The Little Shadows (23 page)

She had never been hit before. Her whole skull tingled and rang. He ground her hand into the hard-packed earth-wall for good measure, and shoved out of the cellar past Verrall, cursing him on the way.

Bella took her one hand in the other and rubbed it. She did not want to touch her face and feel that pain from the outside. Her face felt broken.

‘He was bothering you?’ Verrall asked.

‘No, no,’ she said. She ought not to have come in here with him. She had taken him for a weak sister. That was stupid.

‘I could fetch Miss Aurora—let me—’

‘No! No, no, no,’ she said, shaking her head too many times, to stop him.

‘What were you doing out here anyway?’ East said roughly, coming behind Verrall. He held a fist-full of snow up to Bella’s cheek and pressed. The cold scorched her face. ‘You are like a bad kitten. You must learn to look after yourself better! And not to lead men on.’

‘Oh no,’ she said, more pitifully. ‘I did not—I only meant—’

‘Yes, yes, that’s the usual,’ East said, clearly disgusted. ‘You only meant to have some fun and next you found him excited.’

‘Let me get your sister,’ said Verrall, in some agitation. His delicate hands flapped.

‘Oh no, no!’ she cried, quite desperate. ‘You must not—she will be angry, she will say it is because I am too young. Please do not tell her.’

‘Well, you are only a little thing—how were you to know how he might be?’

East snorted. ‘She is a woman, ain’t she? Born to be one, born knowing.’

‘You are too hard on her, East. It’s only a baby still.’

‘I am not,’ Bella said stoutly. She brushed down her front and tried to sweep the dirt off the back of her skirt. ‘And I did not get beet juice on my boots, so you need not tell.’

‘Well, come with us,’ East said, long-suffering. ‘We will look after you. And no more going off into corners or you will get what comes to you.’

Bella opened her eyes wider and the tears welling there did not fall. She shut her teeth together and refused.

Joy of the Moment

Side by side with Mayhew, who had commandeered the stool next to hers, Aurora sat watching a dancer—the one Mayhew told them he’d come to see. He was looking for a bit of flash for his next venture, he said, and a quick man could find treasures in these dark woods that the slower-moving producers in Boston and New York might give their ears to book.

‘Elvira of the Regiment,’ the band captain called, and Elvira came prancing on, in a tight military jacket with a soldier’s cap, long plaited tails dangling down her back; her small worn boots had brass heels that clicked prettily to the music. Now she seemed only lazily beating time; now she rushed along as if seized by the joy of the moment. Those little brass heels! They gave a tantalizing syncopation to the dancing. Aurora looked round for her sisters. But Clover was still off with Victor Saborsky—and Bella? She could not crane her neck far enough to see Bella at the card tables.

Elvira smiled as she danced, with predatory, evenly spaced teeth. Off came her jacket and cap, revealing a scrap of bodice and a loose-laced cummerbund. Off flew her jaunty skirt, and she was dancing in what appeared to be her underthings, a red-dyed rag-bag with a wild gypsy air. Tapping-mad, she reeled and stamped and flew. At the conclusion of the dance she swirled the skirt up to make herself an officer’s cape, then trotted along the edge of the platform in an orderly fashion and took leave of her public with a right military salute. As she wove through the crowd there was no doubt that she was making a series of appointments with various of the men.

Not that for us, Aurora thought. We don’t have to; we’re going to make money on our feet. And they had Mama, who knew the ropes and meant to keep them in the first flight, both in art and respectability.

Mayhew had risen to clap hands for the little military dancer, but he did not leave Aurora’s table entirely, only reaching across to give the dancer a pasteboard card and hold her in a moment’s conversation.

Mayhew’s acquaintance could not be wasted—Aurora knew she ought to sit with him, work the conversation round to their act, and invite him to see them at the Hippodrome. But while he was occupied with
Elvira, she thought she’d run and check on Bella, whose absence was suddenly causing her a cramp of fright. She had forgotten how rough the men were, how green Bella was. She made her way among the tables.

But Bella was nowhere to be seen—no East or Verrall, either. Bella must have gone outside. The air was thick with smoke back here, and the stink stronger. Aurora stood still for a moment, thinking; then sidestepped back through the crowded tables to get her wraps. Too cold to do without, if she had to search for long.

