Steadfast (5 page)

Her heart jumped with nervous elation. But although before she had seen the performers
here, she might have wondered
why
he was anxious to audition her, now she had no trouble imagining the reason. If the
common sort of dancer in this hall was all he’d had to choose from, it was no sort
of choice at all. There was no place in this man’s act for someone who didn’t put
out full effort, every time. Or who tried to cheat her way through a performance.
“Of—of course,” she stammered, and he stood aside for her as she climbed the steps
and entered a very tall, but incredibly narrow corridor. A young, blond lady in a
neat green walking dress with matching hat was just approaching them, and the one-legged
man hailed her with relief.

“Suzie! This is the dancer who wants to audition for Lionel. Would—”

The young lady didn’t even let him finish what he was about to say. “The girl that
wants to try out for assistant? Golly, that’s a bit of all right, you turning up before
I left! Come on, ducky, I’ll take you right to the boss!” She seized Katie’s elbow,
even though there was scarcely enough room for one person in the corridor, much less
two. “I’ll get you to the stage—oh wait, would you have a bit of a costume with you?
That’ll make it all easier than trying out in street clothes.”

“Y-ye—” Katie hadn’t even gotten the whole word out before Suzie was hauling her off
like a mother with a toddler in tow, chattering the whole time. She popped Katie into
a room crammed with dressing tables, mirrors and hanging costumes, waited while she
slipped into her gauze skirt, mended tights, and tight bodice, took possession of
her clothing and bundle, and chivvied her out, further along the corridor, and finally,
before she was quite ready, out onto a bare stage with a couple of bright footlights
shining up on it.

There was the magician, half in, half out of his costume—without the turban, or the
huge, fierce moustache, and with the greasepaint wiped off, but still in the voluminous
crimson pants and wide blue satin sash. “Here’s the little dancer, Lionel!” Suzie
called cheerfully, as the magician turned to see who had intruded. “Hire her quick
so I can get married!”

The magician snorted good-naturedly, and turned to Katie. “All right then, my dear,”
he said in a kind voice that reminded her oddly of her father. “I can see by your
costume you’re no stranger to performing. What is it you do?”

“I’m an acrobat, m-mostly,” she stammered, and before he could command her to do anything—or
she lost her nerve—she went through one of the shorter routines she did for the circus,
a combination of tumbling and contortion, with a little dance thrown in for good measure.
She had not realized that there was a pianist still in the orchestra pit until a few
notes started right after she did; the man was good, he picked up the rhythm of her
performance immediately, and ended when she did, with a flourish as she pirouetted.

“Well!” Suzie said, admiration in her voice. “I’m off! I can’t wait to tell—”

“Not so fast,” the magician said. “Go wheel out the sword-basket, you little minx.”

With a laugh, Suzie went offstage, and returned pushing the basket in which she had
been impaled with swords on its wheeled pedestal before her.

“Now this is how it works,” Lionel said, leading her over to it by the hand. “You
get in here.” He gestured to the giant basket, as Suzie helpfully pushed a little
stair up to it. He led her up the stair by the hand, and she stepped into the basket.
Having seen the act, she dropped down inside. Lionel leaned over and whispered to
her. “Some of the swords have collapsible blades. Some you can just avoid. See the
slots for them?”

When she looked at the inside of the basket from where she crouched inside, she saw
that, rather than being a real basket made of coiled rope, it was a cunning imitation
of one, made of much sturdier material that had pre-made slots for the swords in it.
“I’m going to go very slowly so you can get your skirt out of the way,” he whispered
in further explanation. “I don’t want to ruin it for you. As limber as you are, you
should have no trouble with this. Ready?”

She wasn’t, but she nodded. He popped the top of the basket on. In the next moment,
she heard him utter the fearful roar that the “Turk” had given as he ran a great sword
through the basket.

But true to his promise, the sword was inserted slowly, and she had no trouble avoiding
it. She realized in the next moment
why
he uttered that roar each time he drove in a blade—it told her
where
the sword was coming from. And he was right—it would certainly take a
very
limber girl to fit in the spaces among the blades, but it wasn’t that difficult for
her.

