him home, however sad and wild he became. For the first time in ages Bella thought of Harry in his coffin, and Papa, and then the old thought followed that she too would be dead soon enough, lying under a low roof, under the creaking weight of earth.
Think of the prop moons instead. She sang on the golden moon now, a step up in the world. Nando had the silver. Myra on the green-cheese moon had not worked; her dreary delivery sent the whole number flat. The green moon was baggage, but no more trouble than the car. They had a big hit with Bella’s New Car. Pantages had taken them on—at a reduced rate, of course, as everything always went, but Nando’s booking agent said they’d still got a whacking good deal, seven-fifty a week to split between them, which amounted to three hundred each, once the expenses of touring the larger rig came off the top. Her grouch-bag was full to bursting—enough to send pots of money on to Aurora and Mama, and to Clover, if she needed it. Bella turned her face into the mingy Pullman pillow. Day after tomorrow was her sixteenth birthday. Nando would not remember. It would be shoddy to remind him. Aurora might think of her, if she was not too taken up with the baby. Clover would remember, on the ocean, as long as her ship was not sunk by Germans like the Lusitania. But it would not be, it would not.
Bella turned, her nightgown twisting into a shroud.
After a while she turned again, carefully, and pushed the curtain back to inspect the corridor. Nobody. She slipped her shoes on and manoeuvred down from the berth. The lower berth curtain did not stir.
Moving quickly down the corridor, she let herself through the connecting door (a burst of juddering noise and shaking, a rush of night air) and into the next carriage, where Nando’s berth was—he had a lower, thank heavens, with an open curtain and empty berth above him. She undid the snap and slid her hand in to pat his face.
‘Wha—!’ he said, huffing and snorting.
She had woken him. Serve him right, being so dozy. She swung herself in, and the curtain shut, in a jiff. He jumped and bumped his head on the upper bunk, but that did not matter. ‘Shh!’ she said.
‘What are you doing? Go back to your berth!’
Where was the boy who had kissed her in the tunnel of the Empress when they were children?
‘I wanted to be with you.’ She put her hand on his cheek in the twilight of the berth.
The moon was somewhere above the train, not visible but shining sometimes on the little ponds flashing by the window. Nando searched for his watch and held it to the window, tilting it impatiently to find the light. ‘It’s the middle of the night,’ he said, giving up.
‘Don’t you want me here? Don’t you want to cuddle?’
‘No!’ He sounded very angry.
‘Don’t you love me?’
‘No!’ He caught her arms and shook her, but not like his father shook him. ‘You can’t do this, it’s not decent. Kisses are one thing but this—you must wait till we’re married.’
‘Will we be married?’ Bella was smiling in the dark; he did too love her.
‘No.’ He was hard-hearted. ‘I was dreaming! Why did you wake me up?’
‘Don’t make me go back, Nandy, it’s cold and I’m lonely.’
‘I’ve my dad to think of, and you’re too young to know what you’re doing anyhow.’
She started to cry, soft as a cat; he believed her, and opened the blanket. He thought he was the only one who could pretend! Much more comfortable under the blanket, even if he would not pet her or be sweet. He was so prickly. His father, and worry, had made him very ill-tempered.
‘May I touch you here?’ She did, without permission. He made no sound, but his whole body stiffened, not just the bit she had hold of. ‘Just let me lie with you for a while, you would like me to,’ she whispered. ‘I want you to, please do, Nandy, please?’
They were like snakes twining then, his hands touching her all over and on her bosom where she thought they must leave traces like red paint, it felt so delicious. His mouth glued to hers kept them quite quiet, and they said no words even when he pushed his stiffness at her, trying to fit in, and pushed, and then—he gasped, and pushed himself up so fast he hit his head on the ceiling again. He swung her legs through the curtain and pushed her out, only her head left looking at him.
‘No!’ she cried. Her bare bottom was cold in the passageway.
‘Shh!’ he said in great irritation. ‘Go back to your bunk!’
‘But I love you, Nando!’
‘You are a baby, and I won’t do it.’ He flung himself down on his side, turning away from her. She stared at his stupid back, his pig head. Then she hauled down her nightie and slammed the curtain along the rod, and slipped through the carriage and back to her own berth, furious to find herself so hurt.
Grave
In vaudeville, Sunday was the day for doing laundry. Church made a change, Aurora thought. She and Mama went with the household to the pretty brick Pro-Cathedral. So called because Qu’Appelle was meant to have been the capital of Saskatchewan—Uncle Chum described the ins and outs of the capital heist as they walked, calling Regina by its old name, Pile o’ Bones, until a series of nine cataclysmic sneezes from Avery distracted him and he forgot ire.
Aurora wore her new afternoon dress, a bell-shaped skirt of Saxe blue over corded silk, ordered after the thousand-a-week contract and delivered just as she and Mama were leaving town. It was lovely, but the brilliant June sunshine made Aurora want to walk the fields in her old muslin dress, left behind long ago at some hotel. To stretch out on grass, to be pressed into the grass by—But the thought of Jimmy brought the face of Miss Masefield, and Aurora stopped thinking. Her body was her own, or at least belonged only to Avery.
