Tipping the Velvet (37 page)

 

When I returned to Felicity Place - for that, I saw now, was the name of the square in which my mistress had her home - I was greeted with gifts. I found Diana in the upstairs parlour, bathed and dressed at last, and with her hair in plaits and elaborately pinned. She looked handsome, in a gown of grey and crimson, with her waist very narrow and her back very straight. I recalled those laces and ties I had fumbled over the night before: there was no sign of them now beneath the smooth sheath of her bodice. The thought of that invisible linen and corsetry, which a maid's steady fingers had fastened and concealed and my own trembling hands, I guessed, would later uncover and undo, was rather thrilling. I went to her, and put my hands on her, and kissed her hard upon the mouth, until she laughed. I had woken tired and sore; I had had a dismal time at Green Street; but I did not feel dismal now - I felt limber and hot. If I had had a cock, it would have been twitching.

We embraced for a minute or two; then she moved away and took my hand. ‘Come with me,' she said. ‘I've had a room made ready for you.'

I was at first a little dismayed to learn that I would not be sharing Diana's chamber; but I could not stay dismayed for long. The room to which she led me - it was a little way along the corridor - was hardly less imposing than her own, and quite as grand. Its walls were bare and creamy-white, its carpets gold, its screen and bedstead of bamboo; its dressing-table, moreover, was crowded with goods - a cigarette-case of tortoise-shell, a pair of brushes and a comb, a button-hook of ivory, and various jars and bottles of oils and perfumes. A door beside the bed led to a long, low-ceilinged closet: here, draped on a pair of wooden shoulders, was a dressing-gown of crimson silk, to match Diana's green one; and here, too, was the suit I had been promised: a handsome costume of grey worsted, terribly heavy and terribly smart. Besides this there was a set of drawers, marked
links
and neckties,
collars
and
studs.
These were all full; and on a further rack of shelves, marked
linen,
there was fold after fold of white lawn shirts.

I gazed at all this, then kissed Diana very hard indeed - partly, I must confess, in the hope that she would close her eyes, and thus not see how much I was in awe of her. But when she had gone, I fairly danced about the golden floor in pleasure. I took the suit, and a shirt, and a collar, and a necktie, and laid them all, in proper order, upon the bed. Then I danced again. The bags I had brought with me from Mrs Milne's I carried to the closet and cast, unopened, into the farthest corner.

I wore my suit to supper; it looked, I knew, very well on me. Diana, however, said the cut was not quite right, and that tomorrow she would have Mrs Hooper measure me properly, and send my details to a tailor. I thought her faith in her housekeeper's discretion quite extraordinary; and when that lady had left us - for, as she had at lunch, she filled our plates and glasses, then stood in grave and (I thought) unnerving attendance until dismissed - I said so. Diana laughed.

‘There's a secret to that,' she said; ‘can't you guess it?'

‘You pay her a fortune in wages, I suppose.'

‘Well, perhaps. But didn't you catch Mrs Hooper, gazing through her lashes at you as she served you your soup? Why, she was practically drooling into your plate!'

‘You don't mean - you can't mean - that she is just -
like us?'

She nodded: ‘Of course. And as for little Blake - why, I plucked her, poor child, from a reformatory cell. They had sent her there for corrupting a house-maid ...'

She laughed again, while I marvelled. Then she leaned with her napkin to wipe a splash of gravy from my cheek.

We had been served cutlets and sweetbreads, all very fine. I ate steadily, as I had eaten at breakfast. Diana, however, did more drinking than eating, and more smoking than drinking; and more watching, even, than smoking. After the exchange about the servants, we fell silent: I found that many of the things I said produced a kind of twitching at her lips and brow, as if my words - sensible enough to my ears - amused her; so at last I said no more, and neither did she, until the only sounds were the low hiss of the gas-jets, the steady ticking of the clock upon the mantel, and the clink of my knife and fork against my plate. I thought involuntarily of those merry dinners in the Green Street parlour, with Grace and Mrs Milne. I thought of the supper I might be having with Florence, in the Judd Street public. But then I finished my meal, and Diana threw me one of her pink cigarettes; and when I had grown giddy on that, she came to me and kissed me. And then I remembered that it was hardly for table-talk that I had been engaged.

That night our love-making was more leisurely than it had been before - almost, indeed, tender. Yet she surprised me by seizing my shoulder as I lay on the edge of sleep - my body delightfully sated and my arms and legs entwined with hers - and rousing me to wakefulness. The day had been a day of lessons for me; now came the last of all.

‘You may go, Nancy,' she said, in exactly the tone I had heard her use on her maid and Mrs Hooper. ‘I wish to sleep alone tonight.'

It was the first time she had spoken to me as a servant, and her words drove the lingering warmth of slumber quite from my limbs. Yet I took my leave, uncomplaining, and made my way to the pale room along the hall, where my own cold bed awaited. I liked her kisses, I liked her gifts still more; and if, to keep them, I must obey her - well, so be it. I was used to servicing gents in Soho at a pound a suck; obedience - to such a lady, and in such a setting - seemed at that moment a very trifling labour.

F
or all the strangeness of those first few days and nights at Felicity Place, it did not take me long to settle into my role there and find myself a new routine. This was quite as indolent as the one I had enjoyed at Mrs Milne's; the difference, of course, was that here my indolence had a patron, a lady who paid to keep me well-fed, well-dressed and rested, and demanded only that my vanity should have herself, in return, as its larger target.

