Tipping the Velvet

by Sarah Waters

  When I stopped talking it was almost light; the parlour seemed chillier than ever. Through all my long narrative Florence had been silent; she had begun to frown when I had reached the part about the renting, and after that the frown had deepened. Now it was very deep indeed.

  ‘You wanted to know,’ I said, ‘what secrets I had...’

  She looked away. ‘I didn’t think there would be quite so many.’

  ‘You said you wouldn’t hate me, over the renting.’

  ‘It’s so hard to think you did those things - for fun. And — oh, Nance, for such a cruel kind of fun!’

  ‘It was very long ago.’

  ‘To think of all the people you have known - and yet you have no friends.’

  ‘I left them all behind me.’

  ‘Your family. You said when you came here that your family had thrown you over. But it was you threw them over! How they must wonder over you! Do you never think of them?’

  ‘Sometimes, sometimes.’

  ‘And the lady who was so fond of you, in Green Street. Do you never think to call on her, and her daughter?’

  ‘They have moved away; and I tried to find them. And anyway, I was ashamed, because I had neglected them...’

  ‘Neglected them, for that - what was her name?’

  ‘Diana.’

  ‘Diana. Did you care for her, then, so very much?’

  ‘Care for her?’ I propped myself upon my elbow. ‘I hated her! She was a kind of devil! I have told you — ’

  ‘And yet, you stayed with her, so long...’

  I felt suffocated, all at once, by my own story, and by the meanings she was teasing from it. ‘I can’t explain,’ I said. ‘She had a power over me. She was rich. She had - things.’

  ‘First you told me it was a gent that threw you out. Then you said it was a lady. I thought, that you had lost some girl... ’

  ‘I had lost a girl; but it was Kitty, and it was years before.’

  ‘And Diana was rich; and blacked your eye and cut you, and you let her. And then she chucked you out because you - kissed her maid.’ Her voice had grown steadily harder. ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know!’

  We lay a while in silence, and the bed seemed suddenly terribly slim. Florence gazed at the lightening square of curtain at the window, and I watched her, miserably. When she put a finger to her mouth to chew at a nail I lifted my hand to stop her; but she pushed my arm away, and made to rise.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

  ‘Upstairs. I want to sit a little while and think.’

  ‘No!’ I cried; and as I cried it, Cyril, in his crib upstairs, woke up, and began to call out for his mother. I reached for Florence and seized her wrist and, all heedless of the baby’s cries, pulled her back and pressed her to the bed. ‘I know what you mean to do,’ I said. ‘You mean to go and think of Lilian!’

  ‘I cannot help but think of Lilian!’ she answered, stricken. ‘I cannot help it. And you - you’re just the same, only I never knew it. Don’t say - don’t say you weren’t thinking of her, of Kitty, last night, as you kissed me!’

  I took a breath - but then I hesitated. For it was true, I couldn’t say it. It was Kitty I had kissed first and hardest; and it was as if I had had the shape or the colour or the taste of her kisses upon my lips, ever after. Not the spendings and the tears of all the weeping sods of Soho, nor the wine and the damp caresses of Felicity Place, had quite washed those kisses away. I had always known it - but it had never mattered with Diana, nor with Zena. Why should it matter with Florence?

  What should it matter who she thought of, as she kissed me?

  ‘All I know is,’ I said at last, ‘if we had not lain together last night, we would have died of it. And if you tell me now we shall never lie together again, after that, that was so marvellous -!’

  I still held her to the bed, and Cyril still cried; but now, by some miracle, his cries began to die - and Florence, in her turn, grew slack in my arms, and turned her head against me.

  ‘I liked to think of you,’ she said quietly, ‘as Venus in a sea-shell. I never thought of the sweethearts you had, before you came here...’

  ‘Why must you think of them now?’

  ‘Because you do! Suppose Kitty were to show up again, and ask you back to her?’

  ‘She won’t. Kitty’s gone, Flo. Like Lilian. Believe me, there’s more chance of her coming back!’ I began to smile. ‘And if she does, you can go to her, and I won’t say a word. And if Kitty comes for me, you can do similar. And then, I suppose, we shall have our paradises - and will be able to wave to one another from our separate clouds. But till then - till then, Flo, can’t we go on kissing, and just be glad?’

