in a vast flashy turban. He called out to the audience for a volunteer, in a ludicrous accent intended to portray the mysterious Hindu: ‘I must have a man with the physique of Hercules, the courage of Napoleon—above all, with what we might delicately call It.’
At that, Verrall slid out of his seat and came down the aisle, slumped into a scrawny slope.
‘Sir, did you not hear the particular criteria?’ East demanded, turban bobbing. ‘I am looking for someone with It.’
‘Oh!’ said Verrall. ‘I thought you said If.’
Backstage, Bella laughed at that every time, a corner of curtain-leg over her mouth to muffle it.
East read Verrall’s mind, retrieving from concealment in the turban a miner’s reflector and a magnifying glass, and peering in Verrall’s ear. ‘Ahhh! Down here … down this very dark tunnel, I begin to see …’
‘What, what?’ Verrall asked, agog.
‘No. I was wrong. Nothing there at all.’ He tapped with a small hammer on Verrall’s head. The orchestra timpanist made a lovely knock on the wooden block.
East promised to conjure up a wife for Verrall, but all his magic failed, as lovely visions (Bella, popping up from behind a screen in a succession of hats) appeared, took one look at Verrall, and vanished again in small puffs of smoke (which East continually begged the stagehand to make very small, since smoke-powder was expensive).
Finally the magician tore off his turban and stomped on it. ‘By jinks, I’ll have to marry you myself!’
After a musical interlude they were back, in their usual bowlers, criss-crossing the stage with their loping lallygagging stride—Verrall saying sadly, ‘If it weren’t for pickpockets, I’d have no love life at all.’
East suggested that Verrall send for a mail-order bride.
‘I tried that once,’ Verrall confessed. ‘Put an ad in the classifieds: Wife Wanted. Next day I had a hundred replies! Each one said, You can have mine.’
Pa-dum-cha! from the timpanist.
‘I’m a married man myself,’ East said, passing again. ‘People ask the secret of our long marriage, and it is simply this: we take time to go to a restaurant every week. A little candlelight dinner, soft music, dancing … Mmm.’ He stared dreamily into the middle distance.
‘And does it work, Mr. East?’
‘Works like a charm. She goes Thursdays, I go Fridays.’
Another cymbal.
Bella turned up in the second half of their act, in a very short skirt (now that they were wearing the brief butterfly skirts, nothing seemed too short, even to Mama) with a very large bow tying up her ruffly hair. She and East became instant pals, and he recruited her as a possible mate for his pal Verrall.
‘Not for me,’ he promised her. ‘No no no no. I’ve got a wife, who is worth her weight in gold.’
He took out a photo to show Bella, who exclaimed, ‘Oh my, I didn’t think there was that much money in the world!’ He nodded, proudly, then did a lovely double-take. Some nights he made it a triple-take—Verrall kept challenging him to try a quadruple.
Bella changed clothes almost without ceasing, but she enjoyed that, with always the laughable risk of going on in the wrong costume. Lucky the wings came first, she thought, and Clover now helped her to lay out her quick changes, since the night she’d missed one change and had been scolded by East and docked fifty cents of her pay—still one silver dollar per performance. They ought to address that ridiculous deal, Aurora had said, but it was only through East and Verrall that they’d got this gig at all.
Pie
In the street in front of the Lyric that evening, as they set off to the late-opening café for supper after the second show, a small crowd had gathered. The usual bold young men wanting to speak to East, shy ones sending furtive glances to the girls. A woman detached herself from the group and rushed forward to Aurora, who felt Clover move closer to protect her.
It was Mrs. O’Hara, from the filthy boarding house.
‘Oh miss,’ she cried, drunk again, but not as far gone as before. ‘I wanted to tell you how good you was. I’m ashamed of how you saw me the other night and I—you made me cry so, that song.’
Verrall, leaving East to the young men, tried to motion Mrs. O’Hara away. He waved to the seven-foot-tall policeman strolling the sidewalk across the street.
‘No, Mr. Verrall, it’s all right,’ Aurora said.
‘My own boy, gone to the war already,’ Mrs. O’Hara said. ‘Not old enough to let him go. I live