Old enough to be her mother, but seeming young and full of energy, and she gave back look for look, so that without the least bit wanting to, Aurora decided she was right. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you, ma’am, I had best be leaving.’ She took Maurice’s arm and steered him to the door, saying, ‘They will be looking for me at home, sir.’
The Playbill
Clover could not quite sleep: the Parthenon playbill ran through her head continually, so that at one moment she was haunted by fascinated fear lest Julius cause another scene or be injured by the vast Miss Sunderland; at another, in an almost-dream, the rats and cats were the ones who fought. Aurora had been too long with the Elocutionist, some page of the programme said. Another page, and there was Mama, left alone in the world. Clover could not turn the next page because there would be her father lying on the front walk with the dark stain seeping under him, so she riffled back through the pages to Julius, to Gentry calling out from the back of the theatre.
She struggled to wake. The room shaped itself around her: the leaning square of mirror tilted over the dresser, the coal-fire’s last ember in the stove, a small mountain of Mama on the sofa. Montana. From Paddockwood to Prince Albert, to Regina, to Calgary, to the Empress in Fort Macleod—now Helena. Clover pushed out of bed and stood. Her feet gripped the linoleum, one hand on the rough sheet still. No Aurora.
Across the room Mama lay uncovered, the coverlet fallen to the floor. Too slippery. Clover took the wool blanket off the bed, easing Bella’s fingers from its edge, and tucked that around Mama instead. She laid the coverlet gently over Bella and stood a moment longer, silent in the dark room, before she made herself climb back into bed.
In Drink
Aurora hurried along beside Maurice as he straggled through silent frozen streets, seeming to know the route more as a horse knows the stable than as a thinking man. She put her hand through his arm, as his hands were shoved into his topcoat pockets, and took the longest strides she could. She feared that if their pace slowed he would forget what he was doing. She had many times seen men in drink, and it did not seem to her that he was too far gone, compared to how Papa had been once or twice, let alone Mr. Dyment from the land office, but she thought he might walk ahead and forget she was with him. From time to time she spoke; he did not seem to hear.
At last she spied the Pioneer on its corner, a block ahead, and felt some relief. Just then Maurice dodged away from her into a dark entryway, the cobbled tunnel to a yard behind a store. She stopped and moved towards him, but he flung out a beautiful white hand.
‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘Nature must be answered!’ and then she saw his arm braced against the bricks and understood that he was relieving himself. Hot piss made a curl of steam in the air. She felt more tired than she had for a very long time. And they had a lesson with Gentry in the morning.
‘Sweetness? My beauty? Girl?’ Maurice’s voice came out of the passageway in a stage whisper, and she realized that he did not know her name.
‘I’m here,’ she said.
‘Come, come,’ he said.
No one in the street. The moon lay on snowy ruts and drifts impartially. She stepped into the shadow, keeping to the opposite wall from where he had been leaning. He opened his topcoat and folded her inside it, keeping her warm, and she found she was fond of him, of his looseness and greatness and strength, however fallen and come low. He kissed her again less clumsily, his mouth cooler after the long walk. With one hand he kirtled up her skirt and then, pinning the gathers between their two bodies, he nudged a knee at her legs to open them, and then his fingers touched her under there, opening her there, pushing through her legs to touch all through her, beneath her drawers along the silky tops of her legs above her stockings, and the feel of that hand on that skin was one of the things she was looking for, she thought, or perhaps she should push him away, she could not tell. After that first soft sweeping his fingers shoved into