Tipping the Velvet (14 page)

The show ended at Christmas. I should, perhaps, have passed the holiday in Whitstable, for I knew my parents would be disappointed not to have me there. But I knew, too, what Christmas dinner would be like at home. There would be twenty cousins gathered around the table, all talking at once, all stealing the turkey from one another's plates. There would be such a fuss and stir they could not possibly, I thought, miss me - but I knew that Kitty would if I left her for them; and I knew, besides, that I should miss her horribly and only make the occasion miserable for everybody else. So she and I spent it together - with Walter, as ever, in attendance - at Mrs Dendy's table, eating goose, and drinking toast after toast to the coming year with champagne and pale ale.

Of course, there were gifts: presents from home, which Mother forwarded with a stiff little note that I refused to let shame me; presents from Walter (a brooch for Kitty, a hat-pin for me). I sent parcels to Whitstable, and gave gifts at Ma Dendy's; and for Kitty I bought the loveliest thing that I could find: a pearl - a single flawless pearl that was mounted on silver and hung from a chain. It cost ten times as much as I had ever spent on any gift before, and I trembled when I handled it. Mrs Dendy, when I showed it to her, gave a frown. ‘Pearls for tears,' she said, and shook her head: she was very superstitious. Kitty, however, thought it beautiful, and had me fasten it about her neck at once, and seized a mirror to watch it swinging there, an inch beneath the hollow of her lovely throat. ‘I'll never take it off,' she said; and she never did, but wore it ever after - even on the stage, beneath her neck-ties and cravats.

She, of course, bought me a gift. It came in a box with a bow, and wrapped in tissue, and turned out to be a dress: the most handsome dress I had ever possessed, a long, slim evening dress of deepest blue, with a cream satin sash about the waist, and heavy lace at the bosom and hem; a dress, I knew, that was far too fine for me. When I drew it from its wrappings and held it up against me before the glass, I shook my head, quite stricken. ‘It's beautiful,' I said to Kitty, ‘but how can I keep it? It's far too smart. You must take it back, Kitty. It's too expensive.'

But Kitty, who had watched me handle it with dark and shining eyes, only laughed to see me so uneasy. ‘Rubbish!' she said. ‘It's about time you started wearing some decent frocks, instead of those awful old schoolgirlish things you brought with you from home. I have a decent wardrobe - and so should you. Goodness knows we can afford it. And anyway, it can't go back: it was made just for you, like Cinderella's slipper, and is too peculiar a size to fit anybody else.'

Made just for me? That was even worse! ‘Kitty,' I said, ‘I really cannot. I should never feel comfortable in it ...'

‘You must,' she said. ‘And, besides' - she fingered the pearl that I had so recently placed about her neck, and looked away - ‘I am doing so well, now. I can't have my dresser running round in her sister's hand-me-downs for ever. It ain't quite the thing, now is it?' She said it lightly - but all at once I saw the truth of her words. I had my own income now - I had spent two weeks' wages on her pearl and chain; but I had a Whitstable squeamishness, still, about spending money on myself. Now I blushed to think that she had ever thought me dowdy.

And so I kept the dress for Kitty's sake; and wore it, for the first time, a few nights later. The occasion was a party - an end-of-season party at the Marylebone theatre at which we had spent such a happy month. It was to be a very grand affair. Kitty had a new frock of her own made for it, a lovely, low-necked, short-sleeved gown of China satin, pink as the warm pink heart of a rose-bud. I held it for her to step into, and helped her fasten it; then watched her as she pulled her gloves on - aching all the time with the prettiness of her, for the blush of the silk made her red lips all the redder, her throat more creamy, her eyes and hair all the browner and more rich. She wore no jewellery but the pearl that I had given her, and the brooch that had been Walter's gift. They didn't really match - the brooch was of amber. But Kitty could have worn anything - a string of bottle-tops about her neck - and still, I thought, look like a queen.

