Tipping the Velvet (31 page)

give him the chance of a closer look *- though he must, of My lace tied, I straightened up, but cautiously kept my course, be content only to look.

place. The carriage slowed, then — in its dark interior still I advanced a little towards the open door. Within, all was hidden behind the heavy lace at its windows - it passed me dark; I saw only the vague outline of a shoulder, an arm, a by. Then, a little way on, it drew to a halt. I began, knee, against the lighter square of the far window. Then uncertainly, to walk towards it.

briefly the end of a cigarette glowed bright in the blackness, The driver, as before, was impassive and still: I could see and glimmered redly on a pale gloved hand, and a face. The only the curve of his shoulders and the rise of his hat; hand was slender, and had rings upon it. The face was indeed, as I approached the rear of the vehicle he powdered: a woman's face.

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I was too surprised even to laugh - too startled, for a I put my hand on the carriage-door and made to swing it to.

moment, to do anything but stand at the rim of gloom that But again she spoke. 'If you won't,' she said, 'let me drive seemed to spill out from the carriage, and gape at her; and you home, then won't you, as a favour, ride with me a in that moment, she spoke.

while? As you see, I am quite alone; and I've rather a

'Can I offer you a ride?'

yearning for company, tonight.' Her voice seemed to Her voice was rich and rather haughty, and somehow tremble - though whether with melancholy, or anticipation, arresting. It made me stammer. I said: 'That, that's very kind or even laughter, I could not tell.

of you, madam' - I sounded like a mincing shop-boy

'Look missis,' I said then, into the gloom, 'you're on the refusing a tip -'but I'm not five minutes from home, and I wrong track. Let me pass, and get your driver to take you shall get there all the quicker if you'll let me say good-another turn around Piccadilly.' Now I laughed: 'Believe night, and pass on my way.' I tilted my cap towards the dark me, I haven't got what you're after.'

place where the voice had come from, and, with a tight little The carriage creaked; the red end of the cigarette bobbed smile, I made to move on.

and brightened and illuminated, once again, a cheek, a But the lady spoke again.

brow, a lip. The lip curled.

'It's rather late,' she said, 'to be out on one's own, in streets

'On the contrary, my dear. You have exactly what I'm after.'

like these.' She drew on her cigarette, and the tip glowed Still I did not guess, but only thought, Blimey, she's keen! I bright again in the shadows. 'Won't you let me drop you glanced about me. A few carriages bowled along the Gray's somewhere? I have a very capable driver.'

Inn Road, and two or three late pedestrians passed quickly I thought, I am sure you do: her man was still hunched from sight, behind them. A hansom had pulled up at the end forward in his seat, his back to me, his thoughts his own. I of the mews, quite near us, and was letting its passengers felt suddenly weary. I had heard stories in Soho about dismount; they disappeared into a doorway, and the hansom ladies like this - ladies who rode the darkened streets with rolled by and away, and all was still again. I took a breath, well-paid servants, on the lookout for idle men or boys like and leaned into the dark interior of the coach.

me who'd give them a thrill for the price of a supper. Rich

'Madam,' I hissed, 'I ain't a boy at all. I'm -' I hesitated. The ladies with no husbands, or absent husbands, or even (so end of the cigarette disappeared: she had thrown it out of Sweet Alice claimed) husbands at home, warming the bed, the window. I heard her give one impatient sigh - and all at with whom they shared their startled catches. I had never once I understood.

known quite whether to believe in such ladies; here,

'You little fool,' she said. 'Get in.'

however, was one before me, haughty and scented and hot Well, what should I have done? I had been weary, but I was for a lark.

not weary now. I had been disappointed, my expectations What a mistake she had made this time!

for the evening dashed; but with this one, unlooked-for 263

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invitation the glamour of the night seemed all restored.

'I thought - the uniform ..." She gestured towards my suit.

