Tipping the Velvet (4 page)

tickets to come and see her every night!' I didn't answer I spent the next day, Sunday, at the cockle-stall; and when him. Kitty Butler had come back for her encore, and had Freddy called that night to ask me out walking, I said I was already drawn the rose from her lapel; but it was no comfort too tired. That day was cooler, and by Monday the weather to me at all to know my family liked her - indeed, it made seemed really to have broken. Father came back to the me more wretched still. I gazed again at the figure in the Parlour full-time, and I spent the day in the kitchen, gutting shaft of limelight and thought quite bitterly, you would be and filleting. We worked till almost seven: I had just marvellous, if I were here or not. You would be marvellous, enough time between the closing of the shop and the without my admiration. I might as well be at home, putting leaving of the Canterbury train to change my dress, to pull crab-meat in a paper cone, for all you know of me!

on a pair of elastic-sided boots and to sit down with Father But even as I thought it, something rather curious and Mother, Alice, Davy and Rhoda for a hasty supper.

happened. She had reached the end of her song - there was They thought it more than strange, I knew, that I should be the business with the flower and the pretty girl; and when returning to the Palace yet again; Rhoda, in particular, this was done she wheeled into the wing. And as she did it I seemed greatly tickled by the story of my 'mash'. 'Don't you saw her head go up - and she looked - looked, I swear it -

mind her going, Mrs Astley?' she asked. 'My mother would towards the empty chair in which I usually sat, then never let me go so far alone; and I am two years older. But lowered her head and moved on. If I had only been in my then, Nancy is such a steady sort of girl, I suppose.' I had box tonight, I would have had her eyes upon me! If I had been a steady girl; it was over Alice - saucy Alice - that my only been in my box, instead of here -!

parents usually worried. But at Rhoda's words I saw Mother I glanced at Davy and Father: they were both on their feet look me over and grow thoughtful. I had on my Sunday calling for more; but letting their calls die, and beginning to dress, and my new hat trimmed with lavender; and I had a stretch. Beside me Freddy was still smiling at the stage. His lavender bow at the end of my plait of hair, and a bow of hair was plastered to his forehead, his lip was dark where the same ribbon sewn on each of my white linen gloves.

he was letting whiskers grow; his cheek was red and had a My boots were black with a wonderful shine. I had put a pimple on it. 'Ain't she a peach?' he said to me. Then he spot of Alice's perfume - eau de rose - behind each ear; and rubbed his eyes, and shouted to Davy for a beer. Behind me I had darkened my lashes with castor oil from the kitchen.

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Mother said, 'Nancy, do you really think -?' But as she dally with it a little longer than it should. I ceased my spoke the clock on the mantel gave a ting! It was a quarter-whispered singing and merely stared, and swallowed. I saw past seven, I should miss my train.

her leave the stage -again, her gaze met mine - and then I said, 'Good-bye! Good-bye!' - and fled, before she could return for her encore. She sang her ballad and plucked the delay me.

flower from her lapel, and held it to her cheek, as we all I missed my train anyway, and had to wait at the station till expected. But when her song was finished she did not peer the later one came. When I reached the Palace the show had into the stalls for the handsomest girl, as she usually did.

begun: I took my seat to find the acrobats already on the Instead, she took a step to her left, towards the box in which stage forming their loop, their spangles gleaming, their I sat. And then she took another. In a moment she had white suits dusty at the knees. There was clapping; Tricky reached the corner of the stage, and stood facing me; she rose to say -what he said every night, so that half the was so close I could see the glint of her collar-stud, the beat audience smiled and said it with him - that You couldn't get of the pulse in her throat, the pink at the corner of her eye.

many of those to the pound! Then - as if it were part of the She stood there for what seemed to be a small eternity; then overture to her routine and she could not work without it -I her arm came up, the flower flashed for a second in the gripped my seat and held my breath, while he raised his beam of the lime - and my own hand, trembling, rose to gavel to beat out Kitty Butler's name.

catch it. The crowd gave a broad, indulgent cheer of She sang that night like -I cannot say like an angel, for her pleasure, and a laugh. She held my flustered gaze with her songs were all of champagne suppers and strolling in the own more certain one, and made me a little bow. Then she Burlington Arcade; perhaps, then, like a fallen angel - or stepped backwards suddenly, waved to the hall, and left us.

