One arm draped along Mayhew’s chair-back, the other occupied in draining a large brandy and soda, Julius had merely to raise an eyebrow to encourage the flow.
‘But that does not mean,’ Mayhew said, ‘any diminument in our loyalty to the faithful medium-time acts which have stood by the company in times past.’
Verrall choked, then quickly asked whether there might be holes in the big-time, at this rate. Mayhew thought there might be, for a suitcase outfit that could travel without sets or stagehands. ‘It will be contagious on you to take every advantage of the situation,’ he said.
Flora did not mind the occasional miswording; she basked in Mayhew’s golden spotlight. He’d been a jumped-up boy in the old days and was much the same now, with a patina of prosperity overlaying his familiar charm.
At the end of the evening, while the party was fetching wraps from the cloakroom, Mayhew managed to lead Flora apart from the others into the lee of the shining oak staircase.
‘Thought you’d like to see this,’ Mayhew said, showing Flora a yellow telegraph form he’d pulled out of his inner pocket. The manager’s report from their last week in Billings:
BELLE A’S: AS SQUARE AND HIGH-TONED A LITTLE TEAM AS EVER CAME ROUND THE CIRCUIT. IT’LL BE A PLEASURE TO READ THEIR NAMES ON THE BOOKING LIST AGAIN. ON THE JOB TO THE MINUTE, STRAIGHT HOME AFTER THEIR ACT, EACH ONE A LADY AND NOT ONE A QUEEN.
‘You can be proud of those girls, Flora,’ he said.
Flora did not speak, but nodded. Each one a lady. That was what mattered, that’s what she’d been able to give them. She and Arthur between them, give him his due.
Mayhew looked at her earnestly. ‘What a job you’ve done! No time just now, but—’
She looked up, dashing wetness from below her eye.
‘Could you grant me a few moments alone, my dear Flora? Perhaps tomorrow, right after the first show goes up? I’ll take you to tea,’ he said. ‘It’s a delicate matter.’ He seemed to hover between smiling and embarrassment.
Flora stared at him for a moment. Then he reached out and squeezed her hand, and she saw that his eyes were—beseeching was the word that sprang to her mind. She returned his smile, and the pressure of his hand. ‘I’d be very happy to have tea,’ she said, gently taking over. ‘I’ll be in the lobby as soon as the overture begins.’
She would wear her new dove-coloured walking suit. And the pheasant-wing hat, and her locket, which she’d been able to redeem. It was time to re-enter the world, her period of mourning done.
But that night Flora woke in a panic from a dream: kneading bread in the summer kitchen at Paddockwood, watching Arthur walk over the field from the schoolhouse—her hair unpinned, arms floured to the elbows, the apron loose around her middle, which was big with Harry. Arthur walked in, lifting her easily up onto the dry-sink edge to kiss her without ceasing, bundled belly and flour and all. He did not speak, did not need to, only enveloped her, loving her for her true self, as she did him. The girls were singing in the parlour and she was beloved and the bread would rise and Harry would be born—
Not Harry. She struggled awake and put that aside. Travelled backwards in the dream and found Arthur again walking across the field and the shape he made against the pale sky and the full-carved shape of his mouth after love, and how she had loved him.
Mayhew was nothing to her. A dynamo of a manager, pleasant company.
But she ought to accept his proposal, whatever it might be, for the sake of the girls. She ran her hands down the bodice of her nightgown to her child-bagged belly. How could she bear to? When she was so old. But people did. You often heard of late marriages. Or late arrangements of convenience.
Flora pushed the covers aside and fit her feet into her house-shoes. She let herself out, leaving the door on the latch, and made her way to the privy through the darkness of the yard.
Wafting Like a Ghost
When Clover heard Mama come inside again, she pushed past the panel of the hall curtain and went towards her.
‘Oh, Clover!’ Mama whispered. ‘You took ten years off me, wafting like a ghost!’
‘I heard you get up,’ Clover said. ‘I heard you weeping.’
‘No, no, no need. I just had a dream.’