  As lovers’ vows go, this one was, I suppose, rather curious; but we were girls with curious histories - girls with pasts like boxes with ill-fitting lids. We must bear them, but bear them carefully. We should do very well, I thought, as Florence sighed and raised her hand to me at last; we should do very well, so long as the boxes stayed unspilled.

  Chapter 19

  That afternoon, we put the truckle-bed back in the attic — I think its castors had got permanently skewed - and I moved my night-things to Florence’s room, and put my gown beneath her pillow. We did it while Ralph was out; and when he came home, and gazed at the place where the bed had used to be propped, and then at us, with our blushes and our shadowy eyes and swollen lips, he blinked about a dozen times, and swallowed, and sat and raised an issue of Justice before his face; but when he rose to go to his room that night, he kissed me very warmly. I looked at Florence.

  ‘Why doesn’t Ralph have a sweetheart?’ I said, when he had left us. She shrugged.

  ‘Girls don’t seem to care for him. Every tom friend of mine is half in love with him, but regular girls - well! He goes for dainty ones; the last one gave him up for the sake of a boxer.’

  ‘Poor Ralph,’ I said. Then: ‘He is remarkably forbearing on the matter of your — leanings. Don’t you think?’

  She came and sat on the arm of my chair. ‘He’s had a long time to get used to them,’ she said.

  ‘Have you always had them, then?’

  ‘Well, I suppose there was always a girl or two, somewhere about the place. Mother never was able to figure it out. Janet don’t care - she says it leaves more chaps for her. But Frank’-this was the older brother, who came visiting from time to time with his family - ‘Frank never liked to see girls calling for me, in the old days: he slapped me over it once, I’ve never forgotten it. He wouldn’t be at all tickled to see you here, now.’

  ‘We can pretend it’s otherwise, if you like,’ I said. ‘We can bring the truckle-bed back, and pretend -’

  She leaned away from me as if I had sworn at her. ‘Pretend? Pretend, and in my own house? If Frank doesn’t like my habits, he can stop visiting. Him, and anyone else with a similar idea. Would you have people think we were ashamed?’

  ‘No, no. It was only that Kitty -’

  ‘Oh, Kitty! Kitty! The more you tell me about that woman, the less I care for her. To think she kept you cramped and guilty for so long, when you might have been off, having your bit of fun as a real gay tom ...’

  ‘I wouldn’t have been a tom at all,’ I said, more hurt by her words than I was willing to show, ‘if it hadn’t been for Kitty Butler.’

  She looked me over: I had my trousers on. ‘Now that,’ she said, ‘I cannot believe. You would have met some woman, sooner or later.’

  ‘When I was married to Freddy, probably, and had a dozen kids. I should certainly never have met you.’

  ‘Well, then I suppose I have something to thank Kitty Butler for.’

  The name, when spoken aloud like that, still grated on my nerves a little and set them tingling; I think she knew it. But now I said lightly, ‘You do. Be sure you remember it. In fact, I have something that will remind you ...’ I went to the pocket of my coat, and drew out the photograph of Kitty and me, that I
had got from Jenny, at the Boy in the Boat; and I carried it to the bookcase and set it there, beneath the other portraits. ‘Your Lilian,’ I said, ‘may have got a thrill from gazing at Eleanor Marx. Sensible girls used to put pictures of me on their bedroom walls, five years ago.’

  ‘Stop boasting,’ she answered. ‘All this talk about the music hall. I’ve never heard you sing a song to me.’

  She had taken my place in the armchair, and now I went and nudged at her knees with my own. ‘Tommy,’ I sang - it was an old song of W. B. Fair’s - ‘Tommy, make room for your uncle.’

  She laughed. ‘Is that a song you used to sing with Kitty?’

  ‘I should say not! Kitty would have been too afraid, in case there was a real torn in the crowd who got the joke and thought we meant it.’

  ‘Sing me one of the ones you sang with Kitty, then.’

  ‘Well...’ I was not sure I liked the idea; but I sang her a few lines of our song about the sovereigns - strolling about the parlour as I did so, and kicking my moleskinned legs. When I finished, she shook her head.

