went up the steps, and would not say another word.
Best to let him alone till they went to the theatre, she thought, remembering Papa on his darker days.
Between the first and second shows, Nando had a word with George Burt, the Detroit manager, who looked fussed and said he’d deal with it after the second. As Bella was wiping the dust off her face and bosom from the New Car explosion-finale, Burt turned up, ushering in the big boss, Mr. Pantages. Burt went across to fetch Nando.
Bella shrieked and dodged behind her screen, and Pantages laughed. His heavy eyes creased, smooth as unbaked buns. ‘Nice little number,’ he said, peering over the screen. She turned her back but could not resist giving him just a very brief view of her pretty bodice. It could not hurt to keep the boss intrigued.
Nando came into the room and asked Pantages shortly what he could do for him.
‘It’s you wants to see me, boy,’ Pantages said, good-naturedly enough. His shining hair was parted in the middle over a very white scalp. ‘I hear you wants out your contract.’
‘Can’t help it, sir,’ Nando said, stiff as a plank. He gave Bella not one glance. ‘My old dad’s in trouble and there’s only me to help him.’
‘And me,’ Bella said behind the screen.
‘I’ve got to head for Philly in the morning,’ Nando said, doggedly ignoring her.
Pantages examined a hand full of rings. ‘And that leaves me where?’
‘I know it’s putting you out, but I got no choice,’ Nando said. ‘If it means I’m sunk in this business, I still got to go.’
‘Oh you’ll be sunk, if you cross me,’ Pantages promised, still genial, and glossy as shellac.
‘Well, I got an offer for the movies and I’ll take that. My dad and me together. It’s the coming thing, it’ll beat out vaudeville, you’ll see!’
Bella ducked her head below the screen to hide her shock—Nando had baldly refused to have anything to do with the pictures before this.
‘If that’s all right with you, boy,’ Pantages said. ‘And what about your missus here?’
‘She’s not my missus, she’s just a baby. She’s not in on this. She’s a good girl and a trouper—I know East & Verrall have been trying to get her for their new number over at the Regent, she’ll be all right with them. I’m sorry you’re out an act.’
He’s arranging my next jump as if I was props, Bella thought, but she kept silence. As long as he didn’t send her straight to Qu’Appelle to wither into dust.
Pantages stared at Nando for a beat, eyes like jet beads. ‘I know your dad, he’s a no-hoper.’
‘Not for me.’
‘Your funeral, boy,’ the boss said, and he went.
After a minute Nando said to the screen, ‘I’ll talk to East. You’ll be safe with them.’
There’s only so much you can do, Bella thought, to throw yourself at someone who doesn’t want you. She stayed behind the screen, pulling on her clothes, every piece of her body hurting like she’d been beaten up, and when she came out Nando had gone.
They did the third show. They yelled at each other as the car fell to pieces, and near the end of the number Bella hauled off and slugged him straight in the eye as hard as she could.
She sat back, aghast, looking at the eye already starting to swell. The audience broke into delighted hoots.
Nando pulled the string that set off the final explosion, and under it he said, quite quietly, ‘Guess that’s that, then. See you in the funny papers.’
‘I hate you so much,’ Bella said, and the car fell apart.
The Work
Left with Madame Saborsky now that Victor was at training camp, late night was Clover’s only solitude. Lamp oil was dear, so she wrote to Aurora by moonlight at the barred window in Victor’s third-floor sitting room, once a nursery. The bed was warm, piled with feather beds and comforters, the linens heavy and smooth. Madame Saborsky had fine taste in fabrics, and wore gorgeous embroidered velvet drapery on her person too. The plank floor was bare and the damp could not be beaten back by the stingy supply of coals for the tiny fireplace, but it was quiet. Down in the cellar Madame would be sorting her hoard of marmalade and tinned beef, her treasure-store against the starvation she expected inevitably to follow war. Small stone crocks of goose-grease—which Madame used as face cream—lined up like soldiers.
It seemed disloyal to send her sisters a full portrait of