Tipping the Velvet (18 page)

147

148

very pleasantly, I thought - to Kitty. But Kitty, who had had marvellous that there had ever been a time I hadn't known her head bent all this time, working at the fastenings of her it.

skirt, now looked up and gave a prim little smile.

Now, when Kitty said it, she flinched. Toms. They make a -

'How nice of you to ask,' she said; 'but we are spoken for a career- out of kissing girls. We're not like that!'

tonight. Our agent, Mr Bliss, is due to take us out to

'Aren't we?' I said. 'Oh, if someone would only pay me for supper.'

it, I'd be very glad to make a career out of kissing you. Do I stared: we had no arrangement that I knew of. But the you think there is someone who would pay me for that? I'd singer only gave a shrug. 'Too bad,' she said. Then she give up the stage in a flash.' I tried to pull her to me again, looked at me. 'You don't want to leave your pal to her but she knocked my hand away.

agent, and come on alone, with me and Ella?'

'You would have to give up the stage,' she said seriously,

'Miss King will be busy with Mr Bliss,' said Kitty, before I

'and so would I, if there was talk about us, if people thought could answer; and she said it so tightly the singer gave a we were — like that.'

sniff, then turned and went over to where her dresser waited But what were we like? I still didn't know. When I pressed with their baskets. I watched them leave - they didn't look her, however, she grew fretful.

back at me. When we returned to the theatre the next night,

'We're not like anything! We're just - ourselves.'

Kitty chose a hook that was far from theirs; and on the

'But if we're just ourselves, why do we have to hide it?'

night after that, they had moved on to another hall. . .

'Because no one would know the difference between us and At home, in bed, I said I thought it was a shame.

- women like that!'

'Why did you tell them Walter was coming?' I asked Kitty.

I laughed. 'Is there a difference?' I asked again.

She said: 'I didn't care for them.'

She continued grave and cross. 'I have told you,' she said.

'Why not? They were nice. They were funny. They were -

'You don't understand. You don't know what's wrong or like us.'

right, or good . . .'

I had my arm about her, and felt her stiffen at my words.

'I know that this ain't wrong, what we do. Only that the She pulled away from me and raised her head. We had left world says it is.'

a candle burning and her face, I saw, was white and She shook her head. 'It's the same thing,' she said. Then she shocked.

fell back upon her pillow and closed her eyes, and turned

'Nan!' she said. They're not like us! They're not like us, at her face away.

all. They're toms.'

I was sorry that I had teased her - but also, I am ashamed to Toms?' I remember this moment very distinctly, for I had say, rather warmed by her distress. I touched her cheek, and never heard the word before. Later I would think it moved a little closer to her; then I took my hand from her face and passed it, hesitantly, down her night-dress, over 149

150

her breasts and belly. She moved away, and I slowed - but reassure themselves that I was quite content - and at that I did not stop - my searching fingers; and soon, as if despite had written at once to say, they must not think of coming, I itself, I felt her body slacken in assent. I moved lower, and was too busy, my rooms were too small... In short - so seized the hem of her shift and drew it high - then did the

'careful' had Kitty made me! -I was as unwelcoming as it same with my own, and gently slid my hips over hers. We was possible to be, this side of friendliness. Since then, our fitted together like the two halves of an oyster-shell - you letters had grown rarer than ever; and the business of my couldn't have passed so much as the blade of a knife fame upon the stage had been quite lost -I never mentioned between us. I said, 'Oh Kitty, how can this be wrong?' But it; they did not ask.

she did not answer, only moved her lips to mine at last, and Now, it was not of the act that I wrote to Alice. I wrote to when I felt the tug of her kiss I let my weight fall heavily tell her what had happened between Kitty and me - to tell upon her, and gave a sigh.

her that we loved each other, not as friends, but as I might have been Narcissus, embracing the pond in which I sweethearts; that we had made our lives together; and that was about to drown.

she must be glad for me, for I was happier than I had ever It was true, I suppose, what she said - that I didn't thought it possible to be.

