Tipping the Velvet (53 page)

or sad, or bewildered, or betrayed, or what.

I groaned still louder. I wanted to chuck the damn picture I said, 'I'm sorry.' But she only shook her head, and put a into the grate along with my half-smoked fag - I had to hand across her eyes for a second; and when she took the return it quickly to its frame in case I did so. I was jealous, hand away, her gaze seemed perfectly clear, and almost of Lilian! I was more jealous than I had ever been, of amused.

anyone! Not because of the house; not because of Cyril, or

'Annie always said it,' she said again. 'Won't she be pleased, even Ralph -who had been kind to me, but who had wept now! Will you mind it, if I tell her?'

for her, and wrung his hands in grief when she lay dying;

'No, Flo,' I said. 'You may tell who you like.'

but because of Florence. Because it was Florence, above Then she went, still shaking her head; and I sat, and listened all, whom Lilian's story seemed both to have given me, and to her climb the stairs and creak about in the room above to have robbed me of for ever. I thought of my labours of my head. Then I took some tobacco and a paper, and rolled the past few months. I had not made Florence fat and myself a cigarette from a tin upon the mantel, and lit it; then happy, as I had supposed: it had only been time, making her I ground it upon the hearth, and threw it into the fire, and grief less keen, her memories duller. Do you remember how put my head against my arm, and groaned.

we said that we would meet, she had asked me tonight, and What a fool I'd been! I had blundered into Florence's life, how you didn't come . . . ? Her eyes had shone as she had too full of my own petty bitternesses to notice her great asked it, for I had done her some sort of wonderful favour grief. I had thrust myself upon her and her brother, and by not turning up that night, two years before.

thought myself so sly and charming; I had thought that I I had done her a wonderful favour - and done myself, it was putting my mark upon their house, and making it mine.

seemed to me now, the worst kind of disservice. I thought I had believed myself playing in one kind of story, when all again of how I had spent that night, and the nights the time, the plot had been a different one - when all the following it; I thought of all the lickerish pleasures of time, I was only clumsily rehearsing what the fascinating Felicity Place - all the suits, the dinners, the wine, the poses Lilian had done so well and cleverly before me! I gazed plastiques. I would have traded them all in, at that moment, about the room - at the washed blue walls, the hideous rug, for the chance to have been in Lilian's place at that dull the portraits: I saw them suddenly for what they were -

lecture, and had Florence's hazel eyes upon me, fascinated!

details in a shrine to Lilian's memory, that I, all unwittingly, had been tending. I caught hold of the little picture of
Chapter 18

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In the days and weeks following Florence's sad disclosure I feelings -which had been stirred, on the night of her became aware that things at Quilter Street were rather confession, into such a curious mixture — only seemed to changed. Florence herself seemed gayer, lighter - as if, in grow queerer and more contradictory as the weeks went by.

telling me her history, she had rid herself of some huge I had been sorry for her, and was as glad as her brother to burden, and was now flexing limbs that had been cramped see her rather lighter-hearted now; I was also pleased and and numbed, straightening a back that had been bowed. She touched that she had confided in me at last, and told me all.

was still gloomy, sometimes, and she still went off for But oh, how I wished her story had been different! I could walks, alone, and came back wistful. But she did not try to never learn to like the tragic Lilian, and had to bite back my hide her melancholy now, or to disguise its cause - letting crossness when she was spoken of so reverently. Perhaps I me know, for example, that her trips were (as I might have pictured her as Kitty - it was certainly Walter's face I saw, guessed) to Lilian's grave. In time she even began to speak whenever I thought of her cowardly man-friend; but it made of her dead friend, quite routinely. 'How Lilian would have me hot and giddy to think of her, commanding Florence's laughed to hear of that!' she would say; or, 'Now, if Lily passion, sleeping beside her night after night - and never so were only here, we might ask her, and she'd be sure to much as turning he face to her friend, to kiss her mouth.

know.'

