Tipping the Velvet (22 page)

It was quite like being at Mrs Dendy's again, with all our friends around us - except, of course, that Walter wasn't one of them. He came only occasionally to the Brit, and hardly at all to Stamford Hill; when he did, I couldn't bear to see him so ill at ease, and so found business of my own to keep me occupied elsewhere, and left Kitty to deal with him. She, I noticed, was as awkward and self-conscious as he when he came calling, and seemed to prefer his letters to his person - for he sent his news to her by post, these days, so drastically had our old friendship dwindled. But she said she did not mind, and I understood she didn't wish to talk of something that was painful to her. I knew it must be very hard for her, to think that Walter had guessed her secret, and hated it.

W
e had opened at the Brit on Boxing Day, and rehearsed all through the weeks before it. Christmas, therefore, had been rather swallowed up; and when Mother had written - as she had the year before - to ask me home for it, I had had to send another apologetic note, to say I was again too busy. It was now almost a year and a half since I had left them; a year and a half since I had seen the sea and had a decent fresh oyster-supper. It was a long time - and no matter how gloomy and spiteful Alice's letter had made me, I could not help but miss them all and wonder how they fared. One day in January I came across my old tin trunk with its yellow enamel inscription. I lifted the lid - and found Davy's map of Kent pasted on the underside, with Whitstable marked with a faded arrow, ‘To show me where home was, in case I forgot.' He had meant it as a joke; they had none of them thought I really would forget them. Now, however, it must seem to them that I had.

I closed the trunk with a bang; I had felt my eyes begin to smart. When Kitty came running to see what the noise was, I was weeping.

‘Hey,' she said, and put her arm about me. ‘What's this? Not tears?'

‘I thought of home,' I said, between my sobs, ‘and wanted to go there, suddenly.'

She touched my cheek, then put her fingers to her lips and licked them. ‘Pure brine,' she said. ‘That's why you miss it. I'm amazed you have managed to survive this long away from the sea, without shrivelling up like a bit of old seaweed. I should never have taken you away from Whitstable Bay. Miss Mermaid ...'

I smiled, at last, to hear her use a name I thought she had forgotten; then I sighed. ‘I would like to go back,' I said, ‘for a day or two ...'

‘A day or
two!
I shall die without you!' She laughed, and looked away; and I guessed that she was only partly joking, for in all the months that we had spent together, we had not been separated for so much as a night. I felt that old queer tightness in my breast, and quickly kissed her. She raised her hands to hold my face; but again she turned her gaze away.

‘You must go,' she said, ‘if it makes you sad like this. I shall manage.'

‘I shall hate it too,' I said. My tears had dried; it was I, now, who was doing the consoling. ‘And anyway, I shan't be able to go until we close at Hoxton - and that is weeks away.' She nodded, and looked thoughtful.

It
was
weeks away, for
Cinderella
was not due to finish until Easter; in the middle of February, however, I found myself suddenly and unexpectedly at liberty. There was a fire at the Britannia. There were always fires in theatres in those days - halls were regularly being burned to the ground, then built up again, better than before, and no one thought anything of it; and the fire at the Brit had been small enough, and no one got injured. But the theatre had had to be evacuated, and there had been problems with the exits; afterwards an inspector came, looked at the building, and said a new escape door must be added. He closed the theatre while the work was done: tickets were returned, apologies pasted up; and for a whole half-week we found ourselves on holiday.

Urged on by Kitty - for she had grown suddenly gallant about letting me go - I took my chance. I wrote to Mother and told her that, if I was still welcome, I should be home the following day - that was Sunday - and would stay till Wednesday night. Then I went shopping, to buy presents for the family: there was something thrilling after all, I found, about the idea of returning to Whitstable after so long, with a parcel of gifts from London ...

Even so, it was hard to part from Kitty.

‘You will be all right?' I said to her. ‘You won't be lonely here?'

