The Little Shadows (63 page)

Outside Gali’s door they caught each other’s eye and choked with laughter, but kept that silent too. And then Victor was gone.

Breakdown

In mid-June the congregation thronged to Mrs. Gower’s garden for the Strawberry Festival: melting ice cream and strawberries. Aurora was observing a truce with Mrs. Gower, who had
spoken very kindly to her and to Mama at the end of the Deanery working-bee; and since Bella’s latest cheque had paid for a new moon-green silk dress which was at least the match of any other lady’s there, Aurora prepared herself to enjoy the fete. She looked around (she could not help it) for Lewis Ridgeway, but did not find him. Perhaps he had end-of-term school work to do, or—well, it did not matter.

Avery was cranky and suffering from a surfeit of ice cream. Mabel took him into her arms, needing something to occupy herself. They’d learned that morning that an Indian Head boy had been killed in action: Frank Richmond, a schoolfriend of Aleck Graham’s. Dr. Graham had brought the news to church with him. The doctor and Mabel were carefully not talking together, as if conversation could only tend in one direction, and that a useless one.

The night before, Mabel had shown Aurora part of a letter that a friend of Aleck’s, John Levitt (wounded in action and invalided home) had brought from the Front. She’d handed the page over without a word, and retired to her room once it was back in her hand.

 … give me the rifle fire all day, every day instead of one of those hellish coal-boxes packed with nails, screws, anything sharp—no wonder to see men go plumb loony, nutty—

You read of such cases in the papers, how men suffer from breakdown.

Don’t think they are nervous or weak or anything like that. Pity them rather—for the whine and sizzle of the shell in the air, and the awful suspense of waiting for the explosion to come is what does the trick. Enough of this—

Enough, yes. The sun was pale for May.

Aurora stood on Mrs. Gower’s graceful veranda, listening to Mama’s slight, sweet voice singing to Avery as Mabel held him, ‘
Whispering Hope, oh how welcome thy voice, making my heart in its sorrow rejoice …’

Hearing an odd groan or gasp, Aurora stepped in through the French doors to see Mrs. Gower standing in the middle of her wood-panelled hall. Dr. Graham and Lewis and the Dean had come in through the front door together, looking grave or unhappy depending on their natures, and the Dean held a telegram.

Mrs. Gower’s mouth opened very sadly, as if she were going to speak, but she did not. One foot pawed at the first of the grand stairs, could not lift to it. Lewis went to help her. She shied away from him too, now saying, ‘No, no,’ in almost her ordinary voice, and tripped, falling heavily onto the stair.

Dr. Graham knelt beside her. Seeing that she had the help she needed, Lewis led Aurora back through the drawing room, out onto the veranda again. ‘Her son has been killed in Belgium,’ he said. But she had already known that.

Mama’s voice had dwindled to a whisper. Behind Avery’s drowsing golden head, Mabel’s eyes were like caves. Aurora took her hand.

Moon Flit

Victor’s leave only worried Clover more. She did not see how he could carry on in that state of distress, in the dreadful conditions which were becoming known. And now so weak in body. He had not talked about the trenches in daylight, only in the half-dream state at four a.m. But she had seen his feet, and the hideous bruises coursing down his back and flanks. Greyer than before, Madame crept through the house and spent more time on scales and meditation at Galichen’s atelier, seeking comfort. Clover wrote lightly to her sisters. To Aurora:

Galichen requires his followers to be tested for purity, purpose and spiritual fitness
before
they reproduce, so we jumped the gun. But Harriet is such a darling, not even he could carp. While I work she stays with Madame or with Heather Jakes in the atelier kitchen. Work has dried up, and these are my last few weeks for now. I would like to go with that American singer, Elsie Janis, to the Front—but Harriet makes that impossible. I am not complaining. Victor did not want to talk about the war at all when he was home.

That was all Clover could say about that. After Victor’s visit she found it harder to write to him, mired as he was in unimaginable terrors. He had talked of shelling that turned pretty woods into blank prairies, land scarred worse than the mine pit at Butte; he had said (this in fits and starts, in the dark, and she was not sure he was awake) that one night they had camped in a bad smell, and only when a poor boy went off his head, hacking at the ground, did they realize that they were lying on a mud stew of shallow-buried bodies.

