was gone by Monday, not melted so much as evaporated in the dry prairie sun. By Tuesday it was spring again, almost summer, and the few trees loosed their tight-furled leaves like a girl might shake out her hair. The air was soft and smelled delicious. When they were not rehearsing, Bella and Clover walked out along the new-laid sidewalks as far as they stretched, not talking much. The subject closest to their hearts, Aurora and Mayhew, seemed disloyal to discuss—although Bella did tell Clover the reason that East and Verrall had not been at the wedding: because they had never received an invitation.
‘Like they were bad fairies at the christening,’ Bella said, indignant. ‘And just what you might expect from—’
Clover hushed her, saying, ‘It is a pity they were forgotten, but he had a great deal on his mind.’ (Although privately she thought Mayhew had calculated the usefulness of the two comics, and given their seats to pressmen instead.)
On Thursday they opened. The Starland was lit up with brand-new electric lights around the sign, every surface festooned with garlands and flowers, and although its facade was plain, Mayhew had ordered a huge banner to be hung with the playbill painted on it, and there they were, in beautiful ornate letters, the headliners:
LES TRÉS BELLES AURORES DE NOUVELLE FRANCE
Bella was so excited to see it up there, Clover could hardly drag her inside.
Mayhew had papered the house to the rafters—every pressman who had not turned up for the wedding was artfully blackmailed into attending the opening in recompense.
The lineup stretched around the block when the girls arrived at six. By the time the curtain went up there wasn’t an empty seat in the house, and a considerable crowd stood bunched at each arched entrance.
The openers, the Banjophiends, were playing their first gig in Calgary, although well known in the east. A self-contained little group who spoke only to each other, they stood glumly in the wings, one man tuning his instrument obsessively with soft plinks, until the stage manager gave the word, and off they trotted in a sudden froth of mirth.
Clover had crept up to watch, tucked into a corner by the hemp-bed. She laughed to see their sober frowns turn upside down as they hit the light and instantly cavorted. They played well, but it was the harum-scarum nature of the banjos that did the trick, and their wit. The leader and the littlest Banjophiend carried on a back-chat throughout their turn, about courage, which they called pluck, and how the little one could get up enough of it to finally propose to Miss Minnie Abernathy, the love of his life. At the end the little fellow did a soulful solo of Silvery Moon, and cried out in anguished ecstasy, ‘Good night, Miss Minnie Abernathy, I looove you!’
The audience, which had been slow to settle, was good-natured. They cat-called and whooped for Miss Abernathy and gave the Banjophiends plenty of applause.
Paul Conchas, the Military Hercules, had been readying behind the curtain all that time. It rose to display him in an Olympian marble arena (his own special Diamond Dye drop), attired in nothing but a large paper fig leaf, tied round his hips with an inadequate-seeming piece of string. His pale skin shone like the marble pillars of the backdrop. Clover stared in awe at the classical indentations of his musculature, particularly the fascinating downward-tending ridge of muscle which separated the torso from the thighs. She felt her own being concentrated in that corresponding area, and shook her head to dispel the sensation. She had seen Victor half-clad, changing for his act as he talked to her—he too had that ridge, not so prominent under his silky biscuit-coloured skin.
Bella came crowding into Clover’s corner, dressed in her saucy hotel uniform, an extra row of frills sprucing up her black serge skirt. Up next, East and Verrall squeezed in too, East blowing good-luck kisses to Clover and Bella and Verrall with great abandon. With no Julius, they had revamped the hotel sketch to lean more heavily on their own banter, and Bella was to come on later, to apply for a job. She and Clover watched East and Verrall begin with their own kind of classical indentation: two clerks who had worked the same shift for too long.
VERRALL: I’m afraid I’m going to leave you, East. I’ve found the love of my life.
EAST: But can she do this? (turning a triple pirouette while snapping fingers)
VERRALL: Well, yes, she can—she’s