Tipping the Velvet (40 page)

'Mrs Lethaby don't half pay a decent wage.'

I asked then.

I thought of how she came every morning with the coffee,

'She was wearing her green suit, miss, and had her bag with and every night with jugs of water for the bowls. I said, her.'

'Don't think me rude, but - whenever do you spent it?'

339

340

'I am saving it, miss!' she said. 'I aim to emigrate. My friend been to the Cavendish, but only to take a letter that must be says, in the colonies a girl with twenty pounds can set up as signed by another lady.

a landlady of a rooming-house, with girls of her own.'

'I didn't like to wake you,' she said, dipping her hand into

'Is that so?' She nodded. 'And you'd like to run a rooming-the water.

house?'

I forgot about Blake, then, and how handsome she was.

'Oh yes! They will always need rooming-houses in the I forgot about Blake, indeed, for a month or more. Diana colonies, you see, for the people coming in.'

gave dinners, and I posed and wore costumes; we made

'Well, that's true. And, how much have you saved?'

visits to the club, and to Maria's house in Hampstead. All She flushed again. 'Seven pounds, miss.'

went on as usual. I was occasionally sulky, but, as on the I nodded. Then I thought and said: 'But the colonies, Blake!

night of our trip to the opera, she found ways of turning my Could you bear the journey? You should have to live in a sulkiness to her own lewd advantage - in the end, I hardly boat — suppose there were storms?'

knew if I were really cross or only feigning crossness for She picked up the scuttle of coal. 'Oh, I shouldn't mind that, the sake of her letches. Once or twice I hoped she would miss!'

make me cross - fucking her in a rage, I found, could at the I laughed; and so did she. We had never chatted so freely right moment be more thrilling than fucking her in before. I had grown used to calling her only 'Blake' as kindness.

Diana did; I had grown used to her curtseys; I had grown Anyway, we went on like this. Then one night there was used to having her see me as I was now: swollen-eyed and some quarrel over a suit. We were dressing for a supper at swollen-mouthed, naked in a bed with the sheet at my Maria's, and I would not wear the clothes she picked for bosom, and the marks of Diana's kisses at my throat. I had me. 'Very well,' she said, 'you may wear what you please!'

grown used to not looking at her, not seeing her at all. Now, And she took the carriage, and went off to Hampstead as she laughed, I found myself gazing at her at last, at her without me. I threw a cup against the wall - then sent for pinking cheeks and at her lashes, which were dark, and Blake to come and tidy it. And when she came, I thinking, Oh! - for she was really rather handsome.

remembered how pleasant it had been to chat with her And, as I thought it, there came the old self-consciousness before; and I made her sit with me, and tell me more about between us. She hoisted her scuttle of coal a little higher, her plans.

then came to take my tray and ask me, 'Would there be And after that, she would come and spend a minute or two anything else?' I answered that she might run me a bath; with me whenever Diana was out; and she became easier and she curtseyed.

with me, and I grew freer with her. And at last I said to her: And when I lay soaking in the bathroom I heard the slam of

'Lord, Blake, you've been emptying my pot for me for more the front door. It was Diana. She came to find me. She had than a year, and I don't even know what your first name is!'

341

342

She smiled, and again looked handsome.

Is it true, what she said? Or is it only one of her stories? Is Her name was Zena.

it true that they had you in there, because you . . . kissed Her name was Zena, and her story was a sad one. I had it another girl?'

from her one morning in the autumn of that year, as I lay in She let her hands fall to her lap, then sat back upon her Diana's bed, and she came, as usual, to bring breakfast and heels and gazed into the unlit grate. Then she turned her to see to the fire. Diana herself had risen early, and gone face to me and gave a sigh.

out. I woke to find Zena kneeling at the hearth, working

'I was a year in the reformat'ry,' she said, 'when I was quietly with the coals so as not to disturb me. I shifted seventeen. It was a cruel enough place, I suppose, though beneath the sheets, feeling lazy as an eel. My quim - in the not so hard as other gaols I heard of; its mistress is a lady clever way of quims - was still quite slippery, from the Mrs Lethaby knows from her club, and that is how she got passion of the night before.

