Tipping the Velvet (58 page)

from gazing at Eleanor Marx. Sensible girls used to put

'We can pretend it's otherwise, if you like,' I said. 'We can pictures of me on their bedroom walls, five years ago.'

bring the truckle-bed back, and pretend -'

'Stop boasting,' she answered. 'All this talk about the music She leaned away from me as if I had sworn at her. 'Pretend?

hall. I've never heard you sing a song to me.'

Pretend, and in my own house? If Frank doesn't like my She had taken my place in the armchair, and now I went habits, he can stop visiting. Him, and anyone else with a and nudged at her knees with my own. 'Tommy,' I sang - it similar idea. Would you have people think we were was an old song of W. B. Fair's - 'Tommy, make room for ashamed?'

your uncle.'

'No, no. It was only that Kitty -'

She laughed. 'Is that a song you used to sing with Kitty?'

'Oh, Kitty! Kitty! The more you tell me about that woman,

'I should say not! Kitty would have been too afraid, in case the less I care for her. To think she kept you cramped and there was a real tom in the crowd who got the joke and guilty for so long, when you might have been off, having thought we meant it.'

your bit of fun as a real gay torn ..."

'Sing me one of the ones you sang with Kitty, then.'

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'Well..." I was not sure I liked the idea; but I sang her a few when she said a similar thing another night, I touched her lines of our song about the sovereigns - strolling about the through the folds of her skirt until her voice grew weak -

parlour as I did so, and kicking my moleskinned legs. When and then she led me into the pantry, and put a broom across I finished, she shook her head.

the door, and we caressed amongst the packets of flour and

'How proud she should have been of you! I she said softly.

tins of treacle while the kettle whistled and the kitchen

'If I'd been her -' She didn't finish. She only rose, and came grew woolly with steam, and Annie called out from the to me, and drew back the shirt where it flapped beneath my parlour, What were we doing? The fact was, we had both throat, and kissed the flesh that showed there, until I gone kissless for so long that, having once begun to kiss trembled.

again, we could not stop. Our boldness made us marvel.

She had seemed chaste as a plaster saint to me, once; she

'I had you down for one of those terrible grudging girls,' she had seemed plain. But she was not chaste now - she was said to me one night, a week or two after our visit to the marvellously bold and frank and ready; and the boldness Boy. 'One of those dry-rub-it-on-the-hip-don't-touch-me made her bonny, made her gleam, like a kind of polish. I sorts . . .' 'Are there such girls?' I asked her. She coloured.

could not look at her and not want to touch her. I could not

'Well, I have lain with one or two ..." The thought that she see the shine upon her pink lips, without wanting to step to had lain with different girls - with so many girls that she her and press my mouth to it; I couldn't look at her hand as could put them into categories, like breeds of fish - was it lay limp upon some table-top, or held a pen, or carried a wonderfully astonishing and stirring. I put my hand upon cup, or did any kind of ordinary business, without longing her - we were lying together, naked despite the cold, to take it in my own and kiss the knuckles or put my tongue because we had bathed in a steaming tub and were still to the palm, or press it to the fork at my trousers. I would warm and prickling from it - and stroked her, from the stand beside her in a crowded room and feel the hairs lift on hollow at her throat to the hollow of her groin; then I my arms - and see her own flesh pimple, and her cheeks stroked her again, and felt her shiver.

grow warm, and know she ached for me, to match my

'Who would ever have thought that I should touch you so, aching; but she would take a dreadful satisfaction, too, in and talk to you so!' I asked her - whispering, because Cyril lengthening the visits of her Mends - in handing out a lay beside us, asleep in his crib. 'I was sure you would second cup of tea, and then a third -and all while I looked prove prim and awkward. I was sure you would be shy.

on, tortured and damp.

Indeed, I didn't see how you could fail to be, being so

'You made me wait, for two years and a half,' she said to political and good as you are!'

me once; I had followed her into the kitchen, and put my She laughed. 'It ain't the Salvation Army, you know,' she shaking arms about her as she lifted a kettle to the stove. 'It answered, 'socialism.'

won't hurt you, to wait an hour till the parlour clears ..." But

'Well, maybe ..."

