He had resolved to be the sort of man who shaved every day. He would carry on as he was, an artist, a civilized man forced by his own sense of duty to act against his fastidious instincts. A mot juste, he thought at the time, and proudly called himself “fastidious.” In the morning, when the dust of his first bombardment still hung in the air, he squatted near the dugout and unrolled his kit across his knee, beside him a mug of hot water requisitioned from the teakettle. He opened the razor and saw how dull the metal had grown, already, and that he had left fingerprints on the handle. Rooting in the bag, he dragged out the little silk mirror case and felt it give under his fingers. When he opened it, the pieces fell out into his palm, no shard bigger than his thumb. He stared at them, confused, the razor open and useless in his right hand, the water cooling beside him.
Glancing up, he saw his captain leave the dugout and prop a bit of highly polished metal against the dirty sandbags of the lintel. He opened a common sort of black-handled razor. As Liam watched, he lathered, then crossed each cheek without incident, his chin, his upper lip even. Each pass was measured, followed by a critical glance in the mirror. He checked his throat against the back of his hand, relathered, the blade bright against his sunburn as it cleared the jugular. As though nothing could jolt him from above and knock him forward against his own razor. He might have been at home, in an enamelled bathroom, with a cup of coffee beside him.
Liam shut his monogrammed, ivory-handled razor, and dropped it carefully into its leather case. He dumped the mirror fragments into their little silk bag and dropped it to the mud. Above him the sky was blue. Around him were the shredded remains of a wood. He ran the back of one hand across his stubbled cheeks and thought he felt the bare rumour of a vibration, as though his hand contained the rolling echo of each shell that had fallen the night before. After that he preferred the French barbers. And anyway, they were cheap.
Dispelling such tedious memories, he finished shaving, and went to Mrs. Qualey’s front room to read the paper. Then he went looking for the theatre, having only a vague memory of where the Temple had stood. All around it were brick apartment buildings; the ones that had seemed respectable on his last visit now were dingy and soot-stained. The streets were full of young men who always had their hands in their pockets, and stood in great crowds on the corners, so Liam either chose to walk in the gutter or found himself shoved there by a casual shoulder, and his shoes got wet. These young men were not the sort that moved aside for a gentleman, and Liam was still a gentleman, despite the wear on his good suit and the state of his cuffs.
He found the Temple much changed as well. He had only known it for a few months under Mrs. Kilgour’s patronage, but it had been very clean and modern then, if not in particularly good taste. A year or more after the crash, it had been dropped from the circuit, he had heard, and now it hosted occasional performers and films, the new management having upgraded the projector and installed speakers. Already it seemed hopelessly out-of-date, a remnant of the age of flappers and bootleg gin, and that age was centuries past, leaving behind those awful flourishes in the baloney-pink ceiling, the plaster rosettes, the pink pillars of granite, the gilt-edged portraits of Egyptian gods with the heads of jackals and long-beaked birds. He wondered how he had ever thought it was a nice theatre, and been for a moment proud to sing in it. Now it was rented out two mornings a week to a bunch of dull men in work clothes, who paid for the manager’s non-interference as much as for space in the lobby, or occasionally the stage if they had a large group. These groups of men often carried stacks of leaflets, he was told, and had threatened to distribute them to the theatre’s patrons—people, the manager told Liam, who only wanted to see Cavalcade, or the latest Joan Crawford film, and did not want leaflets. Men like that were fools if they thought anyone cared for leaflets in this day and age, and the manager had told them so and that had been that, they knew where their bread was buttered. Men like that only needed to be told what for, and they usually slunk away. The manager was a short, thick man like a sea lion, who smiled an unpleasantly knowing smile whenever he talked about his customers or the leaflet-men.
Liam saw the pamphlet-men that afternoon when they had the lobby. He looked in from the theatre itself, where he had been meaning to practice, but had fallen, instead, to smoking and contemplating the dreadful pink and gold plasters. They sat in a circle, the dingy men in shirtsleeves. One of them was standing; he wore overalls and heavy boots that badly needed a cleaning. He was mid-sentence when he noticed Liam.
“I know you,” he said.
Liam nodded. “My name is Manley, but I think you have the advantage.” He had heard that line in a film, you have the advantage from some dinner-jacketed trans-Atlantean. He found, more and more, that he drew his habitual dialogue not from short stories in good magazines, but from films. He wondered if this showed. Often he didn’t care.
“I remember you, Mr. Manley. I saw you sing.”
“Yes?” Liam said. He did not want to cross the floor toward the group of shirtsleeved men with their pamphlets, but they had grown silent and were staring at him.
“Yes,” said another one. “Mr. Liam Manley. Sweet Singer of Sweet Songs,” and laughed. “You sang with that old capitalist, Kilgour. I remember when she came to entertain us. We called that insult to injury. But I liked your songs—you sang my father’s old songs, from Scotland.”
“Yes,” Liam said.
“I saw your name on the marquee, but didn’t think until I saw you. You sang with her, though, I remember that.”
Liam nodded, smiled, then said the little speech he had thought up as he entered the foyer and wondered what to do about the little cluster of fellows. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I am currently at work, as I see you are. Please do not be disturbed—but I must do a little further preparation for tonight.”
