Tipping the Velvet

by Sarah Waters

  She opened her eyes. ‘It was fun,’ she said sadly. ‘It is always fun before they catch you.’ Then she gazed at me, and swallowed.

  I said: ‘It won’t be so bad, Zena - will it? You’re the only tom I know in London, now; and since you’re all alone, I thought - we might make a go of it, mightn’t we? We might find a room, in a rooming-house. You could get work, as a sempstress or a char. I shall buy another suit; and when my face is all healed up - well, I know a trick or two, for making money. We shall have your seven pounds back in a month. We shall have twenty pounds in no time. And then, you can make your trip out to the colonies; and I’ — I gave a gulp — ‘I might go with you. You said they always need landladies there; surely, they’ll always need gentlemen’s tarts, too - even in Australia ... ?’

  She gazed at me as I murmured, saying nothing. Then she bent her head and kissed me once, very lightly, upon the lips. Then she turned away again, and at last I slept.

  When I woke, it was daylight. I could hear the sounds of women coughing and spitting, and discussing, in low, peevish voices, the nights that they had passed, and the days they must now move on to. I lay with my eyes shut and my hands before my face: I didn’t want to look at them, or at any part of the squalid world I was now obliged to share with them. I thought of Zena, and the plan that I had put to her - I thought: It will be hard, it will be terribly hard; but Zena will keep me from the worst of the hardness. Without Zena, it would be hard indeed ...

  Then I took my hands from my face at last, and turned to gaze at the bed beside me; and it was empty. Zena was gone. The money was gone. She had risen at dawn, with her servant’s habits; and she had left me, slumbering, with nothing.

  Understanding it at last left me curiously blank: I think, I was too giddy already to be dazed any further, too wretched to descend to greater depths. I rose, and drew my frock from beneath the mattress - it was creased worse than ever - and buttoned it on. The drunkard in the neighbouring bed had spent a ha’penny on a bowl of tepid water, and she let me use it, after she had stood in it and washed herself down, to wipe the last remaining flakes of blood from my cheeks, and to flatten my hair. My face, when I gazed at it in the sliver of mirror that was glued to the wall, looked like a face of wax, that had been set too near a spirit-lamp. My feet, when I stepped on them, seemed to shriek: the shoes were ones I had used to wear as a renter, but either my feet had grown since then, or I had become too used to gentle leather; I had gained blisters in the walk to the Kilburn Road, and now the blisters began to rub raw and wet, and the stockings to fray.

  We were not allowed to linger past the morning in the bedroom of the lodging-house: at eleven o’clock a woman came, and chivvied us out with a broom. I walked a little way with the drunkard. When we parted, at the top of Maida Vale, she took out the smallest screw of tobacco, rolled two thread-like cigarettes, and gave me one. Tobacco, she said, was the best cure for a bruise. I sat on a bench, and smoked till my fingers scorched; and then I considered my plight.

  My situation, after all, was a ridiculously familiar one: I had been as cold and as ill and as wretched as this four years before, after my flight from Stamford Hill. Then, however, I had at least had money, and handsome clothes; I had had food, and cigarettes - had all I required to keep me, not happy, but certainly quick. Now, I had nothing. I was nauseous with hunger and with the after-effects of wine; and to get so much as a penny for a cone of eels, I should have to beg for it - or do what Zena recommended, and try my luck as a tart, up against some dripping wall. The idea of begging was hateful to me - I could not bear the thought of trying to extract pity and coins from the kind of gentlemen who, a fortnight before, had admired the cut of my suit or the flash of my cuff-links as I passed amongst them at Diana’s side. The thought of being fucked by one of them, as a girl, was even worse.

  I got up: it was too cold to sit upon the bench all day. I remembered what Zena had said the night before - that I must go to my folks, that my folks would take me. I had said that I had no one; but now I thought that there might, after all, be one place I could try. I did not think of my real family, in Whitstable: I had finished with them, it seemed to me then, for ever. I thought instead of a lady who had been like a mother to me, once; and of her daughter, who had been a kind of sister. I thought of Mrs Milne, and Gracie. I had had no contact with them in a year and a half. I had promised to visit them, but had never been at liberty to do so. I had promised to send them my address: I had never sent them so much as a note to say I missed them, or a card on Gracie’s birthday. The truth was that, after my first few, strange days at Felicity Place, I had not missed them at all. But now I remembered their kindness, and wanted to weep. Diana and Zena between them had made an outcast of me; but Mrs Milne - I was sure of it! - was bound to take me in.