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We said nothing more, then; only kissed and murmured.

I wriggled lower. 'And this, too?'

But the next night she produced a book, and had me read it.

'Oh, certainly!'

It was Towards Democracy, the poem by Edward I slid beneath the sheet. 'And how about this?'

Carpenter; and as I turned the pages, with Florence warm

'Oh!'

beside me, I found myself growing damp.

'Lord,' I said a little later. 'To think I have been part of the

'Did you used to look at this with Lilian?' I asked her.

socialist conspiracy all these years, and never knew it till She nodded. 'She used to like to have me read it to her, as now . . .'

we lay in bed. She couldn't have known, I suppose, that it We kept Towards Democracy beside the bed permanently, was sometimes hard to do it..."

after that; and just as Florence would sometimes say to me, Perhaps she did know, I thought - and the idea made me when the house was quiet, 'Sing me a song, in your damper. I handed the book to her. 'Read it to me, now,' I moleskins, Uncle . . .', so I would occasionally lean to said.

whisper to her, over supper or as we walked side by side:

'You have already read it.'

'Shall we be democratic tonight, Flo . . . ?' Of course, there

'Read me the bits you used to read to her . . .'

were certain songs - 'Sweethearts and Wives' was one of She hesitated, then did so; and as she murmured, I put my them - I would never have sung for her. And Leaves of hand between her legs and touched her, and her voice grew Grass, I noticed, stayed downstairs, on the shelf beneath the less steady, the more firmly I stroked.

photographs of Eleanor Marx and Kitty. I didn't mind it.

There are books written especially for this sort of thing,' I How could I mind it? We had struck a kind of bargain. We said to her, thinking back to the many times I had lain doing had fixed to kiss for ever. We had never once said, I love something similar with Diana - on the very same nights, you.

probably, that Florence had lain squirming next to Lilian.

'Isn't it marvellous to be in love, in spring-time?' Annie

'Wouldn't you rather I bought you a book like that? I can't asked us one evening in April: she and Miss Raymond were believe Mr Carpenter really intended his poem to be sweethearts now, and spent long hours in our parlour, enjoyed in such a way.'

sighing over one another's charms. 'I went visiting a factory She put her lips against my throat. 'Oh, I think Mr today, and it was the grimmest, most broken-down old Carpenter would approve all right.'

place you ever saw. But I came out into its yard and there She had let the book fall on to her breast. Now I pushed it was a piece of pussywillow growing there - just a piece of aside, and rolled upon her.

common old pussy-willow, but with a bit of yellow sun on

'And this,' I said, moving my hips, 'is really contributing to it, and it looked so exactly like my dear Emma I thought for the social revolution?'

a moment I would fall down and kiss it, and weep.'

'Oh, yes!'

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Florence snorted. They should never have let women into

'And now you have said you will help to run it. Which the civil service, I said it all along. Weeping over pussy means,' I said bitterly to Miss Raymond, 'that she will have willow? I never heard such rubbish in my life; I really taken far more duties upon herself than she should have, wonder, sometimes, how Emma can bear you. If I heard and so, as usual, I shall be obliged to help her - to sit up late Nancy likening me to a sprig of catkins, I should be sick.'

at night writing letters to the president of the Hoxton Fur

'Oh, for shame! Nancy, have you never seen Florrie's face and Feather Dressers' Union, or the Wapping Small Metal in a chrysanthemum, or a rose?'

Workers' Society. And all at a time -' All at a time, I wanted

'Never,' I said. 'Though there was a flounder for sale on a to say, when I longed only to tip her satchel of papers into fishmonger's barrow, in Whitechapel yesterday, and the the fire, and lie kissing her before its blaze.

likeness was quite uncanny. I very nearly brought it home I thought Florence looked at me a little sadly then. She said,

..."

'You needn't help, if you don't care to.'