True, it was very late, and I was alone, and this woman was It, too, seemed to have lost some of its bravado, seemed to clearly a stranger of some determination, and with odd and be bleeding its crimson into the shadows of the coach. I felt secret tastes ... But her voice and manner were, as I have I was letting her down. I said, with an effort at music-hall said, compelling ones. And she was rich. And my purse was sauce, 'Oh, the uniform is my disguise for the streets, not a empty. I hesitated for a moment; then she held out her hand party. I find that a girl in skirts, on her own in the city, gets and, where the lamplight fell upon her rings, I saw how looked at, rather, in a way not always nice.'

large the stones were. It was that - only that, just then -

She nodded. 'I see. And you don't care for that? - being which decided me. I took her hand, and climbed into the looked at, I mean. I should never have guessed it.'

carriage.

'Well... It depends, of course, on who's doing the looking.'

We sat together in the gloom. The brougham lurched I was getting back into my stride at last; and she, I could forward with a muted creak, and started on its smooth, sense it, was also warming up. I felt for a second - what I quiet, expensive way. Through the heavy lace of its had not felt, it seemed, for a hundred years - the thrill of windows the streets seemed changed, quite insubstantial.

performing with a partner at my side, someone who knew This, I realised, was how the rich saw the city all the time.

the songs, the steps, the patter, the pose . . . The memory I glanced at the woman at my side. She wore a dress or brought with it an old, dull ache of grief; but it was cloak of some sombre, heavy material, indistinguishable overlaid, in this new setting, with a keen, expectant from the dark upholstery of the carriage's interior; her face pleasure. Here we were, this strange lady and I, on our way and gloved hands, illuminated by the regular gleam of to I knew not what, playing whore and trick so well we passing street-lamps, their surface fantastically marbled by might have been reciting a dialogue from some handbook the shadow of the drapes, seemed to float, pale as water-of tartery! It made me giddy.

lilies, in a pool of gloom. She was, as far as I could tell, Now she raised her hand to finger the braided collar of my handsome, and quite young - perhaps ten years older than coat. 'What a little impostor you are!' she said mildly. Then: myself.

'But you have a brother in the Guards, I think. A brother -

For a full half-minute neither of us spoke; then she tilted or, perhaps, a beau . . . ?' Her fingers trembled slightly, and back her head, and looked me over. She said, 'You are, I felt the chillest of whispers of sapphire and gold upon my perhaps, on your way home from a costume ball?' Her voice throat.

had a new, slightly arrogant drawl to it.

I said, 'I work in a laundry, and a soldier brought this in. I

'A ball?' I answered. To my own surprise I sounded reedy, thought he wouldn't notice if I borrowed it." I smoothed out rather trembly.

the creases around my crotch, where the slippery cravat still rudely bulged. 'I liked the cut,' I added, 'of the trousers.'

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After the briefest of pauses her hand - as I knew it must -

had you, dear, a dozen times: but oh! as I said, why spoil moved to my knee, then crept to the top of my thigh, where the chase! Tonight - what was it, decided me at last?

she let it rest. Her palm felt extraordinarily hot. It was an Perhaps it was the uniform; perhaps the moon ..." And she age since anyone had touched me there; indeed, I had kept turned her face to the carriage window, where the moon such a close guard over my own lap lately, I had to fight showed - higher and smaller than before, but still quite back the urge to brush her fingers away.

pink, as if ashamed to look upon the wicked world to which Perhaps she felt me stiffen, for she removed the hand it was compelled to lend its light.

herself and said, 'I'm rather afraid that you are something of I, too, flushed at the lady's words. What she had said was a tease.'

strange, was shocking - and yet, I guessed, might easily be

'Oh,' I said, recovering, 'I can tease all right - if that's what true. In the bustle and swarm of the streets on which I plied you care for .. .'

my shadowy trade, a stationary or a lingering carriage

'Ah.'

would be unremarkable - especially to me, who attended to

'And besides,' I added pertly, 'it's you who's the tease: I saw the traffic of the pavements rather than the roads. It made you in St James's Square, watching me. Why didn't you me horribly uneasy to think she really had been observing stop me then, if you wanted - company-so badly?'

me, all those times . .. And yet, was it not just such an

'And spoil the fun with hastening it? Why, the wait was half audience that I had longed for? Had I not lamented, again the pleasure!' As she said it she raised the fingers of her and again, precisely the fact that my new nocturnal other hand - her left hand - to my cheek. The gloves, I performances must be staged in the dark, under cover, thought, were rather damp about the tips; and they were unguessed? I thought of all the parts I had handled, the scented with a scent that made me draw back in confusion gents I'd knelt to and the cocks I'd sucked. I had done it all, and surprise.

as cool as Christmas; now, the idea that she had watched She laughed. 'But how prim you have turned! You are never me went direct to the fork of my drawers and made me wet.

so dainty, I'm sure, with the gentlemen of Soho.'