“I say, Lionel, I rather like you doing it slowly like that,” said the pianist from
the pit, as he played. “It looks ever so much more menacing.”

The swords were withdrawn, the top of the basket taken off, and she popped up, breathless
and flushing. Without warning her, Lionel’s hands encircled her waist and he lifted
her out and put her on the floor. “And light as a feather,” the magician said, approvingly.
“Tell your lad you’re posting the banns, Suzie.” He grinned at Katie. “You may consider
yourself hired, my dear—ah—what
is
your name?”

3

“K
-KATIE,” she stammered. “Katie Langford. I—”

But he had plunged his hand into that sash and come out with a pocketbook, from which
he was extracting some pound notes. “You’ll be needing lodgings of course, so we’ll
just advance you your first week’s pay.” He shoved them into her hands before she
could blink. “There you go! Now, Suzie—”

Suzie rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, all right, I’ll see she’s put up. And fed,
I’m
starving and she must be too.” The girl took possession of Katie’s elbow. “Come on,
ducks, let’s get you respectable again, and it’s off to the boarding house.”

“But—” Katie said feebly. Suzie ignored her, and towed her back off to the little
dressing room. It was like being in the circus again, back when her parents were still
alive and Katie had been allowed to change with the rest of the circus dancers and
acrobats. Suzie had the bodice undone in a trice, was pulling off her gauze skirt
while she was doing up her corset, and between them they had her tidy in half the
time it usually took her to dress. “You’re the size my sister used to be,” Suzie said,
as she gently shoved Katie ahead of her, down the now-mostly-deserted hall to the
stage door. “I have an entire trunk of her things in my room I’ve been dying to be
rid of.”

“But—won’t she want them back?” Katie asked, now completely bedazzled by the swift
turn of events.

“She got pregnant and too plump to wear them, and besides, she’s a farm wife now and
she’s got no use for ’em. Coo! That gives me a capital idea!” Suzie went on. “You
can share my room till I move out of it! That will give me plenty of time to coach
you!” She waved at the doorman. “Jack! This is Katie Langford, and she’s hired. As
soon as she has the routine I’ll be off with my boy, so don’t let anyone take advantage
of her!”

The doorman pulled the brim of his hat. “Wouldn’t think of it, Suzie. Welcome, Katie.
Rehearsal is at ten.”

Suzie gave Katie no chance whatsoever to reply. Down the street they went, but not
very far, not nearly as far as Katie would have thought. They cut down an alley to
a quiet cul-de-sac, and it was obvious what their goal was: the only building in the
circle that was still brightly lit up. There was a sign above the front door:
Mrs. Baird’s Theatrical Lodgings For Ladies.

“Boarding house,” Suzie explained, tugging on Katie’s arm when she hesitated, pulling
her up the stairs to the door. “It’s cramped-small, but lovely. Four shillings six
a week, breakfast and supper included. Come on, I have a lovely room.”

There was a heavenly smell wafting down the passage, but Suzie urged her up a narrow
stair, past two landings, and unlocked a door on the third.

Maybe Suzie thought her room was cramped for space, but by the standards of someone
who had lived most of her life in a caravan it was impossibly spacious. There were
two narrow little beds, a wardrobe, a tiny dressing table, a chest at the foot of
each bed, and one at the window. One of the beds was covered in odds and ends; Suzie
cleared it swiftly and dropped Katie’s bundle on it, then hurried her downstairs again.

This time they followed the passage to the back where there was a room containing
a single enormous table with women and girls crammed all around it and a woman presiding
at the end—

A woman that, had Katie not been circus folk, would have caused her to stare and stare,
because she had a beard that would have done any man proud, and every inch of skin
that could be seen was heavily tattooed.

The company was chattering at the tops of its lungs. Suzie had to shout to be heard
over them. “Mrs. Baird! This is Katie! She’s taking my place at the Palace! She’ll
be having my room in a week or so!”

The bearded visage nodded. “That’s all right then!” Mrs. Baird shouted back. “Four
shillings six a week! Breakfast and supper, and we have supper late, after closing!
We’ll settle up in the morning!”

