The night before, Mabel had shown Aurora part of a letter that a friend of Aleck’s, John Levitt (wounded in action and invalided home) had brought from the Front. She’d handed the page over without a word, and retired to her room once it was back in her hand.
… give me the rifle fire all day, every day instead of one of those hellish coal-boxes packed with nails, screws, anything sharp—no wonder to see men go plumb loony, nutty—
You read of such cases in the papers, how men suffer from breakdown.
Don’t think they are nervous or weak or anything like that. Pity them rather—for the whine and sizzle of the shell in the air, and the awful suspense of waiting for the explosion to come is what does the trick. Enough of this—
Enough, yes. The sun was pale for May.
Aurora stood on Mrs. Gower’s graceful veranda, listening to Mama’s slight, sweet voice singing to Avery as Mabel held him, ‘Whispering Hope, oh how welcome thy voice, making my heart in its sorrow rejoice …’
Hearing an odd groan or gasp, Aurora stepped in through the French doors to see Mrs. Gower standing in the middle of her wood-panelled hall. Dr. Graham and Lewis and the Dean had come in through the front door together, looking grave or unhappy depending on their natures, and the Dean held a telegram.
Mrs. Gower’s mouth opened very sadly, as if she were going to speak, but she did not. One foot pawed at the first of the grand stairs, could not lift to it. Lewis went to help her. She shied away from him too, now saying, ‘No, no,’ in almost her ordinary voice, and tripped, falling heavily onto the stair.
Dr. Graham knelt beside her. Seeing that she had the help she needed, Lewis led Aurora back through the drawing room, out onto the veranda again. ‘Her son has been killed in Belgium,’ he said. But she had already known that.
Mama’s voice had dwindled to a whisper. Behind Avery’s drowsing golden head, Mabel’s eyes were like caves. Aurora took her hand.
Moon Flit
Victor’s leave only worried Clover more. She did not see how he could carry on in that state of distress, in the dreadful conditions which were becoming known. And now so weak in body. He had not talked about the trenches in daylight, only in the half-dream state at four a.m. But she had seen his feet, and the hideous bruises coursing down his back and flanks. Greyer than before, Madame crept through the house and spent more time on scales and meditation at Galichen’s atelier, seeking comfort. Clover wrote lightly to her sisters. To Aurora:
Galichen requires his followers to be tested for purity, purpose and spiritual fitness before they reproduce, so we jumped the gun. But Harriet is such a darling, not even he could carp. While I work she stays with Madame or with Heather Jakes in the atelier kitchen. Work has dried up, and these are my last few weeks for now. I would like to go with that American singer, Elsie Janis, to the Front—but Harriet makes that impossible. I am not complaining. Victor did not want to talk about the war at all when he was home.
That was all Clover could say about that. After Victor’s visit she found it harder to write to him, mired as he was in unimaginable terrors. He had talked of shelling that turned pretty woods into blank prairies, land scarred worse than the mine pit at Butte; he had said (this in fits and starts, in the dark, and she was not sure he was awake) that one night they had camped in a bad smell, and only when a poor boy went off his head, hacking at the ground, did they realize that they were lying on a mud stew of shallow-buried bodies.
She did not want to hurt him more. At last she managed a few sentences that were neither frozen nor frivolous: the first time she’d ever thought twice before speaking or writing to him. When she had addressed her letters, she wrapped Harriet up and took her along to the postbox. The walk along wide pavements soothed her spirit a little, and Harriet’s slight weight gave her ballast. The moon flitted between clouds. She tried not to think what its light shone on, over in France.
Shadow Buff
At Katepwa that second August the mornings were fresh and the weather very fine and hot. Towards evening thunderstorms swelled down the valley like a tide. In late August, when idleness began to pall, Mabel organized a games evening for all their acquaintances to join in: the Dean with his daughter Nell, Miss Frye and her great friend Miss North who was visiting in the area, even Mrs. Gower, Dr. Graham and Lewis Ridgeway.
