Tipping the Velvet (8 page)

'As my dresser,' she said, 'if you'd care to. As my -

lips. 'And all of them, downstairs?' she said, nodding anything, I don't know. I have spoken to Mr Bliss: he says towards the door. 'Your mother and father, your brother, there will not be much money for you at first - but enough, Alice, Freddy?' As she spoke there came a shout, and the if you share my diggings.'

sound of voices raised in friendly argument.

'Why?' I said then. She raised her eyes to mine.

They mean nothing to me, I wanted to say, compared with

'Because I - like you. Because you are good for me, and you . . . But I only shrugged, and smiled.

bring me luck. And because London will be strange; and She smiled then, too. 'And so you really will come? We Mr Bliss may not be all that he seems; and I shall have no must leave on Sunday, you know - a week from today. It one ..."

doesn't give you long.'

'And you truly thought,' I said slowly, 'that I would say no?'

I said it would be long enough; and she placed the faded

'This afternoon - yes. Last night, and this morning, I rose upon the bed, and seized my hands and squeezed them believed - Oh, it was so different in the dressing-room, hard.

when it was just the two of us! I didn't know then how it

'Oh Nan! My dear Nan! We'll have such times together, I was for you here. I didn't know then that you had a - a promise you!' As she spoke, she flung my hands aside and chap.'

gripped me in a fierce embrace, and laughed with pleasure, Her words made me bold. I drew my hand away from hers so that I felt her body shudder in my arms.

and got to my feet. I walked to the head of the bed, where Then, all too soon, she stepped away, and I had only empty there was a little cabinet, with a drawer in it. I opened it, air to clutch at.

and took something from it, and showed it to her. 'Do you There was more noise from below, then the sound of a door know this?' I said, and she smiled.

opening, followed by the thud of feet upon the staircase, 61

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and a cry: 'Nancy!' It was Alice. She paused outside the from a window at dawn, with my clothes in a rag at the end bedroom door, but was too polite - or fearful - to turn the of a stick, and a streaming face, and a note pinned to my handle. 'Everyone is leaving,' she called. 'Mother says will pillow saying Do not try to follow me ... But if I said these Miss Butler just step down for a moment, please, for them things, I would be lying. My parents were reasonable, not to say good-bye.'

passionate, people. They loved me, and they feared for me; I looked at Kitty. 'You go on,' I said, 'without me, and I the idea of allowing their youngest daughter to travel in the shall come down in a minute. And don't,' I added in a lower care of an actress and a music-hall manager to the voice, 'say anything to them about - our plans. I'll talk to grimmest, wickedest city in England was, they knew, a mad them about it, later on.'

one, that no sane parent should entertain for longer than a She nodded, and gave my hand another squeeze; then she second. But because they loved me so, they could not bear opened the door and joined Alice on the landing, and I to have me grieve. Anyone with half an eye could see that heard them step below, together.

my heart lay all with Kitty Butler now; anyone might guess I stood in the gathering shadows and put my trembling that, having once been offered the chance of a future at her fingers before my face. I had taken to scrubbing my hands side, and kept from it, I could never return to my father's very carefully, since meeting Kitty Butler; and if they were kitchen and be happy there, as I had been before.

ever a little stained at the creases now, it was as much with So when, an hour or so after Kitty's departure, I nervously paint and hot-black and blanc-de-perle, as with vinegar.

put her plan before my parents, and argued and pleaded for Even so, there was the scent of oysters on them still, and a their blessing, they listened to me wonderingly, but slender thread - it might have been the bristle from the back carefully; and when, the next day, Father stopped me on my of a lobster, the whisker from a shrimp - beneath one of my way down to the kitchen to draw me into the parlour where nails. How would it be, I thought, to surrender my family, it was quiet and still, his face was sad and serious, but kind.

my home, all my oyster-girl's ways?