“Yes, of course, but you should join us, before you leave,” the first man said, and now he stretched out his hand toward Liam, holding one of the leaflets. “And why not take this? It’s a great thing we do, Mr. Manley.” For a moment Liam did not think he was going to oblige; he thought instead he’d gently close the door then return to the stage and smoke another cigarette. Instead he found himself crossing the floor and taking the little folded sheet, and smiling, and nodding, and saying something slight about the dreadful state of the world. He glanced at the paper, then stuffed it into his inside pocket. The leaflet was about the Kilgour interests in the mining industry, full of acronyms: IWW, AFL, CIO, BCFL, RCWU. The man who had given him the sheet smiled a hard, grim smile that had filled Liam with an obscure fear.
That night at the Temple, at the ten minute call, with the houselights still burning, Liam looked out from shadowy stage left to watch the audience, their white faces and empty seats like the dots and dashes in a line of Morse code. He glanced down at his cuffs, noticing again that they were frayed, though the wear was so slight he was probably the only one who’d see it.
Someone behind him shuffled. “Mr Manley?” It was the stage manager, a little man with pale blue sleeve garters. He held a poppy in his left hand. “Thought you might like one,” he said, then continued with the inevitable story. They all did it, Liam thought; he had for a while some years before, though no longer.
Liam hesitated, but took the thing that was in the stage manager’s palm and said, “Thank you, sir. Where was it you mentioned?” He pinned the flower over his heart. It would look well—black, white and red—he thought critically, and be a reminder. He should have arranged to sing “The Minstrel Boy” or “Wi’ A Hundred Pipers.” The man went on about some moment somewhere with the 29th. Liam watched him, wondered how many times he’d told this story with pride. His wife would know the details intimately, would exclaim at the right times. His children, too. Stupid little man.
Liam fixed his eyes again on the audience. Yes, the red spot repeated, more expressive than just the white faces. It was like a sacred heart, as though each flower were swollen with blood. In the end my im
maculate heart will triumph. The line emerged mechanically, like a glory be. He distracted himself with an Ave and wondered why the stage manager dwelt in the past, and why he had singled Liam out like that. He would have to be avoided.
The stage manager had finished. He reached up and clapped Liam on the shoulder and left. That was a relief. Five minutes to curtain.
Liam watched the audience from his dark corner. They were as nearly quiet as a half-filled room could be. He ran eyes up and down the rows, forward and backward, his hands quietly at his sides, hanging, not even in fists. He began to look closely at their faces, at their eyes like the glass eyes of dolls, and their good navy satin dresses stiff and shining, their white hands knotted in their laps. Cheap stones around their necks.
Two minutes. Liam waited, and then when the houselights faded he thought, it’s time. He stood very straight with his hands behind his back, and pinched the cuffs’ frayed hems between his fingers. He stepped into the darkness of the stage and felt himself illuminated. There was applause. The man who accompanied him was already sitting at the piano. They had agreed on an a cappella opening for “Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms.” The man sat mouse-quiet, with light for his music from a silver-coloured candelabra. Nothing that could distract from Liam, who would stand in the full gold lights of the stage’s apron. Under his feet the black boards were solid, but for a moment he could not believe they persisted beyond the edge of his own lighted circle. Out there he heard coughs, the nearly-quiet rustling darkness full of stiff navy satin and doll’s eyes fixed dead on him, shut mouths with painted lips. Men leaning back in their seats resigned to an evening’s nap and women watching, their necks taut and their fingers knotted.
Liam reminded himself that he was here to do a job, and thought of “Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms.” But the longer he stood silent—three seconds, then five—the more dreadful it seemed that he should sing at all. And then ten seconds, then fifteen, and he heard a cough. One cough always brought others, he would have to do something soon. The gentleman at the piano glanced at him. But though the bad moment continued through the whole performance, Liam stepped away from it, clasped his hands before taking a breath and began:
believe me if all those endearing young charms that i gaze on so fondly today were to fade by tomorrow and wilt in my
SWEET SINGER OF SWEET SONGS
Liam didn’t return to Mrs. Qualey’s directly after the first performance. He walked to the park on the other side of town and back again. The rain slackened. He smoked. Occasionally his hand reached for the poppy on his lapel. After an hour of touching it in the dark between streetlights, he pulled it off and let it fall into the gutter, didn’t look back to see it glow on the wet pavement.
When he’d found his way back to Mrs. Qualey’s, it was at least onethirty and he’d nearly walked himself numb. He might sleep through, tonight, dreamlessly, and wake in the morning refreshed. He lay awake, though, clammy with the damp air, until his hands and feet warmed in the unheated bedroom. He heard, distantly—the sound tiny and precise like a miniature—the train couplings locking and unlocking in the station yard.
On the third afternoon of his seven-day engagement, he recognized the girl outside the theatre. He wasn’t quite sure she’d been in the audience, certainly he would have spotted a pretty one in that mutton-as-lamb crowd of the first and second nights, but he thought he might have seen her. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest and her head bowed, the nape of her neck exposed beneath the short curls at her hairline.