Aurora went to settle Mama and Avery for the night. The thundery air had made both of them fractious and demanding, and Avery insisted Aurora hold him for a little while before he climbed into bed with his grandmother. Mama was trying to convey something in a cautious whisper. All that came out, though, was a thread of song: ‘… sweetheart’s the man in the moon …’ At last she gave up the attempt and opened the coverlet, singing instead, ‘Come out tonight, come out tonight’ to Avery, who joined in her lento, lullaby version of Buffalo Gals. Aurora kissed them and dimmed the lamp.
Outside the door she stopped to listen to the two reedy voices in the room behind. She checked her reflection in the hall mirror: pale green dress, cloud of hair pinned up, her little necklace of brilliants. Fine.
She was not the Belle Auroras any more. A mother, a dutiful daughter, a matron in comfortable circumstances—thanks to Chum’s kindness and to Bella’s money, which kept coming and coming in slightly alarming amounts. Missing Bella very much, Aurora went down to the party.
Across the wide arch between dining room and parlour a white sheet hung. The piano stool sat lonely in the middle of the carpet, the furniture moved back. Well behind the stool, the strongest lamp in the house shone—its mica shade tilted to throw a bright beam.
Mabel explained to the little company, ‘This is Shadow Buff. Someone must be It, and sit on the stool, staring at the screen. Then everyone else will parade behind, between It and the lamplight, so their shadows fall upon the screen like moving pictures—then It must guess whose each shadow is. You may disguise yourselves by changing your gait, rumpling your hair, or—look! Adding one of these ridiculous noses.’ She and Aurora had cut and glued paper noses all the afternoon, laughing at each other’s new profiles.
The Dean was unexpectedly good at the game. He identified more than half the strange shadow-creatures, saying it was due to long observation of his parishioners’ idiosyncracies. Mrs. Gower, drawn in to take a turn, sat on the stool, calling out names almost at random. She had shrunk since her son’s death. The opulent clothes hung on her frame; deep new lines fell from mouth to jowl. After five or six of the company had passed behind her she rose from the stool and retired, saying, ‘Well, I am no use at this game, I’ll give over to all of you.’
Miss Frye bounced up to take her place, pulling off the paper beak with which she had successfully duped the Dean, but did not manage to identify anyone but Miss North (whose bulk was undisguisable) and Nell Barr-Smith, a girl she had taught for six years. ‘It would have been surprising if I’d missed you, Nell,’ she cried, very jocular. ‘Stand up straight next time and I won’t know you!’
The darkened room, the parade of shambling creatures, had become nightmarish to Aurora. The thunderstorm was building, that must be it.
Lewis Ridgeway stood next and took the stool, and the line of disguisers moved behind him. He took the game oddly seriously, asking one or other to pass by again, or turn around. ‘Dean, you are betrayed by the pitch of your head,’ Lewis said. ‘Mabel, no one could miss the kindness in your profile, nose or not. Dr. Graham—but what is the matter with your back, sir? Heal thyself!’
Dr. Graham straightened, indignant at being caught, for no one else had known him.
‘And this—’ Lewis paused.
Aurora walked slowly, putting a hitch in her gait, like Mama since her stroke—or perhaps like Aunt Elsie, with one lame booted foot. She waited for Lewis to name her, but he remained silent as she took the last few steps across the sheet.
At the edge her shadow paused and turned to hook-nosed profile with a giddy flourish. Lewis turned his head quickly to see who it was, to a roar of ‘Cheat! Cheat!’
from the crowd. Accepting disgrace, he yielded the chair and found a nose of his own.
The heat grew in advance of the storm. When the sheet was pulled down from the arch to reveal a late supper, iced lemonade was the first aim of the revellers.
No rain this evening. A storm would help, Aurora thought. She slipped out to the long porch and walked along into the shadows at the far end, wishing she could go down to the lake and bathe without worrying her aunt, who believed that anyone with a toe in the water would naturally be electrified during a storm. Bella would bathe with her, if she was here. Aurora longed for the company of her sisters, for the long-ago time when they’d slid into the water together as children at Christopher Lake. She and Clover had held Bella’s hands the first time, but after that she was a little fish.