The darkness inside was cool and smelled of hymn books. Mabel’s father had been Rural Dean at St. Peter’s before the present incumbent; Aurora saw her shyness dropping away as they entered her territory. She quietly introduced Aurora and Avery to the ladies of the parish, while Mama sat beside Elsie, prim in a pew. One prow-fronted, important dame, Mrs. Gower, looked exactly as Aurora imagined Mama’s Aunt Queen.
This was a very proper place: exquisitely embroidered vestments, stained glass, the lessons read by men with strong English accents. Canon Barr-Smith g
abbled through Morning Prayer at speed, but his sermon was thoughtful and Aurora had no need to feign attention. She felt she must be more proper than anyone, since she carried the thrilling taint of vaudeville, and a baby without a visible husband.
After the service the family joined the congregation in assorted wagons and carriages for the annual Sunday School picnic, jostled up beside more people to whom Elsie and Mabel introduced Mama and Aurora. Mama stared out at the scenery, or into her lap, but did not seem physically uncomfortable.
The picnic was laid out at the cemetery north of town, down an avenue of pines. An established place, unlike most windblown prairie graveyards. Fine stones had pressed down into the earth, and wild roses rioted between the rows.
After the ice cream and cake had been wolfed, a gang of tall boys set up races: egg-and-spoon, three-legged, sack. Mabel, who had taken the blue in last year’s sack race, spread a rug in a bit of shade near the finish line for Mama and Elsie, with Avery between them, and went off to compete.
Aurora walked through the graves alone, not caring if she stained her white slippers in the bright grass. This was an ice-cream world, she thought, insulated by good behaviour and agreeable surroundings—even Aunt Elsie’s chickens were clean and white as hens in a picture book. Paddockwood had been realer. Vaudeville too, with all its pretense, was mixed up in the grubby world, alive.
Among the headstones, Aurora paused to read inscriptions. Her arms felt pleasantly empty, not carrying Avery. Sunlight lay hot and fluid among the graves. A pretty place to sleep under the ground: she wished Papa could have been buried here, and dear Harry.
‘You have such a look of my brother. I miss him,’ Uncle Chum said behind her, startling her by his presence and the coincidence of their thoughts. Not unnatural to be thinking of the dead, she supposed.
‘I miss my brother, too,’ she said. ‘He died when he was four.’ She had not spoken of Harry for years. In the glancing sunlight, she saw it was not her father that Chum reminded her of, but Harry: his square, pleasant face and calm assurance.
Her uncle took her arm to walk on through the grass. At a pressure from his hand, they stopped by a small grave marker. ‘Our little son,’ Chum said. ‘Only lived a day.’
ELMORE ARTHUR AVERY, the plaque read. SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN—1905.
Tears sprang to Aurora’s eyes, so quickly it seemed they would spring out to water the grass.
‘No, no, you must not grieve, nor fear for your own babe. Elsie was well on in years; I dithered too long before marrying her. His lungs were weak, you know. It was God’s will.’
Aurora turned her head so her uncle would not see anger spring into her face as the tears had. That was what the minister had said at Papa’s funeral, with a solemn face, as if he did not know Papa had taken his own life. Not God’s will, his own will.
‘Arthur and I were close,’ Chum was saying. ‘Not as boys, you know, for he was twelve years younger. But when we first came out to Canada, then we were. Worked like slaveys on a farm in Ontario, had a spree or two together once we’d done with that. I was with him the night he met your mother. I hoped he would join the redcoats with me, but schoolmastering was more to his taste.’
Aurora found she could hardly remember her father any more, or be sure her memories were true. He had been melancholy so long, and not himself.
‘We have a good schoolmaster here,’ Chum said, pointing back towards the picnic. ‘Talking to the Dean by the lintel-gate. The principal of the high school, Lewis Ridgeway. A learned man, I’ll introduce him to you and your mother.’
Chum waved to Mr. Ridgeway, a spare man with dark hair, straight shoulders in a dark suit. Shadows round his eyes gave him a patient look. He looked up and smiled, lighting the gravity of his face, then came across the grass, a hand held out to Aurora so that his coat-sleeve displayed a creamy linen shirt cuff. No celluloid cuffs for this schoolmaster, at least on Sundays.
‘Mrs. Mayhew, I believe?’
She inclined her head in a demi-bow (internally amused that no matter how minor the audience, she could not help trying to present well), as Chum put an arm round her, saying, ‘Aurora has come to stay with us while my poor sister recovers from an apoplectic episode.’
Mr. Ridgeway seemed to know all about that. ‘Your mother is making a good recovery, it seems. I saw her reach for her slate, although she did not write. She watches the passing show with interest … A good sign.’
Aurora flushed with gratitude, and asked if he was familiar with the effects of stroke.
Her uncle clapped his hands. ‘Ridgeway is up on all the latest! An educated intellect. Is Dr. Graham back, d’you know?’
Mr. Ridgeway tilted his head as if consulting an aerial calendar. His strong forehead and cheekbone stood out, caught by the noonday sun. ‘Mid-July. He will be pleased to consult, he has a strong interest in apoplexy and ischemia—he’ll be out to see Mabel when he returns, I’m certain.’