Clover was shivering. Mama wrapped her arms around her and the shawl about them both. ‘I’m to have tea with Mr. Mayhew tomorrow, during the first show, and I will try to let him down as easy as I can. Your father’s memory is sacred to me.’
Clover looked down at the floor, at the parting line between the drugget carpet runner and the whitewashed floorboards. Snow on the front yard. Her father sprawled, snow on his black back and legs, red underneath him. Only a body, though, nothing left of himself. She trembled a little and her mother tightened the arm around her.
‘I am sorry,’ Mama said. ‘Never mind it. Forget what I said. He loved us so.’
Clover wished she could erase the parts of her memory that did not tally with Mama’s sweet remembrance. ‘I thought it was Aurora that Mr. Mayhew wanted,’ she said, pretending to be puzzled—the only way she could think to save her mother from humiliation.
‘Aurora! She is thirty years younger than he!’
Clover went down the hall, feeling indeed like a ghost, one who could not make people listen.
Permission
Flora stayed in the dressing room after the girls had gone up, giving her skin a lustrous glow with just a very little ivory 5. The least suspicion of mascara under the shading black velvet brim. She looked very well, she thought. A dash of powder. There. He understands this world, that is the great thing, she thought. She would not have to justify the frippery nature of theatre, or patiently soothe fears of licentiousness, as she’d had to do even after fourteen years with Arthur. Outrageous, since he had been so wild himself: but it was no wonder, once Chum had put the bee into his bonnet … Fitz understood you had to set preference aside from time to time, to secure a place. It was a business.
She pinched her cheeks but did not add rouge. Arthur had not liked too high a colour.
The car was waiting, but Mayhew said, ‘Will you walk? It’s a lovely evening.’
The five o’clock sun was still striking the bright windows of the city. He took her arm as they walked up the length of State Street to the Grandon, which surprised Flora a little, knowing that the Placer was his favourite. The route took them past Gentry’s building and she could not help a pang—how pleasant it would have been to form a partnership with him, odd as he was. She’d always had a soft place for Gentry.
At the Grandon, Mayhew settled her into an easy chair in the tea-lounge. A small bustle of waiters, then a lovely pot of tea steaming, and a tray of nice things to eat. It would be like this, to be married to Mayhew. All the superficial things would be delightful.
She excused herself, and went to the ladies’ powder room, where she carefully washed off the 5 and dabbed her face back into plainness. Because Arthur—
All the superficial things—but beneath that, the immovable rock of memory. The silence in the night when Arthur was outside and she’d known he was out there and unable to bear his life. He’d been infinitely more to her than any other could be, and it was her fault that he died. It was her fault that Harry died.
She leaned on the marble counter, then pushed herself away and stood straight. In the mirror she saw a very tired older woman, with a stricken face and a long past behind her. A bundle of lies she’d told her beloved husband and a package of make-believe she’d sold her daughters, and with all that, she could not bring herself to take on Fitz Mayhew.
‘I’m sorry, your tea must be growing cold,’ she said, gliding back to the table.
‘Neither the tea nor my heart!’ His humour a little ponderous as always.
‘Oh!’ Then she was at a loss. She poured a cup of tea.
‘I don’t know how to begin,’ he confessed, looking up with a frank expression of hopeless vulnerability. ‘It’s caught me late. I’m not used to this!’
She truly did feel sorry for him.
‘You’ve probably seen how it is for me,’ he said. ‘I’m head over ears, but I wasn’t sure how you—’
She began to stop him, but he broke in.
‘Oh, Flora, just tell me, can I have your dear girl? I would keep her very well.’
She looked up then, suddenly, into his eyes. Pale blue and staring, straw-coloured lashes standing stiff out from them, faint blueness under the skin around the eyes. So old! For a brief instant she stared. Then she lowered her eyelids, and then her face, and bit the inside of her cheek till it bled.
He leaned forward. ‘I see you are not prepared for this.’
She shook her head, rapid, almost furtive. Eyes still downcast to her hands, twined in her lap.
‘Maybe you don’t like to think of your daughter—’
Up came her eyes again, and he stopped.
