the war already,’ the old woman said, with a sobering effort. ‘Not old enough to let him go. He sang so sweet—I live in fear, sir, I can’t bear, but needs must, you know, needs must, needs must, and no work here for him to—’
She broke into ugly weeping.
‘I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier!’ She fumbled with her shawl, and stood upright again. ‘I’ll fight anyone who says I did!’
Hunched, she bustled twice around invisible flights of stairs and flung open an imaginary door. ‘My best room, saved for you,’ she boasted to her imaginary boarder. ‘Isn’t it spacious!’ A great bumping noise: ‘Oh, watch your head, there, that’s a nasty crack.’
In the wings, Mabel stood very still, holding herself tightly in check. As she was always in check, she thought, except with Aleck. The old hag showed the client round the room, boasting, disguising flaws. The cans at the bed-legs: ‘Well, you know, it’s a particulous convenimence to have the cans already there, and I won’t have the boarders using the po-po for the keeping away of bugs!’
That got a laugh, surprising in this straight-laced town, Mabel thought. Perhaps they’d already been shocked into submission.
‘Lights out at 3 a.m. and everybody goes back to their own room! Iron-clad, no deviagation from that one.’ But it was no good, the prospective boarder was leaving. ‘Well, go then! Who needs you! But needs must, you know, needs must, and there was no work here for him to—He always liked my pie …’
The boarder relented—his weak will and small stature almost visible, as the landlady took his money and watched him go upstairs to the room. She turned away, with a rackety jig as she fingered the cash and tucked it away, and turned to them again, to speak as if to a fair judge. ‘There’s no word can ease a mother’s grief. Only the knowledge that my boy was not alone, that he was one of all those tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, who are doing what they believe to be … That he had good company out there! He wrote to me, you see, although he was never one for writing, and he says, we strive together, that’s what he says. I’ll see you again, dear Mother, that’s what he wrote.’
‘Somebody must go,’ the old woman said. ‘But oh, my boy.’
Mabel stood against the proscenium arch, just touching it. Clover had spoken to her beforehand, had asked her please not to listen, but she could not bear to miss it. In the audience, a woman began to sob. Mabel hoped it was not Mrs. Gower.
Ferocious again, the old Irishwoman straightened and stepped up one stair, shouting, ‘Supper six sharp, for them as can mind their manners!’
On second thought, Mrs. Gower can stand it, Mabel told herself. She has good company here.
Miss Peavey and Miss Frye were sitting directly behind Victor Saborsky, having changed seats during the fruit-basket-upset of the intermission. Miss Peavey leaned over to congratulate Mr. Saborsky on his wife’s mastery of the monologue form, which made him duck his head; Miss Frye then leaned forward to confide. ‘What I want to know,’ she whispered, ‘is about your experience of the hospitals—Miss Peavey is our district nurse, and she will certainly be enthralled.’
Victor could not answer. He shook his head stiffly. The air seemed to be full of eyes. He got up and limped along the row, and went backstage instead, where he belonged, to find his wife.
Miss Frye was not much taken aback by Mr. Saborsky’s behaviour; everyone knew him to be suffering from shell shock. But Miss Peavey whispered that they ought not to have presumed to speak to him about his war experiences. Chastened, Miss Frye sat back to watch as the curtains unfurled—and there was lovely Mrs. Mayhew and such a very handsome gent with shiny shoes. The music for the Castle Walk number was enchanting.
Lewis Ridgeway sat beside Dr. Graham, watching Aurora dance with that negligible jackanapes. She had thrown off her disguise tonight, and he saw her more clearly now, in company with her sisters. Not in any sense the wife of a superintendent of schools. All evening he had hovered on the verge of saying to himself irrevocable words. He had been puzzling over what an honourable person ought to do, but there was only one answer. The men he most admired, Chum and Dean Barr-Smith, had seen active service. Victor Saborsky was entirely admirable too—even the comical