bit of dancing. Not After the Ball, I beg you.’
‘We’ve no sides for Early One Morning,’ Flora said, hesitating to mention it.
‘Caspar will manage—won’t you?’ At the bandleader’s nod, Gentry waved them all away. ‘Now sponge!’
Sponging they knew; Mama always made them do it when they were hoarse or had a cold in the throat: she poured boiling hot water into a bowl, let a sponge suck it all up, and (with a towel to protect her hand) squeezed it firmly out again. Then they sang scales in half-voice, breathing through the sponge for ten minutes, so the hot steam would act upon the bronchial tubes and the mucous membranes. The sponge had to be squeezed quite dry or it would make you choke. Having only one sponge, they took turns; while one was wheezing and singing, the others teased and distracted her until Mama made them stop. She would not let them go out into the cold air after the sponging, so they spent an endless hour lying flat on their backs on the bed going over the Early One Morning lyrics—until it was time to spring up and dress quickly (in their white wool challis, because the theatre was so cold that Gentry had forbidden them to wear the flowered waists) and trot cross-lots to the theatre.
Miss Belle-A-Clovers
No need to be on time for the opener since they were the closer, but they heard the tail end as they slid quietly in the stage door. Clover caught her breath, already winded from racing to the theatre, when she heard Julius Foster Konigsburg’s rolling voice.
She dodged up to the wings and, craning around the last curtain-leg, saw his massive silhouette against the footlights, one arm flung dramatically out as he intoned, ‘Do you love me so much you would die for me? Ahhh—but remember! Mine is an undying love.’
Clover hid her mouth in her sleeve, so as not to make noise. She loved that bit. Julius was well in flight and the audience was laughing—how glad Clover was that he and Sybil had landed here where they were! And now they were balanced again, since the Belle Auroras had been cancelled too. He would be able to like them again. She kept her sleeve wrapped around her neck, hugging herself to get warm in this cold coffin of a place.
‘The soubrette has a lantern jaw and so has to sing light music, tra-la-la-la,’ Julius sang, mangling a bit of operetta with the most ridiculous exaggerated face, chin dropping to his middle waistcoat button, eyes rolling back in his head. ‘She sings with impressive strength, strangling up to that last petrified high-C. Rising to the last screech of her upper register, her mouth looks like one long red Tunnel to Perdition.’
Couldn’t have said perdition at the Empress, Clover thought.
‘A flat flounder of a running mate with straggling pink moustachios accompanies this heavyweight Harpy in her flight …’
An in-drawn gasp beside her made Clover jump, and she saw that two people in costume had come to stand in the wings. They must be the next turn. One was a towering prow of a woman in a tight sateen gown, the other a fish-mouthed young man in ill-fitting tails, with a reddish moustache—the longest and limpest she had ever seen.
On the stage Julius continued: ‘Her fervour is enough to shake the rafters—the poor young limpet thanks his stars it’s not the ballet, so he doesn’t have to hoist his Inamorata to the heavens, which would mean serious damage to his Inner Works and probably a perpetual Truss.’
The woman gasped again and grabbed at the stage manager—who Clover now saw was Johnny Drawbank, dressed for the work in a grey collarless shirt and no hat.
‘Stop him!’ the woman demanded.
Drawbank goggled, and the tenor goggled too. They were twin frogs and Clover had to clap her arm over her mouth again. This must be how Bella feels all the time, she thought, this crazy laugh wanting to come out. On the stage Julius had worked himself up into a frenzy, shielding his eyes as from a burning glare: ‘But soft! What light is this from yonder balcony? It is a vast explosion—an explosion of song!’
‘Stop him,’ the woman hissed, and Clover saw the uniformed boy ready with the signboard:
AN EXCURSION OF SONG
SUNDERLAND & PETTIBONE
‘Please, Miss Sunderland—’ Johnny Drawbank began, but at her glare, his drooping eyes blinked and he bent to whisper through the speaking tube to the orchestra pit. ‘Change music! Change!’ and