Never Sleep Three in a Bed

by Max Braithwaite

  The athletes crouched in their positions. Manerlie, piercing eyes on fire, stood beside them, his starting pistol raised aloft pointing at the sky. “On your marks, get set .…”

  And then a terrible thing happened. Unnoticed by anyone, the breadman’s rig had come down Eastlake Avenue, the old white horse clip-clopping along contentedly, the Chesapeake and the Airedale trotting beneath the wagon. They came abreast of the contestants just as they were going into their crouch and Manerlie had begun his starting chant.

  It was then that Pal, who’d been ranging about looking for trouble, spied them and challenged them to come out and fight. They came, all right, and the three joined battle in the only open space available-right in front of the crouching athletes on the string-marked course.

  Oh it was a wonderful scene, rolling, tearing dogs, screaming girls, cheering boys, fainting matrons. Pandemonium complete. Back and forth across that track the three dogs plunged. And I never had any idea that a drill teacher could be so handy with curse words. As he waded in among those dogs, getting himself entangled in the cords, and went down on top of them waving his arm with the starting pistol in it, the language he used would have done justice to a mule-skinner. “Who owns that blankety-blank dog?” he kept yelling.

  I didn’t wait for the conclusion of the fight. I suddenly remembered that time was passing, and if I was going to get myself changed and down town in time for my papers, I’d have to leave immediately. As I went, I could hear the sound of snarling dogs, screaming girls and swearing men rising into the autumn sky. And when I got down to the bottom of the short hill and started across the old Traffic Bridge, Pal caught up to me. He was unconcerned about the whole thing, probably wondering what all the fuss was about. Several other dogs, attracted by the noise, had come from blocks away to join in the fray, so I guess he felt his presence was no longer needed.

  There is only one more thing to be said about Pal, and it grieves me even now to think of it. One day at noon a couple of years later, when Denny, too, was in high school, we came home together. When we walked in the back door Mother was standing at the stove stirring the soup. She didn’t tell us to be sure and clean our feet, or to hang up our coats or anything like that. In fact, she didn’t even look at us.

  As we went past Mother on the way to the dining room where the rest of the family were sitting silently, she stopped us and said, “You’d better go and look at what’s at the side of the house.” By the way she said it, we knew something very bad had happened. And when we got there we saw old Pal, lying on his side, very dirty, and very dead. He’d been shot through the chest with a twenty-two calibre rifle. There was no blood, just a small, round hole, but it was enough.

  He’d barely made it home, Mother told us later, and it was obvious that he’d been shot not far away. Without saying a word, the two of us carried him to the middle of the back garden, dug a big hole and placed him in it.

  Then we set out, still silent, to find his murderer. A Mr. Grady lived behind us, his garden, of which he was inordinantly fond, butting on ours. He hated Pal, we knew, because of the havoc done to his tomatoes, sweet peas, and other garden stuff. We knocked on his door.

  “Did you shoot our dog?” Denny asked, when Grady came to the door.

  He looked at us, two very serious youths standing on his back stoop. “No,” he said, “but I wish I had.”

  Denny’s red hair bristled, and his eyes glinted as they did when I’d pushed teasing him too far and he was about to start throwing things. But you can’t throw things at an adult and a neighbour. Denny choked back his rage and muttered, “You can’t just go around shooting people’s dogs, you know. You’ll get into trouble.”

  Mr. Grady slammed the door, leaving us there on his stoop with our wrath and our sorrow. It was no use, we realized. Nobody would ever admit to the act, and besides, Pal was dead. All that energy and splendid nonsense suddenly gone from the world. Gone forever.

  I missed him most of all on the long, lonely, miserable walks when I was covering my paper route. Pal always used to pick me up at the Nutana end of the bridge, and dutifully accompany me up and down the long blocks. There were always dogs to fight, cats to chase, and garbage cans to demolish. For months, as I trudged up and down those streets, I’d hear a noise behind me and turn quickly, for a split second looking for Pal. Then I’d realize that, of course, he wasn’t there, and never would be again.

