and lace that Clover had helped her pick from the dressmaker’s shop. ‘Will this not do?’
‘No, no,’ Mayhew said, seriously. ‘Your opulence in dress is your stock-in-trade, my dear. Never underestimate the importance of being well turned-out. For a woman especially, variety in dress is a necessity. Order one in ivory peau de soie. When that’s done we’ll put the melodrama on the bill, and not before.’
Gumballs
The older brother of the Tusslers was called Walter Middleton. Bella knew the name of the younger brother now too, but she refused to use it, even in her mind. Every show, at the end of their turn, the younger Tussler was there in the wings staring at her, and she remembered again the slam of his fist, those ham-knuckle bones. When he was hit onstage, or fell down the trick-collapsible stairs, she felt hot pleasure. Even so, she would have left it alone, hating herself for the mousey way fear made her behave; but then he began to bother Xiang.
The Chinese girl was unknowable—they had no common language, and her father required her constant presence both offstage and on—but Bella loved her straight-across bangs and mincing, dress-hobbled step. Before Long Chak Sam’s act, Xiang carried a red lacquer tray of assorted magician’s props upstairs. She wore big-soled black slippers with a divider between the toes and cotton socks that split her toes to match, and they were not easy on stairs. Perhaps wearied of worrying Bella, the Tussler started lying in wait for Xiang during the intermission. He had prop-work to do himself, clearing up the clattered furniture their act left splintered about the stage, and would engineer it so that he finished just in time to arrive at the top of the stairs as Xiang began to climb from the bottom. He’d have something large and awkward in his hands, wooden slats or a drawer, and would slip, stumbling down as she was going up. It was loud and terrifying, but he was very practised at falling; his wood slats were aimed with skill into Xiang’s painstakingly arranged tray of props, scattering them. The first time Bella happened to see this, she was frightened enough to leap to help, although she usually avoided being within twenty feet of the Tussler. He scrambled up, pawing at Xiang’s dress, and made as if to do the same to Bella, except that Bella fled back into their dressing room. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Xiang fly to the top of the stairs as if by magic.
It happened again at the next show. And again, and again. Afraid to tell her sisters what had happened to her, Bella could not tell them what was happening to Xiang; but she could not leave it as it was. She woke one night from bad dreams and lay in the dark, cold even under Clover’s arm. He would have to be stopped.
She had no poison. Oil on the dressing-room stairs might kill him, but the Tussler was very good at falling. Oil on his collapsible stairs would kill only him, but the brothers checked their set-up before every show and would certainly notice oil-slick. For a moment she thought longingly of the bright spears of broken glass in the glass-crash box—but could not bear to imagine how it would cut her hand to use one to kill the Tussler.
Mattie could not help, he was just a boy. Verrall was so fearful of any trouble that he would only clasp his hands and beg her to take no notice. East was more of a firebrand but did not care for anybody but Verrall. No point in asking him. Maybe Aurora could get Mayhew to fire him? But she’d have to tell Aurora why, and no matter how she scolded herself she found she could not bear to speak of it, of the shame of being hit.
She needed Nando from the Knockabout Ninepins. She thought with pleasure of Nando dropping the gumballs that his wicked father danced and fell on later. Victor Saborsky had returned—maybe he could help somehow, he was good at elaborate machines. But she was shy of him, of his formal speaking and his intense, un-ironic energy. It was as if he could only speak to one woman in his life, and that was Clover. It was tiresome also because Clover was so mad in love with him that she was in a daze, a dazzle-ry, distracted and prone to fits of slight bad