Why had Florence cared for her so much? I would gaze at Her new, sweeter mood had an effect upon us all. The the photograph of Eleanor Marx -I could never shake off atmosphere of our little house - which I had always thought the confused conviction that it was really Lilian's features easy enough, before, but which I now saw to have been printed there - until the face began to swim before my eyes.

quite choked with the memory of Lilian, and with Ralph She was so different from me — hadn't Florence herself and Florence's sorrow - seemed to clear and brighten: it was told me that? She said she had never been gladder of as if we were passing not into the fogs and frosts of winter, anything, than that I was so different from Lilian! She but into springtime, with all its mildnesses and balms. I meant, I suppose, that Lilian was clever, and good; that she would see Ralph gazing at his sister as she smiled or knew the meaning of words like cooperative, and so never hummed or caught at Cyril and tickled him, and his gaze had to ask. But I - what was I? I was only tidy, and clean.

would be soft, and he would sometimes lean to kiss her Well, I think I was never quite so tidy, after that night. I cheek, in pleasure. Even Cyril himself seemed to feel the certainly never beat the dirt from Lilian's gaudy rug again -

change, and to grow bonnier and more content."

but smiled when people stepped on it, and took a dreadful And I, in contrast, became ever more pinched and secretive pleasure in watching its colours grow dim.

and fretful.

But then I would imagine Lilian in paradise, weaving more I could not help it. It was as if, in casting off her own old carpets so that Florence might one day come and sit on load, Florence had burdened me with a new one; my them and rest her head against her knee. I imagined her 455

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stocking up the bookshelves with essays and poems, so that auburn; but it was not auburn, there were a thousand tints of she and Florence might walk, side by side, reading together.

gold and brown and copper in it. It rose and curled, and I saw her preparing a stove in some small back kitchen in grew ever more rich and lustrous, as it dried.

heaven, so that I should have somewhere to stew the oysters I looked from her hair to her face - to her lashes, to her while she and Flo held hands.

wide pink mouth, to the line of her jaw, and the subtle I began to look at Florence's hands -I had never done such a weight of flesh beneath it. I looked at her hands - I thing before - and imagine all the occupations I would have remembered seeing them at Green Street, beating the hot set them to, had I been in Lilian's place ...

June air; I remembered taking her hand in mine, a little later Again, I couldn't help it. I had persuaded myself that

-I remembered the exact pressure of her fingers, in their Florence was a kind of saint, with a saint's dimmed, warm linen glove, against my own. Her hands were pink, unguessable limbs and warmths and warnings; but now, in tonight, and still a little puckered from her bath. Her nails -

telling me the story of her own great love, it was as if she which she had used, I remembered now, to chew - were had suddenly shown herself to me, robeless. And I could neat and quite unbitten.

not tear my eyes from what I saw.

I looked at her throat. It was smooth, and very white; One night, for example - one dark night, quite late, when beneath it - just visible in the spreading V at the neck of her Ralph was out with his union friends and Cyril was quiet dressing-gown - was the hint of the beginnings of the swell upstairs - she bathed and washed her hair, then sat in the of a breast.

parlour with her dressing-gown about her, and fell asleep. I I looked - and looked - and felt a curious movement in my had helped her tip her tub of soapy water down the privy, own breast, a kind of squirming or turning, or flexing, that I then gone to warm some milk for us to drink; and when I seemed not to have felt there for a thousand years. It was returned with the mugs, I found her slumbering there, followed almost immediately by a similar sensation, rather before the fire. She was sitting, slightly twisted, and her lower down . . . The mugs of milk began to quiver, until I head had fallen back, and her arms were slack and heavy, feared they would spill. I turned, and placed them carefully and her hands were loose and vaguely folded in her lap. Her upon the supper-table; and then I crept, very quietly, from breaths were deep, and almost snores.

the room.

