Tipping the Velvet (33 page)

the brief renewal of passion which had followed my return There was a low, respectful knock on the outer door of the to her arms; but my sleep since then had been a heavy, adjoining room. At her call the door was opened; I heard dreamless one, and when next I knew the bed I was alone in footsteps, and the rattle of china. To my amazement the it: she had donned her dressing-gown and stood at the half-rattle grew louder, the footsteps approached: the servant -

opened window, smoking, and gazing thoughtfully at the who I thought would deposit her burden in the room next view beyond. I stirred, and she turned and smiled.

door, and discreetly take her leave - appeared in the

'You sleep like a child,' she said. 'I have been up this half-doorway of ours, I pulled the sheet to my throat and lay hour, making a fearful row, and still you've slumbered on.'

quite still; neither the mistress nor the maid, however,

'I was so very weary.' I yawned - then I recalled all that had appeared in any way discomfited by my presence there. The wearied me. A slight awkwardness seemed to fall between latter - not the pale-faced woman I had seen the night us. The room last night had been as unreal as a stage-set: a before, but a girl a little younger than myself - gave a bob place of lamplight and shadows, and colours and scents of and, with her eyes lowered, made space for a tray on the impossible brilliance, in which we had been given a licence dressing-table. When she had finished with the china she to be not ourselves, or more than ourselves, as actors are.

paused with her head bent and her hands folded over her Now, in the late morning light that flowed between the apron.

partly-drawn drapes, I saw that there was nothing fantastic

'Very good, Blake, that will be all for now,' said the lady.

about the chamber at all; I saw that it was really elegant,

'But have a bath ready for Miss King by half-past twelve.

and rather austere. I felt, all at once, quite horribly out of And tell Mrs Hooper I shall speak to her about luncheon, place. How does a tart take leave of her customer? I did not later.' Her tone was quite polite, yet colourless; I had heard know; I had never had to do it.

ladies and gentlemen use that tone on cabmen and shopgirls and porters a thousand times.

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The girl gave another little duck to her head - 'Yes m'm' -

seventy years; or he may live in pleasure - with a princess and withdrew. She had not looked towards the bed, at all.

for a wife, and servants to bathe him, and robes of gold - he With the breakfast things to busy ourselves over, the next may live in pleasure, for five hundred days.' She paused; few minutes passed easily. I raised myself into a sitting then said: 'Which would you choose, if you were that position - wincing all the time, for my body ached as if it beggar?'

had been pummelled, or stretched on a rack - and the lady I hesitated. Those stories are silly,' I said at last. 'Nobody is fed me coffee, and warm rolls spread with butter and ever asked -'

honey. She herself only drank and, later, smoked. She

'Which would you choose? The comfort; or the pleasure?'

seemed to take pleasure from seeing me eat - as last night She put her hand to my cheek.

she had liked to watch me stand, undress, light cigarettes;

'I suppose then, the pleasure.'

but, still, there was that disconcerting thoughtfulness about She nodded: 'Of course; and so did the beggar. I should be her, that made me long for her honest, cruel kisses of the very sorry, if you had said the other thing.'

night before.

'Why?'

When we had drained the coffee-pot between us, and I had

'Can you not guess?' She smiled again. 'You say that there finished all the rolls, she spoke; and her voice was graver is no one you must answer to. Have you no - sweetheart, than I had yet heard it. She said: 'Last night, upon the street, even?' I shook my head, and perhaps looked bitter, for she I invited you to drive with me and you hesitated. Why was sighed with a kind of satisfaction. 'Tell me, then: will you that?'

stay with me, here? - and be pleasured, and pleasure me, in

'I was afraid,' I answered honestly.

your turn?'

She nodded. 'You are not afraid now?'

For a second I only gazed stupidly at her. 'Stay with you?' I

'No.'

said. 'Stay as what? Your guest, your servant -?'

'You are glad that I brought you here.'

'My tart.'

It was not a question, but as she said it she raised a hand to

'Your tart!' I blinked; then heard my voice grow a little my throat, and stoked me there until I reddened and hard. 'And how should I be paid for that? Rather swallowed; and I could not help but answer: 'Yes.'

handsomely, I should think . . .'

