berth below did not like the window cracked, and would fret if Bella turned over too many times. Myra had turned out to be considerable trouble: wistful and stubborn, only wanting Nando. Her ethereal face masked a hungry spirit, and no friendliness on Bella’s part could satisfy her. Nando was kept on the hop all the time, and Bella too—if she would not do to talk to, she served very well to fetch tea and run baths in the hotels.
Bella stared up at the dented ceiling cloth, feeling straitjacketed in the berth. Maybe Joe was kept in one of those canvas jails, in his sanatorium. If Papa had gone to the san when he was so ill, he would have been, because he was non compos mentis, the doctor had said. But Mama had kept him home, however sad and wild he became. For the first time in ages Bella thought of Harry in his coffin, and Papa, and then the old thought followed that she too would be dead soon enough, lying under a low roof, under the creaking weight of earth.
Think of the prop moons instead. She sang on the golden moon now, a step up in the world. Nando had the silver. Myra on the green-cheese moon had not worked; her dreary delivery sent the whole number flat. The green moon was baggage, but no more trouble than the car. They had a big hit with Bella’s New Car. Pantages had taken them on—at a reduced rate, of course, as everything always went, but Nando’s booking agent said they’d still got a whacking good deal, seven-fifty a week to split between them, which amounted to three hundred each, once the expenses of touring the larger rig came off the top. Her grouch-bag was full to bursting—enough to send pots of money on to Aurora and Mama, and to Clover, if she needed it. Bella turned her face into the mingy Pullman pillow. Day after tomorrow was her sixteenth birthday. Nando would not remember. It would be shoddy to remind him. Aurora might think of her, if she was not too taken up with the baby. Clover would remember, on the ocean, as long as her ship was not sunk by Germans like the Lusitania. But it would not be, it would not.
Bella turned, her nightgown twisting into a shroud.
After a while she turned again, carefully, and pushed the curtain back to inspect the corridor. Nobody. She slipped her shoes on and manoeuvred down from the berth. The lower berth curtain did not stir.
Moving quickly down the corridor, she let herself through the connecting door (a burst of juddering noise and shaking, a rush of night air) and into the next carriage, where Nando’s berth was—he had a lower, thank heavens, with an open curtain and empty berth above him. She undid the snap and slid her hand in to pat his face.
‘Wha—!’ he said, huffing and snorting.
She had woken him. Serve him right, being so dozy. She swung herself in, and the curtain shut, in a jiff. He jumped and bumped his head on the upper bunk, but that did not matter. ‘Shh!’ she said.
‘What are you doing? Go back to your berth!’
Where was the boy who had kissed her in the tunnel of the Empress when they were children?
‘I wanted to be with you.’ She put her hand on his cheek in the twilight of the berth.
The moon was somewhere above the train, not visible but shining sometimes on the little ponds flashing by the window. Nando searched for his watch and held it to the window, tilting it impatiently to find the light. ‘It’s the middle of the night,’ he said, giving up.
‘Don’t you want me here? Don’t you want to cuddle?’
‘No!’ He sounded very angry.
‘Don’t you love me?’
‘No!’ He caught her arms and shook her, but not like his father shook him. ‘You can’t do this, it’s not decent. Kisses are one thing but this—you must wait till we’re married.’
‘Will we be married?’ Bella was smiling in the dark; he did too love her.
‘No.’ He was hard-hearted. ‘I was dreaming! Why did you wake me up?’
‘Don’t make me go back, Nandy, it’s cold and I’m lonely.’
‘I’ve my dad to think of, and you’re too young to know what you’re doing anyhow.’
She started to cry, soft as a cat; he believed her, and opened the blanket. He thought he was the only one who could pretend! Much more comfortable under the blanket, even if he