Tipping the Velvet

by Sarah Waters

  She raised her head and saw, I suppose, my downcast look.

  ‘Poor child,’ she said. ‘And do you always grow sorry, when your business is complete?’ She put a hand to my chin and tilted my face to the lamplight, and I caught her wrist and shook my head free. My cap - which had remained on my head through all our violent kisses - now fell off. She at once returned her hands to my face, and fingered my pomade-stiff ened hair; then she laughed, and rose, and walked into her bedroom. ‘Pour yourself some wine,’ she called. ‘And light me a cigarette, will you?’ I heard the hiss of water against china, and guessed that she was using the commode.

  I moved to the glass, and examined myself. My face was as scarlet, almost, as my jacket, my hair was ruffled, my lips looked bruised and swollen. I remembered the dildo at my hip, and stooped to unfasten it. Its lustre was cloudy now, and its nether straps were sodden and limp from my own lavish spendings; yet it was as indecently rigid and ready as before - that never happened with the gents in Soho. There was a handkerchief on the little table before the fire, and with this I wiped first it, and then myself. I lit two cigarettes, and left one smouldering. Then I poured myself a glass of wine and, in between gulps, began to retrieve my stockings, my trousers and my boots from the pile of clothes that lay strewn across the carpet.

  The lady reappeared, and seized her fag. She had changed into a dressing-gown of heavy green silk, and her feet were bare; she had that long second toe that you sometimes see on the statues done by the Greeks. Her hair had been properly unfastened, combed out, and rebound into a long, loose plait, and she had at last removed her white kid gloves. The flesh of her hands was almost as pale.

  ‘Do leave all that,’ she said, nodding towards the trousers over my arm. ‘The maid will deal with it in the morning.’ Then she saw the dildo, and caught it up by one of its straps. ‘I should, however, remove this.’

  I was not sure that I had heard her properly. ‘The morning?’ I said. ‘Do you mean that I should stay?’

  ‘Why, of course.’ She looked genuinely surprised. ‘Are you not able? Will you be missed?’ I felt light-headed suddenly. I told her that I lodged with a lady who, though she would wonder at my absence, wouldn’t worry over it. Then she asked if I had an employer - perhaps at the laundry I had mentioned ? - who would expect me on the morrow. I laughed at that, and shook my head: ‘There is no one at all to miss me. I’ve only myself to think of and please.’

  As I said it, the toy at her thigh began to swing.

  She said, ‘You did, before tonight. Now, however, you have me ...’

  Her words, her expression, made a mockery of my efforts with the handkerchief: I was wet for her anew. I reunited my trousers with her discarded petticoats, and added my jacket to the pile. Next door, the silken counterpane had been turned back, and the sheets beneath looked very white and cool. The chest kept its still, enigmatic place at the foot of the bed. The clock on the mantel showed half-past two.

  It was four, or thereabouts, before we slumbered; and perhaps eleven when I woke. I remembered stumbling to the commode some time in the early morning, and recalled the brief renewal of passion which had followed my return to her arms; but my sleep since then had been a heavy, dreamless one, and when next I knew the bed I was alone in it: she had donned her dressing-gown and stood at the half-opened window, smoking, and gazing thoughtfully at the view beyond. I stirred, and she turned and smiled.

  ‘You sleep like a child,’ she said. ‘I have been up this half-hour, making a fearful row, and still you’ve slumbered on.’

  ‘I was so very weary.’ I yawned - then I recalled all that had wearied me. A slight awkwardness seemed to fall between us. The room last night had been as unreal as a stage-set: a place of lamplight and shadows, and colours and scents of impossible brilliance, in which we had been given a licence to be not ourselves, or more than ourselves, as actors are. Now, in the late morning light that flowed between the partly-drawn drapes, I saw that there was nothing fantastic about the chamber at all; I saw that it was really elegant, and rather austere. I felt, all at once, quite horribly out of place. How does a tart take leave of her customer? I did not know; I had never had to do it.

  The lady was still gazing at me. She said, ‘I have waited for you to wake, before ringing for breakfast.’ There was a bell-pull set into the wall beside the fireplace: I had not seen that the night before, either. ‘I hope you are hungry?’

