Steadfast (17 page)

“Katie!” she heard Peggy bellow from inside the dressing room. “Ducks, if you’re out
there, squeeze yourself in!”

She blinked, but obeyed, as the others made space for her. She couldn’t imagine what
on earth they wanted with
her,
but—

“Here she is. Ah good, still got them toe shoes on,” Peggy proclaimed. “Lionel, hoist
her up on that table.”

Before she had any idea of what was going on, Katie found Lionel lifting her up at
the waist onto a small round table, putting her above the floor. She was surrounded
by Peggy, Mayhew, and Lionel, all seated, and several other old hands who had crammed
into the dressing room.

“All right, then, ducks,” Peggy said, her hands folded across her midsection. “You
know that twiddly business you do in the morning to limber up before anyone gets here?
Do that for us, will you?”

That business
was something Katie had never thought anyone paid any attention to—a combination
of dance and contortion she did while the piano player warmed up. She generally did
it off in a corner, to keep out of the way. When had Peggy seen her at it? And why
on earth would she want Katie to do it now?

Well . . .
maybe because I’m good at it . . .
It was something she had practiced at the behest of her parents, who wanted her to
make a solo act of it eventually. It was far more elaborate than anything she had
ever done with her husband; she had kept him from ever seeing it, because . . . because
she had wanted something for herself alone. She had wanted something that she absolutely
knew she was good at.

Well . . . if Peggy liked it, it might be good enough for a solo act. Maybe good enough
to put at the bottom of the bill and shove everyone else up a slot, so there would
at least not be the dreaded
gap.

She took a deep breath, caught her balance, and began.

Unlike the circus contortions, which were flashy and lively, this was slow, graceful,
deliberate . . . and very, very difficult. She began by slowly bending over backward,
sliding her hands down along the backs of her legs, until she placed them flat on
the top of the table. Then, just as slowly, she raised her legs into the air, balancing
on her hands, scissored her legs slowly, did it again, knifed them, bent her knees
and arched her back, balanced her toes on the top of her head. She held that for a
good couple of breaths, then put her feet flat down on the table again, one on either
side of her hands, and slowly stood up. Then she brought her left leg up behind her,
reached back and caught her ankle in her hands, and pulled her leg right up over the
top of her head, balancing on one foot. Then she inched her way in a slow circle,
still with her leg held up over her head.

She never stopped moving, never paused for a moment, as she went through contortion
after contortion. She never gave anyone the “pause” that would signal a moment of
applause. The whole routine took about ten minutes, and when it was over, she was
dripping with sweat, and the room was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.

She ended as she had begun, standing with arms outstretched, looking down at Peggy
and Mayhew, and very aware of Lionel behind her. Finally, she lowered her arms.

The people packed into the dressing room uttered a collective sigh.

“Give that child a towel, one of you!” Peggy ordered, breaking the silence. “And come
down off the table now, ducks.” As Katie took the offered towel, and obeyed, Peggy
turned to the theater owner. “Well?” she demanded.

Mayhew chewed furiously on his moustache. “Well . . .” he said, doubtfully. “It’s
a damn good act. But it ain’t
bally—”

“It is if we say it is, Charlie,” Lionel interrupted. “Seriously? All people know
is that
Russian Ballet
is some sort of dancing, and is something they haven’t seen before. If it looks like
dance, and we dress her up right, her act will be taken as whatever we say it is.
Plus I have another couple of ideas I know Katie can pull off if you’ll give her the
chance.”

Wait—what?
Katie paused in mopping her face to stare at him.

“Charlie,” called a girl from the door. “Everybody in the chorus
knows
she’s heaps and heaps better than the rest of us. She’d make us all look like fools
if she cared to, but she’s a trooper and fits hersel’ roight in. You oughter give
her a chance.”

“Well. . . .” Mayhew chewed on his moustache some more. Finally he turned to Lionel.
“If you two can give me a three-routine act in a week—”

Caught in shock and amazement, Katie listened dumbly as Lionel promised she would—somehow!—throw
together a three-dance act in a week, and fiercely negotiated a rate for her that
practically made her head spin.

Panic flooded her at that. How would she
ever
be able to put together two brand new dance-routines in two weeks’ time—much less
dance routines that would pass for this
Russian Ballet
business? Her mind went absolutely blank. It was impossible, completely impossible.

But then—then everyone
else
began coming up with ideas!

One of the Italian acrobats suddenly sprang to his feet, smacking himself in the forehead
with the palm of his hand.
“Bah, imbecile!”
he exclaimed. “Guiseppe, we have just the thing! The ribbon!”