yet again like a falling one: she sang like a falling angel I sat for a moment as if stunned, my eyes upon the flower in might sing with the hounds of heaven fresh burst behind my hand, which had been so near, so recently, to Kitty him, and hell still distant and unguessed. And as she did so, Butler's cheek. I wanted to raise it to my own face - and I sang with her - not loudly and carelessly like the rest of was about to, I think, when the clatter of the hall pierced the crowd, but softly, almost secretly, as if she might hear my brain at last, and made me look about me and see the me the better if I whispered rather than bawled.

inquisitive, indulgent looks that were turned my way, and And perhaps, after all, she did. I had thought that, when she the nods and the chuckles and the winks that met my up-walked on to the stage, she had glanced my way - as much turned gaze. I reddened, and shrank back into the shadows as to say, the box is filled again. Now, as she wheeled of the box. With my back turned to the bank of prying eyes before the footlights, I thought I saw her look at me again.

I slipped the rose into the belt of my dress, and pulled on The idea was a fantastic one - and yet every time her gaze my gloves. My heart, which had begun to pound when Miss swept the crowded hall it seemed to brush my own, and Butler had stepped towards me across the stage, was still 29

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beating painfully hard; but as I left my box and made my that you like her,' he said simply. 'Now will you come way towards the crowded foyer and the street beyond, it along, or what?'

began to feel light, and glad, and I began to want to smile. I I did not know what to say. So I said nothing, but let him had to place a hand before my lips so as not to appear an lead me away from the great glass doors with the blue, cool, idiot, smiling to myself as if at nothing.

Canterbury night behind them, past the archway that led to Just as I was about to step into the street, I heard my name the stalls, and the staircase to the gallery, towards an alcove called. I turned, and saw Tony, crossing the lobby with his in the far corner of the foyer, with a curtain across it, and a arm raised to catch my eye. It was a relief to have a friend, rope before it, and a sign swinging from the rope, marked at last, to smile at. I took the hand away, and grinned like a Private.

monkey.

'Hey, hey,' he said breathlessly when he reached my side,
Chapter 2

'someone's merry, and I know why! How come girls never I had been back stage at the Palace with Tony once or twice look so gay as that, when / give them roses?' I blushed before, but only in the daytime, when the hall was dim and again, and returned my fingers to my lips, but said nothing.

quite deserted. Now the corridors along which I walked Tony smirked.

with him were full of light and noise. We passed one

'I've got a message for you,' he said then. 'Someone to see doorway that led, I knew, to the stage itself: I caught a you.' I raised my eyebrows; I thought perhaps Alice or glimpse of ladders and ropes and trailing gas-pipes; of boys Freddy were here, come to meet me. Tony's smirk in caps and aprons, wheeling baskets, manoeuvring lights. I broadened. 'Miss Butler,' he said, 'would like a word.'

had the sensation then - and I felt it again in the years that My own grin faded at once. 'A word?' I said. 'Miss Butler?

followed, every time I made a similar trip back stage - that I With me?'

had stepped into the workings of a giant clock, stepped That's right. She asked Ike, the fly-man, who was the girl through the elegant casing to the dusty, greasy, restless that sat in the box every night, on her own, and Ike said you machinery that lay, all hidden from the common eye, was a pal of mine, and to ask me. So she did. And I told behind it.

her. And now she wants to see you.'

Tony led me down a passageway that stopped at a metal

'What for? Oh, Tony, what on earth for? What did you tell staircase, and here he paused to let three men go by. They her?' I caught hold of his arm and gripped it hard.

wore hats and carried overcoats and bags; they were sallow-

'Nothing, except the truth -' I gave his arm a twist. The truth faced and poor-looking, with a patina of flashness - I was terrible. I didn't want her to know about the shivering thought they might be salesmen carrying sample-cases.

and the whispering, the flame and the streaming light. Tony Only when they had moved on, and I heard them sharing a prised my fingers from his sleeve, and held my hand. 'Just joke with the stage door-keeper, did I realise that they were 31

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the trio of tumblers taking their leave for the night, and that was dressed in the trousers and the shoes that she had worn their bags contained their spangles. I had a sudden fear that for her act, but she had removed the jacket, the waistcoat, Kitty Butler might after all be just like them: plain, and, of course, the hat. Her starched shirt was held tight unremarkable, almost I unrecognisable as the handsome girl against the swell of her bosom by a pair of braces, but I had seen swaggering in the glow of the footlights. I very gaped at the throat where she had undipped her bow-tie.

nearly called to Tony to take me back; but he had Beyond the shirt I saw an edge of creamy lace.

descended the staircase, and when I caught up with him in I looked away. 'I do like your act,' I said.

the passageway below he was at a door, and had already

'I should think you do, you come to it so often!'

turned its handle.

