Tipping the Velvet

by Sarah Waters

  My own renter persona was, of necessity, a rather curious mixture of types. Never a very virile boy, I held no appeal for the kind of gentleman who liked a rough hand through the slit of his drawers, or a bit of a slap in the shadows; equally, however, I could never afford to let myself be seen as one of those lily-white lads whom the working-men go for, and make rather free with. Then again, I was choosy. There were many fellows with curious appetites in the streets round Leicester Square; but not all of them were the sort I was after. Most men, to be frank, will step aside with a renter as you or I might call into a public-house, on our way home from the market: they take their pleasure, give a belch, and think no more of it than that. But still there are always some - they are gentlemen, for the most part; I learned to spot them from afar - who are fretful, or wistful, or romantic - who could, like the fellow from the Burlington Arcade, be brought to kiss me, or thank me, or even weep over me, as I was handling them.

  And, as they did so - as they strained and gasped, and whispered their desires to me in some alley or court or dripping lavatory stall - I would have to turn my face away to hide my smiles. If they favoured Walter, then so much the better. If they did not - well, they were all gents and (whatever their own opinion on the matter) with their trousers unbuttoned they all looked the same.

  I never felt my own lusts rise, raising theirs. I didn’t even need the coins they gave me. I was like a person who, having once been robbed of all he owns and loves, turns thief himself - not to enjoy his neighbours’ chattels, but to spoil them. My one regret was that, though I was daily giving such marvellous performances, they had no audience. I would gaze about me at the dim and dreary place in which my gentleman and I leaned panting, and wish the cobbles were a stage, the bricks a curtain, the scuttling rats a set of blazing footlights. I would long for just one eye - just one! - to be fixed upon our couplings: a bold and knowing eye that saw how well I played my part, how gulled and humbled was my foolish, trustful partner.

  But that - considering the circumstances - seemed quite impossible.

  All continued smoothly for, perhaps, six months or so: my colourless life at Mrs Best’s went on, and so did my trips to the West End, and my renting. My little stash of money dwindled, and finally disappeared; and now, since renting was all I knew and cared for, I began to live entirely from what I earned upon the streets.

  I still had had no word of Kitty — not a word! I concluded at last that she must have gone abroad, to try her luck with Walter — to America, perhaps, where we had planned to go. My months upon the music-hall stage seemed very distant to me now, and quite unreal. Once or twice on my trips around the city I saw someone I knew, from the old days - a fellow with whom we’d shared a bill at the Paragon, a wardrobe-mistress from the Bedford, Camden Town. One night I leaned against a pillar in Great Windmill Street and watched as Dolly Arnold - who had played Cinderella to Kitty’s Prince, at the Britannia - made her exit from the door of the Pavilion and was helped into a carriage. She looked at me, and blinked - then looked away again. Perhaps she thought she knew my face; perhaps she thought I was a boy that she had worked with; perhaps she only thought I was a miserable ningle, haunting the shadows in search of a gent. Anyway, she did not see Nan King in me, I know it; and if I had an urge to cross to her and reveal myself and ask for news of Kitty, it lasted for only a moment; and in that moment the driver shook his horses into life, and the carriage rumbled off.

  No, my only contact with the theatre now was as a renter. I discovered that the music halls of Leicester Square - the very same halls which Kitty and I had gazed at, all hopefully, two years before — were rather famous in the renter world as posing-grounds and pick-up spots. The Empire, in particular, was always thick with sods: they strolled side-by-side with the gay girls of the promenade, or stood, in little knots, exchanging gossip, comparing fortunes, greeting one another with flapping hands and high, extravagant voices. They never looked at the stage, never cheered or applauded, only gazed at themselves in the mirror-glass or at each other’s powdered faces, or - more covertly - at the gentlemen who, rapidly or rather lingeringly, passed them by.

  I loved to walk with them, and watch them, and be watched by them in turn. I loved to stroll about the Empire - the handsomest hall in England, as Walter had described it, the hall to which Kitty had longed so ardently, so uselessly! for an invitation - I loved to stroll about it with my back to its glorious golden stage, my costume bright beneath the ungentle glare of its electric chandeliers, my hair gleaming, my trousers bulging, my lips pink, my figure and pose reeking, as the gay boys say, of lavender, their import bold and unmistakable - but false. The singers and comedians I never looked at once. I had finished with that world, entirely.