They sat without speaking for a moment.
‘Flora, I think you have got the wrong end of the stick.’ He shifted a little in his cretonne chair, yanked it slightly off its line, put his stiff hands on the armrests. ‘I’m not—I’m not suggesting anything you wouldn’t like, you know. I want to marry the girl.’
She was unable to make herself speak.
Fitz leaned back again and gave a gusty sigh. A waiter zoomed to his side. ‘A whiskey,’ Fitz ordered. ‘And the bottle.’
The locket around Flora’s throat was choking her but she did not think she could make her fingers undo the catch. Such deep shame had bloomed in her belly and groin that she was afraid she might hemorrhage. A wave of heat poured upward from there, up her chest and throat. She must be a hideous colour but could not for the life of her manage to breathe, to get rid of the shame of it, of thinking it was she—
Fitz poured himself a whiskey and she reached for the bottle and poured a slug into her tea. He laughed. He knocked back his, and she took a good sip of hers.
‘You’ve surprised me,’ she said. ‘You are right. I—a mother …’—try again!—‘She was my little girl, you know, for a very long time.’ Clover! Clover had known, last night. She took another drink of tea, wishing she’d poured a more generous dot from the bottle.
‘Oh, Flora, I know.’ She knew he was going to say it, and then he did. ‘But you will not be losing your daughter,’ he said. Some lightning must have alerted him in her eyes. ‘Or gaining a son! Hardly that! We are contemporaries and must always be!’ His arm flew out and the waiter was there in a trice, and back again in another with a second glass.
Mayhew poured a couple of fingers and handed the glass to her. ‘You can’t drink that in tea.’
Then she could laugh and drink her shot. They laughed together and he poured another for each of them, and the worst of the shame receded, heat borne backwards on that wave of reliable warmth. There was some consolation in being pole-axed by someone who could afford a very good whiskey.
The Old Soldier
Mama had been drinking. She flitted around the dressing room, hanging clothes and tidying, an agitated moth brushing against things, her cloud of soft brown hair passing too close to the gas-jet every time she went by, so that Clover’s attention had to dart after her.
Mama halted by the table where Aurora was doing her face. ‘Has he—made up to you already?’
She stared into Aurora’s face in the mirror, her own beside it. Clover saw how alike they were in certain ways, in expression rather than shape of face or colouring. Aurora had their father’s fairness. Then Mama was off again, moving, picking up Bella’s boots and brushing mud from their tips with a fold of her new dove-coloured walking skirt, so that Clover went to her and took them, and smoothed the skirt down. Mama flicked at it and turned away, jagged motions, saying, ‘Stop, Clover. Don’t fuss at me.’ She sat in the armchair.
‘No, he hasn’t,’ Aurora said.
‘Hasn’t what?’
‘Hasn’t done a thing. Hasn’t fondled me or made sheep’s eyes at me or anything. He probably felt a little awkward, being your old pal.’
Bella came bursting in from the hotel sketch. ‘Julius’s toupée came off, but the bald wig underneath came with it!’ she told Mama. ‘They’re fixing it on with spirit glue—What’s going on?’ She could see that Mama was not attending.
Clover took pity on her. ‘Mr. Mayhew spoke to Mama this afternoon, to see whether he might—he wants to—’
‘Oh!’ Aurora cried. ‘Out with it! He wants to marry me, that’s all.’
Bella stood still, staring.
Aurora stared back, as if reading Bella’s thoughts. ‘He likes my looks, I suppose.’
Mama shook her head, and was going to speak, but she looked suddenly up at the ceiling and then bolted out of the room. Clover looked after her.
‘I’d leave her, if I was you,’ Aurora said. ‘It’ll take her a day or two to talk herself round.’
Clover nodded.
‘Mayhew?’ Bella asked. ‘Will you be rich?’
Aurora laughed. ‘It’s not so strange. Look at Evelyn Nesbit. Sanford White was thirty years older than she. It happens all the time.’ She set her brushes at the edge of her towel perfectly even, and then, telling Clover and Bella to hurry, went out and up the stairs.