I smiled. 'Well, Tony lets me in, you see, for nothing . . .'

The door was one of a row of others, indistinguishable from That made her laugh: her tongue looked very pink, her teeth its neighbours but for a brass figure 7, very old and extraordinarily white, against her painted lips. I felt myself scratched, that was screwed at eye level upon its centre blush. 'What I mean is,' I said, 'Tony lets me have the box.

panel, and a hand-written card that had been tacked below.

But I would pay if I had to, and sit in the gallery. For I do Miss Kitty Butler, it said.

so like your act, Miss Butler, so very, very much.'

I found her seated at a little table before a looking-glass; Now she did not laugh, but she tilted her head a little. 'Do she had half-turned - to reply, I suppose, to Tony's knock -

you?' she answered gently.

but at my approach she rose, and reached to shake my hand.

'Oh, yes.'

She was a little shorter than me, even in her heels, and Tell me what it is you like then, so much.'

younger than I had imagined - perhaps my sister's age, of I hesitated. 'I like your costume,' I said at last. 'I like your one- or two-and-twenty.

songs, and the way you sing them. I like the way you talk to

'Aha,' she said, when Tony had left us - there was a hint, Tricky. I like your . . . hair.' Here I stumbled; and now she still, of her footlight manner in her voice - 'my mystery seemed to blush. There was a second's almost awkward admirer! I was sure it must be Gully you came to see; then silence - then, suddenly, as if from somewhere very near at someone said you never stay beyond the interval. Is it really hand, there came the sound of music - the blast of a horn me you stay for? I never had a fan before!' As she spoke she and the pulse of a drum - and a cheer, like the roaring of the leaned quite comfortably against the table - it was cluttered, wind in some vast sea-shell. I gave a jump, and looked I now saw, with jars of cream and sticks of grease-paint, about me; and she laughed. 'The second half," she said.

with playing cards and half-smoked cigarettes and filthy After a moment the cheering stopped; the music, however, tea-cups - and crossed her legs at the ankle, and folded her went on pulsing and thumping like a great heart-beat.

arms. Her face was still thickly powdered, and very red at She left off leaning against the table, and asked, Did I mind the lip; her lashes and eyelids were black with paint. She if she smoked? I shook my head, and shook it again when 33

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she took up a packet of cigarettes from amongst the dirty

- her mouth stretching wide, out of a kind of sympathy with cups and playing cards, and held it to me. Upon the wall her eyelids, and her breath misting the mirror. For a second there was a hissing gas-jet in a wire cage, and she put her she seemed quite to have forgotten me. I studied the skin of face to it, to light the cigarette. With the fag at the side of her face and her throat. It had emerged from its mask of her lip, her eyes screwed up against the flame, she looked powder and grease the colour of cream - the colour of the like a boy again; when she took the cigarette away, lace on her chemise; but it was darkened at the nose and however, the cork was smudged with crimson. Seeing that, cheeks - and even, I saw, at the edge of her lip - by freckles, she tutted: 'Look at me, with all my paint still on! Will you brown as her hair. I had not suspected the existence of the sit with me while I clean my face? It's not very polite, I freckles. I found them wonderfully and inexplicably know, but I must get ready rather quick; my room is needed moving.

later by another girl..."

She wiped her breath from the glass, then, and gave me a I did as she asked, and sat and watched her smear her wink, and asked me more about myself; and because it was cheeks with cream, then take a cloth to them. She worked somehow easier to talk to her reflection than to her face, I quickly and carefully, but distractedly; and as she rubbed at began at last to chat with her quite freely. At first she her face she held my gaze in the glass. She looked at my answered as I thought an actress should - comfortably, new hat and said, 'What a pretty bonnet!' Then she asked rather teasingly, laughing when I blushed or said a foolish how I knew Tony - was he my beau? I was shocked at that thing. Gradually, however - as if she was stripping the paint and said, 'Oh, no! He is courting my sister'; and she from her voice, as well as from her face - her tone grew laughed. Where did I live? she asked me then. What did I milder, less pert and pressing. At last - she gave a yawn, work at?