Helping Kitty with her buttons made me slow with my own dressing; I said that she should go on down without me. When she had done so I pulled on the lovely gown that she had given me, then stepped to the glass to study myself - and to frown at what I saw. The dress was so transforming it was practically a disguise. In the half-light it was dark as midnight; my eyes appeared bluer above it than they really were, and my hair paler, and the long skirt, and the sash, made me seem taller and thinner than ever. I did not look at all like Kitty had, in her pink frock; I looked more like a boy who had donned his sister's ball-gown for a lark. I loosened my plait of hair, then brushed it - then, because I had no time to tie and loop it, twisted it into a knot at the back of my head, and stuck a comb in it. The chignon, I thought, brought out the hard lines of my jaw and cheek-bones, made my wide shoulders wider still. I frowned again, and looked away. It would have to do - and would have the merit, I supposed, of making Kitty look all the daintier at my side.

I went downstairs to join her. When I pushed at the parlour door I found her chatting with the others; they were all still at supper. Tootsie saw me first - and must have nudged Percy, beside her, for he glanced up from his plate and, catching sight of me, gave a whistle. Sims turned my way, then, and looked at me as if he had never seen me before, a forkful of food suspended on its journey to his open mouth. Mrs Dendy followed his gaze, then gave a tremendous cough. ‘Well, Nancy!' she said, ‘and look at you! You have become quite the handsome young lady - and right beneath our noses!'

And at that, Kitty herself turned to me - and showed me such a look of wonder and confusion that it was as if, just for a second,
she
had never seen me before; and I do not know whose cheeks at that moment were the pinker - mine, or hers.

Then she gave a tight little smile. ‘Very nice,' she said, and looked away; so that I thought, miserably, that the dress must suit me even less than I had hoped, and readied myself for a wretched party.

But the party was not wretched; it was gay and genial and loud, and very crowded. The manager had had to build a platform from the end of the stage to the back of the pit, to carry us all, and he had hired the orchestra to play reels and waltzes, and set tables in the wings bearing pastries and jellies, and barrels of beer and bowls of punch, and row upon row of bottles of wine.

We were much complimented, Kitty and I, on our new dresses; and over me, in particular, people smiled and exclaimed - mouthing at me across the noisy hall, ‘How fine you look!' One woman - the conjuror's assistant - took my hand and said, ‘My dear, you're so grown-up tonight, I didn't recognise you!': just what Mrs Dendy had said an hour before. Her words impressed me. Kitty and I stood side by side all evening but when, some time after midnight, she moved away to join a group that had gathered about the champagne tables, I hung back, rather pensive. I wasn't used to thinking of myself as a grown-up woman, but now, clad in that handsome frock of blue and cream, satin and lace, I began at last to feel like one - and to realise, indeed, that I
was
one: that I was eighteen, and had left my father's house perhaps for ever, and earned my own living, and paid rent for my own rooms in London. I watched myself as if from a distance - watched as I supped at my wine as if it were ginger beer, and chatted and larked with the stage-hands, who had once so frightened me; watched as I took a cigarette from a fellow from the orchestra, and lit it, and drew upon it with a sigh of satisfaction. When had I started smoking? I couldn't remember. I had grown so used to holding Kitty's fag for her while she changed suits, that gradually I had taken up the habit myself. I smoked so often, now, that half my fingers - which, four months before, had been permanently pink and puckered, from so many dippings in the oyster-tub - were now stained yellow as mustard at the tips.

The musician - I believe he played the cornet - took a small, insinuating step my way. ‘Are you a friend of the manager's, or what?' he said. ‘I haven't seen you in the hall before.'

I laughed. ‘Yes you have. I'm Nancy, Kitty Butler's dresser.'

He raised his eyebrows, and leaned away to look me up and down. ‘Well! and so you are. I thought you was just a kid. But here, just now, I took you for an actress, or a dancer.'

I smiled, and shook my head. There was a pause while he sipped at his glass and wiped at his moustache. ‘I bet you dance a treat, though, don't you?' he said then. ‘How about it?' He nodded to the crush of waltzing couples at the back of the stage.

‘Oh, no,' I said. ‘I couldn't. I've had too much cham.'

He laughed: ‘All the better!' He put his drink aside, gripped his cigarette between his lips, then put his hands on my waist and lifted me up. I gave a shriek; he began to turn and dip, in a clownish approximation of a waltz-step. The louder I laughed and shrieked, the faster he turned me. A dozen people looked our way, and smiled and clapped.

