the money was vital, because Victor’s pay was small and he could not send them much.
And because Clover found that she was going to have a baby—in January, as well as she could count.
The chorus girls were cheerful in the dressing room, toasted by the reeking gas fire where they dried their washed-out stockings. After the heat and the noise, the silent walk home through dripping streets was a pleasure, but Clover often found herself tired and lonely. She could not tell Victor her news in a letter, and would not tell Madame or Aurora until he knew. The tiny knot of the baby inside her clutched and stretched, and she sometimes sang to it as she walked along. The London streets were dark with the Zeppelin blackout, yet she felt perfectly safe. She watched for a vast, ghostly shape moving through the skies, but never saw one. Only the great searchlights quartering the sky, and craters the bombs had left.
The baby was so much in the forefront of her mind that she almost told the gnome-like Felix Quirk as they were strolling away from the theatre one evening. But just then, in the grip of some necessity, he dodged into a public house for a quick snifter of brandy, leaving her to make her way home alone.
No. Not alone, for the child went with her.
Hole in the Heart
Late in September, Lewis Ridgeway invited Aurora to give a piano concert to the senior high-school girls. Remembering how she had longed for lovely clothes at that age, she wore the blue grosgrain afternoon gown with a linen jabot, and her best shoes; the half-mile walk would not ruin them. Mr. Ridgeway had asked for a mixed repertoire; she would sandwich two nocturnes around MacDowell’s To A Wild Rose, which the girls could play themselves. The brass zip on her leather music case ran smooth and cool. She missed working.
As she left the house she passed Mama standing on the porch with a watering can for the stone jars of marigolds. ‘O, who would inhabit, This bleak world alone?’ Mama sang, eyes fastened on hers, desperate to convey a message.
Aurora pressed a kiss on her cheek, and told her Avery was in his cot with Mabel writing letters beside him. Her present strategy was to expect Mama to understand, to be perfectly capable, as if that might make her capable.
Mr. Ridgeway was waiting for her at the entrance to the brick high school. The school suited him—it was an oddly significant building for such a little town. Walking down the glossy-floored hall they passed several empty classrooms. She glanced into yet another large bare room, and he gave a sudden smile. ‘Yes, we have the facilities for a music room. Mrs. Gower has donated an instrument I think you’ll enjoy.’
He ushered her through the last double doors into a pleasant open hall with folding wooden chairs and, on a raised dais, a vast black concert grand.
Aurora went to examine the piano. The high-school girls trooped in, taking their seats with decorum, and Mr. Ridgeway introduced Aurora as a seasoned concert performer.
Feeling a ridiculous blush rise to her cheeks, she turned to the girls to say, ‘My sisters and I toured in vaudeville for several years …’ Then she fell silent, alone onstage, missing Clover and Bella—as if her arms were gone, whole portions of her body. What could these girls know about vaude, the real life and ordinary beauty of it?
Taking herself in hand, Aurora bowed and began. Halfway through the Field nocturne she wished she’d thought to turn the piano, so she could see the audience. The audience. Even a handful of schoolgirls was worth working for—it was not vanity or shallowness of mind, it was the desire to do one’s best by the music, and to—to elevate the listeners, or simply delight them.
She turned from the piano after Wild Rose, to find several of the girls in tears. ‘It’s exquisite!’ said a cherry-ribboned girl—Nell Barr-Smith, the Dean’s daughter. ‘But does it have words, could you sing it?’ And the others cried yes, yes, please.
Grateful and surprised, Aurora altered her plan and instead of the second Field piece gave them Last Rose of Summer, a capella. After singing it under-voice all these months to encourage Mama, it was a pleasure to let her full voice out—but a pity to do without Clover’s mourning violin.
She sang, enjoying the song’s frank sentiment and the long afternoon light streaming in the tall windows. At