understand her. Always, always, it came down to the same It was a long letter, but I wrote it easily; and when I had thing: that however much we had to hide our love, however finished it I felt light as air. I didn't read it through, but put guardedly we had to take our pleasure, I could not long be it in an envelope at once, and ran with it to the post-box. I miserable about a thing that was - as she herself admitted -

was back before Kitty had even stirred; and when she woke so very sweet. Nor, in my gladness, could I quite believe I didn't mention it.

that anyone who cared for me would be anything but happy I didn't tell her about Alice's reply, either. This came a few for me, if only they knew.

days later - came while Kitty and I were at breakfast, and I was, as I have said before, very young. The next day, had to stay unopened in my pocket until I could make time while Kitty still slept, I rose and made my noiseless way to be alone and read it. It was, I saw at once, very neat; and into our parlour. There I did something that I had longed for knowing Alice to be no great pen woman, I guessed that months to do, but never had the courage. I took a piece of this must be the last of several versions.

paper and a pen, and wrote a letter to my sister, Alice.

It was also, unlike my letter, very short - so short that, to I hadn't written home in weeks. I had told them, once, that I my great dismay and all unwillingly, I find that I remember had joined the act; but I had rather played the matter down -

it, even now, in its entirety.

I feared they wouldn't think the life a decent one for their

'Dear Nancy,' it began.

own daughter. They had sent me back a brief, half-hearted,

'Your letter was both a shock to me and no surprise at all, puzzled note; they had talked of travelling to London, to for I have been expecting to receive something very like it 151

152

from you, since the day you left us. When I first read it I As for Alice: after that one brief, bitter epistle, she never did not now whether to weep or throw the paper away from wrote to me at all.

me in temper. In the end I burned the thing, and only hope you will have sense enough to burn this one, likewise.

Chapter 6

'You ask me to be happy on your behalf. Nance, you must The months, that year, seemed to slide by very swiftly; for, know that I have always only ever had your happiness at of course, we were busier now than ever. We continued to my heart, more nearly even than my own. But you must work our hit - the song about the sovereigns and the winks -

know too that I can never be happy while your friendship all through the spring and summer, but there were always with that woman is so wrong and queer. I can never like new songs, new routines to labour over and perfect, new what you have told me. You think you are happy, but you orchestras to grow familiar with, new theatres, and new are only misled -and that woman, your friend "so-called", is costumes. Of the latter, we acquired so many that we found to blame for it.

we couldn't manage them without help, and took on a girl to

'I only wish that you had never met her nor ever gone away, do my old job - to mend the suits and to help us dress in but only stayed in Whitstable where you belong, and with them, at the side of the stage.

those who love you properly.

We grew rich - or rich, at least, as far as I was concerned.

'Let me just say at the last what you must I hope know.

At the Star, in Bermondsey, Kitty had started on a couple of Father, Mother and Davy know nothing of this, and won't pounds a week, and I had thought my own, small dresser's from my lips, since I would rather die of shame than tell share of that quite grand enough. Now I earned ten, twenty, them. You must never speak of it to them, unless you want thirty times that figure, on my own account, and sometimes to finish the job you started when you first left us, and more. The sums seemed unimaginable to me: I preferred, break their hearts completely and for ever.

perhaps foolishly, not to think of them at all, but let Walter

'Don't burden me, I ask you, with no more shameful secrets.

worry over our wages. He, in response to our great But look to yourself and the path that you are treading, and successes, had found new agents for his other artistes and ask yourself if it is really Right.

was now our manager full-time. He negotiated our

'Alice.'

contracts, our publicity, and held our money for us; he paid She must have kept her word about not telling our parents, Kitty and she, as before, gave me whatever little cash I for their letters to me continued as before - still cautious, needed, when I asked her for it.

