Tipping the Velvet (10 page)

did insist on a decent bit of space for the two of you.' She smiled at me, and I looked away. Kitty, however, said very 77

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brightly: 'It's perfect, Mrs Dendy. Miss Astley and I will be She smiled, then bent to tug at the straps of the basket at her as cosy here as two peg-dolls in a dolls' house - won't we, feet; and after a moment of idling in the armchair, watching Nan?'

her busy herself with dresses and books and bonnets, I rose Her cheeks, I saw, had grown a little pink - but that might to help her.

have been from the climb up from the parlour. I said, 'We It took us an hour to unpack. My own few poor frocks and will', and lowered my gaze again; then moved to take a box shoes and underclothes took up little enough space, and from Mr Bliss.

were stowed away in a moment; but Kitty, of course, had Mr Bliss himself did not stay long after that - as if he not only her everyday dresses and boots to unpack and thought it indelicate to linger in a lady's chamber, even one brush and straighten, but also her suits and toppers. When he was paying for himself. He exchanged a few words with she started on these, I moved to take them from her. I said, Kitty regarding her appointment on the morrow at the

'You must let me take charge of your costumes now, you Bermondsey Star - for she had to meet the manager, and know. Look at these collars! They all need whitening. Look rehearse with the orchestra, in the morning, in preparation at these stockings! We must keep a drawer for the ones that for her first appearance in the evening - then he shook her have been cleaned, and another for the ones that need hand, and mine, and bade us farewell. I felt as anxious, mending. We must keep these links in a box or they will be suddenly, at the thought of him leaving us, as I had done a lost. . .'

few hours before at the prospect of meeting him at all.

She stepped aside, and let me fuss over the studs and gloves But when he had gone - and when Mrs Dendy, too, had and shirt-fronts, and for a minute or two I worked in closed the door on us and wheezed and coughed her way silence, quite absorbed. I looked up at last to find her downstairs behind him -I lowered myself into one of the watching me; and when I caught her eye she winked and armchairs and closed my eyes, and felt myself ache with blushed at once. 'You cannot know,' she said then, 'how pleasure and relief simply to be alone at last with someone horribly smug I feel. Every second-rate serio longs to have who was more to me than a stranger. I heard Kitty step a dresser, Nan. Every hopeful, tired little actress who ever across the luggage, and when I opened my eyes she was at set foot upon a provincial stage aches to play the London my side and had raised a hand to tug at a lock of hair which halls - to have two nice rooms, instead of one, miserable had come loose from my plait and was falling over my one - to have a carriage to take her to the show at night, and brow. Her touch made me stiffen again: I was still not used drive her home, afterwards, while other, poorer, artistes to the easy caresses, the hand-holdings and cheek-strokings, must take the tram.' She was standing beneath the slope of of our friendship, and every one of them made me flinch the ceiling, her face in shadow and her eyes dark and large.

slightly, and colour faintly, with desire and confusion.

'And now, suddenly, I have all these things, that I have 79

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dreamed of having for so long! Do you know how that must set for dinner; more importantly, it was ringed with faces, feel, Nan, to be given your heart's desire, like that?'

every one of which looked up as we appeared and broke I did. It was a wonderful feeling - but a fearful one, too, for into a smile -the same quick, well-practised smile which you felt all the time that you didn't deserve your own good shone from all the pictures on the walls. It was as if half-a-fortune; that you had received it quite by error, in someone dozen of the portraits had come to life and stepped from else's place - and that it might be taken from you while your behind their dusty panes to join Mrs Dendy for supper.

gaze was turned elsewhere. And there was nothing you There were eight places set — two of them vacant and would not do, I thought, nothing you would not sacrifice, to waiting, clearly, for Kitty and me, but the rest all taken. Mrs keep your heart's desire once you had been given it. I knew Dendy herself was seated at the head of the table; she was that Kitty and I felt just the same - only, of course, about in the process of dishing out slices from a plate of cold different things.

meats, but half rose when she saw us, to bid us make I should have remembered this, later.

ourselves at home, and to gesture, with her fork, to the We unpacked, as I have said, for an hour, and while we other diners - first to an elderly gentleman in a velvet worked I caught the sound of various shouts and stirrings in waistcoat who sat opposite to her.