me. I was sent to reformat'ry on the word of a girl I was I lay watching her. She raised a hand to scratch her brow, friends with at a house in Kentish Town. We were maids and when she took the hand away she left a smudge of soot there, together.'

there. Her face, against the smudge, seemed very pale and

'You were a maid before you came here?'

rather pinched. I said, 'Zena', and she gave a jump: 'Yes,

'I was sent out as a skivvy when I was ten: Pa was rather miss?'

poor. That was at a house in Paddington. When I was I hesitated; then, 'Zena,' I said again, 'don't mind me asking fourteen I went to the place in Kentish Town. It was you something, but I can't help but think of it. Diana once altogether a better place. I was a housemaid, then; and I got told me - well, that she got you out of a prison. Is it true?'

very thick with another girl there, named Agnes. Agnes had She turned back to the hearth, and continued to pile coals a chap, and she threw the chap over, miss, for my sake.

upon the fire; but I saw her ears turn crimson. She said.

That's how thick we were ..."

'They call it a reformat'ry. It wasn't a gaol.'

She gazed very sadly at her hands in her lap, and the room

'A reformat'ry, then. But it's true you were in one.' She grew still, and I grew sorry. I said, 'And was it Agnes told didn't answer. 'I don't mind it,' I added quickly.

the story that got you sent to the reformat'ry?'

She gave a jerk to her head, and said: 'No, I don't mind it, She shook her head. 'Oh, no! What happened was, Agnes now. . .'

lost her place, because the lady didn't care for her. She went Had she said such a thing, in such a tone, to Diana, I think to a house in Dulwich - which, as you will know, is very far Diana would have slapped her. Indeed, she looked at me from Kentish Town, but not so far that we couldn't meet of now a little fearfully; but when she did so, I grimaced. Tm a Sunday, and send each other little notes and parcels sorry,' I said. 'Do you think me very rude? It's only - well, it through the post. But then - well, then another girl came.

is what Diana said, about why they had you in there at all.

She was not so nice as Agnes, but she took to me like 343

344

anything. I think she was a bit soft, miss, in the head. She

'No, there is something,' I said, smiling. 'What are you would look through all my things - and, of course, she thinking?'

found my letters and all my bits. She would make me kiss She took another puff of her cigarette, smoking it as you her! And when at last I said that I wouldn't, for Agnes' sake see rough men on the street smoking, with her fingers

- well, she went to the lady and told her that I had made her cupped around the fag, the burning end of it nearly kiss me; and that I touched her, in a peculiar way. When all scorching her palm. Then she said: 'Well, you will think me the time, it was her, only her -! And when the lady wasn't forwarder than I ought to be.'

sure whether or not to believe her, she went and took her to

'Will I?'

my little box of letters, and showed her those.'

'Yes. But I have been just about busting to know it, ever

'Oh!'I said.'What a bitch!'

since I first got a proper look at you.' She took a breath.

She nodded. 'A bitch is what she was, all right; only, I

'You used to work the halls, didn't you? You used to work didn't like to say it before.'

the halls, alonger Kitty Butler, and calling yourself plain

'And it was the lady, then, who got you sent to the Nan King. What a turn it give me, when I saw you here reformat'ry?'

first! I never maided for no one famous before.'

'It was, on a charge of tampering and corrupting. And she I studied the tip of my cigarette, and did not answer her.

made sure Agnes lost her place, too; and they would have Her words had given me a kind of jolt: they were not what I sent her to prison along with me - except that she took up had been anticipating at all. Then I said, with a show of with another young man again, very sharp. And now she is laughter: 'Well, you know, I am hardly famous now. They married to him, and he I hear treats her shabbily.'

were all rather long ago, those days.'

She shook her head, and so did I. I said, 'Well, it seems like

'Not so long,' she said. 'I remember seeing you at Camden you were roundly done over by women, all right!'

Town, and another time at the Peckham Palace. That was

'Wasn't I, though!'

with Agnes - how we laughed!' Her voice sank a little. 'It I gave her a wink. 'Come over here, and let's have a fag.'

was just after that, that my troubles started ..."

