put more vim into I Can’t Do the Sum and seemed to win the attention of the house. Aurora—and even, dutifully, Clover—twinkled and glimmered at the boxes and caught what eyes they could, but it was uphill work, and then went all downhill during Early One Morning, for which that crowd was definitely not in the mood.
As they cleaned their faces, Aurora said, ‘If we’d had another number prepared, we could have caught them. Something with a little pep—or maybe a sentimental number?’
Bella shook it off. But she did think Gentry was wrong about the crowd down here.
Had ’Em, Lost ’Em
Bella trotted up to the stage-right side to be ready for East & Verrall’s number, and caught the last of the Tusslers’ act. That younger one had rangy legs curving in strong lines front and back. Arms bare beneath a brocade waistcoat, clean-boned and taut. He saw her watching and stared at her so boldly that she looked away and went through her lines in her head.
East and Verrall crowded into the wings beside her, kissed each side of her face, and went on. With an afternoon of hard work they had whipped their hotel number into slightly better shape.
It started in one, the seafront olio drop covering up the terrible mess left in two and three by the Furniture Tusslers. Behind the drop the hands raced to clear that mess.
Bella loved the dual view she had from the wings: East and Verrall’s chatty number going on in front, bathed in the sweetness of the pinky golden light, all alive—while at the same time, behind the olio, deathly silent in faint blue light, stagehands going through their practised moves, soundlessly crouching, lifting slowly as if they were in a dream; the Furniture Tusslers walked like ghosts through their old life to retrieve their props.
In front, Verrall opened their number, minding his own business in a straw boater on the promenade, whistling idly till East came rolling onstage as if punched, brought up short and saved from the ocean by Verrall’s foot.
‘I was living the life of Riley,’ East said, dusting off his coat.
‘And then what happened?’
‘Riley came home.’
Verrall was sympathetic. ‘Women! You got to keep moving, Mr. East.’
East, looking nervously behind him: ‘Now I’ll have to move. Can you recommend a hotel?’
Their turn went on, light pattering music up and down under their voices in the same absurd style as their pattering conversation. On cue—exactly as the last of the stagehands whisked across behind a broom—the seafront olio rose to reveal a hotel lobby drop and a desk, in two, and Verrall strolled back to become the hotel manager.
Sidling up to the desk, East took out a cigar and chomped it between his teeth.
Verrall cried, ‘Hey, put that out, there’s no smoking in here.’
‘What makes you think I’m smoking?’ asked East, eyes wide open.
‘You’ve got a cigar in your mouth!’
‘I got boots on my feet, don’t mean I’m walking.’
Verrall told him, in deep disdain: ‘You’re going to make some woman a wonderful husband.’
With a wild, agonizing roll of the eyes East said, ‘I’m afraid so!’
‘You don’t even know what a husband is.’ Verrall’s superiority was massive.
‘Oh, yes I do!’ East snapped back, uncrushed. ‘A husband is what’s left of a sweetheart after the nerve has been killed.’
After they’d tangled a bit over the price of a room, Verrall tinged his little desk bell and yelled, ‘Front! Show the man the elevator!’
But East said, ‘No, no, I want a room with a bed in it.’
‘Will you be needing a bath, sir?’ Verrall asked, very cold.
‘How rude!’ Then, anxious, ‘Would you say I do?’
Verrall rang his bell again with vigour, and Bella went skittering on in her dancing slippers, eyes wide as saucers for her first dramatic role. She was as helpfully unhelpful as they’d rehearsed and she said the lines as they’d told her to, and when she got a laugh she could not help checking the audience and laughing too—her naive pleasure making it all the funnier; she was quick enough to play with that, the way East and Verrall played.
When they came off after their turn they told Bella she’d saved their bacon.
‘Cat-calls off, wolf-whistles on. That was all for you, cupcake,’ East said as they bundled her down the stairs at the intermission. He gave her bottom a thoughtful pat.
‘That last gag of yours was a three-person joke,’ Verrall told East. ‘I hope those three enjoyed themselves.’
‘Over the heads of the rest. Had ’em, lost ’em, had ’em,