She reached for Bella’s things on back of her chair, and told Sybil that she had to go. ‘Keep him entertained for me till we get back,’ she said, relying on Sybil’s good nature, Julius’s love of exalted company, and their pressing need to keep Mayhew’s interest aroused.

The Girl in the Other Bed

The door closed behind her and shut half the noise away with it. Aurora pulled on her wraps, and (after a pause to gather her courage) felt her way along the log wall, half blind in the darkness, heading like a moth for the glow of light from the wagon yard. She could hear strange noises, and felt someone pass a few feet from her as she rounded the corner of the roadhouse. There were the rails of the corral fence. She made her way along by touching the poles every few feet—but there were fearful shapes in the darkness. She was never easy without light.

A mound. What was that crumpled thing, lying there? Not Bella, it could not be …

Aurora stood still, uncertain whether she could bring herself to touch the bundle on the ground. A lantern—she was turning back to get one when she saw a bobbing light coming through the trees, and then another beside it.

‘Miss Avery? Aurora?’

It was Verrall, with Bella on his arm. Aurora ran stumbling over the packed snow to reach her sister quickly. ‘Are you—?’ She did not know what to ask.

Bella had a hand filled with snow pressed to her cheek. Tears shone in her eyes but she only sounded angry: ‘I ran into a tree branch in the dark, I am so stupid!’

‘It will leave a miserable bruise,’ Verrall said.

‘But you should see the other fella,’ East said, irrepressible. From within Aurora’s warm clasp Bella punched East’s coat-sleeve.

‘It is too cold to stand here,’ Aurora said. ‘I must find Clover, too.’

But then she remembered the bundle on the ground. Verrall was handing her his lantern already, courteous as always; she took it and went back to the corral fence, to the place where she had seen the fallen heap.

It was a woman lying there. Aurora set the lantern down beside her and gently took the woman’s shoulder. ‘Are you in difficulty?’ she asked, feeling the inadequacy of the words. ‘Can we help you?’

A shock-white face lolled towards them as Aurora turned the woman’s shoulder. Red hair like fox-fur springing from the girl’s forehead, blood coming from her nose. Her dress was torn, her skirt ripped away, and Aurora saw blood on the pallid, splaying legs.

‘How did you find out she was dead?
’ East asked, after a little silence. Verrall groaned and turned away into the darkness, to be loudly sick.

Bella knelt by Aurora and lifted the girl’s bloody head to her lap. She still had a clump of snow in her hand, and with that she touched the broken cheek and eyelids. Aurora found the girl’s hands and chafed them.

The girl shifted, not moaning but making a small cat sound. She opened her eyes and stared at them, then looked away and tried to cover her skinny legs.

‘Mr. East?’ Aurora said into the darkness, where East had gone to help Verrall.

‘In a minute,’ he said. ‘Finish off, for the lord’s sake, Verrall! How much do you have in there?’

Then Mayhew came, full of authority. He bent and lifted the girl by the shoulders to help her sit up, and Bella and Aurora gave him room; he felt her head with practised fingers, then said, ‘Upsy-daisy,’ and lifted her right up to her feet.

She stood there swaying. Bella found the ripped end of the girl’s skirt and tucked it up so the girl was covered. Aurora pressed the girl’s limp hand. ‘Can you see?’ she asked. ‘Can you speak to me?’

The girl licked her broken lip. A purple mark showed faintly on her neck in the dim light. ‘My shawl …’ she said.

Bella searched for it and found it caught on a splinter of the fence-rail.

Aurora asked her, ‘Who hurt you?’

‘I—he—I—’ The girl touched her neck, and felt along her chest. ‘He took my—’

Mayhew still had hold of her back. ‘Best not to pry into it,’ he told the others, quietly. ‘It’s her livelihood, after all. You’d only get her sacked.’

Aurora felt so sorry for her. No bigger than Bella, and not much older, from her voice. Her matted red braid had come down. It lay like a rope around her neck. Her poor lip.

‘It’s nothing,’ the girl finally said. She shook her head, slowly, experimentally. ‘I’m lucky, this time.’ She had a strong accent—Irish, perhaps, mangled through her swollen mouth. She put up one hand and tucked a strand of hair back into order. ‘Let me go.’

Aurora fell back. There was nothing to be done.

‘You sang so nice,’ the girl said to her. She almost smiled, then put a hand to her mouth. She took her shawl from Bella and walked off, feet very careful, into the dark recess behind the roadhouse where the privy was.

