Tipping the Velvet (41 page)

of the shells, tried to open one with a cigar-knife. The blade Diana herself, that night, I never saw look more handsome.

slipped, and cut her finger almost to the bone; and after she She came as her Greek namesake, in a robe, and with had bled into the ice, no one much cared for them. Diana sandals showing her long second toe, and her hair piled had them taken away.

high and with a crescent in it; and over her shoulder she Half of the Cavendish Club attended that party - and, wore a quiver full of arrows and a bow. She claimed the besides them, more women, women from France and from arrows were for shooting gentlemen, although later I heard Germany, and one, even, from Capri. It was as if Diana had her say they were for piercing young girls' hearts.

sent a general invitation to all the wealthy circles of the My own costume I kept secret, and would not show to world - but marked the card, of course, Sapphists Only.

anyone: it was my plan to reveal myself, when the guests That was her prime requirement; her second demand, as I were all arrived, and present a tribute to my mistress. It was have said, was that they come in fancy dress.

not a very saucy costume; but I thought it a terribly clever The result was rather mixed. Many ladies viewed the one, because it had a connection with the gift I had bought evening only as an opportunity at last to leave their riding-Diana, for her birthday. For that event the year before I had coats at home, and put on trousers. Dickie was one of these: begged the money from her to buy her a present, and had she came clad in a morning suit, with a sprig of lilac at her got her a brooch: I think she liked it well enough. This year, lapel, and calling herself 'Dorian Gray'. Other costumes, however, I felt I had surpassed myself. I had bought her, all however, were more splendid. Maria Jex stained her face by post and in secret, a marble bust of the Roman page and put whiskers on it, and came robed as a Turkish pasha.

Antinous. I had taken his story out of a paper at the Diana's friend Evelyn arrived as Marie Antoinette - though, Cavendish, and had smiled to read it, because - apart of another Marie Antoinette came later and, after her, yet course from the detail of Antinous being so miserable, and another. That, indeed, was one of the predicaments of the finally throwing himself in the River Nile - it seemed to evening: I counted fully five separate Sapphos, all bearing resemble my own. I had given the bust to Diana at lyres; and there were six Ladies from Llangollen -I had not breakfast, and she had adored it at once, and had it set up on even heard of the Ladies from Llangollen before I met a pedestal in the drawing-room. 'Who would have thought 349

350

the boy had so much cleverness in him!' she had said a little looked knowing, and Diana-standing just where I could later. 'Maria, you must have chosen it for him - didn't you?'

have wished her, beside the bust of Antinous on its little Now, while the ladies all assembled at the party below, I pedestal - raised a brow. Now, at the sight of me in my toga stood in my bedroom, trembling before the glass, garbing and belt, the ladies sighed and murmured.

myself as Antinous himself. I had a skimpy little toga that I gave them a moment, then stepped over to Diana, lifted reached to my knee, with a Roman belt around it - what the extra garland from around my neck, and wound it about they called a zone. I had put powder on my cheeks to make hers. Then I knelt to her, took up her hand, and kissed it.

them languorous, and spit-black on my eyes to make them She smiled; the ladies murmured again - and then began, in dark. My hair I had covered entirely in a sable wig that a delighted sort of way, to clap. Maria stepped up to me, curled to my shoulders. About my neck there was a garland and put a hand to the hem of my toga.

of lotus flowers - and I can tell you, the lotus flowers had

'What a little jewel you look tonight, Nancy - doesn't she, been harder to organise, in London, in January, than Diana? How my husband would admire you! You look like anything.

a picture from a buggers' compendium!'

I had another garland to hand to Diana: this I also placed Diana laughed and said that I did. Then she reached and put about my neck. Then I went to the door and listened and, her fingers to my chin and kissed me - so hard, I felt her since the moment seemed right, I ran to Diana's closet and teeth upon the soft flesh of my lips.

took out a cloak of hers and wrapped it tight about me, and And then the music started up in the room across the hall.

raised the hood. And then I went downstairs.

