The Little Shadows

by Marina Endicott

  ‘Gentry,’ she said, then drew in a breath. ‘I wonder—I’ve done my best with my dear girls, but they need polish, of course. I wonder if you would consider taking them on for a few weeks, for nothing—well, or for just the usual travelling expenses, alone—to gain experience, to be introduced to the profession.’

  She had caught his attention. Either his pockets were to let, or his native stinginess was stirring. How much this would cost her, coming and going, she thought she knew.

  ‘I’m sure we could go farther afield and find paid work, but it’s you, the association with someone of your calibre—oh! I know very well how much good you did me, all those years ago, and I wish that same good for my girls. Can you find it in your heart to blame me?’

  ‘The thing is, Flora,’ he said, not unkindly, ‘your dainty girls are too refined for this place—it would be cruel. They are not—’

  ‘They are. I promise you. They are better by far than I.’ Her urgency led her to put a hand on his arm. A small hand in a black cloth glove, it vanished on his black sleeve.

  ‘Gentry, for old times’ sake—I beg you.’

  After a moment, he bowed one last time. ‘Madam, that plea is impossible to refuse. Not today. But bring them here at nine tomorrow, and I will see what can be done.’

  She found it hard to look at him, after putting herself so low before him, but busied herself with her music case.

  He gestured towards it: ‘Have you a lobby photograph for the girls there?’ He saw from her face that they had none. ‘After your lunch go to Leroy’s Studio on 8th Avenue. They will not overcharge you.’

  As Flora went up the aisle, he called after her. ‘What happened to your schoolmaster?’

  ‘Oh—’ She shrugged and almost smiled. ‘Oh, he died.’ She nodded, and went through the bright doorway.

  A Very Quick Service

  ‘He has offered a tentative booking’ was how Mama put it to the girls. ‘Two weeks’ work with him in the mornings, and he’ll use us as the closer, and see how we get on. No need to tell you what a chance this is, and how we must take prime advantage.’

  She did not tell them how she had wangled it. Aurora wondered, but did not pry. The French job haunted her thoughts; but whatever it was, there could not have been time—unless it was a very quick service? Her mind went on down that path for an instant and then she shut it out. You do what you have to do, Mama had said about Sybil.

  Mama let the younger girls walk on ahead of her to the train station, where they had left their trunk and boxes, while she and Aurora went to secure rooms. ROOMS UPSTAIRS, she saw again, the sign she’d half noted in the Pioneer Restaurant window on their way to the Parthenon. And beneath it the smaller handwritten sign: WAITRESS WANTED.

  They climbed the steps and Mama rang the bell; Aurora tucked her hair more carefully under her hat, tied her scarf tight round her throat, and assumed a modest expression. It was soon enough worked out: they would take the back room on the second floor, two weeks, $10 per if they did for themselves, $12 if they had maid service. They would do for themselves, and no thank you, no meals—working at the Parthenon, they would be unable to do justice to the full board.

  They did justice to the luncheon Aurora ordered at the Grandon, the best they’d had in months. Rare-broiled porterhouse steak was the special, and it arrived dressed with boiled potatoes and corn alongside, which the waitress promised them was canned right at the hotel, none of your tinned stuff. Bella and Mama had two helpings of cake.

  They made a little stir going through the lobby, three bright-faced well-fed girls on the way to Leroy’s Studio—where a plump, avid young man seemed only too happy to take their photograph, divesting them of their coats with speedy competence and sitting them in a succession of poses against his painted backdrop, Aurora in the centre and the other two in various attitudes around her. He disposed Aurora’s coat tenderly over her shoulders when they were done and looked meaningfully at her, but she contrived to be very concerned about the tying of Bella’s shawl. Three poses, ten prints, to be sent to the theatre in the morning—$2 more out of the grouch-bag, but Aurora decided not to fret about that. They would soon enough be paid—Gentry had all but promised.

  Hey-Go-Mad

  The Pioneer was a board-hotel, intended for longer residencies, and the room was bigger than in the last hotel. An old chaise at the foot of the iron bedstead would make a couch for Mama so the girls could have the bed. Their trunk had been delivered and Clover and Aurora set about unpacking and making themselves at home, while Mama put up Bella’s hair in rags and chattered about Gentry Fox, the old times and his beautiful theatre, the Daystar in Philadelphia. Clover was very tired, not having slept well on the train, and once the gold coverlet was in place she climbed into bed to lie down, listening to Mama.

