The Little Shadows

by Marina Endicott

  Trusting to Aurora, Uncle Chum, Gali’s string-pulling and her own instinct, she kissed Madame goodbye, and they boarded the ship.

  Very Fond of That

  Bella worked her way down the Pantages circuit as the spring wore on, to Los Angeles, where she would have a month playing the top four of the city’s eight Pan-time theatres. As a single headlining act, she did an expanded version of the Bumble Bee song (with very beautiful new wings and clod-hoppy black boots) and had introduced a send-up of Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life from Victor Herbert’s operetta where she played both lovers; she switched her straight song night to night, as fancy took her, between Danny Boy and a new song, I’m Always Chasing Rainbows, a glum little number about bad luck. She thought she might make a hit of Life’s a Very Funny Proposition After All, taking it sad and poignant. If she could bear to do it—although hardly being able to stand performing something seemed to be part of the art of it.

  Touring alone these last weeks, she’d worked out a plan for doing Bella’s New Car alone—an elegant lady motorist driving herself in hat and veil, kind of a Gibson girl dame, until the disasters began and she could strip off one piece of veiling at a time, almost a burlesque number except of course that she would still be demurely covered until the contraption blew up and a pull-away frock left her in tattered underclothes.

  She was enjoying herself, except when she was not. She had stopped drinking anything more than an occasional polite sherry (Julius’s ulcerative stomach and hideous death being the best of dissuasion), and was sleeping better, except for the nightmares.

  Coming backstage her third night at the Arcade on Broadway, she found a note pinned to her dressing-room door. She opened it without much thought, expecting something from the orchestra leader—and saw his name first of all, his initial.

  There were no other Ns for her.

  Found you. I hear you’re staying at the Alexandria, good hotel. I know you might not want to see me, but I’ll be in the mezzanine at eleven tomorrow morning, in case you do.

  See you there, I hope,

  N. (NANDO DENT)

  He stood against the railing, hat in his hand. Nice grey suit, but it looked like it might be his only one. She had changed her dress eight times.

  The mezzanine lobby was empty, the lunch rush not yet begun.

  She had thought about what to say, but it flew out of her head. ‘Why didn’t you come up and see me after the show?’

  ‘Not sure you would talk to me,’ he said. ‘Now you are headlining.’

  That was not worthy of comment.

  ‘Besides,’ he said, turning his hat round and round in his hands, as if it were a stage prop. ‘I tried to make you mad when I left.’

  ‘That worked.’ She put her hand on a pillar, casual, but needing a bit of support.

  Nando looked up, his careful eyes checking her face, and he turned her to a nearby plush-covered bench. They sat, and she waited.

  ‘You didn’t know my dad, not really. Not when he was so far gone in drinking, nobody knew about that. I couldn’t let you come along and see that. Look what he did to my mam. She wasn’t bad really—she’d had the biscuit. I still can’t blame her.’

  ‘Do you ever see her?’

  ‘Haven’t heard a word from her all this time. We know she’s alive, because Harlan the Great sends out Christmas cards to the industry and she’s in them. Looks pretty. Happier.’

  ‘It was a mean thing to leave you,’ Bella said.

  He moved on the bench, got up and walked to the railing. ‘It was a mean thing to leave you,’ he said.

  Bella’s eyes suffered an unaccustomed rush of water. Not for herself, but because he did not know what she had been doing. Maybe he thought they could still be partners, or something.

  Nando looked at her. She looked over the rail to the staircase instead.

  ‘I know you was with Pantages,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘Some people told me, and I saw your photo with him once or twice. You still with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He leave you in the lurch too?’

  She looked at him again.

  ‘I figure that’s what I did, is why I’m asking. East and Verrall weren’t fit to look after a girl, and Julius was a sad old drunk. But I couldn’t see anything but Dad then. Without my mam around I’ve got to know him a bit better. He’s still an ugly customer but he’s mellowed a fraction. Got Christian Science now and swears he’s off the bottle.’

  ‘Is he here?’ She could not help glancing round, half fearing to see that big surly mug.