  I was, I realised, very hungry indeed; but also slightly nauseous. My mouth, moreover, tasted abominable: I hoped she wouldn’t try to kiss me again. She didn’t, but kept her distance. Soon, piqued by her new, queer, self-conscious air, I began to think that she might, at least, come and put her lips to my hand.

  There was a low, respectful knock on the outer door of the adjoining room. At her call the door was opened; I heard footsteps, and the rattle of china. To my amazement the rattle grew louder, the footsteps approached: the servant - who I thought would deposit her burden in the room next door, and discreetly take her leave - appeared in the doorway of ours. I pulled the sheet to my throat and lay quite still; neither the mistress nor the maid, however, appeared in any way discomfited by my presence there. The latter - not the pale-faced woman I had seen the night before, but a girl a little younger than myself - gave a bob and, with her eyes lowered, made space for a tray on the dressing-table. When she had finished with the china she paused with her head bent and her hands folded over her apron.

  ‘Very good, Blake, that will be all for now,’ said the lady. ‘But have a bath ready for Miss King by half-past twelve. And tell Mrs Hooper I shall speak to her about luncheon, later.’ Her tone was quite polite, yet colourless; I had heard ladies and gentlemen use that tone on cabmen and shopgirls and porters a thousand times.

  The girl gave another little duck to her head - ‘Yes m’m’ - and withdrew. She had not looked towards the bed, at all.

  With the breakfast things to busy ourselves over, the next few minutes passed easily. I raised myself into a sitting position - wincing all the time, for my body ached as if it had been pummelled, or stretched on a rack - and the lady fed me coffee, and warm rolls spread with butter and honey. She herself only drank and, later, smoked. She seemed to take pleasure from seeing me eat - as last night she had liked to watch me stand, undress, light cigarettes; but, still, there was that disconcerting thoughtfulness about her, that made me long for her honest, cruel kisses of the night before.

  When we had drained the coffee-pot between us, and I had finished all the rolls, she spoke; and her voice was graver than I had yet heard it. She said: ‘Last night, upon the street, I invited you to drive with me and you hesitated. Why was that?’

  ‘I was afraid,’ I answered honestly.

  She nodded. ‘You are not afraid now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You are glad that I brought you here.’

  It was not a question, but as she said it she raised a hand to my throat, and stoked me there until I reddened and swallowed; and I could not help but answer: ‘Yes.’

  Then the hand was removed. She grew thoughtful again, and smiled. She said: ‘There is a Persian story I read as a girl, about a princess and a beggar, and a djinn. The beggar sets the djinn free from a bottle, and is rewarded with a wish; but the wish - they always do, alas! - comes with conditions. The man may live in ordinary comfort for seventy years; or he may live in pleasure - with a princess for a wife, and servants to bathe him, and robes of gold - he may live in pleasure, for five hundred days.’ She paused; then said: ‘Which would you choose, if you were that beggar?’

  I hesitated. ‘Those stories are silly,’ I said at last. ‘Nobody is ever asked -’

  ‘Which would you choose? The comfort; or the pleasure?’ She put her hand to my cheek.

  ‘I suppose then, the pleasure.’

  She nodded: ‘Of course; and so did the beggar. I should be very sorry, if you had said the other thing.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Can you not gu
ess?’ She smiled again. ‘You say that there is no one you must answer to. Have you no - sweetheart, even?’ I shook my head, and perhaps looked bitter, for she sighed with a kind of satisfaction. ‘Tell me, then: will you stay with me, here? - and be pleasured, and pleasure me, in your turn?’

  For a second I only gazed stupidly at her. ‘Stay with you?’ I said. ‘Stay as what? Your guest, your servant -?’

  ‘My tart.’

  ‘Your tart!’ I blinked; then heard my voice grow a little hard. ‘And how should I be paid for that? Rather handsomely, I should think ...’

  ‘My dear, I have said: you should have pleasure for your wages! You should live with me here, and enjoy my privileges. You should eat from my table, and ride in my brougham, and wear the clothes I will pick out for you - and remove them, too, when I should ask it. You should be what the sensational novels call kept.’