Maria brought me a glass of the warm spiced wine and, to There, in the hall, I found Maria.

go with it, a cigarette from Diana's special case. One of the

'Nancy, dear boy!' she cried. Her lips looked very red and Marie Antoinettes weaved her way through the crowd to damp where they showed through the slit of her pasha's take my hand and kiss it. 'Enchantee.' she said - this one whiskers. 'Diana has sent me out to find you. The drawing-really was French. 'What a spectacle you have provided for roem is positively pullulating with women, all of them us! One would never see such a thing in the salons of Paris panting for a peek at your pose plastique?’

..."

I smiled - a pullulating audience was precisely what I The entire evening sounds charming; it might, indeed, have wanted - then let her lead me into the room, still with the been the very high point of my triumph as Diana's boy. And cloak about me, and hand me into the alcove behind the yet, for all my planning, for all the success of my costume velvet curtain. Then, when I had bared my costume and and my tableau, I got no pleasure from it. Diana herself - it struck my pose, I murmured to her and she pulled the was her birthday, after all - seemed distant from me, and tasselled cord, and the velvet twitched back and uncovered preoccupied with other things. Only a minute or two after I me. As I walked amongst them the guests all fell silent and had placed the garland of lotus flowers about her neck, she 351

352

took it off, saying it did not match her costume; she hung it Evelyn said: 'We are to hear Dickie Reynolds' history, from from a corner of the pedestal, where it soon fell off - later I a book written by a doctor.'

saw a lady with one of the flowers from it, at her own lapel.

'A doctor? Is she ill?'

I cannot say why -heaven knows, I had suffered graver

'It is her vie sexuelle!'

abuses at Diana's hand, and only smiled to suffer them! —

'Her vie sexuelle?’

but her carelessness over the garland made me peevish.

'My dear, I know it already, it is terribly dreary ...' This was Then again, the room was terribly hot and terribly from a woman who stood beside me in the shadows, garbed perfumed; and my wig made me hotter than anyone, and as a monk; as I turned to her she gave a yawn, then slipped itched - yet, I could not remove it, for fear of spoiling my quietly from the room in search of other sport. The rest of costume. After Marie Antoinette, more ladies sought me the guests, however, looked just as eager as Dickie could out to tell me how much they admired me; but each proved wish. She stood beside Diana; the book that Evelyn had drunker and more ribald than the last, and I began to find referred to was in Diana's hands - it was small and black then wearisome. I drank glass after glass of spiced wine and and densely printed, with not a single illustration: it was not champagne, in an effort to make myself as careless as they; at all the kind of thing that people usually gave Diana, for but the wine - or, more likely, the hashish I had smoked -

her box. And yet, she was turning its pages in fascination.

seemed to make me cynical rather than gay. When one lady A lady dipped her head to read the title from the spine, then reached to stroke my thigh as she stepped past me, I pushed cried: 'But the book's in Latin! Dickie, whatever is the point her roughly away. 'What a little brute!' she cried, delighted.

of a filthy story, if the damn thing's written in Latin?'

In the end I stood half-hidden in the shadows, looking on, Dickie now looked a little prim. 'It is only the title that is rubbing my temples. Mrs Hooper was at the table with the Latin,' she answered; 'and, besides, it is not a filthy book, it hot wine on it, ladling it out; I saw her glance my way, and is a very brave one. It has been written by a man, in an give a kind of smile. Zena had been sent to move amongst attempt to explain our sort so that the ordinary world will the ladies, bearing dainties on a tray; but when she seemed understand us.'

to want to catch my eye, I looked away. Even from her I A lady dressed as Sappho took the cigar from her mouth, felt distant, that night.

and studied Dickie in a kind of disbelief. She said: This So I was almost glad when, at about eleven o'clock, the book is to be passed among the public; and your story is in mood of the party was changed, by Dickie calling for more it? The story of your life, as a lover of women? But Dick, light to be brought, for the lady on the piano to cease her have you gone mad! This man sounds like a pornographer playing, and for all the women present to gather round and of the most mischievous variety!'

pay attention.

'She has taken a nom-de-guerre, of course,' said Evelyn.

'What's this?' cried one lady. 'Why has it grown bright?'

'Even so. Dickie, the folly of it!'

353

354

'You misunderstand,' said Dickie. 'This is a new thing

'It is not true of Indian girls,' said another lady then. 'But it entirely. This book will assist us. It will advertise us.'

is of the Turks. They are bred like it, that they might A kind of collective shudder ran right around the drawing-pleasure themselves in the seraglio.'

room. The Sappho with the cigar shook her head. 'I have

'Is that so?' said Maria, stroking her beard.

never heard of such a thing,' she said.

