Madame. Instead Clover wrote of Galichen. Even in vaude she had never met such a person.
A head bald as an egg, a pair of gimlet eyes—one hugely magnified by a thick monocle. He stares into one’s soul with that one moon eye. I creep about in terror, hiding in the skirts of Victor’s mother. Gali’s people put me to work washing stairs; but everyone about the place scrubs floors all the time. The one to pity is M. le Comte Filouski, who is detailed to Galichen’s own bathroom. I have never seen it, thank God, but the legends are horrific. ‘At times I have to use a ladder to clean the walls,’ he is supposed to have said. But I see how people are swept under Gali’s sway. He puts them through The Work in order to clean their spiritual houses, their soul’s rooms; and they say they are better for it.
Victor said I ought to call his mother Belle-Mère, but it sounds fake-French, like Les Très Belles: I call her Madame. She is unsteady in her spirits and keeps two or three of everything—the house is crammed with things she has collected. Her face puckers under a head of flat black hair, which she dyes herself with some walnut-juice concoction. I miss Mama. Is she writing on her slate yet? Please give her a tender kiss from me, and forward the enclosed note (which of course you may read!) to Bella.
To Bella, she wrote:
There is a variety theatre not far from here, the Gate. I watched the show with Victor before he left—it is vulgar but very funny. They don’t need any singers thank you very much no thank you, especially not ones with colonial accents, but I will keep trying to find some work. I hope your new car is exploding explosively and that you and Nando are headed straight for the Palace. A-oooga!
Love love
Your Clover
Black Thread
The strings on the back of Aurora’s neck tensed painfully when she sewed. But in this domestic life, she knew, it must be done. One summer evening, she went up to Mabel’s room to ask for black darning thread, and found Mabel sorting through a box of letters. On the uncluttered dressing table stood a photo of her Captain Graham, two ivory-backed brushes, and a limp dun hairnet: an inexpressibly sad collection. The young captain’s direct eyes stared from a wide, easy-natured face.
Mabel got up at once to find thread. Seeing Aurora’s eye on the photograph, she held out a page of the letter she had let fall on the bed. Aurora read:
… Tom is still in England, he was left in care of the horses, but—just on the q.t. between you and me May—he got ‘cold feet,’ savvy?
I am sorry I have not written you more. When we go into the firing line for eight days and get about three hours sleep out of every twenty-four, one gets dead all over nearly, and during all the hours whether asleep or awake, one has always to keep his eye skinted down his rifle barrel. It does get one’s nerves, some, but it’s all right—
‘This page is sad, the rest is more—well. I wish you knew him. You will someday.’ Mabel’s fingers refolded the flimsy page gently, her face lighted, shining.
Aurora experienced a dreadful pang of envy, seeing quiet Mabel transformed by love. She took up the spool of black thread to go. But Mabel, composed again, said, ‘Won’t you play for us instead? I can mend your things, if you will play. We get so little good music here, although the high school gives a charity concert from time to time.’
Happy to give over the needlework, Aurora fetched sheet music Bella had sent her, Paderewski’s Minuet and a book of Field and Chopin Nocturnes: suitable for drawing-room music, but a challenge to perfect. Mama sat by the piano, her head leaning on her left hand, the weak right arm abandoned in her lap, humming softly.
After that, Aurora played for them every evening once Avery was put in his cot. She played for him, too, as he lay sleeping right above the drawing room.
Words and Music
On his return to Qu’Appelle in late July, Dr. Graham came out to see Mama. He was a loose-jointed, surprisingly unkempt man with spiky hair that looked as if he’d just run his fingers through it; he had clever crow’s eyes and an air of tolerance.
After listening closely to what Aurora could tell him of Dr. King’s diagnosis,