His brother made the same gesture. “Of course! I know just-a where she is!” He jumped
to
his
feet, wormed his way out of the dressing room, and evidently dashed off somewhere.
Lionel looked around at the bodies cramming his dressing room. “Let’s move this to
the stage,” he suggested. “If we’re going to come up with something for Miss Kate,
it might as well be there.”

By the time all the interested parties had shuffled back to the front of the house,
Katie reckoned that the “interested parties” numbered about a quarter of the folks
that worked there. She could understand why some of the musicians and stagehands would
feel intimately concerned over the financial well-being of the music hall, but what
surprised her was that Peggy and a few others of the better traveling acts were as
well, people who had no reason to worry, even if Mayhew came a-cropper over this.

But Charlie’s a good master,
she realized, quickly. He was fair in his pay and his hours, fair in how he ran his
hall, and people liked working for him. If Charlie went under, whoever took this venue
probably would not be nearly so nice.

By the time people had arrayed themselves over the stage and in the seats in the orchestra
pit, the acrobat had returned with what he had sought.

“Our sister, she saw this thing, wanted it in the act,” Guiseppe explained, unfurling
what looked like yards and yards of silk ribbon from the end of a wand. “It never
fit, and then she made Mama happy and got married to a nice clerk from Napoli. It-a
works like this—”

He demonstrated, and Katie fell instantly in love. Guiseppe made the ribbon form into
spirals, swirls, circles . . . it was
magical!
She took it from him, and started her contortion routine again, only this time, framing
it with the intricate patterns of the swirling ribbon.

Mayhew hooted, and began applauding. “Now
there’s
the ticket!” he exclaimed, as Katie broke the usual pattern by getting up on her
toes and pattering backward, trailing a curlicue of ribbon behind her, then executed
four turns with the ribbon encircling her. Then she circled the stage in a series
of jump-turns, swirling the ribbon around her, stopped in the middle, and spun like
a top with the ribbon orbiting her. “Now
that
looks like
bally!”

“I think we can sell that as Russian,” Lionel said, as she spun to a stop. “Seriously,
Mayhew, I have
seen
these Russians, and there’s a fair amount of their act that’s based on gimmick, and
this is just the right sort of gimmick to work for us. That Pavlova girl—one of her
little dances, she pulls her skirt up around her like a flower closing petals for
the night, another one she’s supposed to be a swan dying . . . I’m not saying she’s
not a sensational dancer, because she is, but our audience don’t care about sensational
so much as spectacle.”

Katie played with the ribbon without actually dancing with it, listening while they
talked.

“I’ve seen the Russians, too, Charlie,” Peggy said. “Katie’s no Pavlova, but the long
and the short of it is, this ain’t Covent Garden either. Our people want something
pretty and fun, and our Katie can give ’em that, without needing a genius in toe shoes.”

That actually made Katie feel a lot less anxious. She remembered what Mary Small had
said about her dancing . . . well, if she was supposed to come up to some sort of
impossible standard, she might just as well tell them it wasn’t going to happen! But
produce something pretty and fun . . . yes, she could do that.

Lionel watched her playing about with the ribbon as she worked out how it moved. “We
should go through the panto costumes and see if we can find some fairy wings or somewhat
for Kate, and with that ribbon, there’s the second third of the act right there.”
He got up and paced a bit, watching her. “First routine—living statue. Just her and
some drapery, and a white light on her. Second routine—fairy, with the ribbon.”

“All you need then, is the last third,” Peggy observed, tucking her frothy dressing
gown around herself.

“Well, let’s see if
this
won’t do that.”

Hearing the familiar voice of Mrs. Litttleton, the Wardrobe Mistress, everyone turned
to see her laboring onto the stage beneath what looked like a giant cloud. She dropped
the whole thing on the stage at Katie’s feet, then stooped down to pluck at the folds.
“Anyone remember four years ago, that horse-faced Meg Farmer, how she came back from
Paris and wouldn’t have it but I make up this costume? Twenty yards of silk tulle,
if it’s an inch, and she could no more manipulate it like that Loie Fuller wench than
I can fly.”

“I remember she nearly strangled herself on it,” Lionel chuckled. “The general impression
I got was a lot of flailing about.”

“She danced like a cow,” observed one of the chorus girls, the one who had been nice
about Katie’s dancing. “And that was without putting on that set of sails.”

“Ah, here we go!” The Wardrobe Mistress evidently found something, and before Katie
was quite aware what was happening, she found herself swathed in yard and yards of
ethereal fabric. She felt rather as if she was the center pole of a tent—

“Here—” she felt something like the ribbon-wand thrust into each hand, except that
these wands were attached somehow in all the fabric. The Wardrobe Mistress stepped
away a bit, and eyed her. “All right, Katie, see what you can do with that. Move the
wands about. Something like those skirt-dances I’ve seen Travelers do—start slow,
see what you can do with it.”