  14 To Tread the Boards

  When I was in Grade Eleven, Bramsby Williams came to our school, and I was never the same again. I don’t know who arranged for him to come, or why he was touring the country; I only know that one Friday our English teacher announced, with some pique, that we wouldn’t be having the regular lesson but instead would go up to the auditorium to hear a famous English actor.

  Great. I didn’t have my homework done for that period, and was wondering how I’d talk myself out of a detention slip. So up the broad stairway we went, making the usual cracks, pushing each other, the bolder ones ripping out the odd raucous belch. We sat down on the folding chairs and waited, figuring we were in for a boring time, but anything was better than listening to Miss Ranken on Keats.

  Then Bramsby Williams came on stage. He was a rather rotund man, not very tall, with hair cut long the way actors often wear it. Actually, a very ordinary-looking guy. Then, before our very eyes, he changed. Everything, his size, his demeanour, his hands, eyes, even the shape of his nose. He was poor, demented Fagin, pleading with Oliver Twist, “That’s right, that’s right. That’ll help us on. This door first. If I shake and tremble as we pass the gallows, don’t you mind, but hurry on. Now, now, now!”

  Then he was Bramsby Williams again, but only for a moment before he became another Dickens character. This time it was that detestable sneak, Uriah Heep, cringing, gloating, obsequious, “a very ‘umble person”. Then he was Wilkins Macawber, Mr. Bumble–one after the other he went into the characterizations, and each time there was absolutely nothing there of Bramsby Williams.

  I sat on the edge of that folding chair and my eyes popped. I’d never imagined anyone could do such things. Sure, we had plays at the lit. The Master Builder, I remembered, and Sheridan’s Rivals. And the kids who did the parts were good, too. But this! Never in the movies, or anywhere else, had I seen anything like it.

  In a daze, I left that auditorium and finished the afternoon. In a daze, I went and got my papers and delivered them. I was so excited that I could hardly walk. This was it. This was what I would be. The living theatre was the thing for me, boy. Nothing less would do.

  It took a long time to get Bramsby Williams out of my mind. In fact I never did, completely.

  It would be a mistake, however, to believe that there was no live theatre on the Prairies during the Twenties and before. There was plenty. In the tiny town of Hanley, for instance, where my wife grew up, there is an auditorium of great style and pretence, known as “The Opera House”. Here was where the local little theatre put on its awful plays, and where the impoverished travelling companies staged Uncle Tom’s Cabin (with Little Eva hoisted up to heaven on creaking wires), and East Lynn, and Abie’s Irish Rose. Here’s where great British actors, like Sir John Martin Harvey, came. I remember his great play, The Only Way, and his intoning of those never-to-be-forgotten lines, “It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” They make me weep just to write them.

  And then there were the tent shows with their Tobys and G-strings and Ingénues and Villains. What was a “toby”? Why, he-was a bumbling lout who couldn’t talk straight, walk without falling over himself, or keep out of trouble. He could make faces fit to kill, and he wore outlandish clothing and, oh my lord, but he was funny. Mickey Rooney made a fortune playing tobys in the movies, and Peter Kastner and Bob Denver, of Gilligan’s Island, carry on in the same tradition. And a “G-string” is a toby, only older, and of course everybody knows what an ingénue is and a villain.


  The Chautauquas, which came once a year, also put on live plays, along with their lecturers, singers and other entertainers. And when the huge Chautauqua tent went up in town, they were sure of a crowd. Always there was the tall, dignified lecturer with his philosophical pep talk, “Attitudes and Platitudes” or “Highways and Byways”, intended to inform and inspire. And a deep basso, a piping tenor, a bosomy soprano. As well as a play with real actors. And maybe a specialty act, involving the “visual arts”. It was all tremendously uplifting, and guaranteed not to offend any member of the family.

  But best of all was the Empire Theatre in Saskatoon. It doubled as a silent movie house when there were no travelling shows, but when the live players came the place burst into life. The Shakespearean companies always needed extras to stand about, and to make up mob scenes or soldiers or other non-speaking parts. These “spear carriers”, as we came to call them, were invariably picked from the high school. And since, by this time, I was about as stage-struck as I could get, I was sometimes hired. It was on one of these occasions that I, and the stage of the Empire Theatre, together knew our most wretched hour.

