The Little Shadows

by Marina Endicott

  ‘Have a bit of chocolate,’ Sybil was saying to Mama in the dressing room, and the prospect almost made Bella go back in. But she would have to share, and she disliked that very much, and her mouth still remembered the hotel stew. She stayed on the step. The magician’s patter that pittered down the stairwell sounded stilted. She could go watch from the wings. The other door at the bottom of the stairs, though, would be the tunnel under the seats to the lobby, like the one in the Prince Albert theatre. That would be better; she could pretend to be audience. She opened the wooden-slat door. Inside was a dirt-packed tunnel, a mine shaft. It was dark.

  She stepped in, meaning to leave the door open, but it had a spring attached, like a front-porch door. Nothing to brace it with, so she would have to feel her way along the dirt wall. She stood inside the closed door to test if she could bear the dark. No, she could not—she opened the door. But the thought came to her that if she was brave enough, they would get the gig. So then she had to.

  This cold-earth smell is what it will be like inside my grave, she thought. What it is like in Papa’s grave, and Harry’s. She saw Harry’s small cold face, and how greatly still he had been. The floor was uneven, spills of dirt and pieces of lumber lying along it. Her fingers moved slowly over the dirt wall, scraping sometimes on a rock, jamming up against a beam every six feet or so. To calm herself she thought the hall was perhaps sixty feet long, so that would mean ten of those beams. Or maybe it was a hundred feet, and she could not imagine what the arithmetic for that would be. She stopped. Pretty soon she would be dead too, and packed in earth. There was no sound down here, none. Her own breathing, and a swimming sound. Papa had said it was the Music of the Spheres: you could only hear it when you were quite alone, when all other noise was absent, when your mind was clear. She loved that sound.

  If She’s Your Niece

  A trill of music plinking—the magician upstairs, playing a ukulele, Clover thought. Quite good. She leaned against the wall, reading a posted sign with great concentration so no one would try to talk to her:

  Don’t say ‘slob’ or ‘son-of-a-gun’ or ‘hully gee’ on Mr. Cleveland’s stage unless you want to be cancelled peremptorily. Lack of talent will be less open to censure than would be an insult to a patron.

  If you are in doubt as to the character of your act, consult the manager, for if you are guilty of uttering anything sacrilegious or suggestive, you will be immediately closed and will never again be allowed in a theatre where Mr. Cleveland is in authority.

  ‘He stole that direct from Keith’s, of course,’ said a rich voice beside Clover. It belonged to the large man pushed deep into the armchair fitted into a hole in the wall; the bit of cloth draped around it was not enough to hide the dirt wall showing behind, hollowed out like a cave.

  ‘Has ideas above his station, Mr. Kennebec Cleveland does. Aping bloody Keith. Bloody one-horse, miles-from-nowhere …’

  The man’s voice was swelling but the pink woman was suddenly across the room and up on his lap, her tiny paw stopping the large man’s mouth. She whispered, ‘No more of that, my dear, no more. Lucky to be here, and now my old pal Flora Dora, only Flora Avery she is now, and her baby-girl act—and no need for despair.’ She turned her face up at a new noise from the stage. ‘We’ll get a thousand a week before we’re done, you see if we don’t!’ As if listening to a lullaby, the large man subsided, until a raucous flapping above made them all start. Clover could see, between lines of dust filtering down through the cracks in the stage boards, a white feather.

  The crooning, screeling noise of the birds was painful. ‘And there’s my flock!’ shrieked Maximilian the Bird Magician. His big finale.

  The door slammed open and Sybil jumped up, frightened. It was only a gawking boy to say, ‘Julius Foster Konigsburg, King of Protean Raconteurs?’

  The large man swept an arm forward, acknowledging the title. ‘Yours to command, dear boy,’ he said, and Clover could not help but laugh. Julius Foster Konigsburg liked that. He waggled his hand again.

  ‘Mr. Cleveland says you have to wait a while. Knockabout Ninepins up next, and then he wants the Avery girls before you …’

  Sybil told Mama, ‘He does it in one, so he’s much in demand, and of course would not be required to audition in the ordinary way. But Mr. Cleveland has asked to see his new material, thinking to put him number eight, next to closer on a nine-act bill—a headliner comedy smash for the big finish.’

