India Dark

by Kirsty Murray

23

  STAGEDOOR JOHNNIES

  Poesy Swift

  We played the Victoria Theatre that night. Carriages picked us up from outside our hotel and drove us through the wide, open street along the foreshore. The Victoria was a beautiful wedding cake of a building with long white columns like a Grecian temple and a grand entrance – a real theatre. Backstage, in the dressing rooms, there were proper mirrors to use when we put on our make-up and racks for hanging our costumes. Miss Thrupp helped Daisy and Flora into their dresses while the rest of us helped each other. May Molloy started to cry but Ruby said she was much too big a girl to make a fuss and she should be able to fix her costume in place herself.

  As soon as Ruby left the dressing room, I went over to help May. Her outfit was the fiddliest arrangement of frills and bows and I couldn’t see why anyone would expect her to be able to fix it at the back.

  ‘It’s all right, May,’ I whispered. ‘You look lovely.’

  ‘I miss my mum,’ she said, sniffing and wrinkling her nose. ‘I wish we was home.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said. But as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true. Not a single part of me wanted to be back in Richmond. I would have liked to see Mumma and Yada and Chooky here in Singapore, sitting outside in the theatre waiting for the moment when I came on stage. It would be grand to see their upturned faces admiring me. But I shuddered at the thought of having to go home with them, back to the dank streets of Richmond, back into my mouse-brown dress and our drab grey life.

  ‘Ruby’s mean to me and it’s not fair,’ said May sulkily. ‘She’s got her sisters with her. Not like you and me. We’ve got no one.’

  ‘That’s not true. We all have each other. Friends can be like sisters,’ I said, pulling the big blue sash around her waist tight and patting it into place. ‘Now don’t you sook any more, May Molloy. We’ve got a show to do.’

  It was funny I was so confident on the outside, because inside I felt like blancmange. When the red velvet curtain parted and I saw a sea of faces in the theatre, I wanted to freeze. This wasn’t a rehearsal. This was a real audience in a beautiful, grand building and the expectation in their faces sent a tingle through every nerve in my body.

  The moment I found myself was when we sang ‘Tell Me Pretty Maiden’. I was one of six Florodora girls in white lace with ostrich feathers on their hats who danced out onto the stage to meet their six beaus. When Charlie went down on bended knee to me, I felt lighter than air. I sat on his knee, my arms around his neck, and I sang ‘If I loved you, would you tell me what to do to keep you true to me?’, and bubbles of happiness fizzed through me from the soles of my little white dancing shoes to the feathery tip of my bonnet.

  After the performance, as we stepped out through the stage door, a crowd of admirers stood waiting for us, exactly as Tilly had said they would: little children with their mothers clutching autograph books, young men with bouquets, old people with boxes of chocolates. Flora was given a huge bouquet, a five-pound box of candy and a doll almost as large as herself that opened and shut its eyes. I’d never felt such a wave of longing. I couldn’t take my eyes off that doll. It made Topsy and Turvy seem raggedy and ugly.

  Tempe Melbourne had her eyes on other things. One young man stood a little away from the crowd, his dark hair glossy in the half-light. Afterwards, I came to think of all those backstage boys as oily, but perhaps that was only because of what happened later.

  The young man was carrying a simply enormous bouquet of flowers. He made his way over to Tempe.

  ‘Excuse me, Miss,’ he said, offering her the bouquet, ‘I can’t tell you how wonderful you were tonight.’

  Tempe looked over her shoulder, her eyes narrowing as she checked to see if Mr Arthur was about.

  Lionel was behind me. He leant in close and whispered in my ear. ‘You watch out for those stagedoor Johnnies – they’re a bad lot for the most part. The ones that go for the big girls make big trouble.’

  ‘I’m not big,’ I said.

  ‘Not yet. But look it – look at Tempe. That’s trouble, if I don’t mistake it.’

  Tempe stood to one side and chatted sweetly with the dark-haired young man. She didn’t see Mr Arthur stepping out of the stage door carrying sleepy Daisy, nor Lionel hurrying over to speak to him.

  Mr Arthur set Daisy on her feet where she swayed, only half awake. ‘Hold her,’ he said to Lionel as he marched up to Tempe and the young man, grabbed hold of the flowers that Tempe was cradling in her arms and thrust them back at the stagedoor Johnny. ‘Flowers may be sent to the hotel.’