Then the hand was removed. She grew thoughtful again,

'My dear, I have said: you should have pleasure for your and smiled. She said: 'There is a Persian story I read as a wages! You should live with me here, and enjoy my girl, about a princess and a beggar, and a djinn. The beggar privileges. You should eat from my table, and ride in my sets the djinn free from a bottle, and is rewarded with a brougham, and wear the clothes I will pick out for you - and wish; but the wish - they always do, alas! - comes with remove them, too, when I should ask it. You should be conditions. The man may live in ordinary comfort for what the sensational novels call kept.'

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I gazed at her, then looked away - at the silken counterpane For it was, it was! What she said was the truth: she had upon the bed, the japanned press, the bell-pull, the found out all my secrets; she had shown me to myself. Not rosewood trunk .... I pictured my room at Mrs Milne's, just with the fierce words of that moment, but with all - the where I had come so close of late to real happiness; but I kisses, the caresses, the fuck on the chair - that had made remembered too my growing obligations there, that had her say them; and I was glad! I had loved Kitty -I would made me, more than once, uneasy. How much freer would I always love Kitty. But I had lived with her a kind of queer paradoxically be, bound to this lady - bound to lust, bound half-life, hiding from my own true self. Since then I had to pleasure!

refused to love at all, had become - or so I thought - a And yet, it was a little sickening, too, that she made such creature beyond passion, driving others to their secret, promises, so easily. I said - and again, my voice was hard -

humiliating confessions of lust; but never offering my own.

'And have you no fear of sensation then? You seem rather Now, this lady had torn it from me -had laid me bare, as sure of me - but you know nothing about me! Don't you surely as if she had ripped the shrieking flesh from my worry I'll raise a row; that I'll tell the papers - the police -

white bones. She pressed against me still; and even as her your secret?'

breath came warm against my cheek, I felt my lusts rise up

'And with it, your own? Oh no, Miss King. I have no fear of to meet her own, and knew myself in thrall.

sensation: on the contrary, I court it! I seek out sensation!

After all, there are moments in our lives that change us, that And so do you.' She leaned closer, and fingered a lock of discontent us with our pasts and offer us new futures. That my hair. 'You say I know nothing about you; but I have night at the Canterbury Palace, when Kitty had cast her rose watched you upon the streets, remember. How coolly you at me, and sent my admiration for her tumbling over into pose and wander and flirt! Did you think you could play at love -that had been one such moment. This was another; Ganymede, for ever? Did you think, if you wore a silken perhaps, indeed, it had already passed - perhaps it was the cock, it meant you never had a cunt at the seam of your second when I was guided into the dark heart of that drawers?' Her face was very close to my own; she would waiting carriage that was the real start of my new life.

not let me turn my eyes from hers. She said: 'You're like Either way, I knew I could not go back to the old one, now.

me: you have shown it, you are showing it now! It is your The djinn was out of the bottle at last; and I had settled on own sex for which you really hunger! You thought, pleasure.

perhaps, to stifle your own appetites: but you have only I never thought to ask what happened to the beggar in the made them swell the more! And that is why you won't raise tale, once the five hundred days came to an end.

a row - why you still stay, and be my tart, as I desire.' She gave my hair a cruel twist. 'Admit that it is as I say!'

Chapter 11

'It is!'

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The lady's name, I learned in time, was Diana: Diana I didn't answer. Her words had made me understand anew Lethaby. She was a widow, and childless, and rich, and the enormity of the change that was come upon me; and I venturesome, and thus - though on a considerably grander thought, for the first time, of the visit I should have to scale - as accomplished in the habits of self-pleasure as make, to Mrs Milne and Gracie. I could hardly shirk my myself, and quite as hard of heart. In that summer of 1892

duty there by sending a boy, with a letter and a coin - could she would have been eight-and-thirty - younger, that is, I? I knew I could not.

than I am now, though she seemed terribly old to me then,

'I must go myself,' I said at last. 'I should like, you know, to at twenty-two. Her marriage had been, I think, a loveless say good-bye to my friends.'

one, for she wore neither wedding-ring nor mourning-ring, She raised an eyebrow: 'As you wish. I shall have Shilling nor was there any picture of Mr Lethaby in any room in that bring the carriage round, this afternoon.'

