The Little Shadows - By Marina Endicott Page 0,133
might be much better.’
Bella clapped her hands. ‘Oh yes! Perfect, it is about sisters!’
The other two stared at her.
‘Their lovely sister-flowers—the lotus flowers await thee, their lovely sister-flower!’
Finally Aurora’s scalp sparkled, and they were off.
American Dollars
Four days later a telegram came, addressed to Bella. Clover answered the bell and gave the boy a nickel, and stood looking at the yellow envelope, thinking it must be from Nando. And an envelope in the mail slot too: from Victor. ‘Bella!’ she called, going down the dusky hall to the parlour, where Bella was curled in the armchair, discontentedly reading a three-day-old newspaper holding nothing but war news.
Aurora and Mama were playing Up-the-River on the Murphy bed. Bella had to edge around it to get to the yellow envelope, but she made good time and flicked it from Clover’s grasp, opened and read it in the blink of an eye—and threw her arms into the air in joy. The Journal went flying, aflutter, pages like grouse lifting. ‘Reprieved!’ she cried. ‘Look, look!’
Clover took the telegram and read it out to the others:
‘WALKER SAYS SPOT PANTAGES WINNIPEG JAN 1 BELL AURORS OPENERS SORRY J BATTLE.’
Aurora, sank to the bed, saying, ‘Openers again. But thank God!’ She began mumbling numbers: rent for December, food, train fare to Winnipeg.
Bella read the telegram again to Mama, who began to praise Jimmy Battle as the best boy in vaudeville, how she had known he would never let them down, unlike some, and how you could tell who was solid sterling worth, and so on.
There was an extra sheet in the envelope, Clover saw as she picked it up. ‘He wired cash as well,’ she said. ‘Forty-seven dollars. Not a round number—perhaps it is all he has.’
But still not enough for train fare for the four of them. Mama and Bella debated hammer-and-tongs who should be left behind to find her own way to Winnipeg, on foot if necessary.
While they were quarrelling, Clover opened her letter from Victor, and three American twenty-dollar bills fell out.
The Casting Couch Redux
East and Verrall heard the news and proposed that instead of stewing in their own juices, the girls come along with them for two jumps on their way to Regina, at small-time houses in Camrose and Swift Current.
‘You’d waste the rent-paid place for the rest of November, yes, but you’d be earning all the way, and refining your new number at the same time,’ Verrall said persuasively.
‘And here’s the bonus,’ East said, holding her other arm. ‘We thought we ought—’
‘Well, we thight we might,’ Verrall said.
‘We think we ink, we thought, ought we not?’ East joggled her arm. ‘Agree! Agree!’
‘To what?’ Aurora begged.
Verrall swatted East to make him stop. ‘Stan Bailey at the David Theatre in Camrose wants a melodrama more than life itself, he’s been shopping everywhere: and we’ve got one in our pocket!’
‘The Casting Couch? But we are missing Miss Heatherton for the mother, and—’
‘Your sainted mama! She would be magnificent in the role! I itch to see it!’
Aurora pushed East away and turned to Verrall. ‘You want to re-stage it?’
‘Indeed, and we’d work on Stan to engage you for Les Très as well as the melodrama, so it might mean double pay—although at a sadly, even pitifully, low rate …’
East chimed back in, mournful: ‘Worst pay in the West. He’s legendary.’
In a flurry of telegrams, Stan Bailey refused to pay full shot but agreed to mount The Casting Couch at $120 for a two-week stint in Camrose, a town southeast of Edmonton—at least in the direction of Winnipeg. Aurora would have taken less to get them to Winnipeg on time and be able to repay Jimmy Battle’s money. And Verrall thought he could also get them onto the bill at the Lyric, in Swift Current (farther south into Saskatchewan, still towards Winnipeg), where he had pull with the management.
For three days the girls rehearsed the melodrama and worked on the butterfly numbers, in a much better frame of mind and heart. The night before they left, Aurora counted the kitty beside Mama, listing additions and subtractions from the sale of their effects and the cash they’d shelled out for the new number: the purchase of sides for On Wings of Song, kimono silk, and new photographs.
After two counts, the tally came to $169, not including Jimmy Battle’s $47, which Aurora had sewn into the bottom pocket of her grouch-bag, hoping not to have to spend it. Four train fares to Camrose cost $40.