  I gazed at her, then looked away - at the silken counterpane upon the bed, the japanned press, the bell-pull, the rosewood trunk .... I pictured my room at Mrs Milne’s, where I had come so close of late to real happiness; but I remembered too my growing obligations there, that had made me, more than once, uneasy. How much freer would I paradoxically be, bound to this lady - bound to lust, bound to pleasure!

  And yet, it was a little sickening, too, that she made such promises, so easily. I said - and again, my voice was hard - ‘And have you no fear of sensation then? You seem rather sure of me - but you know nothing about me! Don’t you worry I’ll raise a row; that I’ll tell the papers - the police - your secret?’

  ‘And with it, your own? Oh no, Miss King. I have no fear of sensation: on the contrary, I court it! I seek out sensation! And so do you.’ She leaned closer, and fingered a lock of my hair. ‘You say I know nothing about you; but I have watched you upon the streets, remember. How coolly you pose and wander and flirt! Did you think you could play at Ganymede, for ever? Did you think, if you wore a silken cock, it meant you never had a cunt at the seam of your drawers?’ Her face was very close to my own; she would not let me turn my eyes from hers. She said: ‘You’re like me: you have shown it, you are showing it now! It is your own sex for which you really hunger! You thought, perhaps, to stifle your own appetites: but you have only made them swell the more! And that is why you won’t raise a row - why you still stay, and be my tart, as I desire.’ She gave my hair a cruel twist. ‘Admit that it is as I say!’

  ‘It is!’

  For it was, it was! What she said was the truth: she had found out all my secrets; she had shown me to myself. Not just with the fierce words of that moment, but with all - the kisses, the caresses, the fuck on the chair - that had made her say them; and I was glad! I had loved Kitty - I would always love Kitty. But I had lived with her a kind of queer half-life, hiding from my own true self. Since then I had refused to love at all, had become - or so I thought - a creature beyond passion, driving others to their secret, humiliating confessions of lust; but never offering my own. Now, this lady had torn it from me - had laid me bare, as surely as if she had ripped the shrieking flesh from my white bones. She pressed against me still; and even as her breath came warm against my cheek, I felt my lusts rise up to meet her own, and knew myself in thrall.

  After all, there are moments in our lives that change us, that discontent us with our pasts and offer us new futures. That night at the Canterbury Palace, when Kitty had cast her rose at me, and sent my admiration for her tumbling over into love - that had been one such moment. This was another; perhaps, indeed, it had already passed - perhaps it was the second when I was guided into the dark heart of that waiting carriage that was the real start of my new life. Either way, I knew I could not go back to the old one, now. The djinn was out of the bottle at last; and I had settled on pleasure.

  I never thought to ask what happened to the beggar in the tale, once the five hundred days came to an end.

  Chapter 11

  The lady’s name, I learned in time, was Diana: Diana Lethaby. She was a widow, and childless, and rich, and venturesome, and thus - though on a considerably grander scale - as accomplished in the habits of self-pleasure as myself, and quite as hard of heart. In that summer of 1892 she would have been eight-and-thirty - younger, that is, than I am now, though she seemed terribly old to me then, at twenty-two. Her marriage had been, I think, a loveless one, for she wore neither wedding-ring nor mourning-ring, nor was there any picture of Mr Lethaby in any room in that large, handsome house. I never asked after him, and she never questioned me about my past. She had created me anew: the old dark days before were nothing to her.

  And they must become nothing to me, of course, now that we had settled our bargain. On that first, fierce morning of my time in her house, she had me kiss her again, then bathe, then re-don my old guardsman’s uniform; and as I dressed, she stood a little to one side and studied me. She said, ‘We shall have to buy you some new suits. This one - for all its charms - will hardly do for very long. I shall ask Mrs Hooper to send to an outfitters.’

  I buttoned my trousers and drew the braces over my arms. ‘I have other costumes,’ I said, ‘at home.’

  ‘But you would rather have new ones.’

  I frowned. ‘Of course, but - I must fetch my things. I cannot leave them all unsorted.’

  ‘I could send a boy for them.’

  I pulled on my jacket. ‘I owe my landlady a month in rent.’

  ‘I shall send her the money. How much shall I send? A Pound? Two pounds?’

