The Little Shadows - By Marina Endicott Page 0,130

outfit as may be managed.’

Clover gave an internal sigh of relief because she loved hers too: mole brown, but with a pleated orange silk lining that pierced her heart with its beauty every time she opened it. And Aurora’s was a sight to behold, a silver-grey upright-opening dresser trunk with mother-of-pearl knobbed drawers, too lovely to be dispensed with—unless she might dislike to have anything that reminded her of Mayhew; but Clover had not noticed that she was sensitive that way.

‘Well, keep them, then,’ Mama said. ‘But when we are begging in the streets for a crust of bread I hope someone comes along who wants a trunk!’ She sank her aching head back into one weak hand, and put the other out for Bella to refill her teacup.

Aurora’s trunk stood open in one corner of the kitchen, acting as her wardrobe. In a fluttering of satin and silks she turned out her closet upstairs; Clover and Bella took the excess clothing to be sold—a long, weary tramp to the rag merchants, who paid far less than the girls had hoped. Then to the dairy and the butcher, paying off accounts. Bella was shocked that they were even bothering to pay what she saw as Mayhew’s bills, but Clover held that after all they’d eaten the eggs and sausages, and could not cheat the tradesmen.

They brought home half a dozen brown eggs and a fresh loaf, and were eating a poached egg supper when the doorbell rasped, six twists, followed by a light-rapping knock. Julius and Sybil blew into the hall, stamping snowy boots, and followed Clover along to the kitchen, Sybil exclaiming and Julius declaiming. They had seen the ruin of the Muse.

‘A Cataclysm,’ Julius declared, raising his voice over Sybil’s excited continuous yip-yapping of: ‘Who’d have thought? Who could have imagined?’

Mama had stayed collapsed in the armchair they’d dragged into the kitchen for her. Julius pressed her hand, begging her not to rise. Bella brought two more chairs from the parlour, Clover set to making more toast, and they had a cozy party in the little kitchen.

‘We saw it in the paper!’ Sybil pulled out a cutting: ‘The dull refulgence of the chandeliers, now lying smashed and buried in the rubble of the auditorium … So of course we rushed round to see, and there it is, displastered all to pieces.’

‘Don’t, don’t read it,’ Mama begged. ‘I will have another spasm.’

‘I took the liberty of bringing liquid refreshment,’ Julius said, with ponderous courtesy. ‘A bottle of sherry, now, brings comfort to the widow and the orphan alike.’

He pulled three bottles from his coat and set them in the middle of the table with a flourish. People like to be helpful in affliction, Clover thought—our kind of people do. All week small packages and bottles had been brought to their door, from the Novelli Brothers, from Teddy—also thrown out of work by the demise of the Muse, with reason to hate anyone associated with Mayhew. Even from Mr. Penstenny, for whom she felt terribly sorry.

‘Not that you are a widow, precisely, dear Aurora,’ Sybil said, receiving a teacup with a bob of thanks to Bella. ‘Although I did hear—but no—oh! Toast! How kind you are, dear Clover.’

‘And a free hand with the butter, a rare thing in a woman,’ Julius said. He pulled a chair up to the little table and Bella made room for his plate by moving the cocoa jug.

‘So what are you going to do?’ Sybil asked.

The three girls looked at her in some dismay, and Mama burst again into damp sobs.

‘Well, I’m sorry to bring it up, I’m sure,’ Sybil said.

‘No, no,’ Aurora said. ‘It must be—we do have to—What was it you heard, Sybil?’

Sybil covered her mouth with her small fat paws.

Clover said, ‘We do not know just yet what we will do, dear Sybil. But what did you hear?’

‘Oh!’ Sybil’s wide mouth came down into a small pursing whistle. But she had the eyes of all and her histrionic heart could not resist. ‘It is only gossip, and I did not like to say, but I understand that he already has a wife, married some years ago, in San Francisco.’

Aurora could not have been exactly surprised, but Clover felt a hideous downward bend within her chest.

It was Julius who protested. ‘Syb!’ he shouted. ‘No! Too much. There is not a man alive who does not have a wife down in San Francisco. I do myself! To suggest bigamy as the reason that the