  Nando laughed. ‘No, he’s in the san again, down in Pasadena. I told them not to let him out till I get back, and he’s behaving himself so far.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ she said. ‘I mean, for thinking about it. About leaving me.’

  ‘Too late, though. Your mama’d have my nuts for nickels, and so would your sisters. Whatever you’ve got up to, you were not—’

  ‘Don’t say it!’ Bella stood and found her hands in fists. ‘Don’t say I was not old enough! I did what I wanted and what I thought I had to do, and I’m not ashamed—you can take that Sunday face off.’

  Nando sat silent on the railing, lazy leg dangling, his face flat.

  ‘You don’t get to scold me,’ she said, still very angry. ‘What have you been up to yourself? Saints all round, I suppose.’

  He nodded. ‘Except when I was with someone or other.’

  She gasped.

  ‘I’m not boasting of it, but you ought to know we’re about even.’

  Her own face went flat, she felt it. She could not bear to think about Nando with someone else.

  ‘Only I never found any girl I wanted like you, or that fit my hand so well, and fit my mind, never anyone. How about you?’

  Now would be the time to flounce off, all aggrieved.

  ‘Liked me best of all, didn’t you?’

  She bit the inside of her cheek.

  ‘I made a good bit in the movies so far—nothing like the money in vaude, but the work’s okay. I can take my dad along, they find him something to do. But I’m not stuck on it, I’d come back to the boards if you wanted me. Dad can manage on his own now, he don’t need much from me but a bank draft, time to time.’

  ‘Why are you—?’ She intended to walk out. She had an independent—She was a headliner, all by herself. All on her own bat.

  He spread his hands open. Callused and squared, short crooked fingers, each one of them broken one time or another.

  ‘I have a little cat, and I’m very fond of that,’ he sang, rusty-voiced. Then he leaned forward, one foot hooked in the mezzanine railing, farther forward than a man could possibly lean, and kissed her mouth.

  11.

  Together Again

  JUNE 1917

  Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan

  Vancouver, British Columbia

  Regina, Saskatchewan

  After the band has rehearsed your music to your satisfaction, thank them kindly and retire. This is not necessary but customary and costs nothing, and is generally appreciated. It does no harm.

  FREDERICK LADELLE, HOW TO ENTER VAUDEVILLE

  The train announced itself at a distance, halved the distance, halved it again, and galloped into the station on a thousand horses, steaming and stamping. Aurora ran down the platform, looking for every opening door and hoping, and then there was Clover—wasn’t it?—backing down off the stairs, a child in her arms, turning to help—and Victor, with a cane, hopping awkwardly down to the platform.

  Aurora stopped for a moment to look at them whole: Clover much older, her hair hidden under a dark felt hat, glancing towards Victor. She was carrying the baby girl, a fairy, thin legs in red Viyella leggings buttoned under nice brown shoes, her face hidden under a red tam and crammed down into Clover’s collar. Victor shook off Clover’s hand and pointed to Aurora. His face was so changed, Aurora could not take it in. His pant-leg was bunched around some contraption, and he leaned on a sturdy cane. She remembered hi
m flying through the air, landing so lightly that the stage made no sound.

  Then they were all together, she and Clover pressed to each other like flowers in a book, and the little Harriet making sleepy mews at being squashed.

  Luggage mushroomed on the baggage cart, a porter loaded it into the Ford—which Uncle Chum, relenting, had taught Aurora to drive—and they went tooling back up the street. Clover pulled off Harriet’s tam, releasing springing dark curls, and then her own hat. Her hair, cut straight to the jaw, swung free.

  ‘London style,’ she said, at Aurora’s admiring gasp. ‘Fabian style, at least!’

  Aurora pointed out landmarks (the church, Mrs. Gower’s, the school, the Opera House) and kept up a flow of welcoming babble until they had passed out of town into the countryside. Then she fell silent to let the air and sky and the thin strip of endless land at the bottom of the window do their work on Clover.

  Everyone was out on the veranda to watch them arrive. When Aurora pulled up in the drive and waved, Mabel let go of Avery’s hand so he could hop down the steps to greet his long-lost aunt. Holding a limp bunch of white clover in his hand, he waited patiently for someone to get out of the car who might be her.