Bella would not come to Qu’Appelle, not while she was earning big money; she had not even come to visit when she’d played Regina last spring, had not let Aurora know until afterwards. She must be in trouble, but did not say what the matter was; her letters were short and funny and told you nothing. Clover’s were just as opaque: she was caught up with Victor. A sudden wave of longing hit Aurora, to be loved like Victor loved Clover, simply for herself, not for beauty or skill.
A long rumble of thunder curled at the edge of the valley and receded. Uncle Chum had put the music on, Aunt Elsie was urging the others to dance. Aurora thought she’d rather stay outside than go in and dance with Lewis in that cramped space.
She heard the French door click and Lewis came out at the other end of the porch. He stood looking down to the lake, perhaps not wanting to dance with her, either.
He had not seen her yet. Aurora studied him in the light that spilled from the house. Arrogant, she told herself. Severe, over-fastidious—yet she also knew him to be perceptive and thoughtful. She must have sighed a little; a tilt of his head betrayed that Lewis had sensed her there.
Even then it took him some time to turn. Spontaneity was not his way.
‘That dress is the colour of a luna moth,’ he said.
‘I know. I looked them up in the library.’
‘I did not know it was you,’ he said. ‘Your shadow.’
Aurora smiled in the darkness.
‘A remarkable example of pathetic fallacy,’ he said, as the thunder rumbled out again. ‘Of all this crowd, I thought it would be you I’d know.’
‘I have a spell to cloud men’s minds,’ she said. One of Madame Tatiana’s mysterioso lines. Lewis laughed then, at her accent and the mysterious swoop her shadow made.
‘Walk down to the shore with me,’ he said. ‘If you are not afraid of the storm. I think it is some way off yet.’
They met at the steps and he took her hand to help her down. When she tried to retrieve it his grip tightened. They walked that way, hidden by darkness, to the edge of the lake and out onto the pebbly sand. East of the thunderclouds a horned moon had risen over the hills, ready to sit on like the green prop moon.
In the warm air Lewis brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm, and kissed it again. His mouth was cool and smooth as lake water. She felt the snaking curl in her belly and chest, radiating everywhere, the inner appetite wanting, wanting. But remembering the luna moth, which has no mouth and cannot eat, she took her hand away.
‘What is to be done?’ he asked her, as he had in the woods last winter.
‘It is impossible, I know,’ she said, answering all the considerations he had not said: her vanished husband, her child, Lewis’s position.
Water lapped at the sand.
After a moment, she said, ‘I don’t know what you want.’
Lewis walked a little away along the edge of the lake. ‘I know I am clumsy,’ he said.
‘No,’ she said. Perhaps his fiancé had told him so. ‘No, it is just difficult.’
‘I want to be honourable,’ he said. ‘To honour what is between us.’
He was looking at her in the darkness, at her silk dress, her silk hair, her costume wings: not seeing her, herself. Naming shadows and fancy moths, this pampered life—it was all false, Aurora thought.
Also false: herself and Lewis.
‘I want to be honest,’ she said. ‘I don’t care much about honour.’
She took off her shoes and stockings, and walked into the water, certain he would not follow. He did not.
Imaginary Ladies
In Portland, East and Verrall stayed in Mrs. Kay’s boarding hotel as they always had, Julius in the next room. Bella was at the Nortonia Hotel, but the delightful tea garden with its Japanese lanterns was closed for the winter. Mr. Pantages had gone south to see a very pretty quick-change artiste whose final change was Godiva. It was more peaceful without his attentions, but her contract was up in January. She continued to headline every bill—and had her picture on the cover of a song-sheet for You’d Be Surprised!—but could not help feeling unsettled.
She felt a fretful, pestering hunger for company, a loneliness as grey as the November evening. Restless and not at all tired, instead of turning in to the Nortonia, she walked down towards Mrs. Kay’s hoping to catch East still at cards in the parlour; it was only just past midnight. She did love East, and he liked her too, however brisk he might be.
