Laurie Graham - The Unfortunates

I had never dreamed how wonderful a theater might be. The carpets were thicker and deeper, the chandeliers were vaster and sparklier than anything I had imagined. And there were marble staircases curving either side of a palm garden. I should have liked to practice majestic sweeping on those stairs.

But most exciting of all was the frenzy of the orchestra preparing to play and the roar of the audience. Aunt Fish was examining every face in the grand tier, and occasionally she would flutter her hand.

‘The Elmore Ferbers are here,’ she observed, ‘in spite of the talk. How brave she looks.’

Uncle Israel looked up from his paper and rolled his eyes.

‘And I spy Mrs Root,’ she pressed on, ‘with a person who may be her sister from Buffalo. What a serviceable gown that twilled silk has turned out to be. I declare I must have seen it a hundred times.’

The lights went down.

‘Now, Poppy,’ she whispered, patting my hand, ‘we need only stay for the first act. And do sit up nicely. With good posture and Honey’s lovely gown I believe you look rather pretty this evening.’

The curtain went up. The stage appeared to be covered with snow, and crowds of people were walking about, just like they were in a real town. There were candy stalls and a merry-go-round and a puppet theater, and everyone seemed happy, except for Petrushka who looked sad and the Ballerina who looked plain dumb. Petrushka wore beautiful blue boots and red satin trousers, but the clothes I liked best were the Wicked Moor’s. He wore gold trousers and a bright green jacket and his hat was made of twisted yellow and violet silk.

Uncle Israel didn’t care for the music.

‘Darned racket,’ he said, and he took out his newspaper again, even though it was far too dark for him to read.

Aunt Fish kept wondering aloud why they hadn’t been able to find a dancer who could point his toes.

I said, ‘I think he’s meant to be dancing that way.’

‘Meant to?’ she said. ‘Of course he isn’t meant to. Ballet is danced with pointed toes, as I would have expected you to know. And I’m sure one pays enough to see correct technique.’

I was anxious that the combination of rackety music and incorrect feet might provoke an early exit, so I fairly begged Aunt Fish to be allowed to stay to the end. This made a sickening spectacle, I dare say, but it worked. I believe she was so astonished by my fawning she quite forgot about leaving the theater early. So the Moor killed Petrushka, the curtain came down, and far below us the livelier element of audience divided, two-thirds whistling and stamping, one-third booing.

With the house lights up, and the prospect of a second supper drawing near, Uncle Israel became cheerful again.

‘Nine-thirty and our duty is done,’ he said. ‘Now that’s what I call a decent show.’

I said, ‘I should like to see it all again.’

‘Well, don’t look at me,’ he said. ‘I’ve swallowed my dose. Bring your sister. Bring your mother.’

Aunt Fish gave him a warning tap with her fan.

‘Dora would find the stairs far too taxing,’ she said. ‘And I don’t know that anything so progressive would suit Honey. Besides, it seemed to me a rather silly story. How much more satisfactory it would have been if someone had married the dainty little doll.’

But I was glad Petrushka never got the Ballerina. It was bad enough he always had to go to his poky room and couldn’t wander around and buy gingerbread and just please himself, without having a prissy girlfriend, too. He was better off dead.

Uncle Israel said why didn’t he treat us all to steak tartare at Luchow’s, but Aunt Fish said she thought we’d had quite enough stimulation for one evening. I didn’t care. I was ready to go home and dream about bright blue boots and turbans made of yellow and violet silk. It seemed to me I had discovered an elegant answer to the question of my mutinous hair.

By the beginning of 1917 President Wilson had taken about as much as he could from the Hun, and even Reilly, who never had a good word to say about the British and believed they intended to take over the world, even she was preparing herself for all-out war. She kept a heavy poker by her bed, in case of a night-time invasion, and was working, in her spare time, on a type of cambric nosebag filled with crushed charcoal biscuits, which she hoped would protect her from phosgene gas. After she had made one for herself and one for the Irish she began work on a miniature one for Sherman Ulysses.

I ran upstairs to report this act of kindness, but it cut no ice with Ma.

‘Little wonder,’ she said, ‘that we are expected to eat our chicken still pink at the bone, when the help amuse themselves all day with handicrafts.’

I said, ‘When the war comes …’ but she would never let me get any further. She was of the firm belief that talking about a thing could bring it on, and that, therefore, the best policy was to look on the bright side. She even planned a season of gay afternoon teas, her first social foray since Pa’s death.

‘Teas,’ she said, ‘are quite suitable for a widow, and not nearly so draining as dinners.’

When war did come, in April, she said, ‘Poppy, you have been humming this past hour and smiling to yourself like a loon. I fail to account for your happiness. I’m sure war is a most inconvenient thing.’

It wasn’t quite happiness I felt, but a little bubble of excitement. Whatever her shortcomings, my mother was deeply patriotic, so it seemed possible that my country’s need of me might outweigh her own claim on my time. I was, after all, nearly twenty years old.

I said, ‘Ma, I should really like to do something for the war effort.’ Nursing was what I had in mind. I liked the crisp femininity of the uniform. I hoped I might be sent to the Western Front and have a handsome blinded officer fall in love with my voice.

‘How proud your father would have been,’ she whispered, and her eyes quite shone.

The very next day Miss Ruby was sent for. She was an unfortunate person who had lost her money through unwise investments and so was forced to do mending and alterations for good families. After a brief discussion with Ma, Miss Ruby provided me with a basket of sludge-brown wool and a lesson in turning heels. I was to be a knitter of socks for the American Expeditionary Force.

I confided in Honey my hopes that I might have been sent to the front line.

‘There are many important ways to serve,’ she said. ‘I shall be very glad of your help at my War Orphans Craft Bazaar, for instance.’

I said, ‘But I wanted to go to France.’

‘And what use would you be to anyone there?’ she asked.

I reminded her that I had studied French for four years, but she laughed.

‘Looking into French books doesn’t signify anything, you goose,’ she said. ‘Minnie Schwab went to Paris and she found they spoke something quite unintelligible. Besides, if you went away who would take care of Ma?’

I said, ‘She has Reilly. Or she could stay with you.’

‘Isn’t that a rather selfish scheme, Poppy,’ she said, ‘to think of uprooting her from her own home?’

Somehow, at the age of nearly twenty, I managed to be both useless and indispensable. My country didn’t need me, my mother couldn’t spare me, and the French would not be able to understand me. I knitted socks in such a fury of frustration, Miss Ruby could barely keep me supplied with yarn.

We suffered almost immediate casualties. Our parlor maid and housemaid had conspired to inconvenience us by leaving together to work in a factory. Then Sherman Ulysses’ day nurse volunteered for the signal corps, and Ma, in the spirit of sharing during a time of national emergency, offered Honey the use of our Irish. Honey wasn’t sure. She and Harry wished their son to be cared for by a person of the highest caliber, someone who would truly understand the ways of an exceptional four year old. My nephew was exceptional in a number of ways. His speech was still immature and when he failed to make himself understood he would lie on the floor and hold his breath until he erupted into a howling rage. ‘Num num,’ he’d sob piteously, ‘num num.’ And all around him would try to guess, with the utmost urgency, what he was trying to convey. Also, though he knew perfectly well how to sit nicely on extra cushions and use his spoon and pusher and drink neatly from a cup, he did not always choose to do so.