'Yes, it is certainly so.'

'Well,' answered Dickie impressively, 'you will hear more

'But it is true also of our own poor girls!' said someone else.

of it, believe me.'

'They are brought up twenty to a bed. The continual fretting

'Let us hear more of it now!' cried Maria; and someone else makes their clitorises grow. I know that for a fact.'

called: 'Yes, Diana, read it to us, do!'

'What rubbish!' said the Sappho with the cigar.

And so more candles were brought, and placed at Diana's

'I can assure you it is not rubbish,' answered the first lady shoulder. The ladies settled themselves into comfortable hotly. 'And if we only had a girl from the slums amongst us poses, and the reading began.

now, I would pull her drawers down and show you the I cannot remember the words of it now. I know that, as proof!'

Dickie had promised, they were not at all filthy; indeed, There was laughter at her words, and then the room grew they were rather dry. And yet, her story was lent a kind of rather quiet. I looked at Diana; and as I did so, she slowly lewdness, too, by the very dullness of the prose in which it turned her head to gaze at me. 'I wonder . . .' she said was told. All the time Diana read, the ladies called out thoughtfully, and one or two other ladies began to study ribald comments. When Dickie's history was complete, they me, as she did. My stomach gave a subtle kind of lurch. I read another, which was rather lewder. Then they read a thought, She wouldn't! And as I thought it, a quite different very saucy one from the gentlemen's section. At last the air lady said: 'But Diana, you have just the creature we need!

was thicker and warmer than ever; even I, in my sulkiness, Your maid was a slum-girl, wasn't she? Didn't you have her began to feel myself stirred by the doctor's prim from a prison or a home? You know what the women get descriptions. The book was passed from lady to lady, while up to in prison, don't you? I should think they must frot Diana lit herself another cigarette. Then one lady said, 'You until their parts are the size of mushrooms!'

must ask Bo about that: she was seven years amongst the Diana turned her eyes from me, and drew on her pink-Hindoos'; and Diana called, 'What? What must she ask?'

tipped fag; and then she smiled. 'Mrs Hooper!' she called.

'We are reading the story,' cried the woman in reply, 'of a

'Where is Blake?'

lady with a clitoris as big as a little boy's prick! She claims

'She is in the kitchen, ma'am,' answered the housekeeper she caught the malady from an Indian maid. I said, if only from her station at the bowl of wine. 'She is loading her Bo Holliday were here, she might confirm it for us, for she tray.'

was thick with the Hindoos in her years in Hindoostan.'

'Go and fetch her.'

355

356

'Yes ma'am.'

Diana stepped towards her. 'I think you do,' she said. She Mrs Hooper went. The ladies looked at one another, and had picked up the book that Dickie had given her, and now then at Diana. She stood very calm and steady beside the she opened it, and held it oppressively close to Zena's face, bust of cold Antinous; but when she raised her glass to her so that Zena flinched again. 'We have been reading a book lip, I saw that her hand was trembling slightly. I shifted full of stories of girls like you,' she said. 'And now, what from one foot to the other, my briefly flaring lust all faded.

are you suggesting? That the doctor who wrote this book -

In a moment, Mrs Hooper had returned, with Zena. When this book that Miss Reynolds gave me, for my birthday - is Diana called to her, Zena walked blinkingly into the centre a fool?'

of the room. The ladies parted to let her pass, then stepped

'No, m'm!'

together again at the back of her.

'Well then. The doctor says you have a cock. Come along, Diana said, 'We have been wondering about you, Blake.'

lift your skirts! Good gracious, girl, we only want to look at Zena blinked again. 'Ma'am?'

you-!'

'We have been wondering about your time at the She had put her hand upon Zena's skirt, and I could see the reformatory.' Now Zena coloured. 'We have been other ladies, all gripped, in their turn, by her wildness, wondering how you filled your hours. We thought there making ready to assist her. The sight made me sick. I must be some little occupation, to which you turned your stepped out of the shadows and said, 'Leave her, Diana! For idle fingers, in your solitary cell.'