a Spanish dancer.
EAST: Can she bake a cherry pie, Verrall boy, Verrall boy? Can she bake a cherry pie, charming Verrall?
VERRALL: Well, East, but neither can you.
EAST: But, Verrall, I could learn.
Then Bella pranced on, after a quick kiss from Clover, to apply for the job soon to be left vacant by Verrall. Her eyes danced like her feet—any hotel would have been glad to have her on the front desk. But of course East wanted no one but Verrall, and was determined to make things difficult for her.
BELLA: I’ve come for the job you advertised in the paper.
EAST: Have you had any experience?
BELLA: (biting her lip and confessing) Once a fellow got me out in a car. He told me he ran out of gas …
Verrall kept dodging out of the restaurant to report on kitchen disasters, each worse than the last (‘The chef backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work …’), causing some in the audience to groan, and others to convulse with pleasure. ‘One important thing I’ve learned in the kitchens,’ Verrall told Bella, earnestly. ‘Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.’
During the sketch, Clover watched the slack-rope for the Ioleen Sisters being set up in three. The sisters walked back and forth along the rope, testing and retesting. They were like Amazons, Clover thought, their harsh Australian voices only adding to that impression. They wore lots of glitter but very little cloth, and in the blue backstage light they glowed.
But it was time to go down to the dressing room. Aurora would need help with her hair and her nerves. Clover did not wait for Bella to flounce offstage, but trotted down to find Aurora in a dreadful state, bone-white, very still, an occasional shudder passing through her body. Clover knew she had not eaten. She pulled out a folded napkin to give Aurora a torn bit of Mrs. Hillier’s homemade bread. Aurora turned her head away, shutting her eyes, but Clover persisted. ‘Once The Casting Couch is done, you will feel easier,’ she said.
Aurora nodded. She was not dressed, but had her Miss Sylvia costume half-on, bodice and sleeves folded down and protected with a light towel. Her makeup was done, but she looked tired and listless. Clover set to work quieting Aurora’s nerves.
The Play Unfolding
Flora sat out front with Mayhew to watch the second half. She did not entirely enjoy the melodrama, seeing herself as Sylvia’s aged and foolish mother. In lieu of Sybil, the part was now played by the violinist Alberick Heatherton’s maiden aunt, formerly on the legitimate; Flora had wondered whether Mayhew might ask her to do it herself, but Miss Heatherton got the nod.
Flora watched the little play unfolding, her hands nervously twisting in her lap. She had a band of pressure in her head and eyes, and often these days felt her heart pounding unexpectedly. As it pounded now, watching Aurora pleading with Malverley for her virtue. East was a devilish mimic, and had put something of Mayhew into his walk, even his voice. Flora hoped Mayhew would not notice—people often did not see themselves in caricature. It was cruel, and in any case inaccurate. Nobody had ever made Aurora do anything she did not want to do.
MALVERLEY: It is entirely your own fault for enflaming me, Sylvia—my heart has been yours since first setting eyes on you. Let me call you—my Own.
SYLVIA: (blushing) Oh, sir! Please, sir! Unhand me!
MALVERLEY: (aside) She maddens me! But her beaux yeux will not make me marry her …
But he had married her. It was a kind of triumph, Flora supposed, to have her daughter so well settled. The bothersome pressure behind her eyes made them prone to seeping. She dabbed at the wetness and smiled, as Sylvia and her mother confounded Malverley’s malevolence with a neat bit of foolery.
Now there was only the foppish violin to endure, and then it would be her dear girls, bursting upon the audience in all their loveliness.
Little Bird
Backstage, Bella stood in the wings behind the violinist Alberick Heatherton, the handsomest boy she had ever seen. Mercurial wings of dark hair swept above the most romantic brow, the darkest and most haunted eyes. She could feel something straining in her chest, like a bird struggling to be free—she must be in love, she thought. She had watched him rehearse that morning, lost in a passionate dream of playing, swaying alone onstage, hairs flying wildly off his ferocious bow.