  Harriet clung to her mother until she saw Avery, whereupon her eyes followed him, fascinated. Aurora saw him afresh, looking very grown up, suddenly, compared to Harriet. Chum called Elsie to come and see Arthur in the children; Elsie countered that she certainly saw Flora in the little girl—‘Look at those sweet brown eyes.’

  By then, Mama had come haltingly down the stairs. She went round Chum in a slight hunch to find Clover. Once she had accepted Avery’s tribute, Clover turned—and Mama insinuated herself through the press to catch at her sleeve, kissing her; but joyfully, not in the mysteriously sad way she sometimes had. ‘Clover, Clover’ she was able to say, and then, overcome, she sang, ‘Wait till the darkness is over, wait till the tempest is done!’ Aurora saw that she used her right hand, as well as her left, to hold her dear lost daughter.

  Mabel stayed in the background, as she did always. She had luncheon waiting on the veranda for the travellers. When they’d been fed, she and Aurora led Clover up to the bedroom waiting for her, and Mabel kindly helped her to settle Harriet for a nap.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to rest yourselves, after the long journey,’ she said.

  ‘Victor will, I think,’ Clover said. ‘But I am not—’

  Aurora got up from studying Harriet’s pale sleeping face. ‘No, no, not yet. Mama will want to sit with you a little longer.’

  ‘All right, then, Mrs.—’ Mabel stopped, agonized at her own clumsiness. ‘I mean—’

  Clover kissed her reddening cheek and said cheerfully, ‘It’s all right, I don’t mind. You must call me Clover anyhow. I’m still Miss Avery, as you may know, but I think I should be Mrs. Saborsky here in Qu’Appelle. I don’t expect there are many Fabians around here to explain the concept of Free Love.’

  What Every Wife Does

  In the pearly evening Aurora and Clover walked down to the garden and stood looking over the neat rows of lettuce and spinach, the first green lace of carrot tops and young bean vines trellising up behind the cucumber hills.

  Clover asked, ‘Did you miss the Paddockwood garden so much?’

  Aurora laughed. ‘I do very little to help—all Aunt Elsie asks is that I play the piano sometimes. Mabel even darns Avery’s socks. She is much better at it than I.’

  ‘Not Mama?’

  ‘She cannot hold the needle well, it frustrates her. But she sorts beans and buttons, all the little things Dr. Graham suggested. She is still improving. You heard her singing Whispering Hope—it seems words come most easily from our old songs. She loves Avery; she will be very happy dandling Harriet too.’

  Aurora turned Clover to walk back up the lawn towards the house. From a wicker chair that Mabel had brought out, Mama was watching the children play under a large spruce tree whose boughs hung down in places right to the ground.

  ‘Avery’s lair—he has play dishes and blocks there, to make a house or a fort. I hope Harriet won’t get too dirty,’ Aurora said.

  ‘Avery’s beautiful. I didn’t expect him to be so fair.’

  ‘His temper is mostly Mayhew, I think.’

  Clover said, ‘It is a little like seeing Harry again, but not sad.’

  As they climbed up to the veranda, a rhythmic shout caught Aurora’s ear: ‘Eleven to three, three to eight, eight to four—’ On a flat patch of grass, Victor was doing scales, reaching and swaying and turning himself in knots, the strange cup-brace hampering but not stopping him. The women stood watching him shift and twirl in the lowering sun. His shadow was huge along the lawn.

  ‘But what does it mean?’ Aurora asked.

  ‘Oh, it means I love you, Clover, over and over, of course. I love you, Harriet, I am your soul.’ Clover closed her eyes.

  Aurora looked at her thin face. The skin colourless, tiny lines drawn round her eyes by the finest brush, not aging her, but setting a shadow over her face.

  ‘He is angry with me all the time,’ Clover said, looking up again.

  Lilacs growing close to the house partly screened the veranda, and the low words would not carry to Victor. Aurora put her arm round her sister’s waist.

