Tipping the Velvet (17 page)

I had removed my dress and petticoats, and buttoned a shirt over my stays. Kitty had found a morning-suit of black and grey for me to wear, and had a similar costume ready for herself. She looked me over.

‘You must take your drawers off,' she said quietly - the door was shut fast, but Walter was audibly pacing the little parlour beyond it - ‘or else they'll bunch, beneath the trousers.'

I blushed, then slid the drawers down my thighs and kicked them off, so that I stood clad only in the shirt and a pair of stockings, gartered at the knee. I had once, as a girl, worn a suit of my brother's to a masquerade at a party. That, however, had been many years before; it was quite different, now, to pull Kitty's handsome trousers up my naked hips, and button them over that delicate place that Kitty herself had so recently set smarting. I took a step, and blushed still harder. I felt as though I had never had legs before - or, rather, that I had never known, quite, what it really felt like to have
two
legs, joined at the top.

I reached for Kitty, and pulled her to me. ‘I wish Walter were not waiting for us,' I whispered - though, in truth, there was something rather thrilling about embracing her, in such a costume, with Walter so near and so unknowing.

That thought - and the soundless kiss which followed it - made the trousers feel still stranger. When Kitty stepped away to see to her own suit, I looked at her a little wonderingly. I said, ‘How can you dress like this, before a hall of strangers, every night, and not feel queer?'

She fastened the clip of her braces, and shrugged. ‘I have worn sillier costumes.'

‘I didn't mean that it was silly. I meant - well, if I were to be beside you, in these' - I took another couple of steps - ‘oh Kitty, I don't think I should be able to keep from kissing you!'

She put a finger to her lips; then pushed at the fringe of her hair. She said, ‘You will have to get used to it, for Walter's plan to work. Otherwise - well, what a
show that
would be!'

I laughed; but the words
Walter's plan
had made my stomach lurch in sudden panic, and the laughter sounded rather hollow. I gazed down at my own two legs. The trousers, after all, were far too short for me, and showed my stockings at the ankle. I said, ‘It won't do, will it, Kitty? He won't really think that it will do - will he?'

 

He did. ‘Oh yes!' he cried when we emerged at last together, all dressed up. ‘Oh yes, but what a team you make!' He was more excited than I had ever seen him. He had us stand together, with our arms linked; then he made us turn, and do again the little stiff-legged dance that he had caught us at before. And all the time he walked about us with narrowed eyes, stroking his chin and nodding.

‘We shall need a suit for you, of course,' he said to me. ‘A number of suits, indeed, to match Kitty's. But that we can easily arrange.' He took my hat from my head, and my plait fell down upon my shoulder. ‘Something must be done about your hair; but the colour, at least, is perfect - a wonderful contrast with Kitty's, so the folk in the gallery will have no trouble telling you apart.' He winked, then stood surveying me a little longer with his hands behind his head. He had removed his jacket. He wore a shirt of green with a deep white collar - he was always a fancy dresser — and the armpits of the shirt were dark with sweat. I said, ‘You really mean it, Walter?' and he nodded: ‘Nancy, I do.'

He kept us busy, that day, all through the afternoon. The outing we had planned, the Sunday stroll, was all forgotten, the driver who was waiting he paid off and sent away. The house being empty, we worked at Mrs Dendy's piano, quite as hard as if it were a weekday morning - except that now I sang too, and not to save Kitty's voice, as I had sometimes done before, but to try out my own alongside it. We sang again the song that Walter had caught us singing, ‘If Ever I Cease to Love' — but, of course, we were self-conscious now, and it sounded terribly lame. Then we tried some of Kitty's songs, that I had heard her sing at Canterbury and knew by heart; and they went a little better. And finally we tried a new song, one of the West End songs that were fashionable then — the one about strolling through Piccadilly with a pocket so full of sovereigns all the ladies look, and smile, and wink their eyes. It is sung by mashers even now; but it was Kitty and I who had it first, and when we tried it out together that afternoon - changing the author's ‘I' to ‘we', linking our arms, and promenading over the parlour-rug with our voices raised in a harmony - well, it sounded sweeter and more comical than I could have thought possible. We sang it once, and then a second time, and then a third and fourth; and each time I grew a little freer, a little gayer, and a little less certain of the foolishness of Walter's plan ...

