The Little Shadows - By Marina Endicott Page 0,143

‘She asked for you, if that’s a comfort. Don’t see why it would be.’ His hand trembled on the velvet armrest. She did not quite dare to touch him.

‘I put pennies on her eyes,’ he said. ‘One is required to do so. But they fell off, and her eyes flew open, and for a moment I persuaded myself—’

Kneeling, she took his hand and kissed it, but he snatched it away and flicked the air. ‘Frees me up,’ he said. ‘I’ll travel now.’

Flora looked at him, the bulk of him wedged into the velvet seat. He had not shaved, but his shirt was clean and buttoned, a string tie pulled tight at the neck.

East and Verrall, coming down the aisle, saw them and approached. Behind Julius, East gestured, questioning, and Flora nodded. ‘Come on, then, old chum,’ Verrall said. He took one arm and East took the other, and they helped Julius to rise.

‘Foster & Foster, ventriloquy,’ he told them, as if they were the management. ‘I’ve bought a dummy. I’ll do Syb’s lines for her.’

‘Come on, you bunk in with us,’ East said. ‘We’ll take you back and set you up. Don’t dawdle, now, we’re going to be late.’

Flora sat back down and laid her head along the red velvet, and cried like a little girl.

Gone for a Soldier

Soon after Julius arrived, as if he had brought trouble with him, something went wrong with the furnace at the boarding house. Mrs. Mead’s husband ran up and down stairs with buckets and wrenches; workmen trooped through the house, to no avail. Cold pervaded everything. Tea steamed in the cups, the air was so frigid.

Clover listened as Mama complained, heavy-eyed and listless, that she could not keep warm. In some form of mourning for Sybil’s death, she took to her bed and stayed there for days, missing several shows. Julius reported for duty but maintained a rigid state of semi-drunkenness; the others tried to pull him into conversation or a hand of cards, but he would not be drawn.

Clover was silent too. A couple of days earlier she had found a letter from Victor waiting at the Regina Theatre. His mother had booked him passage on a ship to England, sailing in April from New York.

She is weak from the after-effects of rheumatic fever, and begs to see me before she passes beyond—Galichen assures me in a postscript that she is not in peril of death, but reminds me that I had sought some way over, and here two birds can be dispatched one-stone-wise. I will write again before I go. V

Reading it, she’d felt her heart crack inside her chest. He would die in battle, she knew it. That was what happened to the ones you loved. She’d seen the last of him. Unhurriedly, she had folded the letter and put it in the pocket of her skirt.

That night was a rough one. The invisible manager, Mr. Cartwright, whom they had never yet met, had put up a new order, in which Julius took second spot and the Belle Auroras closed the first half. A good promotion, but in his present state Julius was a tough act to follow, no one knowing on what line, or if, he would end his act. Mama had remained in bed, which complicated Aurora’s quick change after Poor Butterfly. They felt themselves on suffrage still with Mr. Cartwright, and were anxious for everything to go well. So anxious, in fact, that Aurora was sick twice in the fire bucket while Bella danced the Bumble Bee.

Aurora went on for Poor Butterfly, saying that she would be all right now. But during the bridge of the song, drifting from one painted cherry tree to another, Clover could see her breathing very carefully again. And then the second verse, ‘The moments pass into hours, The hours pass into years, And as she smiles through her tears, She murmurs low …’ she bent to murmur low to a bough of the cherry tree, the painted whorls of its brown cloth bark, and spat daintily into the palm of her hand. Her face was flake-white under the black wig, Clover saw, as she came off and held out her arms for help with the kimono.

Bella was there to do Aurora’s costume change; Clover grabbed her violin and flitted behind the backdrop. She strolled out onto the stage as the lights came up again, and began the intro to Danny Boy. At the assigned phrase she turned to watch Aurora enter,