She did not want to hurt him more. At last she managed a few sentences that were neither frozen nor frivolous: the first time she’d ever thought twice before speaking or writing to him. When she had addressed her letters, she wrapped Harriet up and took her along to the postbox. The walk along wide pavements soothed her spirit a little, and Harriet’s slight weight gave her ballast. The moon flitted between clouds. She tried not to think what its light shone on, over in France.

Shadow Buff

At Katepwa that second August the mornings were fresh and the weather very fine and hot. Towards evening thunderstorms swelled down the valley like a tide. In late August, when idleness began to pall, Mabel organized a games evening for all their acquaintances to join in: the Dean with his daughter Nell, Miss Frye and her great friend Miss North who was visiting in the area, even Mrs. Gower, Dr. Graham and Lewis Ridgeway.

Aurora went to settle Mama and Avery for the night. The thundery air had made both of them fractious and demanding, and Avery
insisted Aurora hold him for a little while before he climbed into bed with his grandmother. Mama was trying to convey something in a cautious whisper. All that came out, though, was a thread of song: ‘…
sweetheart’s the man in the moon …’
At last she gave up the attempt and opened the coverlet, singing instead,
‘Come out tonight, come out tonight’
to Avery, who joined in her lento, lullaby version of
Buffalo Gals
. Aurora kissed them and dimmed the lamp.

Outside the door she stopped to listen to the two reedy voices in the room behind. She checked her reflection in the hall mirror: pale green dress, cloud of hair pinned up, her little necklace of brilliants. Fine.

She was not the Belle Auroras any more. A mother, a dutiful daughter, a matron in comfortable circumstances—thanks to Chum’s kindness and to Bella’s money, which kept coming and coming in slightly alarming amounts. Missing Bella very much, Aurora went down to the party.

Across the wide arch between dining room and parlour a white sheet hung. The piano stool sat lonely in the middle of the carpet, the furniture moved back. Well behind the stool, the strongest lamp in the house shone—its mica shade tilted to throw a bright beam.

Mabel explained to the little company, ‘This is Shadow Buff. Someone must be
It
, and sit on the stool, staring at the screen. Then everyone else will parade behind, between
It
and the lamplight, so their shadows fall upon the screen like moving pictures—then
It
must guess whose each shadow is. You may disguise yourselves by changing your gait, rumpling your hair, or—look! Adding one of these ridiculous noses.’ She and Aurora had cut and glued paper noses all the afternoon, laughing at each other’s new profiles.

The Dean was unexpectedly good at the game. He identified more than half the strange shadow-creatures, saying it was due to long observation of his parishioners’ idiosyncracies. Mrs. Gower, drawn in to take a turn, sat on the stool, calling out names almost at random. She had shrunk since her son’s death. The opulent clothes hung on her frame; deep new lines fell from mouth to jowl. After five or six of the company had passed behind her she rose from the stool and retired, saying, ‘Well, I am no use at this game, I’ll give over to all of you.’

Miss Frye bounced up to take her place, pulling off the paper beak with which she had successfully duped the Dean, but did not manage to identify anyone but Miss North (whose bulk was undisguisable) and Nell Barr-Smith, a girl she had taught for six years. ‘It would have been surprising if I’d missed you, Nell,’ she cried, very jocular. ‘Stand up straight next time and I won’t know you!’

The darkened room, the parade of shambling creatures, had become nightmarish to Aurora. The thunderstorm was building, that must be it.

Lewis Ridgeway stood next and took the stool, and the line of disguisers moved behind him. He took the game oddly seriously, asking one or other to pass by again, or turn around. ‘Dean, you are betrayed by the pitch of your head,’ Lewis said. ‘Mabel, no one could miss the kindness in your profile, nose or not. Dr. Graham—but what is the matter with your back, sir? Heal thyself!’

Dr. Graham straightened, indignant at being caught, for no one else had known him.

‘And this—’ Lewis paused.

Aurora walked slowly, putting a hitch in her gait, like Mama since her stroke—or perhaps like Aunt Elsie, with one lame booted foot. She waited for Lewis to name her, but he remained silent as she took the last few steps across the sheet.

At the edge her shadow paused and turned to hook-nosed profile with a giddy flourish. Lewis turned his head quickly to see who it was, to a roar of ‘Cheat! Cheat!’ from the crowd. Accepting disgrace, he yielded the chair and found a nose of his own.

