Tipping the Velvet

by Sarah Waters

  The Cockney Chanteuse finished her set at last. There were cheers, then a brief delay, marked by shouts and shuffling and rustling, before the orchestra struck up with its introduction for the next act - a tinkling, Chinese melody, which made a boy in the line along from me stand up, and call out, ‘Ninkypoo!’ Then the curtain rose on a magician and a girl, and a black japanned cabinet - a cabinet not unlike the one that sat in Diana’s bedroom. When the magician snapped his fingers, there was a flash, and a crack, and a puff of purple smoke; and at that the boys put their fingers to their lips, and whistled.

  I had seen - or felt as if I had seen - a thousand such acts; and I watched this one now, with my cigarette gripped hard between my lips, growing steadily more sick and more uncertain. I remembered sitting in my box at the Canterbury Palace, with my fluttering heart and my gloves with the bows: it seemed a time immeasurably distant and quaint. But, as I had used to do then, I clutched the sticky velvet of my seat, and gazed at where, with a hint of drooping rope and dusty floorboard, the stage gave way to the wings, and I thought of Kitty. She was there, somewhere, just beyond the edge of the curtain, perhaps straightening her costume - whatever that was; perhaps chatting with Walter or Flora; perhaps staring, as Billy-Boy told her of me - perhaps smiling, perhaps weeping, perhaps saying only, mildly, ‘Fancy that!’ - and then forgetting me...

  I thought all this, and the magician performed his final trick. There was another flash, and more smoke: the smoke drifted as far as the gallery, and left the entire crowd coughing, but cheering through their coughs. The curtain fell, there was another delay while the number was changed, and then a quiver of blue, white and amber, as the limes-man changed the filter across his beam. I had finished my cigarette, and now reached for another. This time, the boys in my row all saw me do it, so I held the case to them, and they each took a fag: ‘Very generous.’ I thought of Diana. Suppose the opera had ended, and she was waiting for me, cursing, beating her programme against her thigh?

  Suppose she went back to Felicity Place, without me?

  But then there came music, and the creak of the curtain. I looked at the stage - and Walter was on it.

  He seemed very large - much larger than I remembered. Perhaps he had grown fatter; perhaps his costume was a little padded. His whiskers he had teased with a comb, to make them stand out rather comically. He wore tartan peg-top trousers and a green velvet jacket; and on his head was a smoking-cap, in his pocket a pipe. Behind him, there was a cloth with a scene on it representing a parlour. Beside him was an armchair that he leaned on as he sang. He was quite alone. I had never seen him in costume and paint before. He was so unlike the figure I still saw, sometimes, in my dreams - the figure with the flapping shirt, the dampened beard, the hand on Kitty — that I looked at him, and frowned: my heart had barely twitched, to see him standing there.

  His voice was a mild baritone, and not at all unpleasant; there had been a burst of applause at his first appearance, and there was another round of satisfied clapping now, and one or two cheers. His song, however, was a strange one: he sang of a son that he had lost, named ‘Little Jacky’. There were a number of verses, each of them ending on the same refrain - it might have been, ‘Where, oh where, is Little Jacky now?’ I thought it queer he should be there, singing such a song, alone. Where was Kitty? I drew hard on my cigarette. I couldn’t imagine how she would fit into this routine, in a silk hat, a bow-tie and a flower ...

  Suddenly a horrible idea began to form itself in my mind. Walter had taken a handkerchief from his pocket, and was dabbing at his eye with it. His voice rose on the predictable chorus, and was joined by not a few from the hall: ‘But where, oh where, is Little Jacky now?’ I shifted in my seat. I thought, Let it not be that! Oh please, oh please, let the act not be that!

  But it was. As Walter called his plaintive question, there was a piping from the wing: ‘Here’s your Little Jacky, Father! Here!’ A figure ran on to the stage, and seized his hand and kissed it. It was Kitty. She was dressed in a boy’s sailor-suit - a baggy white blouse with a blue sash, white knickerbockers, stockings, and flat brown shoes; and she had a straw hat slung over her back, on a ribbon. Her hair was rather longer, and had been combed into a curl. Now the band struck up another tune, and she joined her voice with Walter’s in a duet.

