on the edge of the makeup table in a state of light carbonation, one eye on the hallway through the open door.
Sybil fretted, afraid that Julius had gone too far the day before in quarrelling with Miss Sunderland and might go farther today. Duetto Paradiso—a new placard had been made the day before, Miss Sunderland refusing to perform under the name Excursion of Song ever again—was warming up in half-voice across the hall. Sybil confided to Mama, in a stage whisper, that Julius had touched a drop at breakfast, and that Italians always set him off.
Neither singer was truly Italian, Aurora considered saying, but she left it.
‘Everybody knows it is necessary to get along with all the artistes in a company, and Jay has never done such a pointed thing before—why should he have taken against them so? Except that Miss Sunderland does a little resemble Jay’s mother, who was a terrible tyrant and made his early years a living hell,’ Sybil continued, in a running commentary that soon drove Aurora out into the hall.
She leaned against the doorjamb, staring at the piece of publicity letterhead Kavanagh had pinned to his dressing-room door: Maurice MacKenna Kavanagh, Elocutionist, in glossy black letters above his sketched profile. Remembering (with a delightful swoop of dizziness) his nose on her cheek, his black beard-shadow and the sharp cleft in his chin, she thought that the Belle Auroras needed some publicity letterhead of their own. Clover could draw their three profiles, that would be stylish. She wanted to see his face. His fingers had hurt her, but she had not said so; it was necessary to be brave. His glinting eyes were navy blue.
She could not linger in the doorway. He would think she was waiting for him when he came, as he must do very quickly, or be fined for missing his half-hour call. She started up the stairs on quick feet, planning to find a quiet corner where she could watch the show and not be seen at all.
But—her heart jumped—Kavanagh thundered through the backstage door above. He came pelting down the stairs towards her, his hair dull and tousled.
Aurora flattened against the railing, twinkling up at him (with just the right laughing touch of aren’t you late, rascal!) as he brushed past.
He glanced at her, then aside. She put out a hand to catch his sleeve, and he knocked it away roughly, saying, ‘Get the fuck out of it. Leave me be!’
Her legs trembled so, she thought she might fall. He was in a hurry (she heard herself telling herself), late for his call. The railing felt very shaky.
Kavanagh slammed through the door of his dressing room and swore again.
There was no place to be in the theatre that was dark enough. After a minute Aurora walked up the halls past the dressing rooms (his door not quite closed, she could see him grinding greasepaint stick into the palm of his hand, dark head bent over the job) and, grasping at any door, went into the coal cellar—where she stood on the cleared space of floor waiting to catch her breath. She wanted more than anything to walk casually back and open his door to say something fine and witty, some little remark to let him see that she was perfectly unaffected; but she could not trust herself to get it right. It had been—displeasure. In his eyes, at seeing her.
Not displeasure, disgust.
She felt quite stupid, trying to think.
He had smelled strongly of liquor. And he had looked away, aggrieved that she would be in his way, demanding something of him. The coal dust left on the scraped floor would ruin her white skirt, she had to keep it heaped into her hands—as he had lifted her skirts, last night. A deep worm crawled and turned in her belly. But she would not be sick.
She gathered her skirts in one hand, opened the coal-cellar door with the other, and walked out, back straight and a dainty smile on her face. She went up to the wings to listen to his turn.
His elocution was as brilliant as before.
A Poor Maiden So
Coming into the dressing room Aurora took a fistful of cold cream and covered her face, rubbing it in for what seemed to Clover like a long time, and wiped it off, leaving a clean canvas. Then she began afresh, giving herself more colour by an extra screw of number 5 in the palm of her hand. Once she had her complexion perfect,