  ‘How proud she should have been of you!’ she said softly. ‘If I’d been her -’ She didn’t finish. She only rose, and came to me, and drew back the shirt where it flapped beneath my throat, and kissed the flesh that showed there, until I trembled.

  She had seemed chaste as a plaster saint to me, once; she had seemed plain. But she was not chaste now - she was marvellously bold and frank and ready; and the boldness made her bonny, made her gleam, like a kind of polish. I could not look at her and not want to touch her. I could not see the shine upon her pink lips, without wanting to step to her and press my mouth to it; I couldn’t look at her hand as it lay limp upon some table-top, or held a pen, or carried a cup, or did any kind of ordinary business, without longing to take it in my own and kiss the knuckles or put my tongue to the palm, or press it to the fork at my trousers. I would stand beside her in a crowded room and feel the hairs lift on my arms - and see her own flesh pimple, and her cheeks grow warm, and know she ached for me, to match my aching; but she would take a dreadful satisfaction, too, in lengthening the visits of her friends — in handing out a second cup of tea, and then a third-and all while I looked on, tortured and damp.

  ‘You made me wait, for two years and a half,’ she said to me once; I had followed her into the kitchen, and put my shaking arms about her as she lifted a kettle to the stove. ‘It won’t hurt you, to wait an hour till the parlour clears ...’ But when she said a similar thing another night, I touched her through the folds of her skirt until her voice grew weak - and then she led me into the pantry, and put a broom across the door, and we caressed amongst the packets of flour and tins of treacle while the kettle whistled and the kitchen grew woolly with steam, and Annie called out from the parlour, What were we doing?

  The fact was, we had both gone kissless for so long that, having once begun to kiss again, we could not stop.

  Our boldness made us marvel.

  ‘I had you down for one of those terrible grudging girls,’ she said to me one night, a week or two after our visit to the Boy. ‘One of those dry-rub-it-on-the-hip-don’t-touch-me sorts . . .’

  ‘Are there such girls?’ I asked her.

  She coloured. ‘Well, I have lain with one or two ...’

  The thought that she had lain with different girls - with so many girls that she could put them into categories, like breeds of fish - was wonderfully astonishing and stirring. I put my hand upon her - we were lying together, naked despite the cold, because we had bathed in a steaming tub and were still warm and prickling from it - and stroked her, from the hollow at her throat to the hollow of her groin; then I stroked her again, and felt her shiver.

  ‘Who would ever have thought that I should touch you so, and talk to you so!’ I asked her - whispering, because Cyril lay beside us, asleep in his crib. ‘I was sure you would prove prim and awkward. I was sure you would be shy. Indeed, I didn’t see how you could fail to be, being so political and good as you are!’

  She laughed. ‘It ain’t the Salvation Army, you know,’ she answered, ‘socialism.’

  ‘Well, maybe ...’

  We said nothing more, then; only kissed and murmured. But the next night she produced a book, and had me read it. It was Towards Democracy, the poem by Edward Carpenter; and as I turned the pages, with Florence warm beside me, I found myself growing damp.

  ‘Did you used to look at this with Lilian?’ I asked her.

  She nodded. ‘She used to like to have me read it to her, as we lay in bed. She couldn’t have known, I suppose, that it was sometimes hard to do it ...

  Perhaps she did know, I thought - and the idea made me damper. I handed the book to her. ‘Read it to me, now,’ I said.

  ‘You have already read it.’

  ‘Read me the bits you used to read to her ...’

  She hesitated, then did so; and as she murmured, I put my hand between her legs and touched her, and her voice grew less steady, the more firmly I stroked.

  ‘There are books written especially for this sort of thing,’ I said to her, thinking back to the many times I had lain doing something similar with Diana - on the very same nights, probably, that Florence had lain squirming next to Lilian. ‘Wouldn’t you rather I bought you a book like that? I can’t believe Mr Carpenter really intended his poem to be enjoyed in such a way.’

  She put her lips against my throat. ‘Oh, I think Mr Carpenter would approve all right.’

  She had let the book fall on to her breast. Now I pushed it aside, and rolled upon her.

  ‘And this,’ I said, moving my hips, ‘is really contributing to the social revolution?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’

  I wriggled lower. ‘And this, too?’

