Tipping the Velvet (47 page)

'But I am quite, quite friendless.' My voice shook. 'I am things! - and they have left me so miserable and poor and more friendless than you can possibly know.'

bewildered ..." My voice grew thick. Florence watched me 399

400

in silence for a moment. Then she said, rather carefully I She shook her head at that; then grew thoughtful again, and thought, 'And this person was .. . ?'

glanced quickly at my waist. 'You ain't - you ain't in But that made me hesitate. If I told her the truth, what trouble, are you?' she asked quietly.

would she make of it? I had thought her almost tommish,

'In trouble? I -' I couldn't help it: it was as if she was once; but now — well, maybe she had only ever been an handing me the play text, for me to read it back to her. 'I ordinary girl, asking me to a lecture for friendship's sake.

was in trouble,' I said, with my eyes on my lap, 'but the gent Or perhaps she had liked girls once, then turned her back on fixed that when he beat me. It was on account of it, I think, them - like Kitty! That thought made me cautious: if a torn that I was so poorly, earlier on ..."

with a bruise turned up at Kitty's door, I knew very well At that, there came a very queer and kind expression to her what a welcome she would get. I put my head in my hands.

face; and she nodded, and swallowed - and I saw I had

'It was a gent,' I said quietly, 'I've been living in the house convinced her.

of a gent, in St John's Wood, for a year and a half. I let him

'If you truly have nowhere, it will not hurt, I suppose, for make me a' -I remembered a phrase of Mrs Milne's - 'a pack you to stay a night - just one night - here with us. And of promises. He bought me all manner of stuff. And now . .

tomorrow I shall give you the names of some places where

.' I raised my eyes to hers. 'You must think me very wicked.

you might find a bed . ..'

He said he would marry me!'

'Oh!' I felt ready to swoon all over again, in sheer relief.

She look terribly surprised; but she had also begun to look

'And Mr Banner,' I said, 'won't mind it?'

sorry, too. 'It was this bloke blacked your eye for you, I Mr Banner, it turned out, had no objection to my staying suppose,' she said, 'and not a ladder, at all.'

there at all; indeed, as before, he proved pleasanter than his I nodded, and raised a hand to the bruise at my cheek; then wife, and willing to go to all sorts of trouble for the sake of I put my fingers to my hair, remembering that. 'What a my comfort. When they ate - for I had interrupted them as devil he was!' I said then. 'He was rich as anything, could they were about to take their tea - it was he who set a plate do what he pleased. He saw me on my balcony, just as you before me and filled it with stew. He brought me a shawl did, in a pair of trousers. He -' I blushed. 'He used to like to when I shivered; and, when he saw me limping into the make me dress up, as a boy, hi a suit like a sailor ..."

room after a visit to the privy, he made me pull off my

'Oh!' she cried, as if she had never heard anything more boots, and fetched a bowl of salty water for me to soak my awful. 'But the wealthy ones are the worst, I swear it! Have blistered feet in. Finally - and most wonderfully of all - he you no family to go to?"

took down a tin of tobacco from the shelf of a bookcase,

'They - they've all thrown me over, because of this rolled two neat cigarettes, and offered me one to smoke.

business.'

Florence, meanwhile, sat all night a little apart from us, at the supper-table, working through a pile of papers - lists, I 401

402

fondly supposed them to be, of friendless girls; account-There was an awkward silence. She looked so tired and sheets, perhaps, from Freemantle House. When we lit our ordinary I had a foolish urge to kiss her cheek good-night, cigarettes she looked up and sniffed, but made no as Ralph had. Of course, I did not; I only took a step complaint; occasionally she would sigh or yawn, or rub her towards her as she nodded to me and prepared to make her neck as if it ached, and then her husband would address her way upstairs, and said, 'I am more grateful to you, Mrs with some word of encouragement or affection. Once the Banner, than I can say. You have been very kind to me -

baby cried: she tilted her head, but didn't stir; it was Ralph you, who hardly know me; and more especially your who, all ungrudgingly, rose to see to it. She simple worked husband, who doesn't know me at all.'

on: writing, reading, comparing pages, addressing As I spoke she turned to me, and blinked. Then she placed envelopes . . . She worked while Ralph yawned, and finally her hand on a chair-back, and smiled a curious smile. 'Did stood and stretched and touched his lips to her cheek and you think he was my husband?' she said. I hesitated, bade us both a polite good-night; she worked while I suddenly flustered.

