It was a sort of hop-skip-and-a-jump, like a little spring lamb capering about the fields and running races with the others as they do, but not more than that. They made a ring for her, and we all stood round and watched her, and somebody sang while she was dancing. She had no stockings at all on her clean manicured feet, but a kind of open-work boot of fancy leather. She came back as cool as a cucumber, and no wonder, for she had nearly stayed still, not so much exercise as an ordinary game of blindman’s-buff, and said to me, “Now, pussy, I will escort you to your mommer.”
She took me to the edge of the wall where a little stairs came down, and on the way we passed a boy with one side of him blue and the other green, and another man with wattles like a turkey hanging down his cheeks and a baby’s rattle in his hand. I hated them all, they were streaky and hot, like a nightmare, and simply longed for my nice, clean, natural mother.
But when we got to a door and knocked, a woman like a nurse came and answered it, and through her arm I could see my mother, standing in front of a looking-glass, under a gas globe with a fender over it, and she was streakier than anybody. She had a queer dress on too, with a waistband much too low, and a skirt, shortish, and her hair was yellow!
That finished me, and I screamed, “Oh, Mother, where have you put your black hair?”
Aunt Gerty, who was sitting on a large cane dress-basket, told me to shut my mouth, and Mother turned round and said—
“It is only a wig, dear, and the paint will wash off, and then I will kiss you. Meantime, sit down and keep still!”
So I did, and watched the nurse arranging Mother as if she was a child, nothing more or less. I turned this way and that, trying to get the effect, but it was no use, I still thought she looked horrid.
The others didn’t think so. Aunt Gerty kept saying, “Really, Lucy, I wouldn’t have believed it! A little make-up goes a long way with us poor women, I see. More on the left-hand corner of the cheek, Kate. The lighting is rather unkind here, I happen to know.”
So Kate put more on, and Mother kept taking more off with a shabby bit of an animal’s foot she kept in her hand. She never looked at me at all, she was much too busy. Then suddenly a little scrubby boy came and said something at the door—“Garden scene on!” and went away. The nurse called Kate threw a coat over Mother, and we all three went out and down the stairs.
Then for the first time I twigged what it was—a Theatre! The people were acting all round us. I knew acting well enough when I saw it, but what I didn’t know was behind the scenes, and goodness me, I have heard Aunt Gerty talk about it enough! I was ashamed of having been so stupid, and terribly disillusioned as well.