  ‘He gave me a place in front in the Hey-Go-Mad Girls, and of course I had my usual dance turn. He made me the Queen of the May in our company finale number with a solo dance. Oh, my costume! Palest blue chiffon over silk to match, with inch-wide moiré ribbon edging the skirt; over that a three-quarter coat of cream lace. I was the favourite of the moment, and might have gone far, except we toured up to Toronto to play the Elgin. Your papa came to the theatre one night with his brother, one last hurrah before they headed off to the wilderness and left civilization behind, perhaps forever … And that was it for me. Poor Gentry begged me not to go, tears in his eyes, real tears—but I was head-over-ears, over-the-moon struck, and besides, I was already—oop!’ She broke off and caught up the stack of bowls before Bella could sit on them, tired enough from travel and confusion to flop onto any flat surface and fall straight off to sleep.

  ‘So I had to let Gentry down—how he terrified me. He worked with Nellie Melba, you know! What can have laid him so low as to be beached in this no-horse backpot of a tired old town? I suppose he is somehow tied to that unsavoury Drawbank. Perhaps he owes him money, or perhaps Drawbank owes him and Gentry doesn’t want to let him out of his sight.’

  Clover was accustomed to Mama’s theories—a labyrinth to fall asleep in, wandering down alleys of possibility … Clover was over the stile and asleep, not worried, for a blessed change.

  But the wind rattled round the hotel all night long, shaking the windowpanes. One buffet woke Clover, or perhaps it was a boarder slamming the door tight, coming back from the privy. Coming out of her dream she thought of Papa again, lying on the front walk, covered with snow. And then, shying away from that, of Harry, whose face was always there. Like an infected finger, which some part of your mind was always protecting. And now a new finger to hurt—that they had failed, and failed again, and yet they still had to go on.

  An Idiot of the Voice

  First thing next morning, standing in a straight line as he had arranged them on the empty stage, the Belle Auroras gave Gentry Fox their best repertoire, ending with The Last Rose of Summer.

  As they sang, Gentry did not move from his chair or raise his head. Eyes closed, he leaned one elbow on the wooden armrest. His left leg was crossed tightly over his right; the ankle twined round and round very slowly. Up into the boughs their voices soared for the last of the lastness of the rose, to ‘… inhabit this bleak world alone.’

  Then came the silence Aurora dreaded: someone who had power over their livelihood considering how best to let them down easy and get rid of them. Mama must have felt it too, even if a moment before she had been revelling in their performance. She rushed into explanation, dragging Gentry’s attention to her. ‘We have been most diligent working on their upper registers, they are all soprano of course, but perhaps Aurora has the most colour in the head voice, in the fourth and fifth registers …’

  Aurora hated to hear that self-important tone in her mother’s voice, although it sprang from nerves, she knew. Gentry closed his eyes briefly and swung his great head on its neck as if it pained him terribly. ‘Flora, Flora! You were a skilful and enchanting dancer and I see that these children have been delightfully traine
d à la foot—but you are an idiot of the Voice. Registers! We do not encourage registers, we work for one voice without delineation. Because of the resonators employed, we will hear chest, middle, and head voice, I grant you. But when by bad habit or bad practice these demarcations are exaggerated, the uneven voice rises like a funicular railroad—clunk-clunk-clunk—rather than shading and melting, one register leading into another, imperceptibly—you see how it must be?’

  It seemed to Aurora that this complaint was a mere difference in vocabulary; certainly Mama had never allowed them to clunk.

  Gentry’s black eyes were snapping, his ire barely contained. ‘Beyond the shrieking quality in the top notes when you push for volume, dear girls, confounding voice with register creates a hopeless confusion, from which only the best of teachers may succeed in extricating the singer—and I am no Tosi, no Lehmann.’

  ‘But, my dear Gentry, you are! You have the direct line, you studied with Lehmann.’ Mama half rose from the piano bench, impassioned. ‘You have a duty, a sacred trust, to pass the knowledge on.’

