Tipping the Velvet (24 page)

or two fellows reached out to pluck me by the arm; but I The theatre, of course, was still shut up: there were sounds saw and heard them not, simply hurried, stumbling over my of hammering from the hall as the carpenters finished their skirts, until sheer exhaustion made me slow my pace and work, but apart from that the corridors, the green-room - all look about me.

were quiet. I was glad: I didn't want to be seen by anyone. I 199

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walked very fast but very quietly to the dressing-rooms, I held the card between my fingers for a moment; then I until I reached the door that said Miss Butler and Miss returned it to its box and placed the paper sheet above it, as King. Then very stealthily - for I half-feared, in my fevered before. Then I laid my head upon the table, and wept, again, state, that Kitty might be on the other side, awaiting me - I until I could weep no more.

unlocked the door and pushed it open.

I opened the tin box at last, and took, without counting it, The room beyond it was dark: I stepped across it in the light all the money that lay inside - about twenty pounds, as it from the corridor, struck a match and lit a gas-jet, then would turn out, and only a fraction, of course, of my total closed the door as softly as I could. I knew just what I earnings of the past twelve months; but I felt so dazed and wanted. In a cupboard beneath Kitty's table there was a ill at that moment I could hardly imagine what I would ever little tin box with a pile of coins and notes in it - a portion need money for, again. I put the cash into an envelope, of our wages went there every week, for us to draw on as tucked the envelope into my belt, and turned to go.

we chose. The key to it lay mixed up with her sticks of I hadn't glanced about me, yet, at all; now, however, I took grease-paint, in the old cigar-box in which she kept her a last look round. One thing only caught my eye, and made make-up. I took this box, and tipped it up; the sticks fell me hesitate: our rail of costumes. They were all here, the out, and so did the key - and so, I saw, did something else.

suits that I had worn upon the stage at Kitty's side - the There had always been a sheet of coloured paper at the velvet breeches, the shirts, the serge jackets, the fancy bottom of the box, and I had never thought to lift it. Now it waistcoats. I took a step towards them, and ran my hand had come loose and behind it was a card. I picked it up with along the line of sleeves. I would never take them up again .

trembling fingers, and studied it. It was creased, and stained

. .

with make-up, but I knew it at once. On the front was a The thought was too much; I couldn't leave them. There picture of an oyster-smack; two girls smiled from its deck were a couple of old sailors' bags nearby - giant great things through a patina of powder and grease, and on the sail that we had used once or twice to rehearse with, in the someone had inked, 'To London'. There was more writing afternoons, when the Britannia stage was quiet and clear.

on the back - Kitty's address at the Canterbury Palace, and a They were filled with rags: very quickly I took one of them message: 'I can come!!! You must do without your dresser and loosened the cord at its neck, and pulled all its stuffing for a few nights, though, while I make all ready ..." It was out upon the floor until it was quite empty. Then I stepped signed: 'Fondly, Your Nan'.

to the rail, and began to tear my costumes from it - not all It was the card that I had sent her, so long ago, before we of them, but the ones I could not bear to part with, the blue had even moved to Brixton; and she had kept it, secretly, as serge suit, the Oxford bags, the scarlet guardsman's uniform if she treasured it.

- and stuffed them into the bag. I took shoes, too, and shirts, and neck-ties — even a couple of hats. I didn't stop to think 201

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about it, only worked, sweating, until the bag was full and than to hide from her, to lose myself in the grey anonymous almost as tall as myself. It was heavy, and I staggered when spaces of the city. I wanted a room - a small room, a mean I lifted it; but it was strangely satisfying to have a real room, a room that would prove invisible to any pursuing burden upon my shoulders - a kind of counterweight to my eye. I saw myself entering it and covering my head, like terrible heaviness of heart.

some burrowing or hibernating creature, a wood-louse or a Thus laden, I made my way through the corridors of the rat. So I kept to the streets where I thought I should find it, Britannia. I passed no one; I looked for no one. Only when the grim and uninviting streets where there were lodging-I reached the stage door did I see a face that I was rather houses, doss-houses, houses with cards in the window glad to see: Billy-Boy sat in the doorman's office, quite saying Beds-to-Rent. Any one of them, I suppose, might alone, with a cigarette between his fingers. He looked up have suited me; but I was looking for a sign to welcome when I approached, and gazed in wonder at my bag, my me.

swollen eyes, my mottled cheeks.