  ‘Nine, in such a little one-horse burg! Really!’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll know anyone from the rest of the bill: a mind reader, but he’s a sleazy type, and his assistant is beginning to show, poor little thing. Cleveland will be dumping them, his wife is a terrible prude. And of course there are the Wonder Dogs—’ Sybil jerked a shoulder to the back wall, where a minor mutiny seemed to have broken out in the next room over. ‘Now he’s a character, quite a sweetheart but trouble with his temper, swears without meaning to. He keeps his cheeks stuffed with chaw and you can’t make out what he’s saying, so he gets by. I heard—but this is only gossip—that he cut off his own pecker in a rage one day. But the dogs are dear little things.’

  Clover could not help wondering what that would look like, a stump like that. She tried not to think. She looked instead at a playbill pasted to the wall: None are more Clever and Few Half so Good! Frederic LaDelle, the Man Who Mystifies! A very funny mystical effect that provokes laughter and surprise from the most blasé! She filled in the first e in Clever to make a circle, so it read None are more Clover.

  ‘Then there’s the Sidewalk Conversationalists, East & Verrall, you might remember—I can’t go on! I’ll go on!—and Madame Minou and Her Living Statuary, never been top-of-the-bill and they’ve seen better days. He’s lost the Hi-Jinx Jacksons, they got taken on by Keith’s and are shuffling off to Buffalo! Good luck to them—that’s why he’s got the Knockabout Ninepins coming on—and for now The Italian Boys are the headliners. Lock up your daughters! But don’t worry about them, good fun, but they’re all nancy-boys.’

  And what would that mean? Aurora caught Clover’s eye, simpered. Oh!

  ‘Then there’s the pictures, of course, and In An Artist’s Studio for the play. When it comes to little dogs, I miss the Lone Hand Four Aces,’ Sybil said with some nostalgia. ‘Not to mention Mr. Ace!’

  ‘Girls, if we’ll be next you’d better put your faces on.’ Mama opened her valise and held out the pouch containing their greasepaint sticks and brushes. ‘Still doing comic songs, Syb? Or is it a double act with Julius Foster?’

  ‘Foster Konigsburg now, he’s gone up in the world! A German routine. Things have been pretty dull in our line right now, most of the theatres closed up for the summer. Julius did not work last week, and does not work this week unless he can put it over Mr. Cleveland, but next week we’ll work again and I think I can work the biggest part of the summer.’

  Mama, giving a gurgling girly laugh: ‘I remember you so well, doing He’s a Cousin of Mine—that was the funniest thing, how many was it that one night, every available man in the company—’

  ‘Fourteen kisses! The head carpenter, he was a lovely fellow, mmm … Don’t listen, Jay! They didn’t shut us down, but they’re a bit more relaxed in Chicago. Then I did a follow-up, after you left us, He’s My Cousin (If She’s Your Niece)—did you ever see the sheets for that? It did quite well. I’ve got a mechanical-doll number now. Julius pulls my strings, it’s a take on ventriloquy … with plenty of Clown White on my face I don’t look an inch over fifty!’

  ‘You are too modest, dear Sybil—you look wonderful, and that’s the loveliest dress.’

  ‘Only thing is, dear, I shouldn’t say, but he’s got me doing a doll, and he’s got one baby-girl act already—the Simple Soubrettes. They do Polly Lollipop and what’s that cheeky one, Let Me Ride Your Pony, Daddy?’

  Mama blanched. She put her little hands to her cheeks. ‘Oh God! This is the end!’

  But Aurora laughed. ‘It’s all right,
Mama, we’ll just have to be better than them! Or do the sappy stuff instead—a bit of tone and a sentimental ending.’

  Clover put pink cheeks on, number 5 greasepaint smeared into the palm of her hand, mixed with a tiny dollop of cold cream to enliven her usual all-over pale fawn. ‘He does it in one’—that meant Julius Konigsburg didn’t need the whole stage for his act, so the next turn could be set up behind the curtain while he played down in front by the footlights. They could do it in one too, if they did the sweet songs. For snappy numbers the dancing took more room, but in the hands-clasped soulful airs Mama had grouped them together. A little lip-bow with the brush and the skinny crimson-lake stick, and Clover handed the mascara pad to Aurora, who spat into the small dish and mixed the block into a paste, and damped the brush with it.