At length, when our throats were hoarse and our heads were swimming with sovereigns and winks, he closed the piano lid and let us rest. We made tea, and talked of other things. I looked at Kitty and remembered that I had another, more pressing, reason to be gay and giddy, and I began to wish that Walter would leave us. That, and my tiredness, made me dull with him: I believe he thought he had overworked me. So very soon he did leave; and when the door was closed on him I rose and went to Kitty, and put my arms about her. She wouldn't let me kiss her in the parlour; but after a moment she led me up through the darkening house, back to our bedroom. Here the suit - which I had, indeed, grown rather used to while strolling in it for Walter - began to feel strange again. When Kitty undressed I pulled her to me; and it was lewd to feel her naked hip come pressing in between my trousered legs. She ran her hand once, very lightly, over my buttons, until I began to shake with the wanting of her. Then she drew the suit from me entirely and we lay together, naked as shadows beneath the counterpane; and then she touched me again.

We lay until the front door slammed, and we heard Mrs Dendy's cough, and Tootsie laughing on the stair. Then Kitty said we should rise, and dress, or the others might wonder; and for the second time that day I lay and watched her wash, and pull on stockings and a skirt, through lazy eyes.

As I did so, I put a hand to my breast. There was a dull movement there, a kind of pulling or folding, or melting, exactly as if my chest were the hot, soft wall of a candle, falling in upon a burning wick. I gave a sigh. Kitty heard, and saw my stricken face, and came to me; then she moved my hand away and placed her lips, very softly, over my heart.

I was eighteen, and knew nothing. I thought, at that moment, that I would die of love for her.

 

We did not see Walter, and there was no more talk about his plan to put me on the stage at Kitty's side, until two evenings later, when he arrived at Mrs Dendy's with a parcel, marked
Nan Astley.
It was the last night of the year: he had come to supper, and to stay to hear the chimes of midnight with us. When at last they came - struck out upon the bells of Brixton church - he raised his glass. ‘To Kitty and Nan!' he cried. He gazed at me, and then - more lingeringly - at Kitty. ‘To their new partnership, that will bring fame and fortune to us all in 1889, and ever after!' We were at the parlour-table with Ma Dendy and the Professor, and now we joined our voices with his, and took up his toast; but Kitty and I exchanged one swift, secret glance, and I thought - with a little thrill of pleasure and triumph that I couldn't quite suppress — poor man! how could he know what we were really celebrating?

Only now did Walter present me with his package, and smile to see me open it. But I knew already what it would hold: a suit, a stage suit of serge and velvet, cut to my size to the pattern of one of Kitty's - but blue to match my eyes, where hers was brown. I held it up against me, and Walter nodded. ‘Now that,' he said, ‘will make all the difference. Just you trot upstairs and slip that on, and then we'll see what Mrs Dendy has to say about it.'

I did as he asked; then paused for a moment to study myself in the glass. I had put on a pair of my own plain black boots and piled my hair up inside a hat. I had placed a cigarette behind my ear - I had even taken off my stays, to make my flat chest flatter. I looked a little like my brother Davy - only, perhaps, rather handsomer. I shook my head. Four nights before I had stood in the same spot, marvelling to see myself dressed as a grown-up woman. Now, there had been one quiet visit to a tailor's shop and here I was, a boy - a boy with buttons and a belt. The thought, once again, was a saucy one; I felt I ought not to encourage it. I went down at once to the parlour, put my hands in my pockets and posed before them all, and made ready to receive their praises.

When I stood turning upon the rug, however, Walter was rather subdued, and Mrs Dendy thoughtful. When, at their request, I took Kitty's arm and we sang a quick chorus, Walter stood back, frowned, and shook his head.

‘It's not quite right,' he said. ‘It grieves me to say it, but - it just won't do.'

I turned, in dismay, to Kitty. She was fiddling with her necklace, sucking at the chain and tapping with the pearl upon a tooth. She, too, looked grave. She said, ‘There is something queer about it; but I can't say what...'