  The play was Julius Caesar, and the company was a small, obscure one with no famous actors. A group of us were engaged to play the soldiers for the Battle of Philippi. We were to be dressed in Roman armour, and to come in on cues marked “Enter Brutus and Cassius and soldiers”. In another scene, we would “Enter fighting”.

  This was fine. We had no lines to speak, and were instructed merely to fill in the background. The fighting would be done by real actors in the foreground. All that would be required of us would be to sort of run about and shout and gesticulate. Also, as the assistant director instructed us on the night before the performance, “Be careful not to jab anybody in the ass with those spears!”

  I really wish he hadn’t said that about not jabbing anybody. Such an admonition tends to have the reverse effect on me. With my vivid imagination, I immediately saw just how terrible it would be if I were to jab an important actor in the rear end. How it would affect the actor, the audience, and quite possibly my future career on the stage.

  The day of the performance arrived. As always happened while I was in high school, I was in a terrible rush. I had to finish my paper route, have my dinner, and then get back downtown by seven o’clock. Since we lived on MacPherson Avenue at the time, and that was about a mile from the theatre, it was impossible for me to make it. The only solution to the problem was to skip dinner entirely, and even then it was tight.

  Thus it was that I arrived at the Empire Theatre fully fifteen minutes late, and very hungry. I have one of those metabolisms that can’t go too long without food. Whereas others may feel a bit peckish when eating is delayed, I become extremely irritable and absent-minded, since the only thing I can really think about is food.

  I reported backstage with about a thousand other people, all going in different directions. Since the dressing room facilities at the Empire were limited, even for the actors, there was no place for us to get into our faded costumes and rusty tin helmets except in a back corner. A thin, worried man kept counting us to see if he had enough soldiers for a decent army, and as soon as I arrived he threw the costume at me, hissing that I had only a few minutes to get into it.

  “Then line up there at the stage entrance with the others,” he said. “Oh–don’t forget your spear and shield, and keep quiet until you are on stage. Then do just as they showed you last night.”

  As quickly as possible, I pulled off my pants and shirt and pulled on the short skirt-thing that they’d given me. Then I tied the sandals on my feet, put the helmet on my head, added a couple of arm bands for good measure, and went and lined up with the others.

  The assistant stage manager grabbed me and shoved me into place. Then he did a double-take. “For God sake,” he hissed, “who ever saw a Roman soldier wearing long underwear!”

  Since it was the dead of winter, and winters are cold in Saskatoon, especially when you have to be outside for a couple of hours each evening, I had on a suit of fleece-lined combinations. The legs came down to my ankles and the sleeves down to my wrists.

  “Take that stuff off,” he said, shoving me back towards the corner.

  “But I can’t. I haven’t anything on underneath it.”

  “I don’t care about that. Take it off. And for God sake hurry!”

  So when I finally stumbled onto the stage, accoutred with spear and shield, I had, along with my hunger and nervousness, yet another serious worry. The skirt I had was short and rather tattered, and when I moved I could feel the breezes swirling about my uncovered crotch. Should I happen to get pushed over on that stage, I felt it might result in a certain amount of exposure.

  But it was too late to do anything about it. The alarum had sounded and we must “enter fighting”. It is very difficult, I found, to brandish a spear in one hand, hold a shield in the other, and at the same time prevent a wayward skirt from flapping above the knees. I kept myself low and made up with shouting what I lacked in brandishing, and since I was well at the back, I think I might have got away with it if some damned fool hadn’t got his short sword caught in my skirt. In desperation I grabbed at it, and my spear went clanking onto the stage floor. The thing to do, I realized afterwards, would have been to leave it there and just go about shouting and gesticulating. But such was my nervous state that I had somehow got the notion that I must have that spear or perish. So down on my knees I went to look for it.

