Tipping the Velvet (42 page)

But it was. As Walter called his plaintive question, there was a piping from the wing: ‘Here's your Little Jacky, Father! Here!' A figure ran on to the stage, and seized his hand and kissed it. It was Kitty. She was dressed in a boy's sailor-suit - a baggy white blouse with a blue sash, white knickerbockers, stockings, and flat brown shoes; and she had a straw hat slung over her back, on a ribbon. Her hair was rather longer, and had been combed into a curl. Now the band struck up another tune, and she joined her voice with Walter's in a duet.

The crowd clapped her, and smiled. She skipped, and Walter bent and wagged a finger at her, and they laughed. They liked this turn. They liked seeing Kitty - my lovely, saucy, swaggering Kitty - play the child, with her husband, in stockings to the knee. They could not see me, as I blushed and squirmed; they would not have known why I did it, if they had. I hardly knew it, myself; I only felt myself smart with a terrible shame. I could not have felt worse if they had booed her, or pelted her with eggs. But they liked her!

I looked at her a little harder. Then I remembered my opera glasses, and pulled them from my pocket and lifted them to my eyes, and saw her close before me, as close as in a dream. Her hair, though longer, was still nut-brown. Her lashes were still long, she was still as slender as a willow. She had painted out her own lovely freckles and replaced them with a few comical smudges; but I - who had traced the pattern of them, so often, with my fingers - I thought I could catch the shape of them beneath the powder. Her lips were still full lips, and they gleamed as she sang. She lifted her mouth and placed a kiss, between the verses, on Walter's whiskers ...

At that, I let the glasses drop. I saw the boys in the row looking enviously at them, so passed them along the line — I think they got thrown, in the end, to a girl at the balcony. When I looked at the stage again, Kitty and Walter seemed very small. He had lowered himself into the chair, and had drawn Kitty down to sit upon his knee; she had her hands clasped at her breast, and her feet, in their flat boy's shoes, were swinging. But I could bear to see no more of it. I started up. The boys called something - their words were lost. I stumbled up the darkened aisle, and found the exit.

 

Back at the Royal Opera I found the singers still shrieking upon the stage, the horns still blaring. But I only heard this through the doors: I couldn't face picking my way across the stalls to Diana's side, and facing her displeasure. I gave my ticket to the Italian at the cloaks, then sat in the lobby on a velvet chair, watching as the street filled up with waiting hansoms, with women selling flowers, and with gay girls, and renters.

At last there came the cries of ‘Bravo', and the shouts for the soprano. The doors were thrown wide, the lobby filled with chattering people, and in time Diana, Maria, Dickie and the dog emerged, and saw me waiting, and came up to yawn and scold and ask me what the trouble was. I said I had been sick in the gentlemen's lavatory. Diana put a hand to my cheek.

‘The excitements of the day have proved too much for you,' she said.

But she said it rather coldly; and all through the long ride back to Felicity Place we sat in silence. When Mrs Hooper had let us in and bolted the great front door behind us, I walked with Diana to her bedroom, but then stepped past her, towards my own. As I did so, she put a hand on my arm: ‘Where are you going?'

I pulled my arm free. ‘Diana,' I said, ‘I feel wretched. Let me alone.'

She seized me again. ‘You feel wretched,' she said, with scorn in her voice. ‘Do you think it matters to me, how
you
feel about anything? Get in my bedroom at once, you little bitch, and take your clothes off.'

I hesitated. Then: ‘No, Diana,' I said.

She came closer. ‘What?'

There is a way rich people have of saying
What?:
the word is honed, and has a point put on it; it comes out of their mouths like a dagger coming out of a sheath. That is how Diana said it now, in that dim corridor. I felt it pierce me through, and make me sag. I swallowed.

‘I said,
“No,
Diana.'” It was no more than a whisper. But when she heard it, she seized me by the shirt, so that I stumbled. I said, ‘Get off me, you are hurting me! Get off me, get off me! Diana, you will spoil my shirt!'

‘What, this shirt?' she answered. And with that, she put her fingers behind the buttons, and pulled it until it ripped, and my breasts showed bare beneath it. Then she caught hold of the jacket, and tore that from me too - all the time panting as she did so, and with her limbs pressed close against my own. I staggered, and reached for the wall, then placed my arm over my face — I thought she would strike me. But when I looked at her at last I saw that her features were livid, not in fury, but in lust. She reached for my hand, and placed my fingers at the collar of her gown; and, miserable as I was, when I understood what it was that she wanted me to do, I felt my own breath quicken, and my cunt gave a kick. I pulled at the lace, heard a few stitches rip, and the sound worked on me like the tip of a whip, snapping against the haunches of a horse. I tore it from her, her gown of black and white and silver, that came from Worth's to match my costume; and when it was wrecked and trampled on the rug, she had me kneel upon it and fuck her, until she came and came again.

Then she sent me to my own room, anyway.

I lay in the darkness and shook, and put my hands before my mouth to keep from weeping. Upon the cabinet beside the bed, gleaming where the starlight struck it, lay my birthday gift, the wrist-watch. I reached for it, and felt it cold between my fingers; but when I placed it to my ear, I shuddered - for all that it would say was:
Kitty, Kitty, Kitty ...

I cast it from me, then, and put my pillow over my ears to blot the sound out. I would not weep. I would not weep! I would not even think. I would only surrender myself, for ever, to the heartless, seasonless routines of Felicity Place.

 

So I thought then; but my days there were numbered. And the arms of my handsome watch were slowly sweeping them away.

T
he morning after my birthday I slept late; and when I woke, and rang for Blake to bring me coffee, it was to find that Diana had gone out while I was slumbering.