  And so I walked, from Maida Vale to Green Street - walked creepingly, in my misery and my shame and my pinching boots, as if every step were taken barefoot on open swords. The house, when I reached it at last, seemed shabby - but then, I knew what it was, to leave a place for something grand, and come back to find it humbler than you knew. There was no flower before the door, and no three-legged cat - but then again, it was winter, and the street very cold and bleak. I could think only of my own sorry plight; and when I rang the bell and no one came, I thought: Well, I will sit upon the step, Mrs Milne is never out for long; and if I grow numb from the cold, it will serve me right...

  But then I pressed my face to the glass beside the door and peered into the hall beyond, and I saw that the walls - that used to have Gracie’s pictures on them, the Light of the World and the Hindoo idol, and the others - I saw that they were bare; that there were only marks upon them, where the pictures had been fastened. And at that, I trembled. I caught hold of the door-knocker and banged it, in a kind of panic; and I called into the letter-box: ‘Mrs Milne! Mrs Milne!’ and ‘Gracie! Grace Milne!’ But my voice sounded hollow, and the hall stayed dark.

  Then there came a shout, from the tenement behind.

  ‘Are you looking for the old lady and her daughter? They have gone, dear - gone a month ago!’

  I turned, and looked up. From a balcony above the street a man was calling to me, and nodding to the house. I went out, and gazed miserably up at him, and said, Where had they gone to?

  He shrugged. ‘Gone to her sister’s, is what I heard. The lady was took very bad, in the autumn; and the girl being a simpleton - you knew that, did you? - they didn’t think it clever to leave the pair of them alone. They have took all the furniture; I daresay that the house will come up for sale ...’ He looked at my cheek. ‘That’s a lovely black eye you have,’ he said, as if I might not have noticed. ‘Just like in the song - ain’t it? Except you only have one of ‘em!’

  I stared at him, and shivered while he laughed. A little fair-haired girl had appeared on the balcony beside him, and now gripped the rail and put her feet upon the bars. I said, ‘Where does the lady live - the sister they’ve gone to?’ and he pulled at his ear and looked thoughtful.

  ‘Now, I did know, but have forgotten it ... I believe it was Bristol; or it may have been Bath...’

  ‘Not London, then?’

  ‘Oh no, certainly not London. Now, was it Brighton ... ?’

  I turned away from him, to gaze back up at Mrs Milne’s house - at the window of my old room, and at the balcony where I had liked, in summer-time, to sit. When I looked at the man again, he had his little girl in his arms, and the wind had caught her golden hair and made it flap about his cheeks: and I remembered them both, then, as the father and daughter that I had seen clapping their hands to the sound of a mandolin, on that balmy June evening, in the week I met Diana. They had lost their home and been given a new one. They had been visited by that charity-visitor with the romantic-sounding name.

  Florence! I did not know that I had remembered her. I had not thought of her at all, for a year and more.

  If only I might meet her, now! She found houses for the poor; she might find
a house for me. She had been kind to me once - wouldn’t she be kind, if I appealed to her, a second time? I thought of her comely face, and her curling hair. I had lost Diana, I had lost Zena; and now I had lost Mrs Milne and Grace. In all of London she was the closest thing I had, at that moment, to a friend - and it was a friend just then that, above all else, I longed for.

  On the balcony above me, the man had turned away. Now I called him back: ‘Hey, mister!’ I walked closer to the wall of the tenement, and gazed up at him: he and his daughter leaned from the balcony rail - she looked like an angel on the ceiling of a church. I said, ‘You won’t know me; but I lived here once, with Mrs Milne. I am looking for a girl, who called on you when you moved in. She worked for the people that found you your flat.’

  He frowned. ‘A girl, you say?’

  ‘A girl with curly hair. A plain-faced girl called Florence. Don’t you know who I mean? Don’t you have the name of the charity she worked for? It was run by a lady - a very clever-looking lady. The lady played the mandolin.’