She stepped over to the bed, and I found us two cigarettes; I remembered the Peckham Palace very well, for Kitty and I and for a little while we sat smoking together in silence, had only played there once. It had been in the December occasionally sighing and tutting and still shaking our heads.

before we opened at the Brit, so rather near to the start of At last I saw her gazing at me rather thoughtfully. When I my own troubles. I said, 'To think of you sitting there, with caught her eye, she blushed and looked away. I said, 'What Agnes beside you; and me upon the stage, with Kitty Butler is it?'

..."

'It's nothing, miss.'

She must have caught something in my tone, for she raised her eyes to mine and said: 'And you don't see Miss Butler at 345

346

all, these days . . . ?' And when I shook my head, she looked followed it, very well, for they were busy ones: it was as if knowing. 'Well,' she said then, 'it's something, ain't it, to my stay with Diana were acquiring a kind of hectic have been a star upon the stage!'

intensity, as some sick people are said to be, as it hurtled I sighed. 'I suppose it is. But -' I had thought of something towards its end. Maria, for example, gave a party at her else. 'You oughtn't to let Mrs Lethaby hear you say it. She, house. Dickie threw a party on a boat - hired it to sail with well, she don't quite care for the music hall.'

us from Charing Cross to Richmond, and we danced, till She nodded. 'I dare say.' Then the clock upon the mantel four in the morning, to an all-girl band. Christmas we spent struck the hour and, hearing it, she rose, and stubbed her at Kettner's, eating goose in a private room; New Year was fag out, and napped her hand before her mouth to wave celebrated at the Cavendish Club: our table grew so loud away the flavour of the smoke. 'Lord, look at me!' she cried.

and ribald, Miss Bruce again approached us, to complain

'I shall have Mrs Hooper after me.' She reached for my about our manners.

empty coffee-cup, then picked up her tray and went to her And then, in January, came Diana's fortieth birthday; and scuttle of coal.

she was persuaded to celebrate it, at Felicity Place itself, Then she turned, and grew pink again. She said: 'Will there with a fancy-dress ball.

be anything else, miss?'

We called it a ball, but it was not really so grand as that.

We gazed at one another for the space of a couple of For music there was only a woman with a piano; and what heartbeats. She still had the smudge of coal-dust at her dancing there was - in the dining-room with the carpet brow. I shifted beneath the sheets, and felt again that rolled back - was rather tame. No one, however, came for slippery spot between my things - only now, it was the sake of a waltz. They came for Diana's reputation, and slipperier than ever. I had been fucking Diana every night, for mine. They came for the wine and the food and the rose-almost, for a year and a half. Fucking had come to seem to tipped cigarettes. They came for the scandal.

me like shaking hands -you might do it, as a kind of They came, and marvelled.

courtesy, with anyone. But would Zena have come and let The house, for a start, we made wonderful. We hung velvet me kiss her, if I had called her to the bed?

from the walls and, from the ceiling, spangles; and we shut I cannot say. I did not call her. I only said: Thank you, off all the lamps, and lit the rooms entirely with candles.

Zena; there's nothing else, just now.' And she picked up the The drawing-room we cleared of furniture, leaving only the scuttle, and went.

Turkey

I had some squeamishness upon me about such matters, yet.

rug, on which we placed cushions. The marble floor of the And Diana, I knew, would have been furious.

hall we scattered with roses - we placed roses, too, to This, as I have said, was sometime in the autumn of that smoke upon the fires: by the end of the night you felt ill year. I remember that time, and the two or three months that with it. There was champagne to drink, and brandies, and 347

348

wine with spice in: Diana had this heated in a copper bowl Diana. On the other hand, the women who had been more above a spirit-lamp. All the food she had sent over from the daring in their choices risked going unrecognised by Solferino. They did her a cold roast after the manner of the anyone at all. 'I am Queen Anne!' I heard one lady say, very Romans, goose stuffed with turkey stuffed with chicken cross, when Maria failed to identify her — yet, when Maria stuffed with quail - the quail, I think, having a truffle in it.

addressed another lady in a crown by the same title, she There were also oysters, which sat upon the table in a barrel was even crosser. She turned out to be Queen Christina, of marked Whitstable; however, one lady, unused to the trick Sweden.