‘I shall be horribly lonely. I expect you will come back and find me dead from loneliness!'

‘Why don't you come with me? We might catch a later train -'

‘No, Nan; you should see your family without me.'

‘I shall think about you every minute.'

‘And I shall think of you ...'

‘Oh, Kitty ...'

She had been tapping at her tooth with the pearl of her necklace; when I put my mouth upon hers I felt it, cold and smooth and hard, between our lips. She let me kiss her, then moved her head so that our cheeks touched; then she put her arms about my waist and held me to her rather fiercely - quite as if she loved me more than anything.

 

Whitstable, when I drew into it later that morning, seemed very changed - very small and grey, and with a sea that was wider, and a sky that was lower and less blue, than I remembered. I leaned from the carriage window to gaze at it all, and so saw Father and Davy, at the station, a moment or two before they saw me. Even they looked different - I felt a rush of aching love and strange regret, to think it - Father a little older, a little shrunken, somehow; Davy slightly stouter, and redder in the face.

When they saw me, stepping from the train on to the platform, they came running.

‘Nance! My dearest girl ... !' This was Father. We embraced - awkwardly, for I had all my parcels with me, and a hat upon my head with a veil around it. One of the parcels fell to the ground and he bent to retrieve it, then hurried to help me with the others. Davy, meanwhile, took my hand, then kissed my cheek through the mesh of my veil.

‘Just look at you,' he said. ‘All dressed up to the ninety-nines ! Quite the lady, ain't she, Pa?' His cheek grew redder than ever.

Father straightened, and looked me over, then gave a wide smile that seemed to pull, somewhat, at the corners of his eyes.

‘Very smart,' he said. ‘Your mother won't know you, hardly.'

I did indeed, I suppose, look a little dressy, but I had not thought about it until that moment. All my clothes were good ones, these days, for I had long ago got rid of those girlish hand-me-downs with which I'd first left home. I had only wanted, that morning, to look nice. Now I felt self-conscious.

The self-consciousness did not diminish as I walked, on Father's arm, the little distance to our oyster-shop. The house, I thought, was shabbier than ever. The weather-boards above the shop showed more wood, now, than blue paint; and the sign -
Astley's Oysters, the Best in Kent
- hung on one hinge, and was cracked where the rainwater had soaked it. The stairs we climbed were dark and narrow, the room into which I finally emerged smaller and more cramped than I could have believed possible. Worst of all the street, the stairs, the room, the people in it, all reeked of fish! It was a stink that was as familiar to me as the scent of my own armpit; but I was startled, now, to think that I had ever lived in it and thought it ordinary.

My surprise, I hope, was lost in the general bustle of my arrival. I had expected Mother and Alice to be waiting for me; they were - but so were half-a-dozen other people, each one of whom exclaimed when I appeared, and stepped forward (except for Alice) to embrace me. I had to smile and submit to being squeezed and patted until I grew quite breathless. Rhoda - still my brother's sweetheart - was there, looking perter than ever; Aunty Ro, too, had come along to welcome me back, together with her son, my cousin George, and her daughter, Liza, and Liza's baby - except that the baby was not a baby at all now, but a little boy in frills. Liza, I saw, was large with child again; I had been told this in a letter, I believe, but had forgotten it.

I took off my hat once all the welcomes had been said, and my heavy coat with it. Mother looked me up and down. She said, ‘My goodness, Nance, how tall and fine you look! I do believe you're taller, almost, than your Father.' I did feel tall in that tiny, overcrowded room: but I could hardly, I thought, have really grown. It was just that I was standing rather straighter. I gazed around - a little proud, despite my awkwardness - and found a seat, and tea was brought. I still had not exchanged a word with Alice.

Father asked after Kitty, and I said that she was well. Where was she playing now? they asked me. Where were we living? Rosina said, there had been talk that I had gone upon the stage myself -? And at that I only answered, that I did ‘sometimes join Kitty in the act'.

‘Well, fancy that!'