  He had continued to frown, and to scratch at his head; but at this last detail he brightened. ‘That one,’ he said; ‘yes, I remember her. And that gal what helped her, that was your chum, was it?’

  I said it was. Then: ‘And the charity? Do you remember them, and where their rooms are?’

  ‘Where their rooms are, let me see ... I did go there wunst; but I don’t know as I can quite recall the partic’lar number. I do know as it was a place rather close to the Angel, Islington.’

  ‘Near Sam Collins’s?’ I asked.

  ‘Past Sam Collins’s, on Upper Street. Not so far as the post office. A little doorway on the left-hand side, somewhere between a public-house and a tailor’s ...’

  This was all he could recall; I thought it might be enough. I thanked him, and he smiled. ‘What a lovely black eye,’ he said again, but to his daughter this time. ‘Just like the song - ain’t it, Betty?’

  By now I felt as if I had been on my feet for a month. I suspected that my boots had worn their way right through my stockings, and had started on the bare flesh of my toes and heels and ankles. But I did not stop at another bench, and untie my laces, in order to find out. The wind had picked up a little and, though it was only two o’clock or so, the sky was grey as lead. I wasn’t sure what time the charity offices might close; I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to find them; I didn’t know if Florence would even be there, when I did. So I walked rather quickly up Pentonville Hill, and let my feet be rubbed to puddings, and tried to plan what I would say to her when I found her. This, however, proved difficult. After all, she was a girl I hardly knew; worse - I could not help but recall this, now - I had once arranged to meet her, then let her down. Would she, even, remember me at all? In that gloomy Green Street passageway I had been certain that she would. But with every burning step, I grew less sure of it.

  It did not, as it turned out, take me very long to find the right office. The man’s memory was a good one, and Upper Street itself seemed wonderfully unchanged since his last visit there: the public-house and the tailor’s were quite as he had described them, close together on the left-hand side of the street, just past the music hall. In between them were three or four doors, leading to the rooms and offices above; and upon one of these was screwed a little enamel plaque, which said: Ponsonby’s Model Dwelling Houses. Directress Miss J. A. D. Derby - I remembered this very well now as the name of the lady with the mandolin. Beneath the plaque was a hand-written, rain-spattered note with an arrow pointing to a bell-pull at the side of the door. Please Ring, it said, and Enter. So, with some trepidation, I did both.

  The passageway behind the door was very long and very gloomy. It led to a window, which looked out at a view of bricks and oozing drain-pipes; and from here there was only one way to proceed, and that was upwards, via a set of naked stairs. The banister was sticky, but I grasped it, and began to climb. Before I had reached the third or fourth step, a door at the top of the staircase had opened, a head had emerged in the gap, and a lady’s voice called pleasantly: ‘Hallo down there! It’s rather steep, but worth the effort. Do you need a light?’

  I answered that I did not, and climbed faster. At the top, a little out of breath, I was led by the lady into a tiny chamber that held a desk, and a cabinet, and a set of mismatched chairs. When she gestured, I sat; she herself perched upon the edge of the desk, and folded her arms. From a room nearby came the fitful crack-crack-crack of a typewriting machine.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘what can we do for you? I say, what an eye you have!’ I had removed my hat, as if I were a man, and, as she studied my cheek - and then, more warily, my close-clipped head - I fiddled with the ribbon on the hatband, rather awkwardly. She said, ‘Have you an appointment with us?’ and I answered that I hadn’t come about a house, at all. I had come about a girl.

  ‘A girl?’

  ‘A woman, I should say. Her name is Florence, and she works here, for the charity.’

  She gave a frown. ‘Florence,’ she said; then ‘are you sure? There’s really only Miss Derby, myself, and another lady.’

  ‘Miss Derby,’ I said quickly, ‘knows who I mean. She definitely used to work here; for the last time I saw her she said - she said -’

  ‘She said ... ?’ prompted the lady, more warily than ever - for my mouth had fallen open, and my hand had flown to my swollen cheek; and now I cursed, in a hopeless kind of miserable fury.

  ‘She said that she was leaving this post,’ I said, ‘and moving to another. What a fool I’ve been! I had forgotten it till now. That means that Florence hasn’t worked here for a year and a half, or more!’