  ‘Stand still!’ she said.

  ‘I was,’ Clover said patiently. Aurora was always as nervous as a cat before an audition.

  This was their ninth audition. Nine was lucky, wasn’t it? It had to go well. The hotel in Prince Albert, three theatres in Regina, four in Calgary, now down into the sticks to the Empress—and there was no more money to go farther afield.

  Clover stared into Aurora’s face, trying not to let her eyelids tremble. The brush dabbed, dabbed; her lashes felt cold and heavy.

  ‘You look lovely with your makeup on. Look how pretty,’ Aurora said. Their two faces glowed in the golden mirror, pretty as paint, as pictures, as porcelain dolls. ‘Where’s Bella?’

  Like a White Bird

  In the darkness Bella had passed not ten but twenty of those supports. The hall could not be so long—or had she missed the count? Bella’s teeth were chattering, she could not stop them. She laughed. It was truly like being blind. Perhaps her hearing would improve.

  Swish, swish. Not, this time, the Music of the Spheres, but a scrub brush, overhead. The old woman cleaning in the lobby. Bella put her hand out and felt for the wall, but there was nothing—oh! it was a stair she’d hit. She crept up until there was a wooden door in front of her, a little light bleeding through the slats.

  She had almost thought she would have to scream, which would make a commotion and the audition would be ruined and it would all be her fault. She found the handle and pressed the thumb, but it would not go down. She knocked, then knocked again, loudly. The door flew backwards, opening, and there was the broom-boy from the theatre. It was a very big broom.

  ‘Stuck?’ he asked. He had a sad, strange, flattened face, but it broke open in a moon-wide smile, and he took her arm and pulled her out of the dark stairway. ‘Did you go under all the way without a light? You are brave!’

  She nodded.

  A clattering of pail and bucket: the old woman had finished the lobby cleaning, and she gave the boy a cuff. ‘You’re up, young Nando,’ she said, eyes and mouth cold. She clumped through the double doors and down the long aisle created by the chairs, now back in their places. Bella and the boy followed.

  He stopped halfway and held her sleeve. ‘I’m not on yet, it’s my dad and mam first.’

  They stood still and watched what was happening onstage.

  Two box-set pieces had been lowered, walls of a room with a window and a door, and a bedstead. There was a loud alarum, clang-clang-clang, so Bella was afraid it was fire, but a man in a nightshirt leaped out of the bed, higher than a human could, and landed with his feet plump! in his slippers. He found a giant wind-up clock hopping beside the bed, and threw it out the window—it came winging straight back at him and beaned him on the back of the head with a tremendous clatter.

  ‘Got him good!’ said the boy, close in her ear so as not to distract Mr. Cleveland.

  The man stomped on the clock and hurt his foot. He leaped around the room one-footed, found and reached for his pants—but they whisked away on strings, to the right, to the left, as he lunged for them. The bed revolved as he was diving and caught him in mid-air, and he bounced once, straight up and then down, legs out, slippered feet pointed, and whoosh—straight into the pants now hovering over the bed—and whoops onto the floor all splay-legged and dazed.

  ‘Set the strings right that time!’ the boy said, laughing. ‘Cleveland’ll love that.’

  The man pulled on his yellow waistcoat and reached blearily for his flask, but unstoppered his hot water bottle instead and took a big glug. He spat it out in a fan of spray, aggrieved, and went staggering round the room for his flask. No sooner had he found it than a vast pink elephant floated into the room, and as he backed away in horror from the elephant, a white-robed lady appeared from nowhere and grabbed the flask, holding it out of reach.

  ‘Mrs. Cleveland ought to like that, Temperance herself!’ the boy said, elbowing Bella. ‘Whoops, I’m up, I’ll miss my cue—’ He flew down the length of the hall and vanished.

  Onstage, the drunken man wrestled and danced with the pink elephant until he had vanquished it and tossed it out the window.

  The beautiful lady held the flask aloft, shaking her finger at the man, but he hauled off and punched her—very hard, Bella thought—so that she seemed to float back, suspended in air, before dropping like a dead bird. Satisfied, he smacked the effort from his hands and walked right up over her flattened body to grab the flask from her limp fingers.

