Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [198]
A touch of burlesque in the theatre at the Monte, saucy, vulgar, but never indecent or the Mounties would close it down. The faro tables, the girls in Paradise Alley, the howling of dogs, the drunks, the losers and the winners, they were all there in Beth’s music, and Jack had never been more proud of her.
He looked at her up on the stage, head bent over her fiddle, dark curls tumbling down her back, her slender body moving sensuously with the music. He realized she’d grown from a pretty girl into a beautiful woman in the years he’d known her, without him noticing the changes.
As the piece ended and Beth lowered her bow, the audience went wild. Those sitting leapt up, stamping their feet, clapping their hands and cheering. On and on it went, everyone calling for an encore. But Beth smiled and shook her head, mouthed her thanks to the audience for she couldn’t be heard above the applause, and turned to leave the stage.
Jack understood why. That composition of her own had drained her. All the pain, hardships, joys and delights were in it. She couldn’t surpass it, and didn’t even want to try.
They couldn’t leave Dawson the following day as they’d hoped, for all the boats were fully booked, but Jack managed to get them a first-class cabin on the Maybelline on 3 August, in five days’ time.
The following afternoon, while out on her own buying a few things she needed, Beth spotted Dolores, who used to work in the Golden Nugget, coming out of a grocery shop. She was heavily pregnant.
When she saw Beth she came running over, almost breathless with excitement at seeing her. ‘I was so worried about you when you disappeared. No one seemed to know where you’d gone!’ she exclaimed.
‘I went off to Bonanza to stay with Jack,’ Beth explained. ‘I’d had enough of Dawson. But what about you? Where did you go after the Nugget burned down?’
Dolores laughed. ‘That fire was a lucky break for me. I met Sol that night, he was one of the firemen. He took me back to his place and we’ve been together ever since.’
They chatted for some time, Beth telling her that she and Jack were going off to Vancouver. Dolores said she helped out in the laundry, and Sol was building an extra room on to their cabin for the baby.
‘So when is it due?’ Beth asked, pleased to hear it had all worked out for the girl.
‘Well, the doctor thinks it’s going to be in November,’ Dolores said. ‘But we can’t be sure of the date cos I can’t remember when I had my last do-da.’
Beth smiled at Dolores’ name for menstruation. Having ascertained that Sol appeared to be delighted he was going to be a father and that Dolores was well and happy, she said goodbye and went back to the Fairview.
Thinking over their conversation as she walked, it suddenly occurred to Beth that she hadn’t had a do-da either for some time. She could remember having one soon after she got to Jack’s, and a second one which must have been a month later in early June, but nothing since then.
Because she’d been told back in Montreal that she’d never get pregnant again, she’d had no reason to expect or want any man to be careful, and it certainly never occurred to her that the doctor could have been wrong.
Back in the room at the Fairview, she looked carefully at herself in the mirror. She could see nothing different about herself, she certainly didn’t feel any different either, yet she was over a month late. What if she was pregnant?
She closed her eyes and held her stomach, wishing with all her heart that she was. To have Jack’s baby would be the very best thing in the whole world.
But she said nothing to him when