Tipping the Velvet (36 page)

compelled at once to apply my cheek to it, and then my There came a movement at the door. I turned, and found lips; and finally, my tongue.

Diana there: she had been watching me as I gazed at A last, flimsy package I almost overlooked: this held a set myself-I had been too taken with my own good looks to of handkerchiefs, each one as fine and fragile as the pique notice her. In her hand she held a spray of flowers, and now shirts and each embroidered with a tiny, flowing N.K. The she came to attach them to my coat. She said, 'It should be suit, in all its parts, with all its delicate, harmonising narcissi, I did not think of it': the flowers were violets. I textures and hues, enchanted me; but this last detail, and the bent my head to them as she worked at my lapel, and unmistakable stamp of permanence it conferred upon my breathed their perfume; a single bloom, come loose from relations with the passionate and generous mistress of my the stem, fluttered to the carpet and was crushed beneath curious new home - well, this last detail satisfied me most her heel.

of all.

When she had finished at my breast she took my cigarette I bathed then, and dressed before the glass; and then I threw to smoke, and stepped back to survey her handiwork - just back the window-shutters, lit a cigarette, and gazed upon as Walter had done, so long ago, at Mrs Dendy's. It seemed 305

306

my fate to be dressed and fashioned and admired by others.

She said, 'Mrs Lethaby, ma'am, how pleasant! Mrs Jex is I didn't mind it. I only thought back to the blue serge suit of expecting you in the day-room, I believe.' Diana nodded, those innocent days, and gave a laugh.

and reached to sign her name upon a sheet. Miss Hawkins The laugh brought a hardness to my eyes, that made them glanced again at me. 'Shall the gentleman be waiting for sparkle. Diana saw, and nodded complacently.

you, here?' she said.

'We shall be a sensation,' she said. 'They will adore you, I Diana's pen moved smoothly on, and she did not raise her know it.'

eyes. She said: 'Don't be tiresome, Hawkins. This is Miss

'Who?' I asked then. 'Who have you dressed me for?'

King, my companion.' Miss Hawkins looked harder at me, Tm taking you out, to meet my friends. I'm taking you,' she then blushed.

put a hand to my cheek, 'to my club.'

'Well, I'm sure, Mrs Lethaby, I can't speak for the ladies; The Cavendish Ladies' Club it was called; and it was but some might consider this a little - irregular.'

situated in Sackville Street, just up from Piccadilly. I knew

'We are here,' answered Diana, screwing the pen together, the road well, I knew all those roads; yet I had never

'for the sake of the irregular.' Then she turned and looked noticed the building - the slender, grey-faced building - to me over, raising a hand to twitch at my necktie, licking the which Diana now had Shilling drive us. Its step, I suppose, tip of one glove-clad finger to smooth at my brow, and is rather shadowy, and its name-plate is small, and its door finally plucking the hat from my head and arranging my is narrow; having visited it once, however, I never missed it hair.

again.

The hat she left for Miss Hawkins to deal with. Then she Go to Sackville Street today, if you like, and try to spot it: put her arm securely through mine, and led me up a flight you shall walk the length of the pavement, quite three or of stairs into the day-room.

four times. But when you find the grey-faced building, rest This room, like the lobby below it, is grand. I cannot say a moment looking up at it; and if you see a lady cross its what colour they have it now; in those days it was panelled shadowy threshold, mark her well.

in golden damask, and its carpets were of cream, and its She will walk - as I walked with Diana that day - into a sofas blue ... It was decked, in short, in all the colours of lobby: the lobby is smart-looking, and in it sits a neat, plain, my own most handsome self - or, rather, I was decked to ageless woman behind a desk. When I first went there, this match it. This idea, I must confess, was disconcerting; for a woman was named Miss Hawkins. She was ticking entries second, Diana's generosity began to seem less of a in a ledger as we arrived, but looked up when she saw compliment than I had thought it, posed that morning Diana, and gave a smile. When she saw me, the smile grew before the glass.

smaller.

But all performers dress to suit their stages, I recalled. And what a stage was this - and what an audience!