  ‘Oh, certainly!’

  I slid beneath the sheet. ‘And how about this?’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Lord,’ I said a little later. ‘To think I have been part of the socialist conspiracy all these years, and never knew it till now ...’

  We kept Towards Democracy beside the bed permanently, after that; and just as Florence would sometimes say to me, when the house was quiet, ‘Sing me a song, in your moleskins, Uncle ...’, so I would occasionally lean to whisper to her, over supper or as we walked side by side: ‘Shall we be democratic tonight, Flo ... ?’ Of course, there were certain songs - ‘Sweethearts and Wives’ was one of them - I would never have sung for her. And Leaves of Grass, I noticed, stayed downstairs, on the shelf beneath the photographs of Eleanor Marx and Kitty. I didn’t mind it. How could I mind it? We had struck a kind of bargain. We had fixed to kiss for ever. We had never once said, I love you.

  ‘Isn’t it marvellous to be in love, in spring-time?’ Annie asked us one evening in April: she and Miss Raymond were sweethearts now, and spent long hours in our parlour, sighing over one another’s charms. ‘I went visiting a factory today, and it was the grimmest, most broken-down old place you ever saw. But I came out into its yard and there was a piece of pussy-willow growing there — just a piece of common old pussy-willow, but with a bit of yellow sun on it, and it looked so exactly like my dear Emma I thought for a moment I would fall down and kiss it, and weep.’

  Florence snorted. ‘They should never have let women into the civil service, I said it all along. Weeping over pussy willow? I never heard such rubbish in my life; I really wonder, sometimes, how Emma can bear you. If I heard Nancy likening me to a sprig of catkins, I should be sick.’

  ‘Oh, for shame! Nancy, have you never seen Florrie’s face in a chrysanthemum, or a rose?’

  ‘Never,’ I said. ‘Though there was a flounder for sale on a fishmonger’s barrow, in Whitechapel yesterday, and the likeness was quite uncanny. I very nearly brought it home ...’

  Annie took Miss Raymond’s hand in hers, and gazed at us in wonder. ‘I swear,’ she said, ‘you two are the most unsentimental sweethearts I’ve ever known.’

  ‘We are too sensible for sentiment, aren’t we, Nance?’
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br />   ‘Too busy, more like,’ I said, with a yawn.

  Florence grew sheepish. ‘And, well, we shall be even busier before long, I’m afraid. For, you know, I promised Mrs Macey at the Guild that I would help with the organising of the Workers’ Rally -’

  ‘Oh, Florence!’ I cried, ‘you didn’t!’

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Miss Raymond.

  ‘Some wretched scheme,’ I said, ‘dreamed up by all the guilds and unions of East London, to fill Victoria Park with socialists -’

  ‘A demonstration,’ interrupted Florence. ‘A wonderful thing, if it works. It is to be at the end of May. There will be tents, and speeches and stalls, and a pageant; we hope to get visitors and speakers from all over Britain - and some, even, from Germany and France.’

  ‘And now you have said you will help to run it. Which means,’ I said bitterly to Miss Raymond, ‘that she will have taken far more duties upon herself than she should have, and so, as usual, I shall be obliged to help her - to sit up late at night writing letters to the president of the Hoxton Fur and Feather Dressers’ Union, or the Wapping Small Metal Workers’ Society. And all at a time — ’ All at a time, I wanted to say, when I longed only to tip her satchel of papers into the fire, and lie kissing her before its blaze.

  I thought Florence looked at me a little sadly then. She said, ‘You needn’t help, if you don’t care to.’

  ‘Needn’t help?’ I cried. ‘In this house?’

  And it was just as I had supposed. Florence had committed herself to a thousand duties, and I, to stop her working herself into a fit, took on half of them - wrote letters and figured sums at her direction, and delivered bags of posters and pamphlets to grubby union offices, and visited carpenters’ shops, and sat sewing tablecloths and flags, and costumes for the workers’ pageant. Our house in Quilter Street grew quite dusty again; our suppers became ever more hasty and under-prepared - I had no time for stewing oysters now, but served them raw, and we swallowed them as we worked. Half of the flags I sewed, half of the letters Florence wrote, were stained at the edges with liquor, and spotted with grease.