And at last it seemed to me I found it. I had strayed through

'Lord, Nan,' he said, getting to his feet. 'Whatever is up with Moorgate, wandered towards St Paul's, then turned and you? Are you sick?'

finished up almost at Clerkenwell. Still I had given no I shook my head. 'Give me your fag, Bill, will you?' He did thought to the people about me - to the men and the so, and I pulled on it and coughed. He watched me warily.

children who stared, or sometimes laughed, to see me

'You don't look right, at all,' he said. 'Where's Kitty?'

trudging, blank-faced, with my sailor's load. My head was I drew on the fag again, and handed it hack to him.

bowed, my eyes half-closed; but I became aware now that I

'Gone,' I said. Then I pulled at the door and stepped into the had entered some kind of square -grew conscious of a street beyond. I heard Billy-Boy's voice, lifted in anxiety bustle, a hum of business close at hand; grew conscious, and alarm, but the closing door shut off his words. I raised too, of a smell: some rank, sweet, sickening odour I vaguely my bag a little higher on my shoulder, and began to walk. I recognised but could not name. I walked more slowly, and took one turning, and then another. I passed a squalid felt the road begin to pull, a little stickily, at the soles of my tenement, entered a busy street, and joined a throng of shoes. I opened my eyes: the stones I stood upon were red pedestrians. London absorbed me; and for a little while I and running with water and blood. I looked up, and saw a ceased, entirely, to think.

graceful iron building filled with vans and barrows and porters, all bearing carcases.

Chapter 8

I was at Smithfield, at the Dead Meat Market.

I walked for something like an hour before I rested again; I gave a kind of sigh to know it. Close at hand there was a but the course I took was a random one that sometimes tobacconist's booth: I went to it and bought a tin of doubled back upon itself: my aim was less to run from Kitty cigarettes and some matches; and when the boy handed me 203

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my change I asked him if there were any lodging-houses The room to which she led me was cramped and mean and nearby, that might have rooms to spare. He gave me the perfectly colourless; everything in it - the wallpaper, the names of two or three -adding, in a warning sort of way: carpets, even the tiles beside the hearth - having been

'They ain't werry smart, miss, the lodgings round these rubbed or bleached or grimed to some variety of grey.

parts.' I only nodded, and turned away; then walked on, to There was no gas, only two oil-lamps with cracked and the first address that he had mentioned.

sooty chimneys. Above the mantel there was one small It turned out to be a tall, crumbling house in an unswept looking-glass, as cloudy and as speckled as the back of an row, very close to the Farringdon Street railway. The front old man's hand. The window faced the Market. It was all yard had a bedstead in it, and a dozen rusty cans and about as different from our house at Stamford Hill as it was broken-down crates; in the yard next door there was a possible for any room to be: that, at least, gave me a dreary group of barefoot children, stirring water into pails of earth.

kind of satisfaction and relief. All I really saw, however, But I hardly raised my eyes to any of it. I only stepped to was the bed - a horrible old down mattress, yellow at the the door, laid my bag upon the step, and knocked. Behind edges and blackened in the middle with an ancient me, in the cut of the railway, a train rumbled and hissed. As bloodstain the size of a saucer - and the door. The bed, for it passed, the step on which I rested gave a shake.

all its rankness, seemed at that moment wonderfully My knock was answered by a pale little girl who stared inviting. The door was solid, and had a key in it.

hard at me while I enquired after the vacant rooms, then I told Mrs Best therefore that I should like to take the room turned and called into the darkness behind her. After a at once, and drew out the envelope that held my money.

second, a lady came; and she, too, looked me over. I When she saw that, she sniffed -I think she took me for a thought then of how I must appear, in my expensive dress gay girl. 'It is only fair to tell you now,' she said, 'that the but hatless and gloveless, and with red eyes and a running house I keep here is a tidy one; and I like my lodgers ditto. I nose. But I considered this image of myself rather listlessly, have had trouble with single ladies in the past. I don't care as if it did not much concern me; and the lady at last must what you do or who you see outside my house; but one have thought me harmless enough. She said her name was thing I won't have, that's men-friends in a single lady's Mrs Best, that she had one room left for rent; that the room . . .'

charge was five shillings a week - or seven, with I said that I would give her no trouble on that score.

attendance; and that she liked her rent in advance.