Aurora did not question, but her uncle explained: ‘Mabel is engaged to Dr. Graham’s son, Aleck, who is at the Front. Has she not told you? He farms near Indian Head. Yes, Lewis, we’ll have Graham see if he can make Flora’s lot easier. Your sisters worry me too,’ Chum said, turning to Aurora. ‘Their lives will be unsettled, alone and far away—now you and Flora are comfortable here, won’t you write and ask them to come home too?’
Kind of him to call it home, Aurora thought. Kind to think of her sisters. Maybe this placid ice-cream life would be better for them. ‘We are grateful for your help,’ she said. ‘But I believe the girls are happy as they are. My youngest sister Bella remains on the vaudeville circuit, Mr. Ridgeway, touring with friends of ours, in great demand. I do not think I could drag her away! My other sister has gone to England to stay with her fiancé’s mother.’
‘Were you frightened for her after the Lusitania’s sinking?’ Mr. Ridgeway asked.
She glanced quickly up—it was almost too intimate a question. ‘Very much. Clover was on the Ausania, which sailed a few days afterwards. I was glad my mother could have no grasp of the disaster. But the Ausania has come to no harm.’
‘She may be unable to leave England for some protracted time, if shipping is halted.’
Aurora nodded; she could feel the light going out of her face and eyes.
‘Lewis takes an interest in the war,’ Chum said. ‘He was at Cambridge, you know.’
‘More immediately, Aleck Graham is a friend of mine. But I’d follow the progress of hostilities without any added stake. It is the proper study for all men, as long as the conflict continues.’
‘You think—but it will not continue long, though?’ Aurora asked, surprised.
‘Now that both sides have dug in, I fear it will. This is not last century’s war.’
Chum took Mr. Ridgeway’s arm, saying, ‘Aurora won’t want to hear about all that.’
‘Won’t she?’ Mr. Ridgeway said, looking at her closely. Seeing her glance at the grave marker for Chum’s little son, he nodded.
‘It seems wrong to speak of the war in this quiet place,’ she said, grateful for his understanding.
Mr. Ridgeway walked away, with a word or a brief smile to one person or another as he went. He had Mayhew’s breadth, but not Mayhew’s expansiveness. A schoolmaster, all right.
Against her will Aurora felt suffocated in this peaceful, orderly place. The air was still, yet the noise of grasshoppers and birds trembled beneath every conversation, every thought. But amiable sociability was the least she owed Uncle Chum for taking them in. Money had not yet been mentioned. Before she rejoined Bella, they would have to work out a stipend for Mama’s board.
Aurora went out of the shadow of the pines, back to the races and the blanket where Avery lay on his back in the grass watching Mama. She was singing to him as his bare legs kicked the air. In this week he had uncurled, showing his true length. He would be tall, like Mayhew. But not a man like Mayhew. She would see to that.
‘I heard a maiden singing in
the va-alley below …’
Mama was singing words. Aurora stood still, listening.
Free Love
A letter came from Clover in the first week of July, sooner than Aurora had expected or hoped. The British mails, Chum boasted, were terrifically efficient, even in wartime. ‘Delay would have been in Montreal,’ he said, shaking his paper to turn the page at breakfast.
Aurora skimmed the letter at the table, then ran up to read it to Mama, who was still drowsing in bed, Avery lying beside her making an interesting variety of conversational noise. Mabel had suggested that Mama might like tea and toast on a tray for breakfast, like Aunt Elsie had, rather than rushing in the morning. That allowed Uncle Chum to have his breakfast in peace, with only Mabel and Aurora for company.
Aurora did not read the whole letter to Mama, only the first two pages about the English air and the narrow brick house where Victor’s mother lived, next door to Galichen’s atelier, ‘with a fine view of Wormwood Scrubs prison behind.’ There was a great deal about Victor, very little about Clover herself. Aurora did not read the next page aloud.
… he is filled with joyful purpose to be doing what he knows he must. As I am. I hope you have forgiven me, but I don’t know if Bella ever will.
Victor met my ship at Plymouth—we had three days in a cottage on the edge of Dartmoor, did not stir beyond the garden except out to the moor each day. It is not like the prairie but made me homesick anyway, except that now my home is him. I was already his wife, his true wife. I cannot talk about that in a letter, only to say that I had not known before that love poems are real. I thought they made it all up, but now I see that it is true.
(Do not read that to Mama.)
He is to embark on Friday. I cannot say more about that either, but the Front is so close—he is promised leave at home. His mother has been kind …
Aurora wondered if Victor’s mother was treating Clover badly. The stressing of has been kind gave a faint suggestion of unkindness, but his mother was a Fabian after all, a believer in Free Love. Aurora could hardly be shocked by Clover’s decision to live irregularly. Her own marriage was purely opportune, nothing like the love Clover had for Victor; their parents’ marriage, full of passionate storms, had been no model. Seeing Uncle Chum, she also saw how unlike him Papa had been, how rash and wild.
The Little Shadows Page 43