  I managed to get it, too, but just as I was getting back on my feet with the spear held horizontal to the floor, instead of straight up as we’d been instructed, somebody bumped me from behind, and I went sprawling forward. The actor playing the part of Cato was just finishing the speech with the words, “I am the son of Marcus Cato, ho!” when the point of my spear and the curve of his backside made contact. The “ho!” of challenge became an “Ohhhh!” of alarm, and he lay there on the floor writhing with pain. Afterwards they said it was one of the most realistic deaths ever staged in the Empire Theatre.

  But my most pleasant memories of the old Empire are associated with the annual visit of the Dumbells. It was the high point of the year for us. We’d talk about it for weeks ahead, read all the advance publicity, endlessly go over the skits of the previous year, and try to anticipate what would come this time. We knew the Plunketts like brothers, Captain Merton, and Morley, and Al, who was the first of the crooners to send the girls to swooning.

  The Dumbells we saw in the late Twenties were, of course, only the remnants of the famous “Original Dumbells”, who began as a troupe of soldiers entertaining soldiers. It happened in the blood and muck of the First World War trenches, when Merton Plunkett, a YMCA entertainment organizer, began to gather talented men from the ranks for his small, front-line shows.

  As the men came out of the trenches, tired, dirty, and unbelievably war-weary, he would gather them together and stage an impromptu entertainment. They’d sing It’s a Long Way to Tipperary and other war songs, tell corny jokes about army life, getting as many soldiers as possible into the act. Female impersonation naturally went over big with the soldiers, and somebody was always putting on a wig and doing a dance, or singing a song and displaying a naughty bit of leg. It always brought down the house. Thus did Ross Hamilton transform himself into a tall, beautiful woman with a fine soprano voice.

  Gradually, the show took shape, and the best of the entertainers were withdrawn from the trenches to become permanent troupers. They travelled about France staging their show in barns, on the back of a truck–anywhere they could find–often within sound of the guns. As their audiences and fame grew, their show improved, until it was a fast-moving, slick and professional review.

  In London on leave, the Dumbells played four weeks at the famous Coliseum, and when they returned to Canada they formed themselves into a professional troupe. And after an eight-week run in the Grand Theatre in Toronto and a good run in New York, they began their Canadian
tours, which were to take them many times back and forth across the country.

  By the time we saw them, they had picked up some new professional talent, such as the “silly ass” Englishman, Fred Emney, the rubber-legged waif, Pat Rafferty, the suave straight man, Charlie Jeeves, and tenor, Cameron Geddes. And they still had Ross Hamilton, and another female impersonator, adagio dancer Glen Allen.

  And they were funny! Most of their material came from London music-halls. They did all the old “turns”–the classroom bit, the barber-shop bit, the policeman bit, the dope-fiend bit, the telephone bit–and I can still remember most of those turns, almost word for word.

  I can remember, too, dashing through my paper route, bolting my supper, and galloping down to the theatre to get in line for the rush seats in the gods. We had to stand outside in the freezing cold, and wait, and wait, and wait. But deep inside us was a warm feeling of anticipation, a bubbling laugh already forming, ready to burst out as soon as Red Newman appeared on the stage.

  Then the long climb up the outside stairway to the top balcony; the long wait in the cramped seats of the gallery, talking, whistling, dropping peanuts on the heads of the people below. Finally that great moment. The pit orchestra swung into a medley of war tunes. The house lights went down, and the velvet curtains parted, revealing the asbestos curtain with its advertising signs painted on it; then that too went up to reveal the stage.

  And there, at last, was what we’d been waiting one whole year to see. That stage, and those people, singing, clowning, dancing. The show was fast and clean. While an elaborate set was being put in place behind the curtain, Red Newman would be out front in his wild red wig and unbelievably sloppy uniform, his puttees dangling, singing Oh It’s a Lovely War, in his gravelly Cockney voice. “Up to yer knees in wortah, up to your waist in sluuuush!” and on and on–“Ain’t a shaiym to tike the pie, Who wouldn’t be a sojer, aih?” It was a great song by a great artist, and it took every soldier in the house right back to the days when he was up to his own waist in slush and misery.