Annie took Miss Raymond's hand in hers, and gazed at us

'Needn't help?' I cried. 'In this house?'

in wonder. 'I swear,' she said, 'you two are the most And it was just as I had supposed. Florence had committed unsentimental sweethearts I've ever known.'

herself to a thousand duties, and I, to stop her working

'We are too sensible for sentiment, aren't we, Nance?'

herself into a fit, took on half of them - wrote letters and

'Too busy, more like,' I said, with a yawn.

figured sums at her direction, and delivered bags of posters Florence grew sheepish. 'And, well, we shall be even busier and pamphlets to grubby union offices, and visited before long, I'm afraid. For, you know, I promised Mrs carpenters' shops, and sat sewing tablecloths and flags, and Macey at the Guild that I would help with the organising of costumes for the workers' pageant. Our house in Quilter the Workers' Rally -'

Street grew quite dusty again; our suppers became ever

'Oh, Florence!' I cried, 'you didn't!'

more hasty and under-prepared — I had no time for stewing

'What's this?' asked Miss Raymond.

oysters now, but served them raw, and we swallowed them

'Some wretched scheme,' I said, 'dreamed up by all the as we worked. Half of the flags I sewed, half of the letters guilds and unions of East London, to fill Victoria Park with Florence wrote, were stained at the edges with liquor, and socialists -'

spotted with grease.

'A demonstration,' interrupted Florence. 'A wonderful thing, Even Ralph was involved in it. He had been asked, as if it works. It is to be at the end of May. There will be tents, secretary of his union, to write a little address for the day and speeches and stalls, and a pageant; we hope to get itself, and deliver it - in between the grander speeches -

visitors and speakers from all over Britain - and some, before the crowd. The title of the address was to be 'Why even, from Germany and France.'

Socialism?', and the composing and rehearsing of this threw Ralph - who was no very keen public speaker - into a fever.

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He would sit at the supper-table for hours at a time, writing

'You will thank me for it, in the end. Now, straighten your until his arm grew sore — or more often gazing bleakly at back and lift up your head, and start again. And talk from the empty page before him, then dashing to the bookcase to here' -I touched the buckle on his trousers, and he twitched check a reference in some political tract, and cursing to find

-'not from your throat. Go on.'

it lent out or lost: 'What has happened to The White Slaves

'"Why Socialism?" he read again, in a deep, unnatural of England!? Who has borrowed my Sidney Webb? And voice. 'That is the question I have been invited to discuss where the blazes is Towards Democracy?'

with you this afternoon. "Why Socialism?" I shall keep my Florence and I would gaze at him and shake our heads.

answer rather brief.'

'Give the thing up,' we would say, 'if you don't want to do I sucked at my lip. 'Some joker is sure to shout "Hurrah" at it, or feel you can't. No one will mind,' But Ralph would that point, you know.'

always stiffen and answer, 'No, no. It is for the sake of the

'Not really, Nance?'

union. I almost have it.' Then he would frown at his page

'You may count on it. But you mustn't let it unsettle you, or again, and chew on his beard; and I would see him you'll be done for. Go on, now, let's hear the rest.'

imagining himself standing before a crowd of staring faces, He read the speech - it was a matter of two or three pages, and he would sweat and start to tremble.

no more - and I listened, and frowned.

But here, at least, I felt I could help. 'Let me hear you read a

'You will talk into the paper,' I said at the end. 'No one will bit of your speech,' I said to him one night when Florence be able to hear. They will get bored, and start talking was out. 'Don't forget I was an actress of sorts, once. It's all amongst themselves. I have seen it happen a hundred times.'

the same, you know, whether it's a stage or a platform.'

'But I must read the words,' he said. I shook my head.

That's true,' he said, struck by the idea. Then he flapped his

'You shall have to learn them, there's nothing else for it.

sheets. 'But I am rather shy of reading it out before you.'

You shall have to get the piece by heart.'

'Ralph! If you are shy with me, in our parlour, what will

'What? All this?' He gazed miserably at the pages.

you be like before five hundred people, in Victoria Park?'

'A day or two's work,' I said. Then I put my hand upon his The thought set him biting at his beard again; but he held arm. 'It is either that, Ralph, or we shall have to put you in a his speech before him as requested, stood before the funny suit...'

curtained window, and cleared his throat.

And so through the whole of April and half of May - for of