  He dragged Tempe to one of the waiting carriages. The young man looked flustered but Tempe’s eyes glittered with rage. When I climbed into the carriage beside her, Clarissa, Ruby and Tempe had their heads together, their voices full of jagged barbs.

  ‘I’m sick and tired of him,’ said Tempe. ‘I’ll be eighteen before the year is out and still he treats me like a child. That young man was lovely. And probably rich. Mr Arthur’s own sisters married men they met in the East. Even Mrs Essie!’

  ‘I could put up with him playing chaperone,’ said Clarissa, ‘if he’d let us sing what we want to sing. He’s never going to let us do anything. We’re stuck with these fusty old musicals while everyone else is singing vaudeville. He doesn’t give a fig for our futures.’

  Ruby stamped her feet and the carriage rattled. ‘Oh how I hate him! If I was a man, I’d horsewhip him for how he beat me. He’s simply vile.’

  I wished I had climbed into another carriage. I wished I was with Tilly, even if she was cross with me, or with Charlie or Lizzie. The air between the three girls sparked with rage.

  When I looked out into the night, I saw the oily-haired young man standing in the light outside the theatre, watching our carriage drive away. He had thrown his bouquet into the gutter and was smoking a cigarette, as if he had already forgotten about Tempe. I wanted to make the others look back, to see he didn’t care, to show them that Mr Arthur had been right, but I was afraid to speak.

  ‘He’s just like a butcher,’ said Ruby. ‘He wants to squash us and mince us up so we’re all the same, to turn us into sausages. A butcher.’

  Tempe and Clarissa nodded and the word seemed to echo around the inside of the carriage. Butcher, butcher, butcher.

  24

  BOY MAGIC

  Poesy Swift

  The train from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur snaked through long stretches of green jungle and then wet open fields edged with palm trees. I pressed my face against the glass and watched the tropical green flash past. I was glad to be leaving Singapore. Every time we’d gone to the Victoria Theatre, I’d been afraid of seeing the stagedoor Johnnies. They made me feel strange and not myself. The way they looked at me made me wish I was too little to draw their eye, and yet, to my shame, I wanted them to see me too. I wanted chocolates and flowers from them. But then I thought of what Mr Arthur would think of me and I burned with embarrassment. When we left the theatre at night I kept my head down and tried not to meet anyone’s gaze.

  On our first morning in Kuala Lumpur, Miss Thrupp and Lo harried everyone into a crocodile and we walked in pairs to the theatre next to the Town Hall for the morning rehearsal. Even though it was only a short distance, we were all bathed in sweat by the time we reached the theatre. Ruby grumbled all the way there. ‘We should be going by carriage. Why is he making us walk? Mrs Essie never made us walk.’

  It was cool and dark inside the theatre. I threw off my hat and shook my hair free. Daisy looked especially flushed and she whined in a baby voice when Flora tried to make her play chasey.

  Eddie Quedda sat at the piano and ran through the overture for Florodora. We all massed on stage to sing the opening chorus, and then the boys stepped forward to perform the clerks’ song.

  ‘Cripes, it’s so old-hat, this rubbish,’ grumbled Clarissa. But it was easy to ignore her. Everyone else liked Florodora, especially me. I sang in the chorus as Miss Lucy Ling, but I longed to be cast as Dolores or Angela, the two
principal girls. Ruby had been moved into the chorus again and Valentine’s younger sister, Iris, sang Dolores while baby Daisy lisped her way through the role of Angela. It seemed sad that some of the bigger girls, who had such beautifully strong voices, were now in the chorus. It put you off wanting to grow up, as if the big girls were being punished for becoming women because the audience wanted little girls.

  Tilly was the only bigger girl who looked cheerful, though she was still acting cool with me. Since the trouble with the stage–door Johnny, she’d been given Tempe’s role as Lady Holyrood. The only bad thing about this was she had to pretend to fancy Max, whom she couldn’t stand. It was hard to like the Kreutz twins. They were so rough and prickly and they kept their blonde hair cropped so close you could see their pink scalps.

  When Max puffed out his cheeks and played his role for all the laughs he could get instead of being romantic, Tilly slapped him on the neck. Max let out a howl and then grinned sheepishly at Tilly.