‘Gone out?' I said. ‘Gone where? Who with?' Blake gave a curtsey, and said she didn't know. I sat back against my pillow, and took the cup from her. ‘What was she wearing?' I asked then.

‘She was wearing her green suit, miss, and had her bag with her.'

‘Her bag. Then, she might have been going to the Cavendish Club. Didn't she say, that she was going to her club? Didn't she say when she'd be back?'

‘Please miss, she didn't say a thing. She never does say a thing like that, to me. You might ask Mrs Hooper ...'

I might; but Mrs Hooper had a way about her, of gazing at me as I lay in bed, that I didn't quite care for. I said, ‘No, it doesn't matter.' Then, as Blake bent to sweep my hearth and set a fire there, I sighed. I thought of Diana's rough kisses of the night before - of how they had stirred me, and sickened me, while my heart was still smarting after Kitty. I groaned; and when Blake looked up I said, in a half-hearted sort of way: ‘Don't you get
tired,
Blake, of serving Mrs Lethaby?'

The question made her cheeks flush pink. She looked back to the hearth, then said, ‘I should get tired, miss, with any mistress.'

I answered that I supposed she would. Then, because it was novel to talk to her - and because Diana had gone out without waking me, and I was peevish and bored - I said: ‘So you don't think Mrs Lethaby a hard one, then?'

She coloured again. ‘They are all hard, miss. Else, how would they be mistresses?'

‘Well — but do you
like
it here? Do you
like
being a maid here?'

‘I have a room to myself, which is more than most maids get. Besides,' she stood, and wiped her hands on her apron, ‘Mrs Lethaby don't half pay a decent wage.'

I thought of how she came every morning with the coffee, and every night with jugs of water for the bowls. I said, ‘Don't think me rude, but - whenever do you spent it?'

‘I am saving it, miss!' she said. ‘I aim to emigrate. My friend says, in the colonies a girl with twenty pounds can set up as a landlady of a rooming-house, with girls of her own.'

‘Is that so?' She nodded. ‘And you'd like to run a rooming-house?'

‘Oh yes! They will always need rooming-houses in the colonies, you see, for the people coming in.'

‘Well, that's true. And, how much have you saved?'

She flushed again. ‘Seven pounds, miss.'

I nodded. Then I thought and said: ‘But the colonies, Blake! Could you bear the journey? You should have to live in a boat - suppose there were storms?'

She picked up the scuttle of coal. ‘Oh, I shouldn't mind that, miss!'

I laughed; and so did she. We had never chatted so freely before. I had grown used to calling her only ‘Blake' as Diana did; I had grown used to her curtseys; I had grown used to having her see me as I was now: swollen-eyed and swollen-mouthed, naked in a bed with the sheet at my bosom, and the marks of Diana's kisses at my throat. I had grown used to not
looking
at her, not
seeing
her at all. Now, as she laughed, I found myself gazing at her at last, at her pinking cheeks and at her lashes, which were dark, and thinking,
Oh!
— for she was really rather handsome.

And, as I thought it, there came the old self-consciousness between us. She hoisted her scuttle of coal a little higher, then came to take my tray and ask me, ‘Would there be anything else?' I answered that she might run me a bath; and she curtseyed.

And when I lay soaking in the bathroom I heard the slam of the front door. It was Diana. She came to find me. She had been to the Cavendish, but only to take a letter that must be signed by another lady.

‘I didn't like to wake you,' she said, dipping her hand into the water.

I forgot about Blake, then, and how handsome she was.

 

I forgot about Blake, indeed, for a month or more. Diana gave dinners, and I posed and wore costumes; we made visits to the club, and to Maria's house in Hampstead. All went on as usual. I was occasionally sulky, but, as on the night of our trip to the opera, she found ways of turning my sulkiness to her own lewd advantage - in the end, I hardly knew if I were really cross or only feigning crossness for the sake of her letches. Once or twice I hoped she would
make
me cross - fucking her in a rage, I found, could at the right moment be more thrilling than fucking her in kindness.

Anyway, we went on like this. Then one night there was some quarrel over a suit. We were dressing for a supper at Maria‘s, and I would not wear the clothes she picked for me. ‘Very well,' she said, ‘you may wear what you please!' And she took the carriage, and went off to Hampstead without me. I threw a cup against the wall — then sent for Blake to come and tidy it. And when she came, I remembered how pleasant it had been to chat with her before; and I made her sit with me, and tell me more about her plans.

And after that, she would come and spend a minute or two with me whenever Diana was out; and she became easier with me, and I grew freer with her. And at last I said to her: ‘Lord, Blake, you've been emptying my pot for me for more than a year, and I don't even know what your first name is!'

She smiled, and again looked handsome.

Her name was Zena.

 

Her name was Zena, and her story was a sad one. I had it from her one morning in the autumn of that year, as I lay in Diana's bed, and she came, as usual, to bring breakfast and to see to the fire. Diana herself had risen early, and gone out. I woke to find Zena kneeling at the hearth, working quietly with the coals so as not to disturb me. I shifted beneath the sheets, feeling lazy as an eel. My quim - in the clever way of quims - was still quite slippery, from the passion of the night before.

I lay watching her. She raised a hand to scratch her brow, and when she took the hand away she left a smudge of soot there. Her face, against the smudge, seemed very pale and rather pinched. I said, ‘Zena', and she gave a jump: ‘Yes, miss?'

I hesitated; then, ‘Zena,' I said again, ‘don't mind me asking you something, but I can't help but think of it. Diana once told me - well, that she got you out of a prison. Is it true?'

She turned back to the hearth, and continued to pile coals upon the fire; but I saw her ears turn crimson. She said. ‘They
call
it a re
format
'ry. It wasn't a gaol.'

‘A reformat'ry, then. But it's true you were in one.' She didn't answer. ‘I don't mind it,' I added quickly.