I must have been a queer sort of tenant for Mrs Best, in Would the terms suit me? I gave a quick, half-hearted show those first weeks after my flight from Stamford Hill. I paid of calculation - I felt quite incapable of serious thought -

my rent very promptly, but never went out. I received no then said that they would.

visits, no letters or cards; kept stubbornly to my room, with 205

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the shutters closed fast — there to pace the creaking floor, unable, after all, to gaze upon. I placed them beneath my or to mumble or to weep .. .

bed, still in their bag, and left them there to moulder.

I think my fellow tenants thought me mad; perhaps I was No one came after me, for no one knew where I was. I was mad. My life, however, seemed sensible enough to me then.

hidden, lost. I had cast off all my friends and joys, and For where else, in my misery, could I have run to? All my embraced misery as my career. For a week — and then London friends - Mrs Dendy, Sims and Percy, Billy-Boy another - and another, and another - I did nothing but and Flora - were also Kitty's friends. If I went to them, what slumber, and weep, and pace my chamber; or else I would would they say? They would only be glad, to know that stand with my brow pressed to the dirty window, gazing at Kitty and Walter were lovers at last! And if I went home, to the Market, watching as the carcases were brought and Whitstable, what would they say? I had come away from piled, and heaved about, and sold, and taken away. The there so recently, and been so proud; and it seemed as if only faces I saw were those of Mrs Best, and Mary - the they had all been promising I would be humbled from the little skivvy who had opened the door to me, who changed very day I left them. It had been hard to live among them, my pot and brought me coal and water, and who I wanting Kitty. How could I return to them, and take up my sometimes sent on errands to buy me cigarettes and food.

old habits, having lost her?

Her expression as she handed me my packages showed me So, though I imagined their letters arriving at Stamford Hill, how strange I had become; but to her fear and her wonder and lying there unopened and unanswered; though I alike, I was indifferent. I was indifferent to everything guessed that, recalling my archness, they would think that I except my own grief - and this I indulged with a strange had turned my back on them, and soon stop writing at all, I and horrible passion.

could not help it. If I remembered the things I had left I believe I barely washed in all those weeks - and certainly I behind me - my women's clothes, and my wages; my letters did not change my dress, for I had no other. Very early on I and cards from fans and admirers; my old tin trunk with my gave off wearing my false chignon, too, and let my hair initials on it - I remembered them dully, as if they were the straggle greasily about my ears. I smoked, endlessly - my pieces of some other person's history. When I thought of fingers grew brown, from the nail to the knuckle; but I ate Cinderella, and how I had broken my contract and let them hardly at all. For all that I liked to watch the carcases being down at the Britannia, I didn't much care. I was known in towed about at Smithfield, the thought of meat upon my my new home as 'Miss Astley'. If my neighbours had ever tongue made me nauseous, and I had stomach for none but seen Nan King upon the stage, they did not see her now, in the blandest of foods. Like a woman quickening with child me - indeed, I barely recognised her there myself. The I developed a curious appetite: I longed only for sweet, costumes I had brought with me I found myself quite white bread. I gave Mary shilling after shilling, and sent her to Camden Town and Whitechapel, Limehouse and Soho, 207

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for bagels, brioches and flat Greek loaves, and buns from gone unvisited and unmarked. I might have remained in my the Chinese bakeries. These I would eat dipped in mugs of stupor till doomsday - I think I would have - if something tea, which I brewed, ferociously strong, in a pot on the hadn't happened, at last, to rouse me from it.

hearth, and sweetened with condensed milk. It was the I had been at Mrs Best's for about seven or eight weeks, and drink I had used to make for Kitty, in our first days together had not once stepped beyond her door. I still ate only what at the Canterbury Palace. The taste of it was like the taste of Mary brought me; and though I only ever sent her off, as I her; and a comfort, and a frightful torment, all at once.