Lamentations

Flora woke in the clutch of a sudden vision: fetching carrots from the Pioneer’s cellar, brushing the preserving sand off a bunch of dull orange fingers, feeling the cold depth of the sand with her own raw fingers. In the dream she knelt back on splintery planks over the packed-earth cellar floor and looked from the carrots upwards, to see Bella in trouble, pansy eyes shocked, necklace gone. Bella’s face, head shaking, no, no, no, don’t, don’t.

She woke sweating and afraid, but all was still and safe in her room.
A cock must have crowed in the darkness, to wake her. She should not have sent the girls off alone.

Indian pudding and Boston brown bread, ladles of soup into bowls for the hungry boys—Flora got through lunch service and put in her hour helping to wash up. Then she folded her apron, put on her threadbare ulster, and walked to Gentry’s lodgings. She hesitated to intrude on his private life, but the dream of Bella’s eyes would not stop plaguing her.

Gentry Fox, Impresario
, read the card in the brass slot of the building directory. He lived on the top floor in the flatiron-shaped Hannasyde building: monumental red stone, a good address. But as Flora climbed from floor to floor she saw how the grand staircases narrowed and the carpets grew less plush, down to bare drugget.

When he opened the door to her, Gentry grimaced, but waved her in.

His room was high-ceilinged for an attic, but narrow, cut from a larger chamber, and she was absurdly shocked to see how poor and cluttered and unclean it was. She somehow had not realized that he was straitened himself. Of course, of
course
he would have paid the girls properly, if he could have done so.

It was, then, impossible to make any demand of him. He had been her good friend here, to bring the girls onto the bill when he was in this case. Advancing a few feet into the room, she took hold of a chair-back to give herself some balance.

‘Gentry, I’m afraid I find you in a pickle, and I did not mean to inconvenience you.’

He waved his hands, taking in the whole sorry mess. ‘Not like old times, is it—best of everything, the finest suite at every hotel. Wouldn’t have demeaned myself in those days with a mere sixth-floor room.’

She did not know what to say to that.

‘What is the trouble, dear girl?’

‘Oh! You must not call me girl! I am—’

‘Forty-three.’

‘Well!’ She laughed. ‘Forty-nine, if we’re honest. I scrubbed a few years off the slate in the old days.’

‘They seem to fly, do they not? In the rough-and-tumble.’

His words made her gasp and remember her dream. ‘Oh, Gentry, I came because I need to follow after the girls. I ought not to have let them go alone, you were right. Aurora is wise—but the others are very young still. I’ve got to follow after, but I have no money. I came to ask you for a—for an advance, and I am very sorry to do it. Ten dollars would do me.’

He pulled out his wallet at once, and extracted two five-dollar bills. ‘Flora, be easy. I’m certain you are wallowing in anti-nostalgic visions of the various hells in which you found yourself in your own youth, but consider: you had no mama to shepherd you in the wilderness. You were alone—and pretending to be older, rather than younger, in those days. How old were you, when you struck out on your own?’

‘Fourteen, when I left my aunt’s house.’

‘But these girls of yours are well-protected at the theatre, I promise you; those old days are done, when any ruffian could accost a girl backstage—and there are three of them! What harm could come to one with the other two hawklike in her defence?’

Impossible to tell him of the dream—the pain, and Bella’s eyes.

He waited, and then went on, ‘They are good girls, keen to get on, and—wait, I received the manager’s report from Butte yesterday: here, let me find it—’ He scrabbled in his papers and found a yellow telegraph form and read, scanning down the sheet, ‘Foster, Ventriloquist:
Comedy rather talky and long drawn-out but holds the audience, secured a number of laughs;
East & Verrall:
Not a bad act though decidedly overpaid
; Tusslers:
All the bad features of the act were eliminated when the chandelier …
Ah! Belle Auroras:
Dancing is good and seems to please. All their numbers were applauded. They hold their own here
. So! You see they are very well.’

She shook her head. ‘There’s something wrong, that’s all. I had a dream.’

‘Don’t tell me!’

‘I dreamt that—’

‘Don’t tell me.’

‘Who am I to tell my nightmares to, Gentry?’

‘I’m sure you’ve been lonely, but you must have been enjoying your unaccustomed leisure while the girls are away,’ he said, to divert her.