Diary of a Painted Lady by Maggi Andersen Page B

said.
    “No!”
    The man frowned. “You’re not going to be much good to me, if you don’t want to show your body.” He turned to leave.
    “Wait! I’ll do what I have to when the time comes.”
    “I need to know if you look the part.”
    “You can see that by looking at me.”
    He nodded. “Show me your legs then.”
    Gina pulled her skirt up to reveal her stocking-tops held up with pink garters and a glimpse of naked thigh.
    “Higher.”
    Blushing, she pushed it up to the frilled-edge of her bloomers.
    To her relief, the man said, “You’ll do. Two shillings a performance. Be here tomorrow morning at seven.”
    Gina returned to the flat. She stacked the remainder of Milo’s paintings away in a corner and covered them with a cloth. In every one, her naive face stared back at her. She couldn’t bear to look at them. She tried to buoy herself up with the knowledge that tomorrow her new career would begin.
     
    * * *  
     
    “Great to have you here, ducks,” Mabel said.
    Gina gave her a hug. “I’m grateful to you for helping me, Mabel. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
    “You did it yourself, dearie,” Mabel said. “Looking like you do.”
    Gina stood still as the wardrobe lady draped and stitched the brief costume. She was to be Artemis, goddess of the hunt, pulling back her bow as if about to let the arrow fly. She looked in the mirror at the almost transparent cloth hanging in folds from her shoulders and showing a good deal of her chest. The costume only went to mid-thigh. The wardrobe lady pulled a golden cord tightly around Gina’s waist raising the skirt even higher. In the mirror, her breasts heaved alarmingly and her nipples rose to display themselves. She quickly covered them.
    She’d been comfortable under Milo’s gaze; his artistic eye looked at form and not really at her. A theatre full of men studying her was a different thing altogether. Freezing drafts whipped around the old theatre flattening the cloth against her body and making her afraid she’d catch her death. It was a regular occurrence for the girls to be off sick.
    Some of the goddesses wore even less than Gina as they shivered in the wings, watching the stage. She barely took the show in, concentrating on taking deep, rhythmical breaths to steady her nerves. She held up her chin. An artist’s model was adept at holding a pose. She would keep her bow and arrow still. If she wobbled or dropped it, she would lose her new employment before she’d even begun.
    After the sword swallower left the stage, the curtains closed and the rush was on. The painted backdrop depicting a Grecian ruin unfurled with a bang. The girls dashed onto the stage.
    Gina took her place beside them, each with their own story: Gaia, the earth mother, with her hand on a cradle; Hestia, goddess of hearth and home, holding a candle; Demeter, goddess of the harvest cradling a sheath of wheat; Hera, wife of Zeus, majestic in her peacock robe and Athena, goddess of weaving, sitting at her loom. A girl rushed in late to stand among the flowers that grew at Persephone’s feet wherever she walked.
    As Gina went into her pose, Dave ran on with a large dog of indefinable breed. He ordered it to sit beside her. When it began to scratch, its owner hissed a command from the wings and it stopped. “Ready?” Dave said. Disconcerted by the animal, Gina fixed her arrow and pulled back her bow, her straining fingers threatening to release it at any moment.
    The curtain swung back to whistles and applause. Gina’s knees shook. It seemed an age until it swept shut again. The girls rose and stretched, murmuring to one another and the dog began to scratch in earnest before being led away. Gina flexed her stiff fingers. She saw Mabel clapping from the wings. She’d succeeded in holding her difficult pose right to the end.
    The manager hoped the semi-nudity of the Classical piece would be acceptable to the general public, but the theatre was besieged by