large, handsome house. I never asked after him, and she

'I could just as easily catch a tram ..."

never questioned me about my past. She had created me

'I shall send for Shilling.' She came to me, and set my anew: the old dark days before were nothing to her.

guardsman's cap upon my head, and brushed my scarlet And they must become nothing to me, of course, now that shoulders. 'I think it very naughty of you, to want to go we had settled our bargain. On that first, fierce morning of from me at all. I must be sure, at least, of having you come my time in her house, she had me kiss her again, then bathe, swiftly back!'

then re-don my old guardsman's uniform; and as I dressed, My visit to Green Street was every bit as dreary as I knew it she stood a little to one side and studied me. She said, 'We must be. I could not bear, somehow, for the brougham to shall have to buy you some new suits. This one - for all its draw up at Mrs Milne's front door, so I asked Mr Shilling -

charms -will hardly do for very long. I shall ask Mrs Diana's taciturn driver - to drop me at Percy Circus and wait Hooper to send to an outfitters.'

for me there. When I let myself in with my house-key, I buttoned my trousers and drew the braces over my arms. 'I therefore, it was as if I had just returned from a shopping have other costumes," I said, 'at home.'

expedition or a stroll, as I did most days; there was nothing

'But you would rather have new ones.'

but the length of my absence from them to hint to Mrs I frowned. 'Of course, but -I must fetch my things. I cannot Milne and Gracie of my awful change of fortune. I closed leave them all unsorted.'

the door very softly; still, Grace's sharp ears must have

'I could send a boy for them.'

caught the sound, for I heard her - she was in the parlour -

I pulled on my jacket. 'I owe my landlady a month in rent.'

give a cry of 'Nance!', and the next moment she had come

'I shall send her the money. How much shall I send? A lolloping down the stairs and had me in a fierce, neck-Pound? Two pounds?'

breaking embrace. Her mother soon followed her to the landing.

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'My dear!' she called, 'you're home, and thank goodness!

milliner's, poor thing ..." We had reached the parlour. Mrs We've been wondering ourselves silly - haven't we, love? -

Milne turned to face me, and her eyes were troubled.

about where you might've got to. Gracie was fretted near That is a shame,' she said feelingly. 'A good roomer is hard half to death, poor soul, but I said to her: "Don't you worry to find, these days, that I do know. That's why - and I've about Nancy, girl; Nancy will've found some friend to take told you so before, you know I have - that's why me and her in, or missed the last bus home, and passed the night in Gracie've been so glad to have you with us. Why, if you some rooming-house. Nancy will be back all right, was ever to leave us, Nance -' This seemed the worst tomorrow, you wait and see.'" As she spoke she came possible way for me to tell her, yet I had to speak.

slowly down the stairs, until at last we were quite level. She

'Oh, don't say that, Mrs M!' I said lightly. 'For you see, I'm gazed at me with real affection; but there was a hint of sorry to say I shall be leaving you. This friend of mine has reproach, I thought, in her words. I felt even more guilty asked me and, well, I said I would take the other girl's place about what I must tell her - but also slightly resentful. I was

-just to help her out, you know . . .' My voice grew thin.

not her daughter, nor was I Grade's sweetheart. I owed them Mrs Milne looked grey. She sank into a chair and put a nothing -I told myself - but my rent.

hand to her throat.

Now I drew carefully away from Grace, and nodded to her

'Oh, Nance . . .'

mother. I said, 'You're right, I did meet a friend. A very old

'Now don't,' I said, with an attempt at jollity, 'don't be like friend I hadn't seen in a long time. What a surprise it was, to that; now just don't! I'm not so special a boarder, heaven meet her! She has rooms over in Kilburn. It was too far to knows; and you'll soon find another nice girl to take my come back so late.' The story sounded hollow to me, but place.'

Mrs Milne seemed pleased enough with it.

'But it ain't me I'm thinking of so much,' she said, 'as There now, Gracie,' she said, 'what did I tell you? Now, just Gracie. You have been so good with her, Nance; there's not you run downstairs and put the kettle on. Nancy'll be many as would understand her like you do; not many who wanting a bit of tea, I don't doubt.' She smiled at me again, would take the trouble over her little ways, the way you while Gracie dutifully lumbered off; then she headed back have.'