yawned, and began to doze. At last, at around eleven

'Well, I -'

o'clock, she shuffled her papers together and passed her

'He ain't my husband! He's my brother.' Her brother! She hand over her face. When she saw me she gave a start: I continued to smile at my confusion, and then to laugh: for a really believe that, in her industry, she had forgotten me.

moment she was the pert girl I had spoken with in Green Now, remembering, she first blushed, then frowned. 'I had Street, all those months before . . .

better go up, Miss Astley,' she said. 'You won't mind But then the baby, in the room above us, gave a cry, and we sleeping in here, I hope? I'm afraid there's nowhere else for both raised our eyes to the sound, and I felt myself blush.

you.' I smiled. I did not mind - though I thought there must And when she saw that, her smile faded. 'Cyril ain't mine,'

be an empty room upstairs, and wondered, privately, why she said quickly, 'though I call him mine. His mother used she did not put me in it. She helped me push the two to lodge with us, and we took him on when she — left us.

armchairs together, then went to fetch a pillow, a blanket He is very dear to us, now . . .'

and a sheet.

The awkward way she said it showed there was some story

'Do you have everything you need?' she asked then. 'The there - perhaps the mother was in prison; perhaps the baby privy is out the back, as you know. There's a jug of clean was really a cousin's, or a sister's, or a sweetheart's of water kept in the pantry, if you're thirsty. Ralph will be up Ralph's. Such things happened often enough in Whitstable at six or so, and I shall follow him at seven - or earlier, if families: I didn't think much of it. I only nodded; and then I Cyril wakes me. You'll have to leave at eight, of course, yawned. And seeing me, she yawned too.

when I do.' I nodded quickly. I wouldn't think about the morning, just yet.

403

404

'Good-night, Miss Astley,' she said from behind her hand.

return -with Cyril, I supposed - to bed. And after that he She did not look like the Green Street girl now. She looked didn't stir again, and neither did I.

only weary again, and plainer than ever.

When I woke next morning it was at the slam of the back I waited a moment while she stepped upstairs -I heard her door: this was Ralph, I guessed, leaving for work, for the shuffling above me, and guessed of course that she must clock showed ten to seven. There was movement overhead share her chamber with the baby - then I took up a lamp, soon after that, as Florence rose and dressed, and much and made my way out to the privy. The yard was very activity in the street outside - amazingly close, it all small, and overlooked on every side by walls and darkened sounded to me, who was used to slumbering undisturbed by windows; I lingered for a second on the chilly flags, gazing early risers in Diana's quiet villa.

at the stars, sniffing at the unfamiliar, faintly riverish, I lay quite still, the contentment of the night all seeping faintly cabbagey, scents of East London. A rustling from from me. I didn't want to rise and face the day, to pull my the neighbouring yard disturbed me and I started, fearing pinching boots back on, bid Florence good-bye, and be a rats. It was not rats, however, but rabbits: four of them, in a friendless girl again. The parlour had grown very cold hutch, their eyes flashing like jewels in the light I turned on overnight, and my little makeshift bed seemed the only them.

warm place in it. I pulled the blankets over my head, and I slept in my petticoats, half-lying, half-sitting between the groaned; groaning, I found, was rather satisfying, so I two armchairs, with the blankets wrapped around me and groaned still louder ... I stopped only when I heard the click my dress laid flat upon them for extra warmth. It does not of the parlour door - then lifted the blankets from my face sound very comfortable; it was, in fact, extraordinarily to see Florence squinting at me, gravely, through the cosy, and for all that I had so much to keep me ill and gloom.

fretful, I found I could only yawn and smile to feel the

'You're not ill again?' she said. I shook my head.

cushions so soft beneath my back, and the dying fire warm

'No. I was only - groaning.'

beside me. I was woken, in the night, twice: the first time

'Oh.' She looked away. 'Ralph has left some tea. Shall I by the sound of shouting in the street, and the slam of doors fetch you some?'

and the rattle of the poker in the grate, in the house next

'Yes, please.'

door; and the second time by the crying of the baby, in

'And then - then you must get up, I'm afraid.'