307

308

There were about thirty of them, I think - all women; all Diana placed me before them all, and presented me - more seated at tables, bearing drinks and books and papers. You graciously than she had introduced me to Miss Hawkins, might have passed any one of them upon the street, and but again as her 'companion'; and the ladies laughed. The thought nothing; but the effect of their appearance all first of them, the one who had risen to greet us, now seized combined was rather queer. They were dressed, not my hand. Her fingers held a stubby cigar.

strangely, but somehow distinctly. They wore skirts - but

'This, Nancy dear,' said my mistress, 'is Mrs Jex. She is the kind of skirts a tailor might design if he were set, for a quite my oldest friend in London - and quite the most dare, to sew a bustle for a gent. Many seemed clad in disreputable. Everything she tells you will be designed to walking-suits or riding-habits. Many wore pince-nez, or corrupt.'

carried monocles on ribbons. There were one or two rather I bowed to her. I said, 'I hope so, indeed.' Mrs Jex gave a startling coiffures; and there were more neckties than I had roar.

ever before seen brought together at an exclusively female

'But it speaks!' she cried. 'All this' - she gestured to my face, ensemble.

my costume - 'and the creature even speaks!'

I did not notice all these details at once, of course; but the Diana smiled, and raised a brow. 'After a fashion,' she said.

room was a large one and, since Diana took her time to lead I blinked, but Mrs Jex still held my hand, and now she me across it, I had leisure to gaze about me as she did so.

squeezed it. 'Diana is brutal to you, Miss Nancy, but you We walked through a hush that was thick as bristling velvet must not mind it. Here at the Cavendish we have been

- for, at our appearance at the door the lady members had positively panting to see you and make you our particular turned their heads to stare, and then had goggled. Whether, friend. You must call me "Maria"' - she pronounced it the like Miss Hawkins, they took me for a gentleman; or old-fashioned way - 'and this is Evelyn, and Dickie. Dickie, whether - like Diana - they had seen through my disguise at you can see, likes to think of herself as the boy of the place.'

once, I cannot say. Either way, there was a cry - 'Good I bowed to the ladies in turn. The former showed me a gracious!' - and then another exclamation, more lingering: smile; the one named Dickie (this was the one with the

'My word..." I felt Diana stiffen at my side, with pure monocle: I am sure it was of plain glass) only gave a toss to complacency.

her head, and looked haughty.

Then came another shout, as a lady at a table in the farthest

'This is the new Callisto then, is it?' she said.

corner rose to her feet. 'Diana, you old roue! You have done She wore a boiled shirt and a bow-tie, and her hair, though it at last!' She gave a clap. Beside her, two more ladies long and bound, was sleek with oil. She was about two- or looked on, pink-faced. One of them had a monocle, and three-and-thirty, and her waist was thick; but her upper lip, now she fixed it to her eye.

at least, was dark as a boy's. They would have called her terribly handsome, I guessed, in about 1880.

309

310

Maria pressed my fingers again, and rolled her eyes; then eyelashes, and toe-nail clippings - old sanitary wrappings, she tilted her head, and when I bent to her - for she was from what I could see of it; and she has hair -'

rather short - she said, 'Now, my dear, you must satisfy our

'Hair, Diana,' broke in Dickie meaningfully.

appetite. We want the whole sordid story of your encounter

'- hair, which she has had made up into rings and aigrettes.

with Diana. She herself will tell us nothing - only that the Lord Myers saw a brooch, and asked her where she bought night was warm; that the streets were gaudy; that the moon it, and Susan told him it was from the tail of a fox, and said was reeling through the clouds like a drunken woman she would have one made for him, for his wife! Can you looking for lovers. Tell us, Miss Nancy, tell us, do! Was the imagine? Now Lady Myers is to be found at, all the moon really reeling through the clouds, like a drunken fashionable parties with a sprig of Susan Dacre's sister-in-woman looking for her lovers?' She took a puff of her cigar, law's quim-hair at her bosom!'

and studied me. Evelyn and Dickie leaned and waited. I Diana smiled. 'And Susan's husband knows it all, and does looked from them back to Maria; and then I swallowed.

not mind it?'

'It was,' I said at last, 'if Diana said it was.'