At Green Street I was used to waking rather early. Often Grace would bring me tea at half-past seven or so - often, indeed, she would clamber into the warm bed beside me, and we would lie and talk till Mrs Milne called us to breakfast; later I would wash, at the great sink in the downstairs kitchen, and Grace would sometimes come and comb my hair. At Felicity Place, I had nothing to rise for. Breakfast was brought to me, and I received it at Diana's side - or in my own bed, if she had sent me from her the night before. While she was dressed I would drink my coffee and smoke a cigarette, and yawn and rub my eyes; frequently I would fall into a thin kind of slumber, and only wake again when she returned, in a coat and a hat, to slip a gloved hand beneath the counterpane and rouse me with a pinch, or a lewd caress.

‘Wake up, and kiss your mistress good-bye,' she'd say. ‘I shan't be home till supper-time. You must amuse yourself until I return.'

Then I would frown, and grumble. ‘Where are you going?'

‘On a visit, to a friend.'

‘Take me with you!'

‘Not today.'

‘I might sit in the brougham while you make your call ...'

‘I would rather you were here, for me to return to.'

‘You are cruel!'

She would smile, then kiss me. And then she would go; and I would only sink, again, into stupidity.

When I rose at last, I would call for a bath. Diana's bathroom was a handsome one: I might spend an hour or more in there, soaking in the perfumed water, parting my hair, applying the macassar, examining myself before the glass for marks of beauty or for blemishes. In my old life I had made do with soap, with cold-cream and lavender scent and the occasional swipe of spit-black. Now, from the crown of my head to the curve of my toe-nails, there was an unguent for every part of me - oil for my eyebrows and cream for my lashes; a jar of tooth-powder, a box of
blanc-de-perle;
polish for my fingernails and a scarlet stick to redden my mouth; tweezers for drawing the hairs from my nipples, and a stone to take the hard flesh from my heels.

It was quite like dressing for the halls again - except that then, of course, I had had to change at the side of the stage, while the band switched tempo; now, I had entire days to prink in. For Diana was my only audience; and my hours, when out of her company, were a kind of blank. I could not talk to the servants - to strange Mrs Hooper, with her veiled and slithering glances; or to Blake, who flustered me by curtseying to me and calling me ‘miss'; or to Cook, who sent me lunch and supper, but never showed her face outside her kitchen. I might hear their voices, raised in mirth or dispute, if I paused at the green baize door that led to the basement; but I knew myself apart from them, and had my own tight beat to keep to: the bedrooms, and Diana's parlour, and the drawing-room and library. My mistress had said she wouldn't care to have me leave the house, unchaperoned - indeed, she had Mrs Hooper lock the great front door: I heard her turn the key each time she stepped to close it.

I did not much mind my lack of liberty; as I have said, the warmth, the luxury, the kissing and the sleep made me grow stupid, and lazier than ever. I might drift from room to room, soundless and thoughtless, pausing perhaps to gaze at the paintings on the walls; or at the quiet streets and gardens of St John's Wood; or at myself, in Diana's various looking-glasses. I was like a spectre - the ghost, I sometimes imagined, of a handsome youth, who had died in that house and still walked its corridors and chambers, searching, searching, for reminders of the life that he had lost there.

‘What a scare you gave me, miss!' the maid might say, hand at her heart, after she had come upon me, lingering at a bend in the stair or in the shadows of some curtain or alcove; but when I smiled and asked what work had she to do there? or, did she know if the day were a fine or a dull one? she would only blush and look frightened: ‘I'm sure, miss, I couldn't say.'

The climax of my day, the event to which my thoughts naturally tended, and which gave direction and meaning to the hours before it, was Diana's return. There was drama to be had in the choosing of the chamber, and the pose, in which I would arrange myself for her. She might find me smoking in the library, or dozing, with unfastened buttons, in her parlour; I would feign surprise at her entry, or let her rouse me if I pretended sleep. My pleasure at her appearance, however, was real enough. I at once lost that sense of ghostliness, that feeling of waiting in the wing, and grew warm and substantial again before the blaze of her attention. I would light her a cigarette, pour her a drink. If she was weary I would lead her to a chair and stroke her temples; if she was footsore - she wore high black boots, very tightly laced - I would bare her legs and rub the blood back into her toes. If she was amorous - as she frequently was - I would kiss her. She might have me caress her in the library or drawing-room, heedless of the servants who passed beyond the closed door, or who knocked and, at our breathy answering silence, retired unbidden. Or she might send orders that she was not to be disturbed, and lead me to her parlour, to the secret drawer that held the key that unlocked the rosewood trunk.

The opening of this still enthralled and excited me, though I had soon grown used to handling its contents. They were, perhaps, mild enough. There was, of course, the dildo that I have described (though
the
device, or
the instrument,
was what I learned, following Diana, to call it: I think the unnecessary euphemism, with its particular odour of the surgery or house of correction, appealed to her; only when really heated would she call the thing by its proper name - and even then she was as likely to ask for
Monsieur
Dildo, or simply
Monsieur
). Besides this there was an album of photographs of big-buttocked girls with hairless parts, bearing feathers; also a collection of erotic pamphlets and novels, all hymning the delights of what I would call tommistry but what they, like Diana, called
Sapphic Passion.
They were gross enough, I suppose, in their way; but I had never seen the like of them before, and would gaze at them, squirming, till Diana laughed. Then there were cords, and straps and switches - the kind of thing that might be found, I suppose, in a strict governess's closet, certainly nothing heavier. Lastly, there were more of Diana's rose-tipped cigarettes. They contained, as I guessed very early on, some fragrant French tobacco that was mixed with hashish; and they were, I thought, the pleasantest things of all, since, when used in combination with the other items, they rendered their interesting effects more interesting still.

I might be weary or stupid; I might be nauseous with drink; I might be sore, at the hips, with the ache of my monthlies, but the opening of this box, as I have said, never ceased to stir me - I was like a dog twitching and slavering to hear his mistress call out
Bone!