Florence's room. This sound, in the darkness, made me

'Of course,' I said. 'I shall get up now.' But when she had shiver, for it recalled to me all the awful nights that I had gone I found I could not get up, at all. I could only lie. I spent at Mrs Best's, in that grey chamber overlooking needed to visit the privy again, rather badly; I knew that it Smithfield Market. It did not, however, last for very long. I was dreadfully rude to lie abed like this, in a stranger's heard Florence rise and step across the floor, and then parlour. Yet I felt as if I had been visited in the night by a 405

406

surgeon, who had taken all my bones away and replaced from the back of the door, and pulled it on. Then she took them with bars of lead. I could no nothing at all - except lie up her satchel, reached into it, and brought out a piece of

...

paper and a coin. 'I've made you a list,' she said, 'of hostels Florence brought me my tea, and I drank it - then lay back and houses you might try to find a bed in. The money' - it again. I heard her moving about in the kitchen, washing the was a half-crown - 'is from my brother. He asked me to tell baby; then she returned and pulled the curtains open, you good-bye and good luck.'

meaningfully.

'He's a very kind man,' I said.

'It's a quarter to eight, Miss Astley,' she said. 'I have to take She shrugged, then buttoned up her coat, put her hat upon Cyril across the street. You will be up and dressed, now, her head, and thrust a pin through it. The coat and the hat won't you, when I come back? You really will?'

were the colour of mud. She said, There's a piece of bacon

'Oh, certainly,' I said; yet when she reappeared, five still warm in the kitchen, which you may as well have for minutes later, I had not budged an inch. She gazed at me, your breakfast. Then - oh! then you really must go.'

and shook her head. I gazed back at her.

'I promise I will!'

'You know, don't you, that you cannot stay here. I must go She nodded, and pulled at the door. There came a blast of to work, and I must go now. If you keep me any longer, I icy air from the street outside that made me shiver. Florence shall be late.' With that, she caught hold of the bottom of shivered, too. The wind blew the brim of her hat away from the blanket. But I caught hold of the top.

her brow, and she narrowed her hazel eyes against it, and

'I can't do it,' I said. 'I must be sick, after all.'

tightened her jaw.

'If you're sick, you must go to a place where they will care for you properly!'

I said, 'Miss Banner! I - might I come back, sometime, on a

'I'm not that sick!' I cried then. 'But if I might only lie a visit? I should like - I should like to see your brother, and little and get my strength ... Go on to work, and I'll let thank him ...' I should like to see her, was what I meant. I myself out, and be long gone by the time you get home.

had come to make a friend of her. But I didn't know how to You may trust me in your house, you know. I shan't take say it.

anything.'

She put a hand to her collar, and blinked into the wind.

'There's little enough to take!' she cried. Then she threw her

'You must do as you like,' she said. Then she pulled the end of the blanket at me, and put a hand to her brow. 'Oh,'

door shut, leaving the parlour chill behind her, and I saw she said, 'how my head aches!' I looked at her, saying her shadow on the lace at the window as she walked away.

nothing. At last she seemed to force herself into a kind of After she had gone my leaden limbs seemed all at once, and calmness, and her voice grew stiff: 'You must do as you quite miraculously, to lighten. I rose, and braved again the said, I suppose, and let yourself out.' She caught up her coat chilly privy; then I found the slice of bacon that had been 407

408

put aside for me, and took a piece of bread and a bunch of suffering some disease of the eyes, might weave to while cress, and ate my breakfast standing at the kitchen window, away the endless gloomy hours of a Hebridean winter. The gazing sightlessly at the unfamiliar view beyond it.

mantelpiece was draped with a fluttering shawl, just as my After that I rubbed my hands, and glanced about me, and mother's had been, and upon it were the kind of ornaments I began to wonder what to do.

had seen, as a child, in all my friends' and cousins' homes: a The kitchen, at least, was warm, for someone - Ralph, dusty china shepherdess, her crook broken and inexpertly presumably - had lit a small fire in the range, early on, and mended; a piece of coral, beneath a dome of soot-spotted the coals were only half consumed. It did seem a shame to glass; a glittering carriage-clock. Besides these, however, waste their lovely heat - and it could not hurt, I told myself, there were other less predictable items on display: a creased to boil up some water for a bit of a wash. I opened a postcard, with a picture of working-men on it and the words cupboard door, looking for a pan to set upon the hob, and Dockers' Tanner or Dockers' Strike!; an oriental idol, rather came across a flat-iron; and seeing this I thought: They tarnished; a colour print of a man and woman in working-wouldn't mind, surely, if I warmed that, too, and gave my gear, their right hands clasped, their left hands supporting a battered frock a little press ...