  I didn’t answer. Her words had made me understand anew the enormity of the change that was come upon me; and I thought, for the first time, of the visit I should have to make, to Mrs Milne and Gracie. I could hardly shirk my duty there by sending a boy, with a letter and a coin - could I? I knew I could not.

  ‘I must go myself,’ I said at last. ‘I should like, you know, to say good-bye to my friends.’

  She raised an eyebrow: ‘As you wish. I shall have Shilling bring the carriage round, this afternoon.’

  ‘I could just as easily catch a tram ...’

  ‘I shall send for Shilling.’ She came to me, and set my guardsman’s cap upon my head, and brushed my scarlet shoulders. ‘I think it very naughty of you, to want to go from me at all. I must be sure, at least, of having you come swiftly back!’

  My visit to Green Street was every bit as dreary as I knew it must be. I could not bear, somehow, for the brougham to draw up at Mrs Milne’s front door, so I asked Mr Shilling - Diana’s taciturn driver - to drop me at Percy Circus and wait for me there. When I let myself in with my house-key, therefore, it was as if I had just returned from a shopping expedition or a stroll, as I did most days; there was nothing but the length of my absence from them to hint to Mrs Milne and Gracie of my awful change of fortune. I closed the door very softly; still, Grace’s sharp ears must have caught the sound, for I heard her - she was in the parlour - give a cry of ‘Nance!’, and the next moment she had come lolloping down the stairs and had me in a fierce, neck-breaking embrace. Her mother soon followed her to the landing.

  ‘My dear!’ she called, ‘you’re home, and thank goodness! We’ve been wondering ourselves silly - haven’t we, love ? - about where you might’ve got to. Gracie was fretted near half to death, poor soul, but I said to her: “Don’t you worry about Nancy, girl; Nancy will’ve found some friend to take her in, or missed the last bus home, and passed the night in some rooming-house. Nancy will be back all right, tomorrow, you wait and see.”’ As she spoke she came slowly down the stairs, until at last we were quite level. She gazed at me with real affection; but there was a hint of reproach, I thought, in her words. I felt even more guilty about what I must tell her - but also slightly resentful. I was not her daughter, nor was I Gracie’s sweetheart. I owed them nothing - I told myself - but my rent.

  Now I drew carefully away from Grace, and nodded to her mother. I said, ‘You’re right, I did meet a friend. A very old friend I hadn’t seen in a long time. What a surprise it was, to meet her! She has room
s over in Kilburn. It was too far to come back so late.’ The story sounded hollow to me, but Mrs Milne seemed pleased enough with it.

  ‘There now, Gracie,’ she said, ‘what did I tell you? Now, just you run downstairs and put the kettle on. Nancy’ll be wanting a bit of tea, I don’t doubt.’ She smiled at me again, while Gracie dutifully lumbered off; then she headed back up the stairs, and I followed.

  ‘The thing is, Mrs Milne,’ I began, ‘this friend of mine, she’s in a bit of a state. You see her room-mate up and moved out last week’ - Mrs Milne checked slightly, then stepped steadily on - ‘and she can’t replace her; and she can’t afford all the rent herself, she has only a little part-time work in a milliner‘s, poor thing ...’ We had reached the parlour. Mrs Milne turned to face me, and her eyes were troubled.

  ‘That is a shame,’ she said feelingly. ‘A good roomer is hard to find, these days, that I do know. That’s why - and I’ve told you so before, you know I have - that’s why me and Gracie’ve been so glad to have you with us. Why, if you was ever to leave us, Nance -’ This seemed the worst possible way for me to tell her, yet I had to speak.

  ‘Oh, don’t say that, Mrs M!’ I said lightly. ‘For you see, I’m sorry to say I shall be leaving you. This friend of mine has asked me and, well, I said I would take the other girl’s place - just to help her out, you know ...’ My voice grew thin. Mrs Milne looked grey. She sank into a chair and put a hand to her throat.

  ‘Oh, Nance ...’

  ‘Now don’t,’ I said, with an attempt at jollity, ‘don’t be like that; now just don‘t! I’m not so special a boarder, heaven knows; and you’ll soon find another nice girl to take my place.’