But Katie found her attention caught by something up in the light above the orchestra
pit. She stared upward, manipulating the wands a little, but not really paying attention.

It was one of Lionel’s little sylphs, but this one seemed to have more of a sense
of modesty than the others, for it was swathed from neck to below the ankles in what
looked for all the world just like this voluminous gown the Wardrobe Mistress had
enveloped
her
in. And as soon as Katie’s eyes lit on the little creature, she began to dance with
the fabric—

Katie watched her, fascinated at first, and then, as she watched, she understood
immediately
just what it was she was supposed to do! As the sylph moved, making every movement
as exaggerated as possible, Katie imitated her. It was exactly like learning a new
circus dance number, where you followed the one girl who knew how to do it. This was
exactly what she needed—if she could
see
what it was she was supposed to be doing, she could almost always imitate it.

She started out simply, turning first one way, then the other, leading the turns with
her arms, the wands in her hands pulling the fabric along behind like wings. The more
the costume answered her, the bolder she became, sweeping her arms up and around in
huge serpentine gestures as she turned and twisted.

“There now!” applauded the Wardrobe Mistress. “That’s much more like the thing. Don’t
that Fuller woman have all manner of lights and things on her when she dances, Lionel?”

“That’s what I recall,” Lionel observed. “I think we could manage with a couple of
magic lanterns and some plain colored slides.”

“And I think that’s the third part of the act,” Mayhew declared, levering himself
up out of the chair he’d taken in the pits. “All right, boys and girls, I applaud
you all. Ruination is not staring us in the face, and I dunno how to thank you except
that there’s not a man jack or woman jill of you that’s going to pay for a beer at
my bar for the rest of your last two weeks.”

Spontaneous applause erupted at that pronouncement, as the Wardrobe Mistress helped
Katie out of the strange gown and hung it up so that all the folds fell correctly.

“Now, let’s get ourselves to our beds. Good night’s work. Harder work for you to come,
Miss Kate.” Mayhew tipped two fingers at her. “Hope you’re up to it. You’ve got an
act to build.”

9

T
WO weeks. Katie had to turn a few vague movements into three dance routines in two
weeks. She’d have completely given up in two days, if it hadn’t been for Lionel, Mrs.
Littleton, and Peggy, who all took it upon themselves to help her. Mrs. Littleton
spent all of the first day tinkering with the voluminous gown, fussing with the many
layers until it suddenly settled down and behaved itself, as if it was made of magic.

Although . . . that wasn’t entirely Mrs. Littleton’s doing. Lionel’s sylphs helped.
They seemed to like the idea of buzzing about inside the thing, adding lift right
when it was most needed and making sure nothing got twisted up.

It was Peggy who decided that the dance with the dress should be called Dance of the
Fire Lily, and the magic lanterns should project red and yellow on the folds as she
twisted and flung them around. With that theme in mind, Davey, the piano player, came
up with some wild music of a sort that Katie had
never
heard of in her life—although Peggy rolled her eyes and said “Good Gad, Davey, not
old Samson! Really?”

“The band knows it by heart,” Davey replied, pounding it out on the piano, as Katie
worked out moves to it.

“They should, since every skirt-dancer and kootch-dancer from here to Blackpool thinks
it’ll make her act
class,”
Peggy snorted, and sang through her nose.
“Neener neener nee-ner, neener neener nee-ner. Neener neener neee-ner, neener neener
neee-ner!”

“Pay no attention, Katie,” Lionel advised her, as she faltered. “Davey’s right, it’s
the perfect music, and if it’s familiar, that’ll be all to the good. Let’s not forget
who brings down the house every night by singing ‘She Sits Among Her Cabbages and
Peas,’ now, shall we?”

Peggy made a raspberry at him, but said no more on the subject of the music for what
Katie was coming to think of as the “Dress Dance.” Because goodness only knew, it
wasn’t
she
who was the star of the thing, it was the dress.

Davey picked out perfect music for the other two pieces of the act as well. Something
bright and sprightly for the Fairy Dance with the ribbon—Lionel said it was by a gent
named Mendelssohn—and something slow, dignified, and pretty that Lionel said was by
a fellow named Glook, or something like that. A strange name, but Katie couldn’t pay
it any mind when the music was so nice. Davey wouldn’t let anyone in the band play
the Statue Dance piece except himself and the flute-player, he said they’d just hammer
it out like it was the acrobat music and ruin it. The same went for the Fairy Dance,
it was just Davey and the flute player and a couple of the fiddlers.