He asked me, first, whether I had not changed my mind? I And how would it be to live at Kitty's side, brim-full of a shook my head, and he sighed. He said, if I was quite love so quick, and yet so secret, it made me shake?

decided, then Mother and he could not keep me; that I was a grown-up woman, almost, and should be allowed to know
Chapter 3

my own mind; that they had thought to see me marry a I wish, for sensation's sake, I could say that my parents Whitstable boy, and settle close at hand, and so have a heard one word of Kitty's proposal and forbade me, share in my little happinesses and troubles - but that now, absolutely, to refer to it again; that when I pressed the he supposed, I would go and hitch up with some London matter, they cursed and shouted; that my mother wept, my fellow, who wouldn't understand their ways at all.

father struck me; that I was obliged, in the end, to climb 63

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But children, he concluded, weren't made to please their her dresser for a few nights while I made all ready . . . and I parents; and no father should expect to have his daughter at finished it 'Fondly', and signed it, 'Your Nan'.

his side for ever ... 'In short, Nance, even was you going to I had to be glad only in snatches that day, for the scene that the very devil himself, your mother and I would rather see I had passed with Father, after breakfast, had to be you fly from us in joy, than stay with us in sorrow - and undergone again with Mother - who hugged me to her, and grow, maybe, to hate us, for keeping you from your fate.' I cried that they must be fools to let me go; and Davy - who had never known him so grave before, nor so eloquent. I said, quite absurdly, that I was too little to go to London, had never seen him weep either; but now as he spoke his and would be run down by a tram in Trafalgar Square the eyes glistened, and he blinked, twice or thrice, to hold the minute I set foot in it; and Alice - who said nothing at all tears back, and his voice grew thin. I placed my head when she heard the news, but ran from the kitchen in tears, against his shoulder and let my own tears rise and spill. He and could not be persuaded to take up her duties in the put an arm about me, and patted me. 'It breaks our hearts to Parlour until lunch-time. Only my cousins seemed happy lose you, dear,' he went on. 'You know it does. Only for me - and they were more jealous than happy, calling me promise us that you won't forget us, quite. That you'll write a lucky cat, and swearing that I would make my fortune in to us, and visit us. And that, if things don't turn out as you the city, and forget them all; or else that I would be ruined might, quite, wish them, you won't be too proud to come utterly, and come sneaking back to them in disgrace.

home to those that love you -' Here his voice failed utterly, That week passed quickly. I spent my evenings in calling and he shuddered; and I could only nod against his neck on friends and family, and bidding them farewell; and in and say, 'I will, I will; I promise you, I will.'

washing and patching and packing my dresses, and sorting But oh! hard-hearted daughter that I was, when he had left out which little items to take with me, which to leave me my tears dried at once, and I felt the return of all my behind. I visited the Palace only once, and that was in the gladness of the night before. I hugged myself in pleasure, company of my parents, who came to reassure themselves and danced a jig around the parlour - but delicately, on that Miss Butler was still sensible and good, and to ask for tiptoe, so that they wouldn't hear me in the dining-room further particulars of the shadowy Walter Bliss.

below. Then quickly, before I should be missed, I ran to the I had Kitty to myself for no more than a minute, while post office and sent Kitty a card at the Palace - a picture of Father chatted with Tony and Tricky, after the show. I had a Whitstable oyster-smack, upon whose sail I inked 'To feared all week that I had imagined the words that she had London', and on the deck of which I drew two girls with spoken to me on Sunday evening, or misunderstood them bags and trunks and outsize, smiling faces. 'I can come!!!' I entirely. Every night, almost, I had woken sweating from wrote upon the back, and added that she must do without dreams in which I presented myself at her door, with my bags all packed and my hat upon my head, and she looked 65

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at me in wonder, and frowned, or laughed with derision; or disappointing one. I put my hand to my brow and gazed at else I arrived too late at the station, and had to chase the the glittering bay, at the distant fields and hedges of train along the track while Kitty and Mr Bliss gazed at me Sheppey, at the low, pitch-painted houses of the town, and from their carriage window, and would not lean outside to the masts and cranes of the harbour and the shipyard. It was pull me in ... That night at the Palace, however, she led me all as familiar to me as the lines on my own face, and - like to one side, and pressed my hand, and was quite as kind and one's face when viewed in a glass - both fascinating and excited as she had been before.

rather dull. No matter how hard I studied it, how fiercely I

'I've had a letter from Mr Bliss,' she said. 'He has found us thought, I shall not gaze at you again for months and rooms in a house in a place called Brixton — a place so months, it looked just as it always did; and at last I turned full, he says, of music-hall people and actors that they call it my eyes away, and walked sadly home.