The heat grew in advance of the storm. When the sheet was pulled down from the arch to reveal a late supper, iced lemonade was the first aim of the revellers.

No rain this evening. A storm would help, Aurora thought. She slipped out to the long porch and walked along into the shadows at the far end, wishing she could go down to the lake and bathe without worrying her aunt, who believed that anyone with a toe in the water would naturally be electrified during a storm. Bella would bathe with
her, if she was here. Aurora longed for the company of her sisters, for the long-ago time when they’d slid into the water together as children at Christopher Lake. She and Clover had held Bella’s hands the first time, but after that she was a little fish.

Bella would not come to Qu’Appelle, not while she was earning big money; she had not even come to visit when she’d played Regina last spring, had not let Aurora know until afterwards. She must be in trouble, but did not say what the matter was; her letters were short and funny and told you nothing. Clover’s were just as opaque: she was caught up with Victor. A sudden wave of longing hit Aurora, to be loved like Victor loved Clover, simply for herself, not for beauty or skill.

A long rumble of thunder curled at the edge of the valley and receded. Uncle Chum had put the music on, Aunt Elsie was urging the others to dance. Aurora thought she’d rather stay outside than go in and dance with Lewis in that cramped space.

She heard the French door click and Lewis came out at the other end of the porch. He stood looking down to the lake, perhaps not wanting to dance with her, either.

He had not seen her yet. Aurora studied him in the light that spilled from the house. Arrogant, she told herself. Severe, over-fastidious—yet she also knew him to be perceptive and thoughtful. She must have sighed a little; a tilt of his head betrayed that Lewis had sensed her there.

Even then it took him some time to turn. Spontaneity was not his way.

‘That dress is the colour of a luna moth,’ he said.

‘I know. I looked them up in the library.’

‘I did not know it was you,’ he said. ‘Your shadow.’

Aurora smiled in the darkness.

‘A remarkable example of pathetic fallacy,’ he said, as the thunder rumbled out again. ‘Of all this crowd, I thought it would be you I’d know.’

‘I have a spell to cloud men’s minds,’ she said. One of Madame Tatiana’s
mysterioso
lines. Lewis laughed then, at her accent and the mysterious swoop her shadow made.

‘Walk down to the shore with me,’ he said. ‘If you are not afraid of the storm. I think it is some way off yet.’

They met at the steps and he took her hand to help her down. When she tried to retrieve it his grip tightened. They walked that way, hidden by darkness, to the edge of the lake and out onto the pebbly sand. East of the thunderclouds a horned moon had risen over the hills, ready to sit on like the green prop moon.

In the warm air Lewis brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm, and kissed it again. His mouth was cool and smooth as lake water. She felt the snaking curl in her belly and chest, radiating everywhere, the inner appetite wanting, wanting. But remembering the luna moth, which has no mouth and cannot eat, she took her hand away.

‘What is to be done?’ he asked her, as he had in the woods last winter.

‘It is impossible, I know,’ she said, answering all the considerations he had not said: her vanished husband, her child, Lewis’s position.

Water lapped at the sand.

After a moment, she said, ‘I don’t know what you want.’

Lewis walked a little away along the edge of the lake. ‘I know I am clumsy,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. Perhaps his fiancé had told him so. ‘No, it is just difficult.’

‘I want to be honourable,’ he said. ‘To honour what is between us.’

He was looking at her in the darkness, at her silk dress, her silk hair, her costume wings: not seeing her, herself. Naming shadows and fancy moths, this pampered life—it was all false, Aurora thought.

Also false: herself and Lewis.

‘I want to be honest,’ she said. ‘I don’t care much about honour.’

She took off her shoes and stockings, and walked into the water, certain he would not follow. He did not.

Imaginary Ladies

In Portland, East and Verrall stayed in Mrs. Kay’s boarding hotel as they always had, Julius in the next room. Bella was at the Nortonia Hotel, but the delightful tea garden with its Japanese lanterns was closed for the winter. Mr. Pantages had gone
south to see a very pretty quick-change artiste whose final change was Godiva. It was more peaceful without his attentions, but her contract was up in January. She continued to headline every bill—and had her picture on the cover of a song-sheet for
You’d Be Surprised!
—but could not help feeling unsettled.