I stood before her, holding the steaming mugs. She had With every step I took away from her, the movement at my taken the towel from her head, and her hair was spread out heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a over the bit of lace on the back of her chair, like the halo on ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls into a trunk.

a Flemish madonna. I did not think that I had ever seen her When I reached the kitchen I stood and leaned against a hair so full and loose before, and I studied it now for a long wall - I was still trembling, worse than ever. I did not return time. I remembered when I had thought it was a dreary to the parlour until I heard Florence wake and exclaim, a 457

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half-hour later, over the mugs of milk that I had left upon my scalp and a tickling at the inside of my thighs that the table to grow cool and scummy; and even then I was so remained insistent, and I fingered my drab little curls and flushed and shaken that she looked at me and said, 'What's my flowery frock in a kind of disgust. I went, that day, to wrong with you?', and I had to answer, 'Nothing, nothing . .

the Whitechapel Market; and on the way home I found

.' - all the time averting my gaze from that white V of myself lingering at the window of a gentlemen's outfitters, curving flesh beneath her throat, because I knew that, if I with my forehead and my fingertips pressing smears of looked at it again, I would be compelled to step to her and sweat and longing against the glass . . .

kiss it.

And then I thought, Why not? I went in - perhaps the tailor I had come to Quilter Street to be ordinary; now I was more thought me shopping for my brother - and bought a pair of of a torn than ever. Indeed, once I had made my own moleskin trousers, and a set of drawers and a shirt, and a confession on the matter and begun to look about me, I saw pair of braces and some lace-up boots; then, back at Quilter that I was quite surrounded by toms, and couldn't believe I Street, I knocked on the door of a girl who was known for had not noticed them before. Two of Florence's charity-doing haircuts for a penny and said: 'Cut it off, cut it all off, worker friends, it seemed, were sweethearts: I suppose she quick, before I change my mind!' She scissored the curls must have tipped them off about me, for the next time they away, and - toms, grow easily sentimental over their came calling, I thought they gazed at me in quite a different haircuts, but I remember this sensation very vividly - it was sort of way. As for Annie Page: when next I saw her she not like she was cutting hair, it was as if I had a pair of put her arm about my shoulder and said, 'Nancy! Florrie wings beneath my shoulder-blades, that the flesh had all tells me you're a cousin! My dear, I never was less grown over, and she was slicing free . . .

surprised by anything, nor more delighted ..."

Florence came home distracted that night, and hardly And, for all that my bewildering new interest in Flo was seemed to notice whether I had hair upon my head or not —

such a troublesome one, it was rather marvellous to feel my though Ralph said, in a hopeful way, 'Now, there's a lusts all on the rise again - to have my tommish parts all handsome hair-cut!' She didn't see me in my moleskins, greased and purring, like an engine with a flame set to the either: for I had promised myself that, for the sake of the coals. I dreamed one night that I was walking in Leicester neighbours, I would only wear them to do the housework Square in my old guardsman's uniform, with my hair in; and by the time she came home from Stratford each clipped military-style and a glove behind the buttons of my night, I had changed back into my frock and put an apron trousers (in fact, one of Florence's gloves: I could never on. But then, one day, she came home early. She came look at it again, without blushing]. I had had such dreams home the back way, through the yard behind the kitchen; before, at Quilter Street - minus the detail of the glove, of and I was at the window, cleaning the glass. It was a large course; but this time, when I woke, there was a prickling at window, divided into panes: I had covered the panes with 459

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polish, and was wiping them clear, one by one. I was would she ever care for me, while she still grieved for dressed in the moleskin bags and the shirt -I had left the somebody like Lilian?

collar off - my sleeves were rolled above my elbows, and And so we went on, and the year grew colder. When my arms were dusty and my fingernails black. My throat Christmas came I spent it not at Quilter Street, but at was damp at the hollow, and my top lip wet - I paused to Freemantle House, where Florence had organised a dinner wipe it. My hair I had combed flat, but it had shaken itself for her girls and needed extra hands to baste the goose and loose: there was a long front lock which kept tumbling into wash the dishes. At New Year we drank a toast to 1895, my eyes, so that I had to push out my lip to blow it back, or and another to 'absent friends' - she meant Lilian, of course; swipe at it with my wrist. I had cleaned all the panes except I'd never told her about all the friends that I had lost. In the one before my face; and when I wiped at this I jumped, January there was Ralph's birthday to celebrate. It fell, in for Florence was standing on the other side of it, very still.