  The crowd clapped her, and smiled. She skipped, and Walter bent and wagged a finger at her, and they laughed. They liked this turn. They liked seeing Kitty - my lovely, saucy, swaggering Kitty - play the child, with her husband, in stockings to the knee. They could not see me, as I blushed and squirmed; they would not have known why I did it, if they had. I hardly knew it, myself; I only felt myself smart with a terrible shame. I could not have felt worse if they had booed her, or pelted her with eggs. But they liked her!

  I looked at her a little harder. Then I remembered my opera glasses, and pulled them from my pocket and lifted them to my eyes, and saw her close before me, as close as in a dream. Her hair, though longer, was still nut-brown. Her lashes were still long, she was still as slender as a willow. She had painted out her own lovely freckles and replaced them with a few comical smudges; but I - who had traced the pattern of them, so often, with my fingers - I thought I could catch the shape of them beneath the powder. Her lips were still full lips, and they gleamed as she sang. She lifted her mouth and placed a kiss, between the verses, on Walter’s whiskers ...

  At that, I let the glasses drop. I saw the boys in the row looking enviously at them, so passed them along the line — I think they got thrown, in the end, to a girl at the balcony. When I looked at the stage again, Kitty and Walter seemed very small. He had lowered himself into the chair, and had drawn Kitty down to sit upon his knee; she had her hands clasped at her breast, and her feet, in their flat boy’s shoes, were swinging. But I could bear to see no more of it. I started up. The boys called something - their words were lost. I stumbled up the darkened aisle, and found the exit.

  Back at the Royal Opera I found the singers still shrieking upon the stage, the horns still blaring. But I only heard this through the doors: I couldn’t face picking my way across the stalls to Diana’s side, and facing her displeasure. I gave my ticket to the Italian at the cloaks, then sat in the lobby on a velvet chair, watching as the street filled up with waiting hansoms, with women selling flowers, and with gay girls, and renters.

  At last there came the cries of ‘Bravo’, and the shouts for the soprano. The doors were thrown wide, the lobby filled with chattering people, and in time Diana, Maria, Dickie and the dog emerged, and saw me waiting, and came up to yawn and scold and ask me what the trouble was. I said I had been sick in the gentlemen’s lavatory. Diana put a hand to my cheek.

  ‘The excitements of the day have proved too much for you,’ she said.

  But she said it rather coldly; and all through the long ride back to Felicity Place we sat in silence. When Mrs Hooper had let us in and bolted the great front door behind us, I walked with Diana to her bedroom, but then stepped past her, towards my own. As I did so, she put a hand on my arm: ‘Where are you going?’

  I pulled my arm free. ‘Diana,’ I said, ‘I feel wretched. Let me alone.’

  She seized me again. ‘You feel wretched,’ she said, with scorn in her voice. ‘Do you think it matters to me, how you feel about anything? Get in my bedroom at once, you little bitch, and take your clothes off.’

  I hesitated. Then: ‘No, Diana,’ I said.

  She came closer. ‘What?’

  There is a way rich people have of saying What?: the word is honed, and has a point put on it; it comes out of their mouths like a dagger coming out of a sheath. That is how Diana said it now, in that dim corridor. I felt it pierce me through, and make me sag. I swallowed.

  ‘I said, “No, Diana.’” It was no more than a whisper. But when she heard it, she seized me by the shirt, so that I stumbled. I said, ‘Get off me, you are hurting me! Get off me, get off me! Diana, you will spoil my shirt!’

  ‘What, this shirt
?’ she answered. And with that, she put her fingers behind the buttons, and pulled it until it ripped, and my breasts showed bare beneath it. Then she caught hold of the jacket, and tore that from me too - all the time panting as she did so, and with her limbs pressed close against my own. I staggered, and reached for the wall, then placed my arm over my face — I thought she would strike me. But when I looked at her at last I saw that her features were livid, not in fury, but in lust. She reached for my hand, and placed my fingers at the collar of her gown; and, miserable as I was, when I understood what it was that she wanted me to do, I felt my own breath quicken, and my cunt gave a kick. I pulled at the lace, heard a few stitches rip, and the sound worked on me like the tip of a whip, snapping against the haunches of a horse. I tore it from her, her gown of black and white and silver, that came from Worth’s to match my costume; and when it was wrecked and trampled on the rug, she had me kneel upon it and fuck her, until she came and came again.

