knew them to be genuinely dark, set delicate as mink paintbrushes in the porcelain eyelids.
He had not thought like this for so long. He had not thought he ever would again.
Contagious
Flora and the girls were invited again, with East and Verrall, Julius and Sybil, to an early dinner on Sunday, a special feast prepared by the Placer chef. Mayhew held forth on the future of vaudeville as they waited for the first course to be served. ‘The Parthenon circuit is going to get a tremendous boom from this new stagehand expense deal in the big-time. Big-time acts will come to us where they can play in decent houses at smaller salaries, but with consecutive bookings and a family atmosphere behind the curtain as well as out front.’
One arm draped along Mayhew’s chair-back, the other occupied in draining a large brandy and soda, Julius had merely to raise an eyebrow to encourage the flow.
‘But that does not mean,’ Mayhew said, ‘any diminument in our loyalty to the faithful medium-time acts which have stood by the company in times past.’
Verrall choked, then quickly asked whether there might be holes in the big-time, at this rate. Mayhew thought there might be, for a suitcase outfit that could travel without sets or stagehands. ‘It will be contagious on you to take every advantage of the situation,’ he said.
Flora did not mind the occasional miswording; she basked in Mayhew’s golden spotlight. He’d been a jumped-up boy in the old days and was much the same now, with a patina of prosperity overlaying his familiar charm.
At the end of the evening, while the party was fetching wraps from the cloakroom, Mayhew managed to lead Flora apart from the others into the lee of the shining oak staircase.
‘Thought you’d like to see this,’ Mayhew said, showing Flora a yellow telegraph form he’d pulled out of his inner pocket. The manager’s report from their last week in Billings:
BELLE A’S: AS SQUARE AND HIGH-TONED A LITTLE TEAM AS EVER CAME ROUND THE CIRCUIT. IT’LL BE A PLEASURE TO READ THEIR NAMES ON THE BOOKING LIST AGAIN. ON THE JOB TO THE MINUTE, STRAIGHT HOME AFTER THEIR ACT, EACH ONE A LADY AND NOT ONE A QUEEN.
‘You can be proud of those girls, Flora,’ he said.
Flora did not speak, but nodded. Each one a lady. That was what mattered, that’s what she’d been able to give them. She and Arthur between them, give him his due.
Mayhew looked at her earnestly. ‘What a job you’ve done! No time just now, but—’
She looked up, dashing wetness from below her eye.
‘Could you grant me a few moments alone, my dear Flora? Perhaps tomorrow, right after the first show goes up? I’ll take you to tea,’ he said. ‘It’s a delicate matter.’ He seemed to hover between smiling and embarrassment.
Flora stared at him for a moment. Then he reached out and squeezed her hand, and she saw that his eyes were—beseeching was the word that sprang to her mind. She returned his smile, and the pressure of his hand. ‘I’d be very happy to have tea,’ she said, gently taking over. ‘I’ll be in the lobby as soon as the overture begins.’
She would wear her new dove-coloured walking suit. And the pheasant-wing hat, and her locket, which she’d been able to redeem. It was time to re-enter the world, her period of mourning done.
But that night Flora woke in a panic from a dream: kneading bread in the summer kitchen at Paddockwood, watching Arthur walk over the field from the schoolhouse—her hair unpinned, arms floured to the elbows, the apron loose around her middle, which was big with Harry. Arthur walked in, lifting her easily up onto the dry-sink edge to kiss her without ceasing, bundled belly and flour and all. He did not speak, did not need to, only enveloped her, loving her for her true self, as she did him. The girls were singing in the parlour and she was beloved and the bread would rise and Harry would be born—
Not Harry. She struggled awake and put that aside. Travelled backwards in the dream and found Arthur again walking across the field and the shape he made against the pale sky and the full-carved shape of his mouth after love, and how she had loved him.
Mayhew was nothing to her. A dynamo of a manager, pleasant company.
But she ought to accept his proposal, whatever it might be, for the sake of the girls. She ran her hands down the bodice of her