  ‘I am an old man now,’ he said pitifully, and indeed Aurora thought he was, very.

  She shook her head to dislodge insult and impatience, both his and her own. ‘Mr. Fox, we will work very hard, I promise. My sisters and I are aware that we are beginners, and we truly desire to mend our faults and to learn from you.’

  He was not proof against this pandering to his vanity; and she carried her absurd young head with ridiculous dignity, and seemed intelligent. And if too much in the head, her voice was well enough, when she did not push. It was a puzzle, what to do with them all. The little one would do very well, no need for him to put himself about on her account. The middle one with serious dark brows—the watcher—had not grown into herself yet but had gravitas; her voice was low and well-pitched, once released from the soprano range foolish Flora had forced her into.

  Aurora watched him calculate their potential.

  ‘We can improve at a pace that will surprise you,’ she said, somehow not plagued by self-consciousness. Almost as much as they needed the work, she wished to learn from him: because of his authority, his air of having been in all the best houses, of not belonging in this shabby place.

  Gentry turned to Mama, his face wrinkling in disgust. ‘Sopranos? No of course about it.’ Clover laughed, then, and Aurora thought the rare sound seemed to please Gentry.

  ‘I sing alto,’ Clover said.

  ‘Well, so you do, my dearest, from time to time, but someone must,’ Mama said, but Aurora could see Gentry puffing himself up like a pigeon. Mama turned back to the piano and waited for instructions.

  The Grand Scale

  So Gentry put them through a test. He spent an hour teaching them a plain scale without accompaniment, which he called The Grand, and for another hour made them sing it alone and together, over and over, till each note rang to the back of the hall and resounded in their inner ears. He ignored their music and their songs; he tapped them on the stomach where he wanted them to breathe, which each sister separately found objectionable and which they whispered about together while he struggled up the raked aisle on his half-sized legs to the very back of the auditorium.

  ‘Do not push,’ he said—and although he was almost out the lobby door, they heard him perfectly. ‘Give me the first line of Early One Morning.’

  They had not sung that for him—how could he know they knew it? He knew Mama. She turned on the piano bench and gave them an F and they sang, ‘Early one morning, just as the sun was rising …’

  ‘Do not push,’ he said again, his voice tender and young, coming from that wizened wizard’s face. ‘Just sing to me.’

  ‘I heard a maid singing in the va-alley below,’ they sang. The notes streamed out of their open mouths and through the empty twilit air and slipped into his ear, and he nodded (even at that distance they could see his head bob on his squat body) and said, ‘Enough, for this morning. Your photos have arrived and look very pretty in the lobby, I am relieved to say; you may perform tonight, and this rehearsal will preclude the requirement of a band call. Take them away and sponge them, Flora, and after today’s pictographs they may close with that song—and Buffalo Gals, with a bit of dancing. Not After the Ball, I beg you.’

  ‘We’ve no sides for Early One Morning,’ Flora said, hesitating to mention it.

  ‘Caspar will manage—won’t you?’ At the bandleader’s nod, Gentry waved them all away. ‘Now sponge!’

  Sponging they knew; Mama always made them do it when they were hoarse or had a cold in the throat: she poured boiling hot water into a bowl, let a sponge suck it all up, and (with a towel to protect her hand) squeezed it firmly out again. Then they sang scales in half-voice, breathing through the sponge for ten minutes, so the hot steam would act upon the bronchial tubes and the mucous membranes. The sponge had to be squeezed quite dry or it would make you choke. Having only one sponge, they took turns; while one was wheezing and singing, the others teased and distracted her until Mama made them stop. She would not let them go out into the cold air after the sponging, so they spent an endless hour lying flat on their backs on the bed going over the Early One Morning lyrics—until it was time to spring up and dress quickly (in their white wool challis, because the theatre was so cold that Gentry had forbidden them to wear the flowered waists) and trot cross-lots to the theatre.

  Miss Belle-A-Clovers

  No need to be on time for the opener since they were the closer, but they heard the tail end as they slid quietly in the stage door. Clover caught her breath, already winded from racing to the theatre, when she heard Julius Foster Konigsburg’s rolling voice.

