Tipping the Velvet (35 page)

heavy and terribly smart. Besides this there was a set of 295

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She laughed again, while I marvelled. Then she leaned with from my limbs. Yet I took my leave, uncomplaining, and her napkin to wipe a splash of gravy from my cheek.

made my way to the pale room along the hall, where my We had been served cutlets and sweetbreads, all very fine. I own cold bed awaited. I liked her kisses, I liked her gifts ate steadily, as I had eaten at breakfast. Diana, however, did still more; and if, to keep them, I must obey her - well, so more drinking than eating, and more smoking than be it. I was used to servicing gents in Soho at a pound a drinking; and more watching, even, than smoking. After the suck; obedience - to such a lady, and in such a setting -

exchange about the servants, we fell silent: I found that seemed at that moment a very trifling labour.

many of the things I said produced a kind of twitching at her lips and brow, as if my words - sensible enough to my
Chapter 12

ears - amused her; so at last I said no more, and neither did For all the strangeness of those first few days and nights at she, until the only sounds were the low hiss of the gas-jets, Felicity Place, it did not take me long to settle into my role the steady ticking of the clock upon the mantel, and the there and find myself a new routine. This was quite as clink of my knife and fork against my plate. I thought indolent as the one I had enjoyed at Mrs Milne's; the involuntarily of those merry dinners in the Green Street difference, of course, was that here my indolence had a parlour, with Grace and Mrs Milne. I thought of the supper patron, a lady who paid to keep me well-fed, well-dressed I might be having with Florence, in the Judd Street public.

and rested, and demanded only that my vanity should have But then I finished my meal, and Diana threw me one of her herself, in return, as its larger target.

pink cigarettes; and when I had grown giddy on that, she At Green Street I was used to waking rather early. Often came to me and kissed me. And then I remembered that it Grace would bring me tea at half-past seven or so - often, was hardly for table-talk that I had been engaged.

indeed, she would clamber into the warm bed beside me, That night our love-making was more leisurely than it had and we would lie and talk till Mrs Milne called us to been before - almost, indeed, tender. Yet she surprised me breakfast; later I would wash, at the great sink in the by seizing my shoulder as I lay on the edge of sleep - my downstairs kitchen, and Grace would sometimes come and body delightfully sated and my arms and legs entwined comb my hair. At Felicity Place, I had nothing to rise for.

with hers - and rousing me to wakefulness. The day had Breakfast was brought to me, and I received it at Diana's been a day of lessons for me; now came the last of all.

side - or in my own bed, if she had sent me from her the

'You may go, Nancy,' she said, in exactly the tone I had night before. While she was dressed I would drink my heard her use on her maid and Mrs Hooper. 'I wish to sleep coffee and smoke a cigarette, and yawn and rub my eyes; alone tonight.'

frequently I would fall into a thin kind of slumber, and only It was the first time she had spoken to me as a servant, and wake again when she returned, in a coat and a hat, to slip a her words drove the lingering warmth of slumber quite 297

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gloved hand beneath the counterpane and rouse me with a when out of her company, were a kind of blank. I could not pinch, or a lewd caress.

talk to the servants - to strange Mrs Hooper, with her veiled

'Wake up, and kiss your mistress good-bye,' she'd say. 'I and slithering glances; or to Blake, who flustered me by shan't be home till supper-time. You must amuse yourself curtseying to me and calling me 'miss'; or to Cook, who until I return.'

sent me lunch and supper, but never showed her face Then I would frown, and grumble. 'Where are you going?'

outside her kitchen. I might hear their voices, raised in

'On a visit, to a friend.'

mirth or dispute, if I paused at the green baize door that led Take me with you!"

to the basement; but I knew myself apart from them, and

'Not today.'

had my own tight beat to keep to: the bedrooms, and

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

Diana's parlour, and the drawing-room and library. My

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

mistress had said she wouldn't care to have me leave the

'You are cruel!'

house, unchap-eroned - indeed, she had Mrs Hooper lock She would smile, then kiss me. And then she would go; and the great front door: I heard her turn the key each time she I would only sink, again, into stupidity.

stepped to close it.