At last he stumbled and almost fell, then put me down with a thump. ‘Now,' he said breathlessly, ‘tell me I ain't a marvellous dancer.'

‘You ain't,' I said. ‘You've made me giddy as a fish, and' - I felt at the front of my dress - ‘you have spoiled my sash!'

‘I'll fix that for you,' he said, reaching for my waist again. I gave a yelp, and stepped out of his grasp.

‘No you won't! You can push off and leave me in peace.' Now he seized me, and tickled me so that I giggled. Being tickled always makes me laugh, however little I care for the tickler; but after several more minutes of this kind of thing he at last gave up on me, and went back to his pals in the band.

I ran my hands over my sash again. I feared he really had spoiled it, but couldn't see well enough to be sure. I finished my drink with a gulp - it was, I suppose, my sixth or seventh glass - and slipped from the stage. I made my way first to the lavatory, then headed downstairs to the change-room. This had been opened tonight only so that the ladies should have a place to hang their coats, and it was cold and empty and rather dim; but it had a looking-glass: and it was to this that I now stepped, squinting and tugging at my dress to pull it straight.

I had been there for no longer than a minute when there came the sound of footsteps in the passageway beyond, and then a silence. I turned my head to see who was there, and found that it was Kitty. She had her shoulder against the doorframe and her arms folded. She wasn't standing as one normally stands - as she usually stood - in an evening gown. She was standing as she did when she was on stage, with her trousers on - rather cockily. Her face was turned towards me and I couldn't see her rope of hair, or the swell of her breasts. Her cheeks were very pale; there was a stain upon her skirt where some champagne had dripped upon it from an over-spilling glass.

‘Wot cheer, Kitty,' I said. But she did not return my smile, only watched me, levelly. I looked uncertainly back to the glass, and continued working at my sash. When she spoke at last, I knew at once that she was rather drunk.

‘Seen something you fancy?' she said. I turned to her again in surprise, and she took a step into the room.

‘What?'

‘I said, “Seen something you fancy, Nancy?” Everybody else here tonight seems to have. Seems to have seen something that has rather caught their eye.'

I swallowed, unsure of what reply to make to her. She walked closer, then stopped a few paces from me, and continued to fix me with the same even, arrogant gaze.

‘You were very fresh with that horn-player, weren't you?' she said then.

I blinked. ‘We were just having a bit of a lark.'

‘A bit of a lark? His hands were all over you.'

‘Oh Kitty, they weren't!' My voice almost trembled. It was horrible to see her so savage; I don't believe that, in all the weeks that we had spent together, she had ever so much as raised her voice to me in impatience.

‘Yes they were,' she said. ‘I was watching - me and half the party. You know what they'll be calling you soon, don't you?' “Miss Flirt”.'

Miss Flirt! Now I didn't know whether to cry or to laugh.

‘How can you say such a thing?' I asked her.

‘Because it's true.' She sounded all at once rather sullen. ‘I wouldn't have bought you such a fine dress, if I'd known you were only going to wear it to go flirting in.'

‘Oh!' I stamped my foot, unsteadily - I was as drunk, I suppose, as she was. ‘Oh!' I put my fingers to the neck of my gown, and began to fumble with its fastenings. ‘I shall take the dam' dress off right here and you shall have it back,' I said, ‘if that's how you feel about it!'

At that she took another step towards me and seized my arm. ‘Don't be a fool,' she said in a slightly chastened tone. I shook her off and continued to work - quite fruitlessly, since the wine, together with my anger and surprise, had made me terribly clumsy - at the buttons of my frock. Kitty took hold of me again; soon we were almost tussling.

‘I won't have you call me a flirt!' I said as she tugged at me. ‘How could you call me one? How could you? Oh! If you just knew -' I put my hand to the back of my collar; her fingers followed my own, her face came close. Seeing it, I felt all at once quite dazed. I thought I had become her sister, as she wanted. I thought I had my queer desires cribbed and chilled and chastened. Now I knew only that her arm was about me, her hand on mine, her breath hot upon my cheek. I grasped her - not the better to push her away, but in order to hold her nearer. Gradually we ceased our wrestling and grew still, our breaths ragged, our hearts thudding. Her eyes were round and dark as jet; I felt her fingers leave my hand and move against my neck.