Tipping the Velvet (46 page)

It was the smile, I think, which deranged her at last. ‘Maria,' she said - for Maria was with her, too, along with Dickie and Evelyn: perhaps they had all come to the bedroom to retrieve a dirty book - ‘Maria, get Mrs Hooper. I want Nancy's things brought here: she is leaving. And a dress for Blake. They are both going back to the gutter, where I got them from.' Her voice was cold; as she took a step towards me, however, it grew warmer. ‘You little slut!' she said. ‘You little trollop! You whore, you harlot, you strumpet, you bitch!' But they were words that she had used on me a thousand times before, in lust or passion; and now, said in hate, they were curiously devoid of any sting.

Beside me, however, Zena had begun to shake. As she did so, the dildo bobbed; and when Diana caught the motion she gave a roar: ‘Take that thing from your hips!' At once, Zena fumbled with the straps; her fingers jumped so that she could barely grasp the buckles, and I stepped to help her. All the time we worked, Diana hurled abuses at her - she was a half-wit, a street-whore, a common little frigstress. The ladies at the door looked on, and laughed. One of them - it might have been Evelyn - nodded to the trunk, and called: ‘Use the strap on her, Diana!' Diana curled her lip.

‘They will strap her well enough, at the reformatory,' she said; ‘when she returns there.'

At that, Zena fell to her knees and began to cry. Diana gave a sneer, and drew her foot away so that the tears should not fall upon her sandal. Dickie - the necktie at her throat pulled loose, the lilac at her lapel squashed flat, and browning - said: ‘Can't we see them fuck again? Diana, make them do it, for our pleasure!'

But Diana shook her head; and the gaze that she turned on me was as cold and as dead as the eye of a lantern, when the flame inside has been quite put out. She said: ‘They have fucked their last in my house. They can fuck upon the streets, like dogs.'

Another lady, very drunk, said that, in that case, at least they should have the thrill of watching us, from a window. But I looked only at Diana; and, for the first time in all that terrible evening, I began to feel afraid.

Now Maria returned with Mrs Hooper. Mrs Hooper's eyes were bright. She held my old sailor's bag, that I had brought from Mrs Milne's and cast into the furthest corner of my closet, and a rusty black dress, and a pair of thick-soled boots. While the ladies all looked on, Diana threw the dress and boots at Zena; then she dipped her hand fastidiously into the sailor's bag, and pulled out a crumpled frock, and some shoes, which she cast at me. The frock was one I had used to wear in my old life, and thought fine enough. Now it was cold and slightly clammy to the touch, and its seams were rimmed with moth-dust.

Zena began at once to pull on the dreary black dress, and the boots. I, however, kept my own frock in my hands, and gazed at Diana, and swallowed.

‘I'm not wearing this,' I said.

‘You shall wear it,' she answered shortly, ‘or be thrust naked into Felicity Place.'

‘Oh, thrust her naked, Diana!' said a woman at her back. It was a Lady from Llangollen, minus her topper.

‘I'm not putting it on,' I said again. Diana nodded. ‘Very well,' she said, ‘then I shall make you.' And while I was still too amazed to raise a hand in my defence, she had crossed the room, torn the robe from my fingers, and lowered the hem of its skirts over my head. I writhed, then, and began to kick; she pushed me to the bed, held me fast upon it with one hand and, with the other, continued to tug the folds of cloth about me. I struggled more fiercely; soon there came the rip of a broken hem.

Hearing it, Diana gave a shout: ‘Help me with her, can't you? Maria! Mrs Hooper! You girl — ' she meant Zena. ‘Do you want to go back to that damn reformatory?'

Instantly, there came upon me what felt like fifty hands, all pulling at the dress, all pinching me, all grasping at my kicking legs. For an age, they seemed to be upon me. I grew hot and faint beneath the layers of wool. My swollen head was knocked, and began to pulse and ache. Someone placed her thumb — I remember this very clearly — at the top of my thigh, in the slippery hollow of my groin. It might have been Maria. It might have been Mrs Hooper, the housekeeper.