  Just as he grabbed it, the door opened and in came the skinny boy with his broom at the ready, as if to sweep the floors. When he saw the lady lying supine and frail, he pointed accusingly at the big man, who was busy draining the flask to the lees and would only roll his eyes and shrug.

  The boy shrugged too, and swept her up as if she weighed nothing, had no substance but imagination. She tumbled over and over, light as air, and when they got to the window somehow she was picked up with the broom, and the boy shook her out the window, nothing but a dust roll. She reached backwards once with a graceful hand, and then fell—it looked like she was falling thirty stories, like a wind-blown leaf, but Bella had seen backstage and knew she must only have fallen into a mattress.

  The father seemed to take offence at losing the woman, then. He grabbed the end of the boy’s broom in his huge hands and swung, and the boy rose in an aerial handstand as the broom rose, airborne at the end of it through the long arc, then came slamming down, the stage shaking with the impact. But he recovered and grabbed the broom back—then the father was diving up on the other end of the broom, as high, or higher, and letting go, vaulting and turning a somersault in air, grabbing, grabbing for a rope that was not there.

  And then it was! The rope snaked gently down from the flies, the man relaxed and happy on its end, buffing his nails on his yellow waistcoat, cool as you please.

  The boy had lost track of him. He bent to check out the window in case his quarry had flown out. The man crashed to the ground, grabbed the boy by the rump and upended him. He strode furiously around the room, sweeping the floor with the boy’s hands and head and hair, his anger so huge and real that Bella had to put her fists over her eyes. When she looked again they were bowing, and the lady bouncing back in through the window like a white bird, bowing for Mr. Cleveland, who was clapping all by himself. So he must have liked them.

  Bella heard the backstage man yell, ‘Avery Sisters! Up next in one!’

  She was still in her black skirt! She raced low and silent along the wall, through the invisible door, down the rickety stairs, unfastening her black serge skirt as she ran.

  Avery’s Ivories

  It was too late to put proper makeup on Bella but her sisters helped her out of her black skirt and into baby-girl dress, and brushed the worst of the cobwebs from her hair and boot-toes. Mama’s eyes had filled with tears of anxiety, so Aurora said Bella looked just aces and was the prettiest of them anyway, and Clover pounced at her with a carmined rabbit’s foot and gave her a hectic tubercular flush, and they flitted out the dressing-room door, Sybil hissing good wishes and kissing the air behind them. The interior darkness had glimmered up into mere dusk, enough to manage the gimcrack stairs up onto the stage, and f
or Mama to find the piano and begin the vamp.

  Aurora paused in the wings by the fire bucket and emptied her stomach into it, as neat as pouring tea. Clover found her hankie to wipe Aurora’s mouth gently, not disturbing the set of her lips, and they went on.

  Breathe. The footlights snapped on in their silver shells. The hall vanished in a pinkish glow, and the music tromped out its hokey bliss.

  ‘Soft as the voice of an angel,

  Breathing a lesson unheard …’

  Aurora shifted her face to find the shaft of the Klieg light, to let it fall on her truly beautiful skin, her glorious eyes. She let her eyelids close, then lifted them as slowly as a shy girl might, at prayer.

  ‘Hope with a gentle persuasion

  Whispers her comforting word.’

  Beside her Clover sang the alto clear and clean, no tricksy stuff about her. She held the notes as told to, she kept the others well in tune. Beautiful in service, her delicate hand flicked out to turn the page for Mama.

  ‘Whispering Hope, oh how welcome thy voi-oice

  Making my heart in its sorrow rejoice …’

  Mama pumped away at the piano pedals, playing with great expression, pleased as punch with her dear girlies. Bella could see her thinking as she played, her face an open score: This time! This time! They might think it was only her whim to insist on perfection, but now look. Bella sang flat, but not by much; she shook her head slightly to set the curls swaying. She was the prettiest and the youngest but she was the worst singer, and she had the biggest feet already. It was sad.

  ‘Then when the night is upon us,

  Why should the heart sink away?’

  Their voices blended, very pure, and the footlights glowed up at them, and the hall’s sound rang clear. Bella thought this time they might succeed.