the rest of the house. Now - it was six o'clock or so — there

'Professor Emery,' she said, without a hint of self-came the creak of footsteps on the landing beneath ours, consciousness. 'Mentalist Extraordinary.'

and a cry: 'Miss Butler, Miss Astley!' It was Mrs Dendy, The Professor rose then, too, to make us a little bow.

come to tell us that there was a bit of dinner for us, if we

'Mentalist Extraordinary, ah, as was,' he said with a glance wanted it, in the downstairs parlour - and 'quite a crowd, at our landlady. 'Mrs Dendy is too kind. It has been many besides, that'd like to meet you'.

years since I last stood before a hushed and gaping crowd, I was hungry, but also weary, and sick of shaking hands and guessing at the contents of a lady's purse.' He smiled, then smiling into strangers' faces; but Kitty whispered that we sat rather heavily. Kitty said that she was very pleased to had better go down, or the other lodgers would think us know him. Mrs Dendy pointed next to a thin, red-headed proud. So we called to Mrs Dendy to give us a moment, and boy on the Professor's right.

while Kitty changed her dress I combed and re-plaited my

'Sims Willis,' she said. 'Corner Man -'

hair, and beat the dust from the hem of my skirt into the

'Corner Man Extraordinary, of course,' he said quickly, fireplace, and washed my hands; and then we made our way leaning to shake our hands. 'As is. And this' - nodding to downstairs.

another hoy across the table from himself - 'this is Percy, The parlour was a very different room, now, to the one that my brother, who plays the Bones. He's also extraordinary.'

we had sat and taken tea in on our arrival. The table had As he spoke Percy gave a wink and, as if to prove his been opened out and pulled into the centre of the room, and brother's words, caught up a pair of spoons from the side of 81

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his plate, and set them rattling upon the tablecloth in a

'Training you up?' This was Tootsie again. 'Take my advice wonderful tattoo.

and don't train her too well, Kitty, or some other artiste'll Mrs Dendy cleared her throat above the noise, then take her from you. I've seen that happen.'

gestured to the pretty, pink-lipped girl who had the seat Take her from me?' said Kitty with a smile. 'Oh, I couldn't next to Sims. 'And not forgetting Miss Flyte, our ballerina.'

have that. It is Nan that brings me my good luck ..."

The girl gave a simper. 'You must call me Lydia,' she said, I looked at my plate, and felt myself redden, until Mrs extending a hand, 'which is what I am known as at - do Dendy, still busy with her platter, held a piece of quivering cheese it, Percy! — what I am known as at the Pav. Or meat my way and coughed: 'A bit of tongue, Miss Astley Monica, if you prefer, which is my real name.'

dear?'

'Or Tootsie,' added Sims, 'which is what her pals all call her The supper-talk was all, of course, theatrical tittle-tattle,

- and if you've read Ally Sloper's I'll leave you to work out and terribly dense and strange to my ears. There was no one why. Only let me say, Miss Butler, that she was in half a in that house, it seemed, who had not some link with the panic when Walter told us he was moving you in, lest you profession. Even plain little Minnie - the eighth member of turn out to he some flashy show-girl with a ten-inch waist.

our party, the girl who had brought us tea on our arrival and When she learned you were a male impersonator, why, she had returned now to help Mrs Dendy dish and serve and turned quite gentle with relief.'

clear the plates - even she belonged to a ballet troupe, and Tootsie gave him a push. 'Pay no mind to him,' she said to had a contract at a concert hall in Lambeth. Why, even the us, 'he is always teasing. I am very pleased to have another dog, Bransby, which soon nosed its way into the parlour to girl about the place - two girls, I should say - flashy or beg for scraps, and to lean his slavering jaw against otherwise.' As she spoke she gave me a quick, satisfied Professor Emery's knee -even he was an old artiste, and had glance that showed plain enough which kind she thought I once toured the South Coast in a dancing dog act, and had a was; then - as Kitty took the seat beside her, leaving me stage name: 'Archie'.

with Percy for a neigh-hour - she went on: 'Walter says you It was a Sunday night, and nobody had a hall to rush to will be very big, Miss Butler. I hear you're to start at the after supper; no one seemed to have anything to do, indeed, Star tomorrow night. I remember that as a very fine hall.'

