temper, unlike herself. And Bella could not bear her to know about this, anyway.
What would be the worst thing for the Tussler—humiliation during a show? To be injured, to lose confidence—to be afraid, to see how that felt. Except maybe that was why he liked to do it to her, because he already knew himself.
Les Trois
The theatre was warmer during the day, now that spring had come, and a good thing too, Bella thought: their costumes for the peasant number of Les Très Belles were cut scandalously low, and high. Mayhew came to watch the girls go through their paces. He wore the astrakhan-collared coat, though it was a little too warm outside, and in Bella’s eyes he looked the perfect impresario.
They’d started rehearsing by singing la-la-la because they did not know how to pronounce the French words properly, but Victor spoke French, and had coached them till they were at least comfortable, if not entirely accurate. In fun, Clover and Bella had begun larding ordinary conversation with eus and entrezs and carrying on as if they were actually French, which pleased Mayhew so much that he insisted they ought to keep it up always. ‘No need to inform the press of your nationality—ah, but I forgot! You are true Canadiennes—we merely stress the Frenchity of your native land.’
After listening, he reluctantly agreed that the uptempo Plaisir d’Amour did not work—they would try Mon Homme instead, Clover singing in French with Aurora and Bella in English after. It was Mistinguett’s cabaret song and possibly the only genuine thing in the act, and Bella liked the song very well. Sad or funny, she could work it either way, depending.
‘Two or three girls has he,
That he likes as well as me,
But I love him—I don’t know why I should,
He isn’t true, he beats me too …’
Mayhew also approved Sur le Pont d’Avignon and their bridge dance, which Mama had blocked out to echo the children’s game, London Bridge. ‘That’s the ticket,’ he said. ‘Familiar, yes—but Frenchified. No more of the Scottish numbers, that’s clouding the issue. You’ll have to stick to La Françoise.’ Naturally, they would do as they were told.
Did they have to obey him even more, Bella wondered, now that he was going to be Aurora’s husband? She had thought it might mean Aurora could jolly him out of things. Now they were working on the Lakmé and that meant she could sit out, a good thing since she’d been the one running through the bridge in the previous number, and was covered in a gleam of sweat. She retired behind the piano to watch, running a cloth over her face and neck and (screened by the piano’s bulk) down her chest. The wads of cotton pouffing up her bosom were soaked through, but she looked much older with them and would not even rehearse without. Cleaned up, she could listen to Aurora establishing her own authority over their act, little by little.
‘The key is too high for us,’ Aurora was saying. Mama protested, but Aurora nodded firmly to Caspar, who rustled his paper making a little note, and took it down a few notches to the key of G. ‘But we’ll only do the first third,’ she told him. It was Mayhew who objected this time, so that Aurora had to stop and smile and tell him that perhaps he was a little biased—and that maybe this week, for Clover’s sake, they could begin with a short section and expand as they went along. Bella saw her apologize with her eyes to Clover, who obliged by looking downcast and incompetent. She shuffled her sides and held one upside down, until Aurora walked in front of her again and whispered, ‘Enough, I think!’
The harmony was demanding, and the accompaniment did not match the melody—Aurora and Clover could not catch it till Caspar cleared his throat and sang each part separately for them, which Bella could only be grateful that Gentry Fox did not witness. As she sat waiting for Lakmé to be done, Bella wrote him a letter in her mind:
Dear Gentry Fox,
You were right, we are not singers. But we do what you told us to do and somehow people are fooled. We miss you very much, and thank you, and wish our sister was marrying you, if you were not quite so antique.
Your young friend,
ARABELLA AVERY
What Beauty Awaits
Clover and Victor leaned on the lip of the false front of the theatre. Spring snow fell delicate and whole-flaked around