  Then she sent me to my own room, anyway.

  I lay in the darkness and shook, and put my hands before my mouth to keep from weeping. Upon the cabinet beside the bed, gleaming where the starlight struck it, lay my birthday gift, the wrist-watch. I reached for it, and felt it cold between my fingers; but when I placed it to my ear, I shuddered - for all that it would say was: Kitty, Kitty, Kitty ...

  I cast it from me, then, and put my pillow over my ears to blot the sound out. I would not weep. I would not weep! I would not even think. I would only surrender myself, for ever, to the heartless, seasonless routines of Felicity Place.

  So I thought then; but my days there were numbered. And the arms of my handsome watch were slowly sweeping them away.

  Chapter 14

  The morning after my birthday I slept late; and when I woke, and rang for Blake to bring me coffee, it was to find that Diana had gone out while I was slumbering.

  ‘Gone out?’ I said. ‘Gone where? Who with?’ Blake gave a curtsey, and said she didn’t know. I sat back against my pillow, and took the cup from her. ‘What was she wearing?’ I asked then.

  ‘She was wearing her green suit, miss, and had her bag with her.’

  ‘Her bag. Then, she might have been going to the Cavendish Club. Didn’t she say, that she was going to her club? Didn’t she say when she’d be back?’

  ‘Please miss, she didn’t say a thing. She never does say a thing like that, to me. You might ask Mrs Hooper ...’

  I might; but Mrs Hooper had a way about her, of gazing at me as I lay in bed, that I didn’t quite care for. I said, ‘No, it doesn’t matter.’ Then, as Blake bent to sweep my hearth and set a fire there, I sighed. I thought of Diana’s rough kisses of the night before - of how they had stirred me, and sickened me, while my heart was still smarting after Kitty. I groaned; and when Blake looked up I said, in a half-hearted sort of way: ‘Don’t you get tired, Blake, of serving Mrs Lethaby?’

  The question made her cheeks flush pink. She looked back to the hearth, then said, ‘I should get tired, miss, with any mistress.’

  I answered that I supposed she would. Then, because it was novel to talk to her - and because Diana had gone out without waking me, and I was peevish and bored - I said: ‘So you don’t think Mrs Lethaby a hard one, then?’

  She coloured again. ‘They are all hard, miss. Else, how would they be mistresses?’

  ‘Well — but do you like it here? Do you like being a maid here?’

  ‘I have a room to myself, which is more than most maids get. Besides,’ she stood, and wiped her hands on her apron, ‘Mrs Lethaby don’t half pay a decent wage.’

  I thought of how she came every morning with the coffee, and every night with jugs of water for the bowls. I said, ‘Don’t think me rude, but - whenever do you spent it?’

  ‘I am saving it, miss!’ she said. ‘I aim to emigrate. My friend says, in the colonies a girl with twenty pounds can set up as a landlady of a rooming-house, with girls of her own.’

  ‘Is that so?’ She nodded. ‘And you’d like to run a rooming-house?’

  ‘Oh yes! They will always need rooming-houses in the colonies, you see, for the people coming in.’

  ‘Well, that’s true. And, how much have you saved?’

  She flushed again. ‘Seven pounds, miss.’

  I nodded. Then I thought and said: ‘But the colonies, Blake! Could you bear the journey? You should have to live in a boat - suppose there were storms?’

  She picked up the scuttle of coal. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t mind that, miss!’

  I laughed; and so did she. We had never chatted so freely before. I had grown used to calling her only ‘Blake’ as Diana did; I had grown used to her curtseys; I had grown used to having her see me as I was now: swollen-eyed and swollen-mouthed, naked in a bed with the sheet at my bosom, and the marks of Diana’s kisses at my throat. I had grown used to not looking at her, not seeing her at all. Now, as she laughed, I found myself gazing at her at last, at her pinking cheeks and at her lashes, which were dark, and thinking, Oh! — for she was really rather handsome.

  And, as I thought it, there came the old self-consciousness between us. She hoisted her scuttle of coal a little higher, then came to take my tray and ask me, ‘Would there be anything else?’ I answered that she might run me a bath; and she curtseyed.

