Abracadaver

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SHE BURST INTO NUMBER 4 dressing-room at the Middlesex and wrenched down her spangled bodice to the waist. ‘You see that?’ she demanded, in case anyone was not riveted by the spectacle. ‘A bruise like a set of Crimea medals! The hussy! The stupid, fumbling baggage!’

Jason Buckmaster, rhetorician, elocutionist to Royalty and privileged at that moment to be in the female dressing-room, raised a disciplined eyebrow. ‘An abrasion, Miss Lola? How damnably inconvenient. Does one gather that the sisterly rapport was a little less than perfect on the high trapeze tonight?’

‘Bloody near killed me, that’s all!’ responded Lola with quivering indignation. ‘In me death-defying leap, too. You’ve seen the end of the act when she swings out to meet me as I dive for her ankles? Well, the silly bitch went too soon and caught me full in the chest with her great feet. I found meself in agony, dangling over the bloody audience with me arms round—if you’ll forgive the expression—her thighs, and precious near dragging off her tights to hold on. Me eyes was watering with pain and I must have been pink with the shame of it. We hung there for two minutes before Mr Winter thought of pulling us in with a window-pole. Like two perishing trout on a line. It ain’t dignified for a serious artiste.’ She glanced down at the strawberry-coloured blotch. ‘And it don’t do nothing for a girl’s prospects.’

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