"Grease-Paint Avenue".'

But it was the same there: nothing that I gazed at or touched Grease-Paint Avenue! I saw it instantly and it was was as special as I thought it should be, or changed by my marvellous, a street set out like a make-up box, with going in any way. Nothing, that is, except the faces of my narrow, gilded houses, each one with a different coloured family; and these were so grave, or so falsely merry and roof; and ours would be number 3 - with a chimney the stiff, that I could hardly bear to look at them at all.

colour of Kitty's carmined lips!

So I was almost glad, at last, when it was time to say

'We are to catch the two o'clock train on Sunday,' she went farewell. Father wouldn't let me take the little train to on, 'and Mr Bliss himself will meet us at the station, in a Canterbury, but said I must be driven, and hired a gig from carriage. And I'm due to start the very next day at the Star the ostler at the Duke of Cumberland Hotel, to take me Music Hall, in Bermondsey.'

there himself. I kissed Mother, and Alice, and let my The Star,' I said. That's a lucky name.'

brother hand me to my seat at Father's side and place my She smiled. 'Let's hope so. Oh, Nan, let's only hope so!'

luggage at my feet. There was little enough of it: an old My last morning at home was — like every last morning in leather suitcase with a strap about it, that held my clothes; a history, I suppose - a sad one. We breakfasted together, the cap-box for my hats; and a little black tin trunk for five of us, and were bright enough; but there was a horrible everything else. The trunk was a goodbye gift from Davy.

sense of expectation in the house that made anything except He had bought it new, and had my initials painted on the lid sighing, and drifting aimlessly from job to job, seem quite in swooning yellow capitals; and inside it he had pasted a impossible. By eleven o'clock I felt as penned and as stifled map of Kent, with Whitstable marked on it with an arrow -

as a rat in a box, and made Alice walk with me to the to remind me, he said, where home was, in case I should beach, and hold my shoes and stockings while I stood at the forget.

water's edge one final time. But even this little ritual was a 67

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We did not talk much, Father and I, on the drive to And soon, too, I had London to gaze at and marvel over; for Canterbury. At the station we found the train already in and in an hour we had arrived at Charing Cross. Here Kitty steaming, and Kitty, her own bags and baskets at her side, found a porter to help us with our bags and boxes, and frowning over her watch. It wasn't like my anxious dreams while he loaded them on to a trolley we looked round at all: she gave a great wave when she saw us, and a smile.

anxiously for Mr Bliss. At last, 'There he is!' cried Kitty,

'I thought you might have changed your mind,' she cried, 'at and her pointing finger showed him striding up the the very last moment.' And I shook my head - in wonder platform, his whiskers and his coat-tails flying and his face that she could still think such a thing, after all I'd said!

very red.

Father was very kind. He greeted Kitty graciously and,

'Miss Butler!' he cried when he reached us. 'What a when he kissed me good-bye he kissed her, too, and wished pleasure! What a pleasure! I feared I would be late; but here her happiness and luck. At the last moment, as I leaned you are exactly as we planned, and even more charming from the carriage to embrace him, he drew a little chamois than before.' He turned to me, then removed his hat - the bag from his

silk, again - and made me a low, theatrical bow. '"Off goes pocket and placed it in my hand, and closed my fingers his bonnet to an oyster-wrench!'" he said, rather loudly.

over it. It held coins - sovereigns - six of them, and more, I

'Miss Astley - late of Whitstable, I believe?' He took my knew, than he could afford to part with; but by the time I hand and gripped it briefly. Then he snapped his fingers at had drawn open the neck of the bag and seen the gleam of the porter, and offered us each an arm.

the gold inside it, the train had begun to move, and it was He had left a carriage waiting for us on the Strand; the too late to thrust them back. Instead, I could only shout my driver touched his whip to his cap when we approached, thanks, and kiss my fingers to him, and watch as he raised and jumped from his seat to place our luggage on the roof. I his hat and waved it; then place my cheek against the looked about me. It was a Sunday and the Strand was rather window-glass when he was gone from sight, and wonder quiet - but I didn't know it; it might have been the race-when I should see him next.