Everyone knew Verrall loved Aurora, but maybe East could like her best—he liked so many girls, why not her most of all? She was no longer a child, after all. Perhaps he would come back to the Nortonia with her, just this once.
A fast clip down cold, echoey pavement warmed her. Through hedge-grown back streets she arrived at Mrs. Kay’s from the side and could see, across the grass, the lighted square of East’s and Verrall’s window—not asleep, then.
No, there was East in his shirt-sleeves moving about. Verrall stood behind him, brushing a coat with careful strokes. It was like the picture screen. Bella stood watching.
Taking off his shirt, his chest vulnerable and thin in the lamplight, East laughed at something Verrall had said. Just quietly, a joke between the two of them. Verrall wore a grin of calm pleasure, having pleased his friend. He came to the window—he would see her watching.
No, he turned back, hand on the curtain, to say something, and East came forward and laid his hand on Verrall’s neck. An easy gesture. But it came to Bella, watching them, that East was Verrall’s, and Verrall East’s.
That it had always been so, whatever nonsense East might spout about imaginary ladies, whatever bonbons he might dole out.
Verrall pulled the curtain across.
Bella turned and made her way back through empty streets to the hotel.
Suffit
Victor had been wounded at the Somme. In November the official letter came, before any word from Victor. Both Clover and Madame stood for a long while in the gloomy front hall, trying to read the telegram. Three heads close together in the hall mirror when Clover raised her eyes. Madame’s dark little head—how fond she had become of it—and Harriet’s, remarkably similar.
‘Wait,’ Clover said, and stepped across to push the brass light switch. Before she could return to the paper, Madame had read it and fainted flat on the worn carpet.
Clover read it for herself and then sat down beside Madame, back against the wall and legs out in front of her, still holding Harriet. It was a relief, in a way, that it said wounded in action. That it had come, the thing she knew would be coming.
Harriet climbed off her lap and patted Madame’s face, saying, ‘Dama! Dama!’
In January 1917, Victor was sent to a London hospital, his leg badly infected. The pins the field surgeons had inserted to hold his leg together were causing a great deal of pain; the swelling was terrible to see, and the scar livid. Clover went to Wandsworth Hospital every day, a complicated trip involving two changes on the underground and several buses. Two hours, to be allowed ten minutes with Victor—‘until his condition improves to my liking,’ the ward sister said.
He was not always himself. He did not want to speak, but might return the pressure of her hand. Sometim
es there would be a delay, and Clover counted the seconds until the faint squeeze came. The ward was full of men in worse case, very few in better. It was not a peaceful place, but they kept up the cheer—Victor’s next-cot neighbour (who’d lost one leg at the thigh and one at the knee, but was game as a pebble) told her they had ‘a few infectious spirits who rouse all the others: a very gay ward here, very gay.’ She was grateful to him for trying to rouse her own spirits.
Once they left Harriet with Heather Jakes, so Madame could come. But the visit led to three days’ hysterical weeping from Madame, and was clearly painful for Victor as well; they did not repeat the experiment.
Slowly, in snatches, he began to talk. One day as Clover bent over to kiss his marble face he said, ‘I can’t—’ She stayed bent over his bed, close enough to hear. ‘Tell them—you’ll have to telegraph them. I can’t go back.’
‘All right,’ she said. As if it ever could be all right again.
For days he kept his eyes shut. The nurse, and later the doctor, assured Clover that there was nothing wrong with his eyes. So she thought perhaps he did not want to see her. She visited anyway. Weeks progressed; his leg went from one infection to another as they pondered taking it off, alternately threatening or promising to do so.
At home, Madame was frantic. She often woke Clover, and Harriet, screaming in the night; she denied having nightmares but called them visions. She had been ‘vouchsafed to know the possibilities’ and Victor was not, not, to return to the Front when his leg had been patched together. Walking the floor with Harriet (who cried constantly these days, a colicky stomach or teething or the accumulating strain of everyone around her), Clover tried to reassure Madame—but the only reassurance she had in her quiver was Victor’s leg, which seemed so bad to her that he would never walk on it again.
The Little Shadows Page 48