  ‘Going to sleep is the worst. He is afraid to sleep—not just the dreams, but the letting-go moment before sleep, when all the thoughts he’s kept at bay bleed in. So he stays up half the night until he falls into a heavy sleep, sitting in a chair or lying on the hearth-rug. It was just the same in London; I had to lie with Harriet to keep her warm. When he did come to bed, I was back and forth between them all night long.’

  The veranda railing held Clover as she leaned slightly forward, her eyes always on Victor.

  He had taken up a pair of ebony sticks and was working through a routine with them, sharp and graceful except when he had to shift from the sound leg to the crutch. Almost juggling, except the sticks slid and fell oddly. Sometimes a ball appeared between them and disappeared again.

  ‘Did you—do you know a lot about the war?’ Aurora asked. ‘I mean, what is really happening there?’

  ‘It is so close, the Front—like taking the train from Edmonton to Calgary, and there, right there, is the mud and the wire. But I did not know enough to help him at all. I ought to have gone for an ambulance driver, I would have liked that—no, not liked. I could have done it. I would have liked to see some of—’ Clover gritted her teeth, spoke more carefully. ‘Not liked. I wish I could have seen what he was seeing. But there was Harriet and I could not go.’

  Aurora found Victor’s movements mesmerizing. ‘When he came back, was he—?’

  ‘Off his head? Not long. I think he might wish it had been longer. He was stuck with thinking. The nights are bad. You won’t hear us, we have become good at silence.’

  On the grass, Victor stood still, in as straight a pose as his leg allowed, hands clasped. He ceased to move. His stillness was very restful.

  ‘I think of Mama living with the same thing, without the trigger of the war. But Papa was the same, you know he was, gripped by that hideous understanding of—the underlying horror of every single thing. Livid if Mama talked to Mr. Dyment in the street, you remember; suspecting that she gossiped of his weakness, or worse. How he squashed her frivolous mind, stopped her singing. I think of her.’

  Aurora kissed the pale cheek, and smoothed Clover’s hair while she talked.

  ‘I am not always certain I can go on with him, living this way. It is bad for Harriet … and I must be so careful not to irritate or trouble him, or make everything worse by causing him anxiety. He can’t decide anything. He can’t choose what to eat in a restaurant. I just order for him as if that’s what every wife does. I think he has forgotten that it’s not.’ Clover shook her head to erase all that. ‘His leg, his wounds, are bad. But they will mend. He’ll work again. It’s merely a matter of my good sense to get us bookings again.’

  She
laughed suddenly, and all the heads turned to look up to the veranda, even Harriet peeking out from the spruce-boughs to see what had amused her mother. ‘I sound like Sybil, keeping Julius off the roller skates.’

  Victor removed the strange cup-brace and came slowly back to the house, cane sliding on gravel. ‘I had some skill, once,’ he said, looking up at Aurora. ‘I seek to get it back.’

  Spring Song

  Next morning Mama taught the children to dance, just as she had taught the girls when they were small. A jaunty song that Clover had brought from England squawked on the Victrola: ‘Hello, Hello, Who’s your lady friend? Who’s the little girlie by your side?’

  With her fresh eyes, Clover could see how well Mama had recovered—and after the horrors at the Wandsworth Hospital, Mama’s impairment seemed quite minor. She had a clever way of hiding the stiffness on her right side by holding a hand to her mouth as if musing: the left arm and leg did the dancing. Harriet was working hard to learn the waltz-step. Tall and sturdy at two-and-a-quarter, Avery danced very well already. Clover’s feet itched pleasantly.

  She and Aurora left the children to Mama and Aunt Elsie and walked in to town with Mabel, three abreast down the empty road.

  Breaking through her shyness, Mabel asked whether she had liked London, and a wave of bitterness flooded through Clover.

  ‘I hated everything about it,’ she said. Then checked herself: ‘Not London. It was the war I hated—the talk of glory and noble sacrifice, the self-righteous politicians safe at home. Even the men, how they love each other so as soldiers, and how girls love them too. I did myself, the boys in the hospital, the men coming home in pieces. It’s easier in England because all the men are in, anyone able-bodied, so everyone knows what you’re—well, they don’t look sideways at Victor when they see the crutch. People don’t understand here.’