At last I lay panting upon the bed, the dress about me. The shoes were placed upon my feet, and laced. ‘Stand up!' said Diana; and when I had done so she caught me by the shoulder and propelled me from her bedroom, through the parlour, and out into the darkened hall beyond. Behind me, the ladies followed, Mrs Hooper and Maria with Zena gripped between them. When I hesitated, Diana prodded me forwards, so that I almost stumbled and fell.

Now, at last, I began to weep. I said, ‘Diana, you cannot mean this -!' But her gaze was cold. She seized me, and pinched me, and made me walk faster. Down we went - all flushed and panting and fantastically costumed as we were - down through the centre of that tall house, in a great jagged spiral, like a tableau of the damned heading for hell. We passed the drawing-room: there were some ladies there still, lolling upon the cushions, and when they saw us they called, What were we doing? And a lady in our party answered, that Diana had caught her boy and her maid in her own bed, and was throwing them out - they must be sure to come and watch it.

And so, the lower we went, the greater came the press of ladies at my back, and the louder the laughter and the ribald cries. We reached the basement, and it grew colder; when Diana opened the door that led from the kitchen to the garden at the rear of the house, the wind blew hard upon my weeping eyes, and made them sting. I said, ‘You cannot, you cannot!' The cold was sobering me. I had had a vision, of my chamber, my closet, my dressing-table, my linen; my cigarette case, my cuff-links, my walking-cane with the silver tip; my suit of bone-coloured linen; my shoes, with the leather so handsome and fine I had once put out my tongue and licked it. My watch, with the strap that secured it to my wrist.

Diana pushed me forward, and I turned and grabbed her arm. ‘Don't cast me from you, Diana!' I said. ‘Let me stay! I'll be good! Let me stay, and I'll pleasure you!' But as I begged, she kept me marching, backwards; until at last we reached the high wooden gate, beside the carriage-house, at the far end of the garden. There was a smaller door set into the gate, and now Diana stepped to pull it open; beyond seemed perfect blackness. She took Zena from Mrs Hooper, and held her by the neck. ‘Show your face in Felicity Place again,' she said, ‘or remind me of your creeping, miserable little existence by any word or deed, and I shall keep my promise, and return you to that gaol, and make sure you stay there, till you rot. Do you understand?' Zena nodded. She was thrust into the square of darkness, and swallowed by it. Then Diana turned for me.

She said: ‘The same applies to you, you trollop.' She pushed me to the doorway, but here I held fast to the gate, and begged her. ‘Please, Diana! Let me only collect my things!' I looked past her, to Dickie, and Maria: the gazes they turned upon me were livid and blurred, with the wine and with the chase, and held not one soft spark of sympathy. I looked at all the ogling ladies in their fluttering costumes. ‘Help me, can't you?' I cried to them. ‘Help me, for God's sake! How many times have you not gazed at me and wanted me! How many times have you not come to say how handsome I am, how much you envy Diana the owning of me. Any one of you might have me now! Any one of you! Only, don't let her put me into the street, into the dark, without a coin on me! Oh! Dam' you all for a set of bitches, if you let her do such a thing, to me!'

So I cried out, weeping all the time I spoke, then turning to wipe my running nose on the sleeve of my cheap frock. My cheek felt twice its ordinary size, and my hair was matted where I had lain upon it; and at last, the ladies turned their eyes from me in a kind of boredom - and I knew myself done for. My hands slid from the gate, Diana pushed me, and I stumbled into the alleyway beyond. Behind me came my sailor's bag, to land with a smack on the cobbles at my feet.

I raised my eyes from it to look once more upon Diana's house. The windows of the drawing-room were rosy with light, and ladies were already picking their way across the grass towards them. I caught a glimpse of Mrs Hooper; of Dickie, fixing her monocle to her watery eye; of Maria; and of Diana. A few strands of her dark hair had come loose from their pins, and the wind was whipping them about her cheeks. Her housekeeper said something to her, and she laughed. Then she closed the door, and turned the key in it; and the lights and the laughter of Felicity Place were lost to me, for ever.