For the Fairy Dance she used her old dance dress, but Mrs. Littleton came up with
a pretty spangled bit of gauze to wear over the top of it, some spangled gauze wings,
and a masked headdress that had beaded wire curlicue things on top of it. She just
had to make sure the ribbon didn’t get tangled in the curlicues—but that was where
Lionel’s sylphs came in again.

Mrs. Littleton managed the cleverest thing for the Statue Dance—an all-over white
body stocking like weight lifters wore under their leopard skins so they wouldn’t
be indecent, and over that, long, slender pantaloons and a bit of a tunic belted in
at the waist. So no matter how she twisted herself up, there wouldn’t be anything
improper showing.

With that, she wore a white wig and dusted her face and hands with white powder so
she looked like a proper statue, like rich people had out in their gardens, or nice
theaters had arrayed out front.

She was awfully glad that Lionel had given over the idea of starting rehearsal for
the new act for the fall season, because things were absolutely mad, trying to work
out the dancing act
and
make sure she got in at least a part-rehearsal on the magic act every day.

Charlie was going to get his revenge on the perfidious “Russian Dancer” who had canceled
on him, too. He left the playbills
exactly
as he’d paid to have them printed up. After all, what was the woman going to do?
Complain? She was the one who had canceled so she could make more money in London
under a different name—she couldn’t do anything about Charlie using her old name without
exposing her fraud.

So Katie was being billed as “Natalya Bayonova, the brilliant Russian Ballerina, straight
from the Ballet Russe de Moscow.” There wasn’t any “Ballet Russe de Moscow” so far
as any of them knew, but then, that hadn’t been
their
choice of name in the first place. And anyway, as Peggy said, “No one coming to a
music hall for some fun is going to know the Bally Russe de Moscow from the Bally
Russe de Blackpool, and as long as they get something they ain’t seen before, nor
will they care.”

•   •   •

As Katie fanned herself with a scrap of scenery board, it occurred to her that there
was something peculiar in the fact that the hottest summer anyone could ever remember
was also being known as the “Summer of the Russian Dancers.” Russia was cold, wasn’t
it? She wondered how the
real
Russian Dancers in London were dealing with the heat. Poor things, she pitied them;
they didn’t have the tricks that Jack had taught her, the Fire Magician ways of making
the heat invigorate you. This morning over breakfast some of the girls had been talking
about how horses and even people had been dropping dead in the streets of the heat—not
here, but in London and other towns. At least Brighton had the advantage of a steady
sea breeze to keep the heat from killing people.

Charlie was scarcely the only impresario in Brighton to be featuring a Russian act,
although in some cases connecting “Russian” to the “act” was something of a strain.
Charlie had merely been the first to catch wind of how popular the Russians were going
to be and act on it—and look where that had gotten him! He thought he’d bagged a good
headline act, and then the act had abandoned him and his theater! She wondered how
many other impresarios were going to find themselves in the same situation before
the summer was out. The lure of a lot of money quickly might well overcome the risk
of finding people unwilling to hire you once the craze was over.

The biggest and best music hall in the city, The Coliseum, had what Katie supposed
to be the genuine article. After all, a theater that boasted the likes of Dan Leno
and Little Tich could probably afford Anna Pavlova herself, if she wasn’t already
booked in London. The ballerina’s name, Irina Tcherkaskaya, sounded genuine enough,
at least to Katie. Katie had looked over the playbill from The Coliseum, and the dancer’s
program sounded quite original—“The Dance of the Polivetsian,” “Saber Dance,” “Dance
of the Rusalka,” and “Scene from Swan Lake.” They all sounded like solo pieces from
larger ballets.

The Brighton Music Hall also had a Russian Ballerina that was probably at least a
real ballerina, if not a real Russian. She was billed only as “Marina,” and her bill
listed “Tzarina Dance,” “Bayadere,” and “Scene from Sleeping Beauty.”

Just about every other theater and music hall had
something
that was supposed to be Russian. It was when you got down to this level that Katie
had some severe doubts about the authenticity of any of the dancers, much less their
performances. After all, look at her: she knew
she
was an outright fraud.

And putting some poor can-can dancer in a fur hat and fur-trimmed dress was not going
to make her Russian, it was only going to make her faint with the heat.

According to Jack, there was plenty of that going on in the lesser halls. Mrs. Littleton
had reported a run on rabbit fur to the point where there wasn’t any to be had in
the entire town, and wouldn’t you know it, there were at least three different “Russian
Cossack Choruses” being billed in halls smaller than this one.