  The lady nodded. ‘Ah, well, you see, that was before my time. But, as you say, Miss Derby is sure to remember her.’

  That, at least, was still true. I lifted my head. ‘Then, may I see her?’

  ‘You may - but not today; nor even tomorrow, I’m afraid. She won’t be in now until Friday -’

  ‘Friday!’ That was terrible. ‘But I must see Florence today, I really must! Surely you have a list, or a book, or something, that says where she has gone to. Surely somebody here must know.’

  The lady seemed surprised. ‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘perhaps we do ... But I cannot really give that sort of detail out, you know, to strangers.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Could you not write her a letter, and let us forward it ... ?’ I shook my head, and felt my eyes begin to prick. She must have seen, and misunderstood, for she said then, rather gently: ‘Ah - perhaps you’re not very handy with a pen ... ?’

  I would have admitted to anything, for the sake of a kind word. I shook my head again: ‘Not very, no.’

  She was silent for a moment. Perhaps she thought, that there could be nothing very sinister about my quest, if I could not even read or write. At any rate, she rose at last and said, ‘Wait here.’ Then she left the room and entered another, across the hall. The sound of the typewriter grew louder for a second, then ceased altogether; in its place I heard the murmur of voices, the prolonged rustling of paper, and finally the slam of a cabinet drawer.

  The lady reappeared, bearing a white page - a letter, by the look of it - in her hand. ‘Success! Thanks to Miss Derby’s beautiful clerking system we have tracked your Florence - or, at least, a Florence - down; she left here just before both Miss Bennet and I began, in 1892. However’ - she grew grave -‘we really do not think that we can give you her own address; but she left here to work at a home for friendless girls, and we can tell you where that is. It’s a place called Freemantle House, on the Stratford Road.’

  A home for friendless girls! The very idea of it made me tremble and grow weak. ‘That must be her,’ I said. ‘But - Stratford ? So far?’ I shifted my feet beneath my chair, and felt the leather slide against my bleeding heels. The boots themselves were thick with mud; my skirt had gained a frill of filth, six inches deep, at the hem. Against the window there came the spatter of rain. ‘Stratford,’ I said again, so miserably that the
woman drew near and put her hand upon my arm.

  ‘Have you not the fare?’ she asked gently. I shook my head.

  ‘I have lost all my money. I have lost everything!’ I placed a hand over my eyes, and leaned in utter weariness against the desk. As I did so, I saw what lay upon it. It was the letter. The lady had placed it there, face upwards, knowing - thinking - that I could not read it. It was very brief; it was signed by Florence herself - Florence Banner, I now saw her full name to be - and was addressed to Miss Derby. Please accept notice of my resignation... it ran. I didn’t read that part. For at the top right-hand corner of the page there was a date, and an address - not that of Freemantle House but, clearly, the home address that I was not allowed to know. A number, followed by the name of a street: Quilter Street, Bethnal Green, London E. I memorised it at once.

  Meanwhile, the woman talked kindly on. I had scarcely heard her, but now I raised my head and saw what she was about. She had taken a little key from her pocket and unlocked one of the drawers in the desk. She was saying,‘... not something we make a habit of doing, at all; but I can see that you are very weary. If you take a bus from here to Aldgate, you can pick up another there, I believe, that will take you along the Mile End Road, to Stratford.’ She held out her hand. There were three pennies in it. ‘And perhaps you might get yourself a cup of tea, along the way?’

  I took the coins, and mumbled some word of thanks. As I did so a bell rang, close at hand, and we both gave a start. She glanced at a clock upon the wall. ‘My last clients of the day,’ she said.

  I took the hint, and rose and put on my hat. There were footsteps in the passageway below, now, and the sound of stumbling on the stairs. She ushered me to the door, and called to her visitors: ‘Come up, that’s right. It’s rather steep, I know, but worth the effort...’ A young man, followed by a woman, emerged from the gloom. They were both rather swarthy - Italians, I guessed, or Greeks - and looked terribly pinched and poor. We all shuffled around in the doorway of the office for a moment, smiling and awkward; then at last the lady and the young couple were inside the room, and I was alone at the head of the staircase.