Maybe not the happiest analogy, Clover thought, seeing that Sanford White ended up murdered.
‘He asked permission before he even spoke to her!’ Bella said, hurrying into her white skirt for their number. ‘He is a strange customer.’
Clover shook her head and put a finger to her lips, in case anyone could hear.
Bella said quickly, ‘I mean, it was extremely polite of him.’ And then, more quietly, ‘He is the oldest person we know, now Gentry is gone. But I’d rather marry Gentry, wouldn’t you?’
Clover turned away from the dressing mirror. ‘Maybe it is like the Old Soldier in The Twelve Dancing Princesses—how at the beginning he is so decrepit and exhausted by the wars, but he is brave and resourceful and kind, and then he marries the oldest daughter.’
And Bella seemed happy enough with that explanation.
A Practical Provposal
Aurora was not surprised, of course, but did not know how to proceed. Especially since she was not sure how Mama felt about Mayhew, and the whole idea. A card came down at intermission to say that after the second show the Pierce-Arrow would be waiting for her, to take her out for a late supper.
Mayhew had caused a bower to be built in the ballroom at the Placer Hotel: white gauze cascading down from a ring in the ceiling to make a silken tent within the golden room. The white carpet laid as a path across the polished floor to the tent was lined with lilies, looking to Aurora’s eyes rather funerary, but unquestionably opulent. A roving violinist played Kreisler, never wandering too near. Waiters appeared, vanished; plates materialized upon the table and her glass was refilled—bubbles rose in straight, slow-moving, perfect lines from the stem to the lip.
Aurora thought about bread and milk for supper, about holes in shoes and kerosene cans around bed-legs.
‘You’ll have been told,’ he said, and she thought perhaps he blushed in the candlelight. ‘What I proposed to your—to Flora.’
She nodded, smiling at him; unable not to smile.
‘How would we deal together? Hey? Do you think?’
She set her glass down; it was again replenished. Mayhew’s flick dismissed the waiter. Was this the entire proposal? She’d imagined something more flowery.
‘You and the girls, and your mama, need protection. A weary business, booking and managing: I offer my poor efforts at your service. A practical arrangement.’
Aurora had already determined to accept him. He would not keep them on the bill otherwise; there was a vein, a lode, of untrustworthiness in him, and she did not think his support would outlast a refusal for long. She had that lode of selfishness herself and did not shy away from seeing it in him. This was their ticket. They’d seen over the past week what life in his train would be: good hotels, good service, no m
ore worrying over pennies and pawnshops, no more hungry nights for Clover and Bella. Already Bella’s eyes were bright again; even Clover looked less tired after a few days with lots to eat.
Mayhew sat watching her, one leg crossed over the other in a lazy, confident attitude; but the look on his face was not lazy. Not confident either. It was very gratifying to be so admired. He leaned forward and reached for her hand across the table, and when he had captured it, sat staring at her smooth-skinned fingers where they wound in and out of his.
‘I’ll tell you true, you have enflamed me. My soul is not my own.’
He did not seem entirely comfortable uttering these high-flown statements, but there was no doubt that he was sincerely struck by her.
She rose from the table, and stretched her hands up to touch the white silk roof with her fingertips, letting her back arch. Her hair felt heavy on the back of her head. Clover had coiffed it in the Gibson manner, with an extra rat to give it superabundance; Mama had finished stitching her ivory satin bodice during the second show, sewing up the back seam right on her: décolletage more daring than she’d had before, and she was wearing the gold locket they’d reclaimed from pawn. The plum velvet cummerbund matched a tiny bunch of velvet pansies on the bodice, pinned so that their weight pulled the satin down a little, a sweet revealing swoop.
He was waiting for her to speak.
‘I think we will deal very well together, Fitz,’ she said. ‘I think we will be the best team in vaudeville!’
When he stood and took her in his arms to kiss her forehead, all that was appropriate with the waiters and violinist still present, she felt him, his—prodding between her legs, as if it knew its place. He did not grind at her, as Maurice Kavanagh had done, but pulled back a little, releasing her.
The Little Shadows Page 21