I gazed down at myself. I took my hands from my pockets and folded my arms, and Walter shook his head again. ‘It's a perfect fit,' he said. ‘The colour is good. And yet there's something -
unpleasing -
about it. What is it?'

Mrs Dendy gave a cough. ‘Take a step,' she said to me. I did so. ‘Now a turn - that's right. Now be a dear and light me a fag.' I did this for her too, then waited while she drew on her cigarette and coughed again.

‘She's too real,' she said at last, to Walter.

‘Too real?'

‘Too real. She looks like a boy. Which I know she is supposed to - but, if you follow me, she looks like a real boy. Her face and her figure and her bearing on her feet. And that ain't quite the idea now, is it?'

Now I felt more awkward than ever. I looked at Kitty and she gave a nervous kind of laugh. Walter, however, had lost his frown, and his eyes looked blue and wide as a child's. ‘Damn it, Ma,' he said, ‘but you're right!' He put his hand to his brow, then stepped to the door: we heard his heavy, rapid tread upon the stairs, heard footsteps in the room above our heads - Sims's and Percy's room - and then the slam of a door, higher up. When he returned he held a strange assortment of objects: a pair of gentleman's shoes, a sewing-basket, a couple of ribbons, and Kitty's make-up box. These he dumped about me on the carpet. Then, with a hasty ‘Pardon me, Nancy', he pulled the jacket from me, and the boots. The jacket he handed to Kitty, along with the sewing-basket: ‘Put a few tucks down the inside of that waist,' he said, pointing to the seam. The boots he cast aside, and replaced with the pair of shoes - Sims's shoes they were, and small, low-heeled and rather dainty; and Walter made them daintier still by tying ribbons in a bow at the laces. To advertise the bows a bit - and because, without my boots, I was now a little shorter - he caught hold of the bottom of my trouser-legs, and gave them cuffs.

Next he seized my head and tilted it back, and worked upon my lips and lashes with carmine and spit-black from Kitty's box: he did this gently as a girl. Then he plucked the cigarette from behind my ear and cast it on to the mantel. Finally he turned to Kitty and snapped his fingers. She, infected by his air of haste and purpose, had begun to sew as he had shown her. Now she raised the jacket to her cheek to bite the final length of cotton from it, and when that was done he took it from her and shrugged me into it and buttoned it over my breast.

Then he stood back, and cocked his head.

I gazed down at myself once again. My new shoes looked quaint and girlish, like a principal boy's in a pantomime. The trousers were shorter, their line rather spoiled. The jacket flared a little, above and below the waist, quite as if I had hips and a bosom - but it felt tighter than before, and not a half as comfortable. My face, of course, I could not see: I had to turn and squint into a picture over the hearth, and saw it reflected there - all eyes and lips - over the red nose and whiskers of ‘Rackity Jack'.

I looked at the others. Mrs Dendy and the Professor smiled, Kitty did not look at all nervous, now. Walter was flushed, and seemed awed by his own handiwork. He folded his arms.

‘Perfect,' he said.

 

After that - clad not exactly as a boy but, rather confusingly, as the boy I would have been, had I been more of a girl - my entry into the profession was rather rapid. The very next day Walter sent my costume to a seamstress, and had it properly re-sewn; within a week he had borrowed a hall and a band from a manager who owed him a favour, and had Kitty and I, in our matching suits, practising upon the stage. It was not at all like singing in Mrs Dendy's parlour. The strangers, the dark and empty hall, disconcerted me; I was stiff and awkward, quite unable to master the few simple strolling steps that Kitty and Walter tried patiently to teach me. At last Walter handed me a cane, and said I should just stand and lean upon it, and let Kitty dance; and that was better, and I grew easier, and the song began to sound funny again. When we had finished and were practising our bows, some of the men in the orchestra clapped us.

Kitty sat and took a cup of tea, then; but Walter led me off to a seat in the stalls, away from the others, and looked grave.

‘Nan,' he began, ‘I told you when all this started that I would not press you, and I meant it; I would give up the business altogether before I forced a girl upon the stage against her will. There are fellows who do that sort of thing, you know, fellows who think of nothing but their own pockets. But I am not one of them; and besides, you are my friend.
But
-' he took a breath. ‘We have come this far, the three of us; and you are good - I promise you, you are good.'