still rather fretful, but still kind. But now I got even less It was rather strange with Walter, now that Kitty and I had pleasure from them; only kept thinking, What would they grown so close. We saw him quite as often as we had write, if they knew? How kind would they be then? My before; we still went driving with him; we still spent long replies, in consequence, grew shorter and rarer than ever.

hours with him at Mrs Dendy's piano (though the piano 153

154

itself had been changed, to a more expensive one). He was The Deacon's crowd were noticeably shabbier than the folk as kind and as foolish as ever - but a little dimmed, at Islington Green, but no less kind; if anything, indeed, somehow, a little shadowy, now that the blaze of Kitty's they were inclined to be kinder, jollier, more willing to be charms was more decidedly turned my way. Perhaps it only moved and thrilled and entertained. Our first week there seemed so to me; but I was sorry for him, and could not went well -they packed the hall for us. It was on the help but wonder what he thought. I was sure he hadn't Saturday night of the second week that the trouble came -

guessed that Kitty and I were sweethearts — for, of course, on a Saturday night at the end of September, a night of fog -

we were rather cool ourselves, in public, now.

one of those grey-brown evenings, when all the streets and As rich as we became that year, we were never quite rich buildings of the city seem to waver a little at the edges.

enough to be so very choosy about the kind of halls we The roads are always choked on such a night, and on this sang in. For the whole of September we played at the particular evening the traffic between Windmill Street and Trocadero - a very smart theatre, and one of the ones that Islington was horribly slow, for there had been an accident Walter had pointed out to us on our first, giddy tour of the along the way. A van had overturned; a dozen boys had West End, more than a year before. When we left the Troc, rushed to sit upon the horse's head, to stop the beast from however, it was to drive to Deacon's Music Hall, in rising; and our own carriage could not pass for half an hour Islington. This was an altogether different place: small and or more. We arrived at Deacon's terribly late, to find the old, with an audience drawn from the streets and courts of place as wild as the street we had just left. The crowd had Clerkenwell - and inclined, in consequence, to be rather had to wait for us, and were impatient. Some poor artiste rough.

had been sent on to sing a comic song and keep them We didn't mind a rowdy crowd, as a rule, for it could be occupied, but they had started to heckle him quite unnerving to work the prim West End theatres, where the mercilessly; at last - the fellow had begun a clog dance -

ladies were too gentle or well-dressed to bang their hands two roughs had jumped upon the stage and pulled the boots together or to stamp, and where only the drunken swells of from him, and tossed them up to the gallery. When we the promenade really whistled and shouted as a proper arrived, breathless and flustered but ready to sing, the air music-hall audience should. We had never worked was thick with shouts and bellows and screams of laughter.

Deacon's before, but we had once done a week at Sam The two roughs had hold of the comic singer by the ankles, Collins', up the road. There the crowd had been humble and and were holding him so that his head dangled over the gay - working-people, women with babies in their arms -

flames of the footlights, in an attempt to set fire to his hair.

the kind of audience I liked best of all, because it was the The conductor and a couple of stage-hands had hold of the kind of which, until very recently, I had myself been a roughs, and were trying to pull them into the wings.

member.

155

156

Another stage-hand stood nearby, dazed, and with a Kitty straightened her collar. As she did so we heard the bleeding nose.

great roar, and the thunder of stamping feet, that told us that We had Walter with us, for we had arranged to eat with him our number had gone up. In a second, rising doggedly over later, after the show. Now he looked at the scene before us, the din, there came the first few bars of our opening song.

aghast.

'If they hurl something,' she said quickly, 'we'll duck.' Then

'My God,5 he said. 'You cannot go on with them in such a she took a step, and nodded for me to follow.

mood as this.'

And after all the fuss, indeed, they received us very As he spoke, the manager came running. 'Not go on?' he graciously.

said, appalled. 'They must go on, or there will be a riot. It is

'Wot cheer, Kitty?' someone shouted, as we danced our way entirely because they did not go on when they were meant into the beam of the limes. 'Did you lose your way in the to that the damn trouble - excuse me, ladies - started.' He fog, then, or what?'