like she knew the ropes here. In a back L of the room—closer to the still-room, she guessed, since the jugs of beer came from that end—men and a few women were playing cards.
The dancers came on: a man and woman, both wearing tattered street clothes and caps. The music changed to a danse Apache rag, and the man grabbed the woman’s arm. He pulled her to him and slapped her, hard! But she didn’t seem to mind. Still holding her arm, the man and his partner did a cocky strut till he grabbed her into a bear-hug and a rough little quickstep. They clung together, then the man threw the woman to the floor and yanked her back up to dance a squatting parody of a waltz. It was tight and harsh and none of it pretty; exciting to witness, like a fight on the street.
Next up was a singer, an older woman with a rasping voice and low-slung breasts that threatened to burst out of her stained satin dress. She did music-hall stuff at a rattling pace, with no stinting of lewd gestures and eye-rollings. Ugly, but with enough assurance to put her songs across, and the music was lively.
At first it had been lovely to sit in the warmth, cozied up between Clover and Aurora, but now Bella was hot and the place seemed only ordinary after all. She got up and wound round tables to the back of the long room as if she might be looking for a way out to the privy, but she had no need, only restlessness. Aurora had let her wear her dainty-flowered shirtwaist. She must look as old as her sisters, with her eyes darkened so.
There was a stronger odour back here, a hay smell or a burning-barrel. She supposed it was some unusual cure of tobacco. East had followed her and caught her sniffing at the air. He said, ‘That’s loco weed, that’s all, hashish cigarillos.’ Verrall came up beside him, and added, ‘Makes these folk feel a little less sad, for a while.’
‘But you wouldn’t want that, no, no,’ East said, steering her slightly wide of that table. ‘Although we are as sad as can be. We need it to be comic in our Art.’
‘No sadness for you,’ Verrall agreed. ‘Cards, though—we could all use some of the innocent joy that gambling brings to the hectic personality.’
At home in Paddockwood Bella had frequently played with the men. Her papa had taught her how to play poker, how to make it look like she couldn’t play very well. Though that joke worked only once, she did enjoy trotting it out. East tucked her into the crowd watching a small table where a heavy-set woman was dealing and talking, talking and dealing. Bella could see that she was good.
The younger of the Tusslers was playing at the table, but he dashed his hand down in disgust as East and Bella joined the group, and the older brother replaced him. The younger stood beside them to watch a hand or two, commenting scornfully on the play under his breath to East, who stayed silent and watched; admiring his detached alertness, Bella copied him, a trill of pleasure running under her skin to be out in this wild place, at night. She was not the baby sister here. She was herself.
A Very Fine Suit
Near the end of a song from an angry woman with lank blonde hair, there was a commotion at the door and a large man came in, a bevy of theatre people around him chattering and showing off, oblivious to the performance going on. From his white silk scarf and pointed beard, from the cut of the astrakhan-collared overcoat, and from the very fine suit revealed as he doffed his coat (which was whisked to safety by one of his entourage), Aurora knew this must be Mr. Fitzjohn Mayhew.
The singer onstage knew it too—she snapped urgent fingers at the bandleader and the music changed to a hotter song, syncopated and loud, and she shouted a welcome over the heads of the crowd: ‘Fitz! About time you came back to the sticks!’ Mayhew raised his cane and saluted her, everything fine about him, even his manners. He waved to encourage the music, and the singer went on with a bawdy piece about her loving cup and the man to fill it up. Sybil, sitting alert in the shadow of Julius’s bulk, pressed an importunate hand on Aurora’s arm. ‘You must