  ‘Go on, Tills,’ he said. ‘You don’t want me to be all soppy on you, do you? Or do you?’ And then he winked at her!

  If it had been me, I would have died of embarrassment. But Tilly laughed. It was almost as if she were flirting with him.

  As the morning wore on, Daisy became more and more peculiar. She kept stuttering her lines, and shiny sweat beaded on her forehead. Miss Thrupp wiped Daisy’s brow and then crossed the stage to talk to Mr Arthur. A moment later, Daisy’s role was given to Flora, and Daisy was bundled into a gharry with Miss Thrupp and taken back to the hotel.

  It was after midday by the time Mr Arthur let us stop rehearsing. This time there were carriages waiting for us because the heat was so intense. Lunch was ready in the dining room of the hotel but no one apart from the Kreutz twins had much appetite. Across the table from me, Flora pecked at her rice like a little bird and then laid her head on the white tablecloth and drifted off to sleep.

  Up in our rooms, we peeled off our layers of clothes and lay on our beds in our vests and knickers. The fans whirled overhead and made the white mosquito netting billow like clouds. I tried to write a letter to Mumma and Yada but the sweat from my hands smeared the ink and then made a stain on my white knickers.

  I looked up to see Lionel standing in the doorway, grinning.

  I felt my tummy do a little flip-flop of alarm.

  ‘Go away, Lionel,’ I shouted, pulling the bedsheet up to my chin.

  ‘I’m looking for Lizzie,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know where she is! Go away!’

  He stood staring at me. The grin fell away and there was something peculiar in his expression. Then he pulled the door shut. I leapt up and dressed myself and slipped out into the corridor. I felt all jumpy inside my skin.

  As I walked past the other rooms, I saw Miss Thrupp and Lo arguing beside Daisy’s bed while Daisy lay sprawled across the sheets, breathing shallowly. I saw Max and Freddie wrestling on the floor of their room in a mock punch-up. I saw Lionel, his head bowed, listening to Lizzie as they stood outside Mr Arthur’s room talking in low voices. And I saw Tempe, standing alone on the balcony of her room, dressed in nothing but her underwear. She was leaning on the rail and calling out to someone passing in the street. It seemed both shocking and yet ordinary. It was as if everyone was caught in a different play but I couldn’t understand the stories or guess how the dramas would unfold.

  It had started to rain. Not like Melbourne rain, which you could walk through as if it was fairy drops, but great sheets of thick water that tumbled earthwards from the flat grey clouds as if Heaven was in flood.

  I stood on the front verandah of the hotel and stared out at the deluge. When Charlie came and stood beside me, I realised I had been looking for him all along.

  He held a book with one finger wedged between the pages to mark his place.

  ‘I’ve a new trick,’ he said. ‘Would you like to see?’

  We sat together on a rattan seat as the Kuala Lumpur rain flooded the streets and he opened his book and smoothed the crinkled pages.

  ‘My uncle gave me this before we left Melbourne.’ He showed me the cover: two hands holding a deck of cards and The Boys’ Book of Conjuring embossed on the brown cloth. Then he laid the book in my lap with the page open and drew out a deck of cards from his pocket. They were battered and dog-eared and I don’t know how he managed to make them flow like a waterfall from one hand to the other. Then he held them up in a fan with the deck facing me and asked me to pick a card – any card. I pulled out the Knave of Hearts and pressed it against my chest so he couldn’t see which one I had chosen. He shuffled the cards one more time and then held the deck shut while he closed his eyes, concentrating hard.

  When he opened them and looked into mine, I felt my heart flutter like a trapped butterfly. His eyes were the loveliest shade of green, with little hazel flecks set deep in his irises. He held my gaze for a second or two and it was as if it was the first time we had seen each other.

  ‘Knave of Hearts,’ he said.

  25

  TYGER, TYGER

  Poesy Swift

  Yada always said, ‘Discretion is the better part of valour’, but there was no point trying to explain to Tilly about discretion. She seemed to think I should run and tell her every tiny detail of what happened to me, every ripple of gossip that fluttered through the troupe. She was livid when Valentine told her that Lionel had been to our room while she was asleep and stared at me in my underwear.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Poesy?’ she said. ‘Why do you have to be so prim and proper?’