I said - I didn't know what else to say -I said, 'Am I then so There was a knowingness to the remark. I said, 'You have

- special?'

watched me before - before tonight!'

'We shall see,' she answered.

She answered: 'Well, it is rather marvellous what one may After that, we spoke no more.

catch, from one's carriage, if one is quick and keen and She took me to her home, in St John's Wood; and the house, patient. One may follow one's quarry like a hound with a as I guessed it must be, was grand - a high, pale villa in a fox - and all the time the fox not know itself pursued -

well-swept square, with a wide front door and tall casement might think itself only about its little private business: windows with many panes of glass. In one of these a single lifting its tail, arching its eye, wiping its lips ... I might have lamp sat gleaming; the neighbouring houses, however, 267

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presented only black, shuttered windows, and the clatter of her gesture was not lost on me. This was the third and most our carriage sounded atrocious, to me, in the stillness -I was alarming threshold I had crossed for her tonight. I felt a not then used to that total, unnatural hush which fills the prick, now, not of desire, but of fear: her face, lit from streets and houses of the rich, when they are sleeping.

beneath by the smoking lamp, seemed all at once macabre, She led me to her door, saying nothing. Her knock was grotesque. I wondered at this lady's tastes, and how they answered by a grim-faced servant, who received her might have decked the room that lay behind this unspeaking mistress's cloak, looked once at me from beneath her lashes, door, in this silent house, with its curious, incurious but after that kept her eyes quite lowered. The lady paused servants. There might be ropes, there might be knives.

to read the cards upon her table; and I, self-conscious, There might be a heap of girls in suits — their pomaded looked about me. We were in a spacious hall, at the bottom heads neat, their necks all bloody. The lady smiled, and of a wide staircase winding up to darker, higher floors.

turned. The door swung open. She led me in.

There were doors - closed - to the left and the right of us.

It was, after all, a kind of parlour; nothing more. A small The floor was paved with marble, in squares of black and fire had burned itself ashy in the grate, and a bowl of pink. The walls, to match it, were painted a deep, deep rose; browning petals upon the mantel above it made the thick air and this darkened further, where the staircase curved and thicker with a heady perfume. The window was tall, and lifted, like the interior whorls of a shell. I heard my hostess close-drawn with velvet drapes; against the wall which say, 'That will do, Mrs Hooper', and the servant, with a faced it were two armless, ladder-backed chairs. A door bow, took her leave. The lady lifted the lamp from the table beside the fireplace led into a further room; it was ajar, but I at my side and, still with no word for me, began to ascend could not see beyond it.

the stairs. I followed. We climbed to one floor, and then Between the chairs there was a bureau, and now the lady another. At each step the house grew darker, until at last crossed to it. She poured a glass of wine, and took up a there was only the narrow pool of light from my chaperon's rose-tipped cigarette and lit it.

hand to guide my uncertain footsteps through the gloom.

Wlin me lamp umu m. n.<^+ uu&». -— __.. „ „

She led me down a short passage to a closed door, then

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turned and stood before it, one hand raised upon the panels, invitation or perhaps with challenge. She looked, to tell the the other with the lamp held at her thigh. Her dark eyes 1

gleamed, with

•'-- 'Ti-U*. «t i\,n Wm-lrl' tViat I

-.1 _u-ii———— C^o l™Vorl tn tfill the I had seen already that she was older, less handsome, but inVlUHlUU Ul JJCiliapo .viui ^.^———-o--

more striking than I'd thought at first. Her forehead was truth, like nothing so much as the 'Light of the World' that broad and pale - all the paler for being framed by the hung above the umbrella-stand in Mrs Milne's hallway; but rippled blackness of her hair and her heavy dark brows. Her 269