He continued past the theatre on the opposite side of the street, dropped his cigar and crossed, watching her from the corner of his eye. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her eyes didn’t scan the pavement. She seemed to be waiting but she didn’t wait. No powder compact out with hair patting, or checking of teeth, no little smiles, as though in her head she choreographed a conversation. She only stood.
Liam ran one hand through his hair and dishevelled his pompadour. He dropped his hand again and held it behind his back, surreptitiously wiped the Brylcreem on his shirt, beneath his jacket. He ran one finger along the hem of his cuff. He slowed to give her time to notice. She shifted from her left to her right foot, her hips swinging in a tick-tock. Or just a tick. She raised her head and her hair fell back and obscured her neck. Her coat was light for November, water-darkened about the shoulders. She’d walked a long way in the rain. She wore oxfords and socks. Her long bare legs would be rough to the touch from cold. The hem of a tweed skirt brushed the backs of her knees.
She tocked, weight left, right leg bent.
He was near the overhang now. She hadn’t turned around. No one else waited outside. Well—doors didn’t open for a few hour yet, though there had been a time when there had been a real little crowd waiting for him, and he would watch them from the windows of Mrs. Kilgour’s slow, black Rolls-Royce.
He was level with her, had just turned his head when she looked up.
“Oh,” she said.
He smiled, kept walking, but slowly.
“Mr. Manley.” He turned and nodded. “Mr. Manley,” she said again, and then, “I saw you sing—the opening night. I wanted to say—” this fast, as though it was a message someone had entrusted to her. She stopped again.
He stepped toward her. “Yes?”
“How much I liked it. How much I liked it when you sang.”
“Thank you. It’s very kind. Are you coming again tonight?” That might be too much. A bit desperate, asking her that.
“Oh. No.” But sad. Sad-ish.
Ahah, he thought. “Unfortunate,” he said.
“I’d like to hear you again—”
“You’re fond of the old ballads of Ireland?” he asked, slight emphasis on “Ireland,” and it came out “Oir-land.” He tried not to listen to himself, so that he would not hear how tired his little speeches were, the little inflections that were not quite stage-Irish, but were close enough that he recognized their shabbiness.
“I like them. And Robbie Burns. And all the sad songs.” She was blushing right up to her hairline. Her freckles were nut brown all over the bridge of her nose, her skin very white under the blush. She’d be that pale naked, smooth and slender, unfreckled where the sun never reached.
“I do like the classics, myself, but I find not much demand for them now—and Miss, what are you doing listening to tenors? You should be dancing. Is it Bing Crosby?”
“I don’t like the music now,” she said. “I hate it. I like things from before.”
Before, he thought, from before. He persevered. “You’re an old fashioned girl.”
“I guess I might be. I don’t like things now. They seemed to be better then,” she said and squinted as though looking for then. “When people lived in villages, and had horses. And,” she paused, trying to bring what she saw into focus, “went haying.”
Haying. Good Christ. He thought of the damp heat on the horrible, uninterrupted fields of his father’s farm. He thought of the smell of newmown hay. He laughed, “And a romantic too.”
She blushed.
Too far, too far. He should be solicitous, avuncular. Not tease her until she was used to him.
“You don’t have the money for the ticket,” he said gently. “Is that right?”
Her freckles were nearly gone in the blush. She looked away, but she nodded.
“But you love the music, do you?” She nodded again. “Right. What’s your name, love?”
“Hazel,” she said. “Hazel Lyon.”
“Well, Miss Lyon, I’ll put your name down for a ticket when the box office opens.”
Her eyes flew open. She looked at him steadily, without squirming. For a moment he doubted himself, wondering if this had been her plan all along, and he only obeying. She had pale brown eyes, almost the colour of her hair and her freckles. Then she blushed again and he thought no, no, she would not know how to play like that. “I can’t,” she said. “I shouldn’t.
”
“You can, my dear, and you have. Now—” He pulled some coins from his pocket, thankful he had any money on him. “Buy yourself a cup of tea. See you back here at seven-thirty, and on time, Miss!”
He pushed the money into her hand and quite naturally she took it, and then he left her, smiling.
He saw her from backstage. She sat in the tenth row, a good seat. She was to his left, her face uplifted, examining the faded red brocade of the curtain, the worn gold woodwork. He thought of men he’d known in hospital, young men with permanently wet, bemused smiles on their faces.
The set went well, or at least better than the previous night. He glanced at her occasionally and during “She Moved Through The Fair” he permitted himself one prolonged look during the last sustain. She didn’t smile in return, but watched intently, as though reading him, and he was hard to parse. He thought of the rest of the evening, after the recital. He thought about the rest of the engagement. He wondered where she lived. She was a nice girl, he thought. She folded her hands like a nice girl, and pinned her hair away from her forehead, and her downward glances were modest.
He hadn’t asked, but she was waiting for him, not outside the stage door, but across the street in an archway out of the rain. She was staring at her feet. He was halfway across the street before she looked up and took one involuntary step backward. He smiled and held out his hand.
The Paradise Engine Page 17