  I said I didn’t want to talk about it and then I went and asked Lo to shift me to another room. I was hoping she’d let me share with Lizzie again but Lo said Pearl Kelly was happy to swap places with me. Pearl didn’t want to share the same room as her older sister, Ruby. Unwittingly, I jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. There were six of us in my new room. The big girls, Tempe, Clarissa and Ruby, had their beds on one side while I pushed mine onto the other side close to May and Iris.

  Every day after lunch we were sent to bed to sleep for two hours before the show. Miss Thrupp would come to each room and admonish anyone who wasn’t lying down. ‘Even if you can’t sleep, you must lie still and rest your body.’

  We opened the windows and turned the fans up so they spun as fast as they could, but our bodies still felt sticky against the bedding.

  Ruby always fell asleep within minutes of lying down, her petticoat hitched up and her long legs creamy against the white sheets. Everyone was drowsy that afternoon, except Tempe. She stood at the window, watching the laneway that ran behind the hotel.

  ‘He’s here,’ she hissed, her face flushed.

  ‘Should I wake Ruby?’ asked Clarissa, dressing quickly.

  ‘No, better with just us two,’ said Tempe.

  I sat up in my bed and pushed the mosquito netting aside. ‘Where are you going?’ I asked. That was my mistake. I should never have asked.

  Clarissa and Tempe looked at each other and then back at me.

  ‘It’s too hot to sleep. We’re going downstairs,’ said Clarissa.

  ‘But we have to stay in bed,’ I said.

  ‘We’re not babies,’ sighed Tempe. ‘We’re going motoring.

  We’re going into the jungle and it will be cool and lovely. Mr Tolego, that nice man who gave me flowers the other night, is taking us for a ride in his car.’

  ‘Not another stagedoor Johnny.’

  ‘He’s not a stagedoor Johnny. He’s a gentleman.’

  ‘But you’ll get into trouble. Mr Arthur says talking to gentlemen is “improper” if you don’t have a chaperone.’

  ‘Shut up, Poesy. We’ll only get into trouble if you tattle.’ She paused for a moment and put one finger to her chin, as if considering me more closely. ‘You can come along, if you like. Then it won’t be “improper” at all, because you’ll be our chaperone.’

  I didn’t really want to go with them but I couldn’t think what el
se to do. If Miss Thrupp asked me where they were, I’d have to tell the truth. As I pulled on my dress and pinafore and laced up my boots, I told myself I was saving them from disgrace. I hated lies. But sometimes I told lies to myself.

  As we tiptoed along the hall, Valentine poked her head around the door of her room. ‘Where are you lot off to?’

  ‘None of your beeswax,’ said Clarissa.

  ‘Can I come? I don’t mind where you’re going. Everyone’s asleep in here and I’m bored.’

  Tempe rolled her eyes. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound. Come along, then, you can keep Poesy company.’

  We were almost at the top of the stairs when little Flora called out. ‘Where are you going?’ No one answered. ‘Take me with you. There’s nothing to do when Daisy is sick.’

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ said Tempe. ‘Just what we need. We’d better take her along too. At least, if we get caught, we can say we’re giving all the littlies a treat.’

  She ran to the end of the hall and grabbed Flora by the arm.

  ‘Oh good,’ said Flora. ‘Are we going on an outing?’

  Valentine and I held Flora’s hands. She skipped along merrily between us as we followed the big girls through the foyer. Mr Tolego’s car was parked out the front, long and sleek and black as a panther. We climbed into the back, four girls squashed in a row and Flora sitting on my lap, with Mr Tolego in the front seat all by himself. He turned around and smiled at us and his teeth were very white and ferocious-looking in his swarthy face. He had a strange accent and I felt too shy to listen closely to him when he spoke to us. Tempe leaned forward to hear his conversation as the car made its way slowly through the crowded Kuala Lumpur streets. We drove past strange buildings with little golden hats and spires, down sleepy streets with tumbledown shops. Finally, when we were out of town and on a long stretch of road lined with palm trees, Tempe giggled and climbed over the seat to sit beside Mr Tolego.

  If I’d been a proper chaperone I would have put my arms around her waist and hauled her back from the precipice, but I was afraid she’d jeer at me for being prudish. I’d never been motoring before and the thrill of it all must have muddled my thinking.