  All, as I have said, went smoothly; then, in the first few warm weeks of 1891 - that is, a year and more after my flight from Kitty - there came a bothersome interruption to my little routine.

  I returned to the knocking-shop after an evening of rather heavy renting to find the old proprietress missing, her chair overturned, and the door to my chamber splintered and flung wide. What had happened I never found out for sure; it seemed that the madam had been taken or chased away - though whether by a policeman or a rival bawd, no one professed to know. Anyway, thieves had taken advantage of her absence to steal into the house, to frighten and threaten the girls and their customers, and help themselves to anything that they could lift: the oozing mattresses and rugs, the broken looking-glasses, the few rickety bits of furniture — also my frocks, shoes, bonnet and purse. The loss was not a great one to me; but it meant that I must go home in my masculine attire - I was wearing the old Oxford bags, and a boater - and attempt to reach my room at Mrs Best’s without her catching me.

  It was quite late, and I walked very slowly to Smithfield, in the hope that all the Bests might be abed and sleeping by the time I got there - and, indeed, when I reached the house, the windows were dark and all seemed still. I let myself in and stepped silently up the stairs - horribly mindful of the last time I had crept, noiselessly, through a slumbering house, and all that the creeping had led to. Perhaps it was the memory that made me blunder: for half-way up I put my hand to my head - and my hat went soaring over the banister to land with a thud in the passageway below. I came, cursing, to a halt. I knew I must go down to fetch it; just as I was about to turn and begin my descent, however, I heard the creaking of a door and saw the bobbing glow of a candle.

  ‘Miss Astley -’ It was my landlady’s voice, sounding thin and querulous in the darkness. ‘Miss Astley, is that you?’

  I didn’t stop to answer her, but hurled myself up the remaining stairs and ran into my room. With the door closed behind me I tore the jacket from my shoulders and the trousers from my legs, and stuffed them, with my shirt and drawers, into the little curtained alcove where I hung my clothes. I found myself a night-gown, and pulled it on; as I fastened the buttons at the throat, however, I heard what I had dreaded to hear: the sound of rapid, heavy footsteps on the stairs, followed by a hammering at my door and Mrs Best’s voice, loud and shrill.

  ‘Miss Astley! Miss Astley! It would oblige me if you would open this door. I have found a peculiar item in the downstairs passage, and believe that you have someone in there as you should not!’

  ‘Mrs Best,’ I answered, ‘what do you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean, Miss Astley. I am warning you. I have my son with me!’ She caught hold of the door-knob, and shook it. Above our heads there were more footsteps: the baby had been woken by the noise, and begun to cry.

  I turned the key, and opened the door. Mrs Best, clad in a night-dress and a tartan wrap, pushed past me, into the room. Behind her, in a shirt and nightcap, stood her son. He had a terrible complexion.

  I turned to the landlady. She was gazing about her in frustration. ‘I know there is a gentleman in here somewhere!’ she cried. She pulled the covers from the bed, then stopped to look beneath it. At last, of course, she headed for the alcove. I darted
to stop her, and she curled her lip in satisfaction. ‘Now we’ll have him!’ she said. She reached past me and tweaked the curtain back, then stepped away with a gasp. There were about four suits there, as well as the one that I had just taken off. ‘Why, you little strumpet!’ she cried. ‘I believe you was planning a regular horgy!’

  ‘A horgy? A horgy?’ I folded my arms. ‘They’re bits of mending, Mrs Best. It’s not a crime, is it, to take in sewing, for gentlemen?’

  She picked up the pair of underthings that I had so recently kicked off, and sniffed at them. ‘These drawers are still warm!’ she said. ‘From the heat of your needle, I suppose you’ll be telling me? From the heat of his needle, more like!’ I opened my mouth - but could find no answer to make her. While I hesitated she stepped to the window and looked out of it. ‘This, I suppose, is where they made their escape. The villains ! Well, they won’t get far, that’s for sure, in their birthday suits!’

  I looked again at her son. He was gazing at my ankles where they showed beneath my night-gown.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Best,’ I said. ‘I won’t do it again, I promise you!’