The smart thing, of course, if you couldn’t get a real Russian dancer, was to cobble
up some act around a dancer that was something
like
the acts that were in all the papers coming down from London. As long as you could
get your hands on a reasonably good ballerina, one that might actually have seen Pavlova
and the Ballet Russe, Peggy was right; people would pay to see the act and wouldn’t
complain.

And that was what other halls larger than Charlie’s but smaller than The Coliseum
were doing. You could read the playbills in the papers, and it was actually rather
funny. There were enough “Dying Swans” populating the stages to have put a serious
dent in the supply of white feathers and down—and Lionel had made the joke that if
only the Swans would just
die
there’d be roast bird in every kitchen in Brighton.

There was even one comic version of the “Dying Swan,” according to the girls at the
boarding house, who’d seen it on their dark day and had come back convulsed with laughter.
One of the male comics whose act was to be in a dress had got himself a swan costume
made up and staggered about the stage scattering handfuls of chicken feathers before
falling over, kicking his legs in the air, and taking a good long time to “die.” Katie
hoped she would get a chance to see him.

There were “Ghosts” of various flowers flinging themselves into and out of the wings—“Ghost
of a Rose,” “Ghost of a Violet,” “Ghost of a Lily,” “Ghost of a Daisy” . . . and to
add a pleasing variety to the mix, some dancers were crossing the flowers with the
swans and creating “Dying Rose,” “Dying Lily,” “Dying Camellia.” How one was supposed
to create an impression of a dying flower, she had no idea. Not to mention that with
all these creatures dropping dead on the stage, it was not creating the atmosphere
of fun and laughter you were
supposed
to find in a music hall . . .

Oh well, she supposed the other acts just had to make up for it.

The various kootch- and skirt-dancers down on the Boardwalk, not to be left out of
the craze, had relabeled themselves “Russian Harem Girls,” “Russian Cossack Slaves,”
and “Russian Sword Dancers.” They didn’t actually
change
anything, of course, just put up new signs. And it wasn’t as if the men that crowded
the kootch-tents were actually there for the
dancing.

I’d actually like to see the real thing, the real Russian dancers,
she thought, wistfully, waiting for the dog act to finish its last run through the
hoops and the curtains to close so she could run out and take her pose on the pedestal
for the Living Icon number. She hadn’t any notion of what an “Icon” was supposed to
be, other than it was some sort of Russian art . . . but then, neither would anyone
out there in the audience. Lionel had picked the name, and she trusted it looked all
right on the playbill.

As Peggy had reminded her over and over again, just before the singer took her leave
of the house regulars and went on to her next booking—what mattered was only that
people got their money’s worth, even if they had no idea what it was that they wanted.
It was never about reality in music hall. “All those people out there, all they care
about is that they see something they ain’t never seen before in the middle of the
fun they know and like. Then they can go home and say
Coo! Mazie! I saw one of them Rooshans when we was on ’oliday, and she didn’t half
make me eyes stand out in me head!
And by the time they get done with the telling, you wouldn’t recognize your own act.”

Well, that was true enough. Every one of the people out there in that audience was
perfectly willing to believe that she and Lionel were some sort of wild Turkish magicians,
and that
all
the magic was perfectly real. They all believed that the Clever Cow actually counted
things, and not that the Cow’s handler signaled how many times she was to paw her
hoof by tapping her with a wand. They believed with all their hearts that the Drunken
Gent comedian was going to tumble into the band pit at any moment, and that the swords
the latest juggling act was tossing through the air were sharp enough to shave with.

Given that, believing that Katie was a Russian was scarcely a stretch for them.

The dogs ran off, the trainer ran off collecting their hoops as he went, and the curtain
closed. One of the stagehands ran on from the opposite wing, placed Katie’s platform,
and waited while she ran on from the other side. He lifted her up onto it, she took
her pose, and waited.

This was it. This was the moment when they would all see if the hard work of the last
two weeks was going to pay off. This would be the very first performance before an
audience that was not of her peers.

The curtain parted. Behind her, the backdrop was plain black. The curtain only parted
halfway, leaving her framed in red velvet against the black. The limelight burned
down on her from above. She stood absolutely motionless, and should, she hoped, look
like a white stone statue in the middle of the stage.

The crowd hushed its noise. That was a very good sign; music hall crowds were a noisy
lot, this wasn’t like a theater, where people were expected to sit quietly in seats.
The best seats in the music hall were the ones at the tables, where people drank and
ate and were jolly, and expected to be able to enjoy everything about being there
as loudly as they liked.