The Little Shadows (26 page)

‘Well, he’s gone too,’ Mayhew said. ‘But not with any stain on his noble escutcheon, as
you
might say, Mr. Foster.’

Julius shuddered visibly.

‘Recall that Mr. Fox was well along in years—in fact it was he who wrote to Mrs. Ackerman suggesting she have a second look at the books here—no tinge of criminal suspicion, but merely to ascertain whether full benefit of box office was being rendered.’

Satisfied, or at least muzzled, Julius settled himself again beside Sybil.

Mayhew gathered himself into a nobler pose and deepened his voice. ‘In fact, at this time I’d like to pay a tribute to our pal Mr. Gentry Fox, late of this theatre, who has gone to what we all know is bound to be a rewarding retirement off the boards, down Montreal way. A legend in modern vaudeville, who sounded the depths and the rarefied air above the clouds of theatredom; the general of many battles, often in an army of one. As they say of the great ones, he cried for the griefs of others—for himself he chuckled. A great man of the theatre, and of the world!’

And that was all the fare-thee-well Gentry got: gone and only semi-besmirched. Clover felt a stab of pity, or perhaps anger.

Turning to practicalities, Mayhew expatiated on the seismic changes to come, growing particularly lively on the subject of
the Press
, and of
Advertising
, the Key to Success in Modern Polite Vaudeville. He dropped tantalizing hints about publicity stunts and gimmicks, and urged the company to greater efforts. ‘Don’t tell me that you killed at the Palace—do it here! I’ll tell you this for free: the audience is never wrong. If a performer fails to get across, it’s the material or the manner of presentation—don’t let me hear you blaming the rubes for not getting something. This is a discriminating audience here in Helena and in all our theatres, and we play to them and respect them.’

Which Gentry never had, Clover thought. He was a dreadful snob and elitist, but it was deeply kind of him to leave their pay increase on the books—for Mayhew to assume, it turned out. They had better be worthy of their hire.

Mayhew stepped down from rhetoric and into details: ‘First off, we’ll be papering the house for the next two weeks. No more playing
to empty seats. We’ll take advantage of the community friendliness here, oil the water and find you some good audiences.’

New acts would be arriving to fill out the bill that Gentry had gradually reduced. Mayhew extolled their magnificence in such a naive, hucksterish way that after a little while Clover gave up listening. Maintaining an outward appearance of attention, she secretly pictured the back of Victor’s head, the tender hollow between two tendons at his neck.

Her attention was called back when a large curtained easel rolled out, with red-tasseled drawings displayed on it, and—she gave a gasp of pleasure—a beautiful photo of Victor Saborsky. New playbills were distributed among the company as Mayhew sang the praises of Thierry & Thierrette (magic/terp team), The Royal Cingalese Dancers in picturesque national costumes, Victor Saborsky the Eccentric (guaranteed back by audience demand), and the rest of the company, including Julius (listed alone, and praised by Mayhew as Our Celebrated Protean Raconteur, which made Sybil mutter to Flora that she was ‘nobody’s excess baggage’), East & Verrall—and to Clover’s surprise, themselves in a new guise: ‘Les
Très Belles Aurores, renowned Paris Casino favourites, a trio of charming prima donnas famous for their personal beauty and their delightful, angelic voices.’

This was news. Her sisters had come to attention too. What did Mayhew intend? They’d done very well with sentimental ballads, wearing demure dresses and plaids. Casino girls would not wear tartans; they’d require more revealing garments—and what would they sing,
Au Claire de La Lune?

Onstage, Mayhew was winding up to a rousing finish.

‘We have to engage in a spirited campaign, boys, and dear ladies. From this day forward, the Parthenon Company is on the move!’

There was a burst of applause from the performers, and the meeting was over. Clover was impressed, a little against her will, to see how Mayhew had shifted the mood from glum to anticipatory.

A Dozen Dozen

Aurora stood with Clover in the lobby waiting for Mama—and saw with some pleasure that they seemed to stand among a dozen dozen pairs of pretty girls, refracted in the repeating gilted mirrors.

Emerging from the theatre, Mayhew found them there. ‘Today being dark—’ he began, putting his hand on Aurora’s elbow to speak more privately with her, as the rest of the company streamed out into the noontime sun.

Dark
is the wrong word for today, Aurora thought. Light flashed on the marble floor and the glass and rebounded along the mirrors, almost hurting the eyes.