  And when I lay soaking in the bathroom I heard the slam of the front door. It was Diana. She came to find me. She had been to the Cavendish, but only to take a letter that must be signed by another lady.

  ‘I didn’t like to wake you,’ she said, dipping her hand into the water.

  I forgot about Blake, then, and how handsome she was.

  I forgot about Blake, indeed, for a month or more. Diana gave dinners, and I posed and wore costumes; we made visits to the club, and to Maria’s house in Hampstead. All went on as usual. I was occasionally sulky, but, as on the night of our trip to the opera, she found ways of turning my sulkiness to her own lewd advantage - in the end, I hardly knew if I were really cross or only feigning crossness for the sake of her letches. Once or twice I hoped she would make me cross - fucking her in a rage, I found, could at the right moment be more thrilling than fucking her in kindness.

  Anyway, we went on like this. Then one night there was some quarrel over a suit. We were dressing for a supper at Maria‘s, and I would not wear the clothes she picked for me. ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘you may wear what you please!’ And she took the carriage, and went off to Hampstead without me. I threw a cup against the wall — then sent for Blake to come and tidy it. And when she came, I remembered how pleasant it had been to chat with her before; and I made her sit with me, and tell me more about her plans.

  And after that, she would come and spend a minute or two with me whenever Diana was out; and she became easier with me, and I grew freer with her. And at last I said to her: ‘Lord, Blake, you’ve been emptying my pot for me for more than a year, and I don’t even know what your first name is!’

  She smiled, and again looked handsome.

  Her name was Zena.

  Her name was Zena, and her story was a sad one. I had it from her one morning in the autumn of that year, as I lay in Diana’s bed, and she came, as usual, to bring breakfast and to see to the fire. Diana herself had risen early, and gone out. I woke to find Zena kneeling at the hearth, working quietly with the coals so as not to disturb me. I shifted beneath the sheets, feeling lazy as an eel. My quim - in the clever way of quims - was still quite slippery, from the passion of the night before.

  I lay watching her. She raised a hand to scratch her brow, and when she took the hand away she left a smudge of soot there. Her face, against the smudge, seemed very pale and rather pinched. I said, ‘Zena’, and she gave a jump: ‘Yes, miss?’

  I hesitated; then, ‘Zena,’ I said again, ‘don’t mind me asking you something, but I can’t help but think of it. Diana once told me - well, that she got you out of a prison. Is it true?’

  She turned back to the hearth, and continued to pile coals upon the f
ire; but I saw her ears turn crimson. She said. ‘They call it a reformat’ry. It wasn’t a gaol.’

  ‘A reformat’ry, then. But it’s true you were in one.’ She didn’t answer. ‘I don’t mind it,’ I added quickly.

  She gave a jerk to her head, and said: ‘No, I don’t mind it, now...’

  Had she said such a thing, in such a tone, to Diana, I think Diana would have slapped her. Indeed, she looked at me now a little fearfully; but when she did so, I grimaced. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Do you think me very rude? It’s only - well, it is what Diana said, about why they had you in there at all. Is it true, what she said? Or is it only one of her stories? Is it true that they had you in there, because you ... kissed another girl?’

  She let her hands fall to her lap, then sat back upon her heels and gazed into the unlit grate. Then she turned her face to me and gave a sigh.

  ‘I was a year in the reformat’ry,’ she said, ‘when I was seventeen. It was a cruel enough place, I suppose, though not so hard as other gaols I heard of; its mistress is a lady Mrs Lethaby knows from her club, and that is how she got me. I was sent to the reformat‘ry on the word of a girl I was friends with at a house in Kentish Town. We were maids there, together.’

  ‘You were a maid before you came here?’

  ‘I was sent out as a skivvy when I was ten: Pa was rather poor. That was at a house in Paddington. When I was fourteen I went to the place in Kentish Town. It was altogether a better place. I was a housemaid, then; and I got very thick with another girl there, named Agnes. Agnes had a chap, and she threw the chap over, miss, for my sake. That’s how thick we were ...’

  She gazed very sadly at her hands in her lap, and the room grew still, and I grew sorry. I said, ‘And was it Agnes told the story that got you sent to the reformat’ry?’