PART THREE

Y
ou might think that, having sunk so low already, I should not have scrupled to have banged upon the door that had been closed on me, or even tried to scale the gate, to plead with my old mistress from the top of it. Perhaps I considered such things, in the moments that I stood, stunned and snivelling, in that dark and lonely alley. But I had seen the look that Diana had turned on me - a look that was devoid of any fire, kind or lustful. Worse, I had seen the expressions upon the faces of her friends. How could I go to them, and ever hope to walk before them again, handsome and proud?

The thought made me weep still harder; I might have sat and wept before that gate, perhaps, till dawn. But after a moment there came a movement at my side, and I looked up to see Zena standing there, with her hands across her breast, her face very pale. In all my agony, I had forgotten her. Now I said, ‘Oh, Zena! What an end to it all! What are we to do?'

‘What are we to do?' she answered: she sounded not at all like her old self. ‘What are
we
to do? I know what
I
should do. I should leave you here, and hope that woman comes back for you, and takes you in and treats you nasty. It's all you deserve!'

‘Oh, she won't come back for me - will she?'

‘No, of course she won't; nor for me, either. See where all your soft talk has landed us! Out in the dark, on the coldest night in January, with not a hat nor even a pair of drawers; nor even a handkerchief! I wish I
was
in gaol. You have lost me my place, you have lost me my character. You have lost me my seven pounds' wages, what I was keeping for the colonies - oh! What a fool I was, to let you kiss me! What a fool
you
was, to think the mistress wouldn't - oh! I could hit you!'

‘Hit me then!' I cried, still snivelling. ‘Black my other eye for me, I deserve it!' But she only tossed her head, and wrapped her arms still tighter about her, and turned away.

I wiped my eyes upon my sleeve, then, and tried to grow a little calmer. It had been only just midnight when I had staggered from the drawing-room still dressed as Antinous; I guessed it was about half-past now - a terrible time, because it meant we still had the longest, coldest hours to pass, before the dawn. I said, as humbly as I could, ‘What
am
I to do, Zena? What
am
I to do?'

She looked over her shoulder at me. ‘I suppose, you shall have to go to your folks. You have folks, don't you? You have some friends?'

‘I have nobody, now ...'

I put a hand to my face again; she turned, and began to chew on her lip. ‘If you really have no one,' she said at last, ‘then we are both quite alike, for I have no one, neither: my family all threw me over, over the business with Agnes and the police.' She gazed at my sailor's bag, and nudged it with her boot. ‘Don't you have a bit of cash about you anywhere? What's in there?'

‘All my clothes,' I answered. ‘All the boy's clothes I came to Diana's with.'

‘Are they good ones?'

‘I used to think so.' I raised my head. ‘Do you mean for us to put them on, and pass as gents ... ?'

She had bent to the bag, and was squinting into it. ‘I mean for us to sell them.'

‘Sell them?' Sell my guardsman's uniform, and my Oxford bags? ‘I don't know ...'

She raised her hands to her mouth, to blow upon her fingers. ‘You may sell 'em, miss; or you may walk down to the Edgware Road and stand at a lamp-post till a feller offers you a coin ...'

 

We sold them. We sold them to an old clothes seller who had a stall in a market off Kilburn Road. He was packing up his bags when Zena found him - the market had been trading till midnight or so, but when we reached it the barrows were mostly empty and the street was filled with litter, and they were shutting down the naphtha lamps and tipping the water from their buckets into the drains. The man saw us coming and said at once: ‘You're too late, I ain't selling.' But when Zena opened the bag and pulled the suits from it, he tilted his head and gave a sniff. ‘The soldier's duds is hardly worth my keeping on the stall,' he said, spreading the jacket out across his arm; ‘but I will take it, for the sake of the serge, which might do for a fancy waistcoat. The coat and trousers is handsome enough, likewise the shoes. I shall take them from you, for a guinea.'