When I rose at last, I would call for a bath. Diana's I did not much mind my lack of liberty; as I have said, the bathroom was a handsome one: I might spend an hour or warmth, the luxury, the kissing and the sleep made me more in there, soaking in the perfumed water, parting my grow stupid, and lazier than ever. I might drift from room to hair, applying the macassar, examining myself before the room, soundless and thoughtless, pausing perhaps to gaze at glass for marks of beauty or for blemishes. In my old life I the paintings on the walls; or at the quiet streets and had made do with soap, with cold-cream and lavender scent gardens of St John's Wood; or at myself, in Diana's various and the occasional swipe of spit-black. Now, from the looking-glasses. I was like a spectre - the ghost, I crown of my head to the curve of my toe-nails, there was an sometimes imagined, of a handsome youth, who had died in unguent for every part of me - oil for my eyebrows and that house and still walked its corridors and chambers, cream for my lashes; a jar of tooth-powder, a box of blanc-searching, searching, for reminders of the life that he had de-perle; polish for my fingernails and a scarlet stick to lost there.

redden my mouth; tweezers for drawing the hairs from my

'What a scare you gave me, miss!' the maid might say, hand nipples, and a stone to take the hard flesh from my heels.

at her heart, after she had come upon me, lingering at a It was quite like dressing for the halls again - except that bend in the stair or in the shadows of some curtain or then, of course, I had had to change at the side of the stage, alcove; but when I smiled and asked what work had she to while the band switched tempo; now, I had entire days to do there? or, did she know if the day were a fine or a dull prink in. For Diana was my only audience; and my hours, 299

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one? she would only blush and look frightened: 'I'm sure, surgery or house of correction, appealed to her; only when miss, I couldn't say.'

really heated would she call the thing by its proper name -

The climax of my day, the event to which my thoughts and even then she was as likely to ask for Monsieur Dildo, naturally tended, and which gave direction and meaning to or simply Moi7Sj'eur). Besides this there was an album of the hours before it, was Diana's return. There was drama to photographs of big-buttocked girls with hairless parts, be had in the choosing of the chamber, and the pose, in bearing feathers; also a collection of erotic pamphlets and which I would arrange myself for her. She might find me novels, all hymning the delights of what I would call smoking in the library, or dozing, with unfastened buttons, tommistry but what they, like Diana, called Sapphic in her parlour; I would feign surprise at her entry, or let her Passion. They were gross enough, I suppose, in their way; rouse me if I pretended sleep. My pleasure at her but I had never seen the like of them before, and would appearance, however, was real enough. I at once lost that gaze at them, squirming, till Diana laughed. Then there sense of ghostliness, that feeling of waiting in the wing, and were cords, and straps and switches - the kind of thing that grew warm and substantial again before the blaze of her might be found, I suppose, in a strict governess's closet, attention. I would light her a cigarette, pour her a drink. If certainly nothing heavier. Lastly, there were more of she was weary I would lead her to a chair and stroke her Diana's rose-tipped cigarettes. They contained, as I guessed temples; if she was footsore - she wore high black boots, very early on, some fragrant French tobacco that was mixed very tightly laced -I would bare her legs and rub the blood with hashish; and they were, I thought, the pleasantest back into her toes. If she was amorous - as she frequently things of all, since, when used in combination with the was - I would kiss her. She might have me caress her in the other items, they rendered their interesting effects more library or drawing-room, heedless of the servants who interesting still.

passed beyond the closed door, or who knocked and, at our I might be weary or stupid; I might be nauseous with drink; breathy answering silence, retired unbidden. Or she might I might be sore, at the hips, with the ache of my monthlies, send orders that she was not to be disturbed, and lead me to but the opening of this box, as I have said, never ceased to her parlour, to the secret drawer that held the key that stir me -I was like a dog twitching and slavering to hear his unlocked the rosewood trunk.

mistress call out Bone!

The opening of this still enthralled and excited me, though I And every jerk, every slaver, made Diana more complacent.

had soon grown used to handling its contents. They were,

'How vain I am, of my little hoard!' she would say, as we perhaps, mild enough. There was, of course, the dildo that I lay smoking in the soiled sheets of her bed. She might be have described (though the device, or the instrument, was clad in nothing but a corset and a pair of purple gloves; I what I learned, following Diana, to call it: I think the would have the dildo about me, perhaps with a rope of unnecessary euphemism, with its particular odour of the pearls wound round it. She would reach to the foot of the 301

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bed, and run her hand across the gaping box, and laugh. 'Of as the toe of my boot upon a London street in all that time -

all the gifts I've given you,' she said once, 'this is the finest, when she declared one night at supper that I ought to be isn't it, isn't it? Where in London would you find its like?'

barbered. I looked up from my plate, thinking she meant to

'Nowhere!' I answered. 'You're the boldest bitch in the city!'

take me into Soho for it; in fact, she only rang for the

'l am!'

servants: I had to sit in a chair with a towel about me, while

'You're the boldest bitch, with the cleverest quim. If fucking Blake held the comb and the housekeeper plied the scissors.

were a country - well, fuck me, you'd be its queen . . . !'