“See, I told you, all settled,” said Suzie, who nudged at the end girl on the bench
nearest her, who obligingly squeezed over enough to give them both room. There were
plates in a stack at their end of the table, and cutlery and cups. Suzie passed what
was needed to Katie, took some for herself, then dished out soup from a big tureen
in the center of the table while someone passed Katie a basket of thickly-sliced brown
bread and a dish of butter. Someone else filled a mug of tea and handed it to her.

After that, Katie didn’t think of anything except the food in front of her. No one
seemed to be counting how many slices of bread she took, nor how many times anyone
refilled her bowl of soup. Not that she was greedy, nor that she stuffed herself,
but it was lovely to be able to eat your fill when you were hungry, and leave the
table feeling sated.

Girls left the table and more girls replaced them. Katie watched and saw that it was
the done thing to take your dirty dishes with you. She and Suzie took theirs and left
them with a cheerful little red-faced maid in an apron three times too big for her
who was washing away with all her might.

“This way,” Suzie said, tugging at her when she turned to go back to the front of
the house and the stairs. “You’ll want to wash up every night when you come home.
You can’t get all the greasepaint off at the theater, and Mrs. Baird likes her linens
to be nice.”

And sure enough, Suzie pulled her to the room of Katie’s dreams, a room with a row
of deep washbasins, and three big bathtubs along one wall, all fed by pipes like Katie
had seen in the loo in the train. Without being prompted, Katie stripped herself almost
half nude and gave herself a good wash in one of the basins, while Suzie did the same.

“Usually I take the time to go upstairs, put on a dressing gown, and come down here
for a
good
wash-up,” Suzie said, as they went in single file up the stair. “But it’s awfully
late and you look knackered.”

“I am, a bit,” Katie confessed. “It was a long day, and I didn’t think I’d see a job
at the end of it.” She gazed in wonder at the two pound notes in clutched in her hand.

“I’ll show you where to get a decent bite at lunch, not that nasty, greasy pub food.
Breakfast here is always the same, oatmeal and toast and fruit.” Suzie sighed dramatically.
“Mrs. Baird is Scottish, you see, and you cannot convince her that breakfast should
be anything else.” She opened the door. “Have you a nightgown?”

Katie blushed. “That’s almost all I have besides my costume,” she admitted, shamefacedly.

“Well, no worries about
that.
My sister, I swear, spent every spare penny on clothing, and now she can’t wear any
of it!” Suzie chuckled, and shut the door just as two more girls came trudging up
the stairs, chattering like sparrows. She flung open the window, and along with the
breeze came the distant sounds of celebration. That was all right; Katie had learned
to sleep through the sounds of celebration while still in her cradle.

This must have been a bed for a child, it was so small; that was why two of them fit
in the room. But she and Suzie were both small, and fit the beds neatly.

She slipped out of her clothing and into her threadbare nightgown, and then tumbled
into the bed. She didn’t even hear Suzie get into hers.

•   •   •

She had expected she would wake before Suzie did—she
always
woke up at the crack of dawn, long before Dick, in order to get out of the caravan
before he woke. Fortunately she didn’t have to cook for him, for all the circus people
ate together in common, and Andy Ball took the cost of it out of their wages.

But she didn’t wake before Suzie did; in fact, it was Suzie who woke her, humming
to herself as she unpacked the trunk at the window.

She raised herself up on her elbow and stared as Suzie held up a skirt. “These will
all fit you,” Suzie said, glancing over her shoulder. “And a good thing, too. Much
longer and they’d be so old fashioned that people would stare at you like some sort
of Guy.”

“I can’t—” Katie began. “I mean, you don’t even
know
me. Why are you being so kind to me?”

Suzie turned and sat abruptly down on the side of the bed, and took Katie’s hand in
hers. “Because, ducks, once upon a time, two starving girls who had just lost their
mum and da got taken in by a bearded lady, and taught how to do some dance steps,
and were gotten jobs down on the Boardwalk.”