except sit and smoke and gossip. At seven o'clock there was

'So I've heard. Do call me Kitty

a knock upon the door, and a girl came halloo-ing her way

'And what about you, Miss Astley?' asked Percy as they into the house with a dress of tulle and satin and a gilt tiara: chatted. 'Have you been a dresser for long? You seem awful she was a friend of Tootsie's from the ballet at the Pav young for it.'

come to ask Mrs Dendy's opinion of her costume. While the

'I'm not really a dresser at all, yet. Kitty is still training me frock was spread out on the parlour rug, the supper-things up-'

were carried off; and when the table was cleared the 83

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Professor sat at it and spread a deck of cards. Percy joined She came about a half-hour later. I didn't look at her or say him, whistling; his tune was taken up by Sims, who raised her name, and she didn't greet me, only moved very quietly the lid of Mrs Dendy's piano and began to strike the melody about the room - assuming, I suppose, I was asleep, for I out on that. The piano was a terrible one -'Damn this cheesy was lying very straight on my side and had my eyes hard old thing!' cried Sims as he hit at it. 'You could play shut. There was a little noise from the rest of the house - a Wagner on it, and I swear it would come out sounding like laugh, and the closing of a door, and the rushing of water a sea-shanty or a jig!' - but the tune was gay and it made through distant pipes. But then all was calm again; and soon Kitty smile.

there were only the gentle sounds of her undressing: the

'I know this,' she said to me; and since she knew it she tiny volley of thuds as she pulled at the buttons on her couldn't help but sing it, and had soon stepped over the bodice; the rustle of her skirt, and then of her petticoat; the sparkling frock upon the floor to lift her voice for the sighing of the laces through the eyes of her stays. At last chorus at Sims's side.

there came the slap of her feet on the floorboards, and I I sat on the sofa with Bransby, and wrote a postcard to my guessed that she must be quite naked.

family. 'I am in the queerest-looking parlour you ever saw,'

I had turned the gas down, but left a candle burning for her.

I wrote, 'and everybody is extremely kind. There is a dog I knew that if I opened my eyes now, and tilted my face, I here with a stage-name! My landlady says to thank you for should see her clad in nothing but shadows and the candle-the oysters . . .'

flame's amber glow.

It was very cosy on the sofa, with everyone about me so But I did not turn; and soon there was another rustling, that gay; hut at half-past ten or so Kitty yawned - and at that I meant she had pulled on her nightgown. In a moment the gave a jump, and rose, and said it was my bedtime. I paid a light was extinguished; the bed creaked and heaved; and hasty visit to the privy out the back, then ran upstairs and she was lying beside me, very warm and horribly real.

changed into my nightgown double-quick - you might have She sighed. I felt her breath upon my neck and knew that thought I had been kept from sleeping for a week and was she was gazing at me. Her breath came a second time, and about to die of tiredness. But I was not sleepy at all; it was then a third, then: 'Are you asleep?' she whispered.

only that I wanted to be safely abed before Kitty appeared -

'No,' I said, for I could pretend no longer. I rolled on to my safely still and calm and ready for that moment that must back. The movement brought us even closer together - it shortly come, when she would be beside me in the dark, really was an extremely narrow bed - so I shifted, rather and there would be nothing but the two flimsy lengths of hurriedly, to my left, until I could not have shifted any our cotton nightgowns to separate her own warm limbs further without falling out. Now her breath was upon my from mine.

cheek, and warmer than before.

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She said, 'Do you miss your home, and Alice?' I shook my my hand, and placed her arm over my middle, curling her head. 'Not just a little?'

fingers around the hollow of my waist. 'But we're like

'Well ..."

sisters now, aren't we Nan? You'll be a sister to me — won't I felt her smile. Very gently - but quite matter-of-factly -

you?'

she moved her hand to my wrist, pulled my arm above the I patted her shoulder stiffly. Then I turned my face away -

bedclothes, and ducked her head beneath it to place her quite dazed, with mixed relief and disappointment. I said, temple against my collar-bone, my arm about her neck. The

'Oh yes, Kitty,' and she squeezed me tighter.

hand that dangled before her throat she squeezed, and held.

Then she slept, and her head and arm grew slack and heavy.