'Mind it? It is he who pays her jewellers' bills! You may And at that, Maria gave a startling laugh, low and loud and hear him boasting - I have heard him myself - of how he rapid as the rattle of a road-drill; and Diana took my arm plans to rename the estate New Lesbos.'

and made a space for me upon the sofa, and called for a

'New Lesbos!' Diana said mildly. Then she yawned. 'With waitress to bring us drinks.

that tired old lesbian Susan Dacre in it, it might just as well At the rest of the tables the ladies still looked on - some of be the original ..." She turned to me, and her voice dropped them, I could not help but notice, rather fastidiously. There a tone. 'Light me a cigarette, would you, child?'

had come some murmurs, and some whispers; also a titter I took two fags from the tortoise-shell case in my breast or two and a gasp. No one in our party paid the slightest pocket, lit them both at my own lip, then passed one over.

heed to any of it. Maria kept her eyes fixed upon myself, The ladies watched me - indeed, even while they laughed and when our drinks arrived, she leered at me over her and chattered, they studied all my movements, all my parts.

glass: 'To both ends of the busk!' she said, and gave me a When I leaned to knock the ash from my cigarette, they wink. Diana had her face turned, to catch a story from the blinked. When I ran a hand over the stubble at my hairline, lady named Evelyn. She was saying, 'Such a scandal, they coloured. When I parted my trouser-clad legs and Diana, you never heard! She has vowed herself to seven showed the bulge there, Maria and Evelyn, as one, gave a women, and sees them all on different days; one of them is shift in their chairs; and Dickie reached for her brandy glass her sister-in-law! She has put together an album - my dear, and disposed of its contents with one savage swig.

I nearly died at the sight of it! - full of bits and pieces of After a moment, Maria came close again. She said, 'Now, stuff that she has cut off them or pulled out of them: Miss Nancy, we are still waiting for your history. We want 311

312

to know all about you, and so far you have done nothing but

'Hell, if I haven't scorched a hole through these dam'

tease.'

trousers!'

I said, 'There's nothing to know. You must ask Diana.'

The words came out louder than I meant them to; and as

'Diana speaks for the sake of cleverness, not truth. Tell me they did, there was an answering cry from the room at my now' - she had grown confiding - 'where were you born?

back: 'Really, Mrs Lethaby, this is intolerable!' A lady had Was it some hard place? Was it some rookery, where you risen, and was approaching our table.

must sleep ten to a bed with your sisters?'

'I must protest, Mrs Lethaby,' she said when she arrived at

'A wokery!’ I thought very suddenly, and more vividly than it, 'I really must protest, on behalf of all the ladies present, I had in months, of our old front parlour at home - of the and absent, at the very great damage you are inflicting upon cloth with the fringe that dangled, fluttering, above the our club!'

hearth. I said, 'I was born in Kent, in Whitstable.' Maria Diana raised languid eyes to her. 'Damage, Miss Bruce?

only stared. I said again, 'Whitstable - where the oysters Are you referring to the presence of my companion, Miss come from.'

King?'

At that, she threw back her head. 'Why my dear, you're a

'I am, ma'am.'

mermaid! Diana, did you know it? A Whitstable mermaid! -

'You don't care for her?'

though thankfully,' and here she placed her free hand upon

'I don't care for her language, ma'am, or for her clothes!'

my knee, and patted it, 'thankfully, without the tail. That She herself wore a silk shirt with a cummerbund and a would never do, now would it?"

cravat; in the cravat there was a pin, cast in silver, of the I could not answer. Hot into my head after the image of our head of a horse. Now she stood expectantly at Diana's side; parlour had come the memory of Kitty, at her dressing-and after a moment, Diana sighed.

room door. Miss Mermaid, she had called me; and she had

'Well,' she said. 'I see we must bow to the members'

said it again that time in Stamford Hill, when she had heard pleasure.' She rose, then drew me up beside her and leaned me weeping, come, and kissed my tears . . .

rather ostentatiously upon my arm. 'Nancy, dear, you I gave a gulp, and put my cigarette to my lips. It was costume has proved too bold for the Cavendish after all. It smoked right down and almost burned me; and as I fumbled seems that I must take you home and rid you of it. Now, with it, it fell. It struck the sofa, bounced, then rolled who will ride with us to Felicity Place, to catch the sport..."

between my legs. I reached for it - that made the ladies stare There was a ripple around the room. Maria rose at once, again, and twitch -but it was caught, still smouldering, and reached for her walking-cane. 'Tantivy, tantivy!' she between my buttock and the chair. I leapt up, found the fag cried. Then: 'Ho, Satin!' I heard a yelp, and from beneath at last, then pulled at the linen that covered my bum. I said, her chair there came - what I had not seen before, as it lay 313