“Mrs. Baird?” Katie asked, incredulously.

Suzie nodded and let go of Katie’s hand. “Besides, Lionel hired you right on the spot,
and I have never,
ever,
known Lionel and Jack to be wrong about a person. So! Let’s pick out a gown for you
that you’re not going to die of heat in, go down and make things straight with Mrs.
Baird, and have breakfast. Then it’s off to the theater.”

The gown was clearly not new, but Suzie’s sister had taken good care of her clothing;
it was oyster-colored linen trimmed with blue piping, very neat and a little nautical.
Suzie chose a biscuit-colored skirt and shirtwaist, and the two of them helped each
other with their corsets. Katie felt quite different, wearing something like this,
a gown she would never have chosen for herself. Almost as if she was entirely another
person.

Mrs. Baird, attired in a crisp linen shirtwaist and walking skirt, was sitting in
her office, her ledgers spread out before her, her beard neatly arrayed over her chest.
It looked like a lustrous skein of brown silk. She smiled when they came in, accepted
Katie’s pound note, and counted out the proper change; Katie ran upstairs to put most
of it away safe, then knotted the sixpence into a corner of her handkerchief and put
the latter safely in a petticoat pocket.

Then she ran back downstairs and they went in to breakfast, which was, as Suzie had
promised, oatmeal and toast. But there was plenty of both, and there were fresh strawberries
for the oatmeal and marmalade for the toast, and anyway, it was much the same as the
circus breakfast except that Mrs. Baird’s oatmeal wasn’t burnt on the bottom. Mrs.
Baird didn’t stint on the tea, nor boil it till it was bitter and nasty, nor serve
leaves steeped so often the “tea” was barely colored water. She wasn’t stingy about
the sugar and milk, either. Katie was getting the sense that she was going to get
good value for her boarding money.

The table was not quite as crowded this morning as it had been last night, but girls
and young women kept trailing in one and two at a time. As soon as she and Suzie were
done, they took their dishes back to the kitchen, where a different, slightly older,
but equally cheerful girl was washing away mightily.

After that, they went out into the streets, and in a few moments were at the theater.
Katie could see she would have no difficulty remembering the way back; it really was
supernaturally convenient. Her head was spinning as she contemplated her luck. How
easy it would have been to get into a place where the landlady was abusive, or worse,
a pander! It was almost as if some good spirit had been guiding her from the time
she arrived in Brighton. The doorman was already on duty, and smiled at them both,
touching the brim of his hat to them.

He looked as if he had been a very handsome man before pain and grief had etched lines
in his face, making him look older than he was.
I wonder how he lost his leg?
Katie took care to smile back at him. From his bearing, she guessed that he must have
been a soldier. She knew, vaguely, that there was a war going on . . . in Africa?
Had that been where he’d been hurt?

The theater felt emptier this morning, probably because the acts that knew their parts
in their sleep didn’t feel the need to turn up to rehearse this early. The corridor
was
still
quite dark, and a bit claustrophobic for someone who was used to the vast expanses
underneath circus canvas.

“Let’s go to wardrobe and see if we can’t find something in the Aladdin panto costumes
that you can use for now,” Suzie said, as they threaded their way past the dressing
room. “Here—”

She paused, and there was a set of stairs, just off the corridor, that Katie hadn’t
realized was there. They weren’t regular stairs, not wooden stairs with landings;
they were made of iron and wound in a tight spiral, taking up very little space. Down
they went, ending in a corridor that was a good bit wider than the one above it, and
then left, and into a room filled with costumes on racks, and lit by a long line of
somewhat dirty windows up near the ceiling, where a sewing machine was clattering
away, vigorously pumped by a middle-aged woman in a neat little bonnet.

“Mrs. Littleton!” Suzie called, and the clattering stopped as the woman looked up.
“This is the new girl that’s taking my place. Lionel wants to order a costume for
the Turk number for her from you, but until you finish it, is there something in the
panto costumes she can use? She fits my sister’s old things a treat.”

The costume mistress looked Katie up and down. “I should think so,” she said. “Wait
here.”