need a partner. Might you be persuaded to join me?’
Aurora looked at him, charged with energy, bright in this stifling wood-panelled hall. An oblique bevel of the mirror seared his cheek with a scar of sun. She felt she knew him very well, and yet they’d only spent a few moments alone in these three years.
‘A week to rehearse, two weeks’ run. Walker will pay well for the number,’ he said, as if she needed convincing. He joined her in the pier-glass. The two of them side by side, a pleasing combination of light and dark, well-matched as to size and build. ‘Two hundred a week, he promised, if it looks good when we get it sorted out,’ he said. ‘Strong placement, too: second-to-last in the first half.’
‘What of Miss Masefield?’ The play was off, Walker had said.
‘She had an opportunity,’ Jimmy said, smiling at Aurora with warm understanding. ‘New York, a revival of The Degenerates, in which she had such great success some years ago. The cast was already filled, she had no need of another young man. And so!’
Aurora wished the story were otherwise, that he’d had the resolution to quit Miss Masefield’s company. But after all, she had not quit Mayhew. She raised her arms to unpin her hat, her face bent away. The velvet cuff of her walking-suit fell back, revealing a bandage on one wrist. The silver bracelet she had worn for some time now caught on the gauze.
Jimmy put out a hand to touch the bracelet, then the bandage. ‘What’s this?’
‘Oh!’ She tucked her hands back into the cuffs. ‘Nothing! A small fire, it was nothing. Only it burnt our props, so we are having to change our act.’
‘Poor hand,’ he said. He pulled her wrist gently out into the open, and kissed above the burn. ‘Will you find time to dance with me, though?’
‘I think so—but what about us?’ Us always meaning the three of them, she and her sisters.
Jimmy laughed. ‘Double acts come and go, sister acts are more rare. Never fear, Walker wants the Belle Auroras too. He’s a man of vision, pays top dollar for good openers.’
Remembering, she pulled the grouch-bag out of her bodice and ripped the loose stitching from its inner pocket. ‘Thank you for the loan,’ she said. Forty-seven dollars; she counted them into his hand. Then she said, ‘Now that we are quits, we can be partners.’
Brittle
East and Verrall, arriving on a later train, paid a call on the girls that evening. Verrall’s arm was in a sling, but he swore he only wore it as a ploy for pity, to save joining up. East brought a white paper bag of peanut brittle, as well as the rundown on who all was in town, or had enlisted: the cream of vaudeville was rising in Winnipeg, three of its theatres counting as minor big-time—firststringers abounded, with plenty of their old friends to round out the bills. Among East’s other news: the Elocutionist, Maurice Kavanagh, was starring in a play at the Pantages.
‘Kavanagh’s a furniture actor,’ East told them disgustedly. ‘Acquits himself well enough sitting down, but the moment he stands up, he’s a joke. Grabs the back of chairs, leans against the tables—rested against a wall last week and the flat collapsed. And he’s got his lines written all over. Nice bit of business, picks up the picture of his dear wife—except when you look close, you see he’s pasted his sides on it. Soused buffoon.’
‘No, East,’ Verrall objected. ‘Nobody would know. He speaks as smooth as velvet and he’s got grace, you’ve got to give him that.’
Bella glanced across to see how Aurora took this news of Kavanagh’s decline. Not well—a pity to still be overset by an old drunk not treating her with respect years ago, Bella thought. Looking suddenly quite sick, Aurora dashed out of the parlour.
‘Bit queasy these days, ain’t she?’ East asked Bella, in an interested way.
‘She’s always like that,’ Bella said, around a mouthful of brittle. East took the bag from her.
‘It’s Julius that has me worried,’ Verrall said. ‘Since—you know—since then, he doesn’t look after himself as he ought.’
‘He told me he’d found the cure for a hangover: continuous drunkenness. I thought that was rather good,’ East said. ‘Continuous vaudeville used to do the same for me.’
Mama had drawn as close to the fire as the chair would fit. ‘Sybil was my youth brought back,’ she said, into a little silence. ‘She always thought I was judging her, but I