‘I mean to say—no shows today, I hope I may treat you girls and your dear mother to lunch—talk about this French Casino angle. The name gave me the idea, you know. When I saw you sing, before.’

In the bright lobby, Aurora let herself look into Mayhew’s eyes for the first time. Pale blue, with yellowing whites, a bit lost in his large face.

At the roadhouse he had been smooth, even glossy. In this light she saw that Mayhew was not so dapper, but slightly frayed around the edges. His moustache raggedly trimmed; his nails, which bent over the tips of his fingers, yellow and not quite even. The skin sagged at his eyes and ears. Around the pointed beard, white stubble had formed on his jowls after his morning shave; she saw the cracked edge of a half-healed snick. His hair was like stiff straw. Seeing these things, oddly, made him more real to her.

He looked searchingly at her own face, his eager heart on display, and she was sorry for him. She smiled, to see him liking her, and understanding leaped between them. So much that he stood taller and breathed in loudly. ‘Well!’ he said, patting his chest, maybe not even conscious of that. She could have laughed at what she did to him, but that would hurt his dignity.

‘Well!’ he repeated. ‘Mademoiselle Aurora.’

Bella clattered into the lobby, Mama behind her. At the sight of Mayhew, Bella stopped short, making Mama stumble.

Mayhew moved quickly, to help her regain her balance. Aurora liked that in him too, his awareness of other people. ‘Dear Flora,’ he said, clasping her hand and shaking it strongly. ‘Or rather, Mrs. Avery I must call you now! To make your acquaintance again! What joy.’

‘So pleasant to see—after too many years—and you not looking a moment older!’

‘Nor you, my dear,’ Mayhew said, as he could hardly help doing. ‘I have been arranging with your girls, to carry you all away to luncheon. We’re booked at the Placer, where I have my suite. It is the newest and the best: their atrium lobby is a thing to behold. Come now! The chariot awaits!’

Hot-house

Over lunch Mayhew outlined his vision for
Les Très Belles:
ditch the sentimental ballads, move along to a whole new act—‘the French thing,’ as Mendel had said long ago at the Empress. Starting with familiar folk-songs ‘in demure old-country garb,’ then, after a rural tour through
Florian’s Song
, a quick change for some Parisienne flounce-skirt dancing—nothing risqué, this was family vaudeville—a pert, uptempo rendition of
Plaisir d’Amour;
one last change, into spectacular (here Aurora caught the overtone of ‘seductive’) costume for (and this he was proud of) the Flower Duet from
Lakmé
.

‘French as you please,’ he said. ‘Saw it in Boston last fall, it brought down the house. Had to reprise twice! High reach, but voices just like yours,’ nodding to Aurora and Clover.

Aurora glanced at Bella, who was apparently to be left out of that one, but Bella was finishing her oysters Rockefeller in a philosophical way.

Mayhew ate in great bites between spates of talk; his lunch was over and done with before theirs, even though he talked the whole time.

‘Do you plan to return to New York, dear Fitz?’ Mama asked, no doubt trying to discern the future.

‘Vaudeville’s all sewn up out East,’ Mayhew said, shaking his head. ‘But here and in the North there’s opportunity, and I intend to seize it. I’ve got an option pending on a brand-new two-a-day house up in
Edmonton. I call it The Muse. There’s a venture in Calgary I’m looking at—fill you in on that later. For now at the Parthenon, we’ll mount a melodrama. I wonder—’ He turned to Aurora and tapped her thoughtfully on the forearm. ‘I wonder if you’ve ever thought of acting? I saw a short play in Chicago as I went through—it strikes me that it might adapt well for you.’

Aurora still found his partiality for her slightly shocking. But not unreasonable, she supposed; it was the response one worked for, after all. ‘I would love to act,’ she said, smiling for him. Her hand went to her wineglass. She loved champagne, loved being in vaudeville, loved being the object of Mayhew’s attentions. Mama and the girls were happy too, and the lunch was magnificent! Oysters and lamb chops, meringues with hot-house strawberries, every kind of careful service from three hovering waiters. She was so happy. Glorious golden-yellow roses massed in a bank on the table—in April!

Mayhew touched her arm again, his fingers warm through the voile, then turned and made certain that Mama had had enough, offering to call up more meringue. She demurred, but Bella said
she
could manage another. Mayhew laughed and gestured to one of the waiters, who vanished and reappeared like an Arabian djinn, a new plate in hand piled high with meringue and fruit and cream.