'Gently with her, gently!' called Diana, looking on. Mrs These were the words which, pricked on by my mistress, I Hooper came close to trim the hair above my brow, and I used now - lewd words which shocked and stirred me even felt her breath, quick and hot, upon my cheek.

as I said them. I had never thought to use them with Kitty. I But the hair-cut turned out to be only the prelude to had not fucked her, we had not frigged; we had only ever something better. Next morning I woke in Diana's bed to kissed and trembled. It was not a quim or a cunt she had find her dressed, and gazing at me with her old enigmatic between her legs - indeed, in all our nights together, I don't smile. She said, 'You must get up. I have a treat for you believe we ever gave a name to it all...

today. Two treats, indeed. The first is in your bedroom.'

Only let her see me now, I thought, as I lay beside Diana,

'A treat?' I yawned; the word had lost its charge for me, making the necklace of pearls more secure about the dildo; rather. 'What is it, Diana?'

and Diana herself would reach to stroke her box again, and

'It's a suit.'

then lean and stroke me.

'What kind of suit?'

'Only see what I'm mistress of!' she would say with a sigh.

'A coming-out suit.'

'Only see - only see what I own!'

'Coming-out -?'

I would draw on the cigarette till the bed seemed to tilt; I went at once.

then I'd lie and laugh, while she clambered upon me. Once I Now, since my very first trouser-wearing days at Mrs let a fag fall on the silken counterpane, and smiled to see it Dendy's, I had sported a wonderful variety of gentlemen's smoulder as we fucked. Once I smoked so much I was sick.

suits. From the plain to the pantomimic, from the military Diana rang for Blake and, when she came, cried: 'Look at to the effeminate, from the brown broad-cloth to the yellow my tart, Blake, resplendent even in her squalor! Did you velveteen - as soldier, sailor, valet, renter, errand-boy, ever see a brute so handsome? Did you?' Blake said that she dandy and comedy duke - I had worn them all, and worn had not; then dipped a cloth in water, and wiped my mouth.

them wisely and rather well. But the costume that awaited It was Diana's vanity, at last, that broke the spell of my me in my bedroom that day in Diana's villa in Felicity Place confinement. I had passed a month with her - had left the was the richest and the loveliest I ever wore; and I can house only to stroll about the garden, had set not so much remember it still, in all its marvellous parts.

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There was a jacket and trousers of bone-coloured linen, and myself as I stood smoking. I looked -I think I can say a waistcoat, slightly darker, with a silken back. These came without vanity - a treat. The suit, like all expensive clothes, wrapped together in a box lined with velvet; in a separate had a bearing and a lustre all of its own: it would have package I found three piqu6 shirts, each a shade lighter than made more or less anyone look handsome. But Diana had the one before it, and each so fine and closely woven it ordered wisely. The bleached linen complemented the dull shone like satin, or like the surface of a pearl.

gold of my hair and the fading renter's tan at my cheek and Then there were collars, white as a new tooth; studs, of wrists. The flash of amber at my throat set off my blue eyes opal, and cuff-links of gold. There was a neck-tie and a and my darkened lashes. The trousers had a vertical crease, cravat of an amber-coloured, watered silk: they gleamed and made my legs seem longer and more slender than ever; and rippled as I drew them from their tissue, and slithered and they bulged at the buttons, where I had rolled one of the from my fingers to the floor like snakes. A flat wooden case scented doe-skin gloves. I was, I saw, almost unsettlingly held gloves - one pair of kid, with covered buttons, the attractive. Framed by the wooden surround of the mirror, other of doe-skin and fragrant as musk. In a velvet bag I my left leg slightly bent, one hand hanging loosely at my found socks and drawers and undershirts - not of flannel, as thigh and the other with its fag arrested half-way on its my linen had been till now, but of knitted silk. For my head journey to my faintly carmined lips, I looked not like there was a creamy homburg with a trim that matched the myself at all, but like some living picture, a blond lord or neckties; for my feet there was a pair of shoes - a pair of angel whom a jealous artist had captured and transfixed shoes of a chestnut leather so warm and rich I felt behind the glass. I felt quite awed.