  ‘You certainly shan’t do it again, in my house! I want you out of here, Miss Astley, in the morning. I’ve always found you a very peculiar tenant, I don’t mind admitting - and now, to go and try and play the hussy on me like this! I won’t have it; no, certainly I won’t! I warned you when you moved in.’

  I bowed my head; she turned on her heel. Behind her, her son at last gave me a sneer. ‘Tart,’ he said. Then he spat, and followed his mother into the darkness.

  Being not exactly overburdened with articles to pack, I was out of the house next morning just as soon as I had washed. Mrs Best curled her lip as I passed by her. Mary, however, gazed at me with a kind of admiration in her eyes, as if awed and impressed that I had proved myself so normal - so spectacularly normal - at the last. I gave her a shilling, and patted her hand. Then I took a final turn around Smithfield Market. It was a warm morning, and the reek of the carcases was terrible, the hum of flies about them as deep and steady as the buzz of a motor; but for all that, I felt a kind of bleak fondness for the place, which I had gazed at, so often, in my weeks of madness.

  I moved on at last, and left the flies to their breakfast. I had only the vaguest ideas about where I should make for, but I had heard that the streets around King’s Cross were full of rooming-houses, and thought perhaps that I might try my luck up there. In the end, however, I did not get even so far as that. In the window of a shop on the Gray’s Inn Road I saw a little card: Respectible Lady Seeks Fe-Male Lodger, and an address. I gazed at it for a minute or so. The Respectible was off-putting: I couldn’t face another Mrs Best. But there was something very appealing about that Fe-Male. I saw myself in it - in the hyphen.

  I memorised the address. It was for a road named Green Street, which turned out to be wonderfully near - a narrow little street off the Gray’s Inn Road itself, with a well-kept terrace on one side, and a rather grim-looking tenement on the other. The number I sought was one of the houses, and looked very pleasant, with a pot of geraniums upon the step and, beside that, a three-legged cat, washing its face. The cat gave a hop as I approached, and lifted its head for me to tickle.

  I pulled on the bell, and was greeted by a kind-faced, white-haired lady in an apron and slippers; she let me in at once when I explained my visit, introduced herself as ‘Mrs Milne’, then spent a moment fussing over the cat. While she did so I looked about me, and blinked. The hallway was as crowded with pictures, almost, as Mrs Dendy’s old front parlour. These pictures were not, however, theatrical in theme; indeed, so far as I could make out, they had nothing in common at all save the fact that each of them was very brightly-hued. Most seemed rather cheap - some had evidently been cut from books and papers, and pinned frameless to the wall - but there were one or two rather famous images. Above the umbrella-stand, for example, hung a copy of that gaudy painting The Light of the World; beneath it was an Indian picture, of a slender blue god wearing spit-black on the eyes, and holding a flute. I wondered whether Mrs Milne was perhaps some form of religious maniac - a theosophist, or a Hindoo convert.

  When she saw me looking at the walls, however, she smiled in a most Christian-like way. ‘My daughter’s pictures,’ she said, as if that explained it all. ‘She does like the colours.’ I nodded, then followed her up the stairs.

  She took me directly to the room that was for rent. It was a pleasant, ordinary kind of chamber, and everything in it was clean. Its chief attraction was its window: this was long, and split down the middle to form a pair of glass doors; and these opened on to a little iron balcony, that overlooked Green Street and faced the shabby tenement.

  ‘It’ll be eight shillings for the rent,’ said Mrs Milne as I gazed about me. I nodded. ‘You’re not the first girl that I’ve seen,’ she went on, ‘but, to be honest, I was hoping for an older lady - I thought perhaps a widow. My niece was here until very recently, but had to leave us to get married. You might be thinking of getting married yourself, rather soon?’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve no young man?’

  ‘Not one.’

  That seemed to please her. She said, ‘I am glad. You see, it is just myself and my daughter here, and she is rather an unusual, trusting sort of girl. I wouldn’t like to have young fellers, coming in and out ...’

  ‘There’s no young man,’ I said firmly.

  She smiled again; then seemed to hesitate. ‘Might I ask - might I - why you are leaving your present address?’ At that I hesitated - and her smile grew smaller.