‘These darling girls need fattening up!’ Mayhew said. ‘You’re going to need a new set of photos, new placards—we’ll get cracking on it all right away and aim to introduce the new act in a week or two.’

The abacus in Aurora’s mind clicked: cloth, lace, new slippers and other necessities.

‘An increase in pay, of course,’ he told her solemnly, as if this was a sad consequence, and added to Flora, ‘And in view of the expense of these costumes I’m demanding, we’ll work out an advance, dear madam, that will amply cover your outlay.’ Inwardly, Aurora sighed with relief, and wondered exactly how great an increase. She decided that her role here was to be an innocent girl, and leave it all to Mama.

And indeed, Mama was claiming Mayhew’s attention, in an effort to draw him out about himself, asking if he had created acts
himself in Ziegfeld’s operation. He laughed. ‘Oh ho! You don’t create around Flo! He takes care of the direction—I mined the raw materials. I’ve always had an eye for remarkable talent. Well, didn’t I say, my dear Flora, that you had a gift for enchantment, in those old days at Proctor’s?’

Her nostalgia appealed to, she gave a great heart-shaped smile, blushing a little in happy confusion. ‘You did, dear Fitz, and I’ve often remembered that over the years,’ she admitted. ‘But the girls don’t need to waltz down memory lane with us!’

‘Beauty and grace,’ he said, almost turning serious. ‘That’s what the vaudeville stage can never have enough of. And with a voice and a face like your daughter’s, my dear—well, these girls are going to go far.’

We Need the Eggs

Bella thought about Mayhew as she sat on the hotel counter in the wings, waiting for East and Verrall’s sketch during their first show back in the saddle in Helena. She did not mind him, but he had no value for her or Clover except as Aurora’s appendages. And he thought her a child, which she was
not
.

The stagehands rolled the counter on and she fluffed her skirt higher. The curtain parted and there she sat, knees jauntily revealed, and here was East, coming on to book a hotel room. Laughter rolled from the audience at the sight of her perched on the counter, and again at East’s admiring double-take. It was much better to be playing to full houses—Mayhew had got that right.

‘This is where my wife and I spent our wedding night!’ East told Bella, while they waited for Verrall to answer the ping of the desk bell. ‘Only this time
I’ll
stay in the bathroom and cry.’

Her job here was to be dumb-Dora, and look fetching while the audience laughed.

‘It is a little difficult to travel these days,’ East said. ‘My wife thinks she’s a chicken.’

‘Goodness! You should take her to the hospital!’

‘Well, I would,’ East confessed. ‘But we need the eggs.’

‘I think it’s mean,’ Bella said, very shocked. ‘Your wife ought to be your soulmate!’

‘Well, she was my
cell
-mate—that’s where we first met, in pokey.’

‘How romantic,’ Verrall said, popping up from under the hotel desk as if he were climbing the stairs from the basement—he did that false climb so brilliantly that every time Bella had the urge to check behind her for the trap door.

‘You again!
’ he said, when his head was high enough to see East. ‘No room till we see the colour of your money! ’

East looked ashamed. Since he could not pay—and still owed Verrall for his honeymoon visit—East was shanghaied into a job as waiter in the hotel restaurant. The desk spun round and disgorged a café table complete with red-checked cloth, and Julius already seated at the table in a black wig, the only customer, with a full roster of complaints and problems, from the first fly in his soup to the last corn on his toe, set to be stomped on by East’s extra-long boot. More ridiculous nonsense, plates of soup and flying loaves of bread and egg-juggling (by everyone but Bella, who simply could not get the hang of it, try though she had). From time to time Julius’s patently false black toupée would be dislodged by East or Verrall—and set back in place, so delicately that Julius continued in blissful self-satisfaction whether it was backwards, forwards, or drenched in soup.

She was Julius

After the intermission, Clover joined Bella, Mama and Sybil at the back of the house to watch Long Chak Sam, a copy-cat Chinese magician Mayhew had booked in for the week before Thierry & Thierrette. Myriad three-named Chinese magicians worked the circuits—this one, at least, was truly Chinese. A silent, unsmiling man, he had a little daughter who spoke no English, but carried a document swearing she was sixteen. It was obvious to anyone with an eye that she was ten or twelve.