I cannot say what squeamishness still made me keep the fact of my success from them. It was, I think, because the act - as I have said - was so entangled with my love: I could not bear to have them pry at it, or frown at it, or pass the idea of it on to others, carelessly ...

It was, I suppose now, a kind of priggishness; indeed, I hadn't been amongst them more than half-an-hour before George, my cousin, gave a cry: ‘What's happened to your accent, Nance? You've gone all
lardy-dah.'
I looked at him in real surprise, then listened hard next time I spoke. It was quite true, my voice had changed. I was not posh, as he had claimed, but there is a certain lilt that theatre people have - a rather odd, unpredictable mixture of all the accents of the halls, from coster-man to
lion comique;
and I, all unknowingly, had picked it up. I sounded rather like Kitty - occasionally, even like Walter. I had never realised it till now.

We drank our tea; there was a lot of fussing over the little boy. Someone handed him to me for me to nurse - when I took him, however, he cried.

‘Oh dear!'
said his mother, tickling him. ‘Your Aunty Nance will think you a real cry-baby.' She took him from me, then held him near my face: ‘Shake hands!' She seized his arm and waved it. ‘Shake hands with Aunty Nancy, like a proper little gent!' He jerked at her hip, like some great swollen pistol that at any second might go off; but I dutifully took his fingers in my own, and squeezed them. Of course, he snatched his hand away at once, and only wailed the louder. Everybody laughed. George caught the baby up and swung him high, so that his hair brushed the cracked and yellowed plaster of the ceiling. ‘Who's a little soldier, then?' he cried.

I looked at Alice, and she glanced away.

The baby quietened at last; the room grew warmer. I saw Rhoda lean towards my brother and whisper, and when he nodded, she coughed. She said, ‘Nancy, you won't have heard our bit of good news.' I looked at her properly. She had her jacket off and her feet, I noticed, were bare but for a pair of woollen stockings. She seemed very much at home.

Now she held out her hand. On the second finger from the left there was a narrow strip of gold, with a tiny stone - sapphire or diamond, it was too small to tell - mounted upon it. An engagement ring.

I blushed - I don't know why - and forced a smile. ‘Oh, Rhoda! I
am
glad. Davy! How nice for you.' I was not glad; it was not nice; the thought of having Rhoda as a sister-in-law - of having any kind of sister-in-law! - was peculiarly horrible. But I must have sounded pleased enough, for they both grew pink and smug.

Then Aunt Rosina nodded towards my own hand. ‘No sign of a ring on your finger yet, Nance?'

I saw Alice shift in her seat, and shook my head: ‘Not yet, no.' Father opened his mouth to speak; I could not bear, however, for the conversation to run down that particular road. I got up, and retrieved my bags. ‘I've bought you all some things,' I said, ‘from London.'

There were murmurs and little interested ‘Oh's at that. Mother said I shouldn't have, but reached for her spectacles and looked expectant. I went to my Aunt, first, and handed her a bag full of packages. ‘These are for Uncle Joe, and Mike and the girls. This is for you.' George next: I had bought him a silver hip-flask. Then Liza, and the baby ... I went all around the crowded room, and finished up at Alice: ‘This is for you.' Her parcel - a hat, in a hat box - was the biggest. She took it from me with the smallest, straightest, stiffest smile you ever saw, and began slowly and self-consciously to pull at its ribbons.

Now everybody had a gift but me. I sat and watched as they tore at their packages, chewing at my knuckle and smiling into my hand. One by one the objects appeared, and were turned and examined in the late morning light. The room grew quite hushed.

‘My word, Nancy,' said Father at last, ‘you have done us proud.' I had bought him a watch-guard, thick and bright as the one that Walter wore; he held it in his hand, and it seemed brighter than ever against the red of his palm, the faded wool of his jacket. He laughed: ‘I shall look quite the thing in this, now, shan't I?' The laugh, however, didn't sound quite natural.