  She dodged up to the wings and, craning around the last curtain-leg, saw his massive silhouette against the footlights, one arm flung dramatically out as he intoned, ‘Do you love me so much you would die for me? Ahhh—but remember! Mine is an undying love.’

  Clover hid her mouth in her sleeve, so as not to make noise. She loved that bit. Julius was well in flight and the audience was laughing—how glad Clover was that he and Sybil had landed here where they were! And now they were balanced again, since the Belle Auroras had been cancelled too. He would be able to like them again. She kept her sleeve wrapped around her neck, hugging herself to get warm in this cold coffin of a place.

  ‘The soubrette has a lantern jaw and so has to sing light music, tra-la-la-la,’ Julius sang, mangling a bit of operetta with the most ridiculous exaggerated face, chin dropping to his middle waistcoat button, eyes rolling back in his head. ‘She sings with impressive strength, strangling up to that last petrified high-C. Rising to the last screech of her upper register, her mouth looks like one long red Tunnel to Perdition.’

  Couldn’t have said perdition at the Empress, Clover thought.

  ‘A flat flounder of a running mate with straggling pink moustachios accompanies this heavyweight Harpy in her flight …’

  An in-drawn gasp beside her made Clover jump, and she saw that two people in costume had come to stand in the wings. They must be the next turn. One was a towering prow of a woman in a tight sateen gown, the other a fish-mouthed young man in ill-fitting tails, with a reddish moustache—the longest and limpest she had ever seen.

  On the stage Julius continued: ‘Her fervour is enough to shake the rafters—the poor young limpet thanks his stars it’s not the ballet, so he doesn’t have to hoist his Inamorata to the heavens, which would mean serious damage to his Inner Works and probably a perpetual Truss.’

  The woman gasped again and grabbed at the stage manager—who Clover now saw was Johnny Drawbank, dressed for the work in a grey collarless shirt and no hat.

  ‘Stop him!’ the woman demanded.

  Drawbank goggled, and the tenor goggled too. They were twin frogs and Clover had to clap her arm over her mouth again. This must be how Bella feels all the time, she thought, this crazy laugh wanting to come out. On the stage Julius had worked himself up into a frenzy, shielding his eyes as from a burning glare
: ‘But soft! What light is this from yonder balcony? It is a vast explosion—an explosion of song!’

  ‘Stop him,’ the woman hissed, and Clover saw the uniformed boy ready with the signboard:

  AN EXCURSION OF SONG

  SUNDERLAND & PETTIBONE

  ‘Please, Miss Sunderland—’ Johnny Drawbank began, but at her glare, his drooping eyes blinked and he bent to whisper through the speaking tube to the orchestra pit. ‘Change music! Change!’ and then as the piano cut in, covering Julius, Johnny murmured to the lights, ‘Follow down, and let him off, and …’

  Clover watched Julius draw out the applause and bow and bow, acknowledging quite imaginary bravos and kissing his hand to the non-existent balcony. He raised himself to his great height and strode off into the wings, where the tenor and the woman waited.

  ‘I think that went rather well, would you not say so, dear Drawbank?’ he inquired pleasantly.

  The boy had run on to change the placards and a sudden wave of laughter broke, as the audience read the new one. The opera dame empurpled, and seemed to double in size. Clover wondered if she would burst. ‘I will not go on. After such an insult? How dare you fit me into your paltry act,’ she demanded of Julius.

  ‘Happy accident, ma’am, I’m forced to say—you fitted hand-in-glove-like into a patter I had long been in habit of using. But I can see, looking at the dangling whiskers of your little friend here, how you might forgivably have wondered if I was referencing your Execution of Song—forgive me, Excrement of—but no. In-credible. No one who’d heard you sing, madam, could possibly believe that my poor comedy could in any way hope to approach its sheer horror—’

  The soprano reached out one big paw and slapped Julius Foster Konigsburg’s face. The sound must certainly have carried into the audience, but the music started up, operatic, and the lights rose again. Miss Sunderland sailed onstage, her arms held out to receive the slavish clapping of Pettibone the tenor. Her long green sateen train swam behind her like the tail of a giant fish. A scattering of applause from the audience, and quite a lot of laughter.