  ‘To be truthful,’ I said, ‘there was a little bit of unpleasantness with my landlady ...’

  ‘Ah.’ She stiffened a little, and I realised that in telling the truth I had blundered.

  ‘What I mean,’ I began - but I could see her mind working. What did she think? That my landlady had caught me kissing her husband, probably.

  ‘You see,’ she began again, regretfully, ‘my daughter ...’

  This daughter must be a beauty and a half, I thought - or else a complete erotomaniac - if the mother is so eager to keep her safe and close, away from young men’s eyes. And yet, just as I had been drawn to that mispelt card in the shopkeeper’s window, so, now, there was something about the house and its owner that tugged at me, unaccountably.

  I took a chance.

  ‘Mrs Milne,’ I said, ‘the fact of it is I have a curious occupation - a theatrical occupation, you could call it - that obliges me sometimes to dress in gentlemen’s suits. My landlady caught me at it, and took against me. I know for certain that, if I live here, I shall never bring a chap over your threshold. You may wonder how I know that, but I can only say, I do. I shan’t ever get behind with my rent; I shall keep myself to myself and you won’t hardly know that I am here at all. If you and Miss Milne will only not object to the sight of a girl in a pair of bags and a neck-tie now and again - well, then I think I might be the lodger you are seeking.’

  I had spoken in earnest - more or less - and now Mrs Milne looked thoughtful. ‘Gentlemen’s suits, you say,’ she said - not unkindly or incredulously, but with a rather interested air. I nodded, then pulled at the cord of my bag and drew out a jacket — it happened to be the top half of the guardsman’s uniform. I gave it a shake and held it up against myself, rather hopefully. ‘My eyes,’ she said, folding her arms, ‘he’s a beauty, in’ he? Now my little girl would like him.’ She gestured to the door. ‘If you’ll permit me ... ?’ She stepped out on to the landing and gave a shout: ‘Gracie!’ I heard the sound of footsteps below. Mrs Milne tilted her head. ‘Now, she’s a mote shy,’ she said in a low voice, ‘but don’t you pay no mind to her if she starts being silly on you. It’s just her way.’ I smiled, uncertainly. In a second Gracie had begun her ascent; a few seconds more, and she was in the room and at her mother’s side.

  I had expected some extraordinary beauty. Grace Milne was not beautiful — but she was, I saw
at once, rather extraordinary. Her age was hard to judge. She might, I thought, have been anything between seventeen and thirty; her hair, however, was as yellow and fine as flax, and hung loose about her shoulders like a girl’s. She was clad in an odd assemblage of clothes - a short blue dress, and a yellow pinafore, and beneath that gaudy stockings with clocks upon them, and red velvet slippers. Her eyes were grey, her cheeks very pale. Her features had a strange, smooth quality to them, as if her face was a drawing to which someone had halfheartedly taken a piece of india-rubber. When she spoke her voice was thick and slightly braying. I realised then, what I might have guessed before: that she was rather simple.

  I saw all this, of course, in less than a moment. Grace had put her arm through her mother’s and, on being introduced to me, had indeed hung back rather shyly. Now, however, she gazed with obvious delight at the jacket that I held before me, and I could see that she was desperate to seize its coloured sleeve and stroke it.

  And after all, it was a lovely jacket. I asked her, ‘Would you like to try it on?’

  She nodded, then glanced at her mother: ‘If I might.’ Mrs Milne said she might. I raised the jacket for her to step into, then moved around her to fasten the buttons. The scarlet serge and the gold trim went bizarrely well with her hair, her eyes, her dress and stockings.

  ‘You look like a lady in a circus,’ I said, as her mother and I stood back to study her. ‘A ring-master’s daughter.’ She smiled - then took a clumsy bow. Mrs Milne laughed and clapped.

  ‘May I keep it?’ Gracie asked me then. I shook my head.

  ‘To be honest, Miss Milne, I don’t believe that I can spare it. Had I only two the same ...’

  ‘Now Gracie,’ said her mother, ‘of course you can’t keep it. Miss Astley needs the costume for her theatricals.’ Grace pulled a face, but did not seem very seriously dismayed. Mrs Milne caught my eye. ‘She might borrow it, though, mightn’t she,’ she whispered, ‘from time to time ... ?’