Tipping the Velvet (20 page)

quiet. Our neighbours, I think, were city men; their wives But Kitty said it looked queer, us still sharing a room, and a stayed at home all day, and their children had nurses, who bed, when we had the money to live somewhere ten times wheeled them, puffing, up and down the garden steps in the size; and she had a house agent look about for rooms for great iron perambulators. We had the top two floors of a us, somewhere more seemly.

house close to the station; our landlady and her husband It was to Stamford Hill that we moved, in the end -

lived beneath us, but they were not connected to the Stamford Hill, far across the river, in a bit of London I business, and we rarely saw them. Our rooms were smart, hardly knew (and thought, privately, a little dull). We had a we were the first to rent them: the furniture was all of farewell supper at Ginevra Road, with everyone saying how polished wood, and velvet and brocade, and was far finer sorry they were to see us go - Mrs Dendy herself even wept than anything either of us was used to -so that we sat upon a little, and said her house would never be the same. For the chairs and sofas rather gingerly. There were three 165

166

bedrooms, and one of them was mine - which meant only, was that winter, playing Dandini to Kitty's Prince, at the of course, that I kept my dresses in its closet, my brushes Britannia. Any artiste will tell you that it is their ambition and combs upon its wash-hand stand, and my nightgown to work in pantomime; it is not until you play in one beneath the pillow of its bed-this was for the sake of the girl yourself, however, at a theatre as grand and as famous as who came to clean for us, three days a week. My nights the Brit, that you understand why. For the three coldest were really spent in Kitty's chamber, the great front months of the year you are settled. There is no dashing bedroom with its great high bed that the house-builders had about from hall to hall, no worrying about contracts. You meant for a husband and wife. It made me smile to lie in it.

mix with actors and ballet-girls, and make friends with

'We are married,' I would say to Kitty. 'Why, we don't have them. Your dressing-room is large and private and warm -

to lie here at all, if we don't wish to! I could carry you down for you are really expected to change and make-up in it, not to the parlour carpet, and kiss you there!' But I never did.

arrive, breathless, at the stage door, having buttoned on For though we were at liberty at last to be as saucy and as your costume in your brougham. You are handed lines to clamorous as we chose, we found we couldn't break speak, and you speak them, steps to take, and you take ourselves of our old habits: we still whispered our love, and them, costumes to wear - the most wonderful costumes you kissed beneath the counterpane, noiselessly, like mice.

ever saw in your life, costumes of fur and satin and velvet -

That, of course, was when we had time for kisses. We were and you wear them, then pass them back to the wardrobe-working six nights a week now, and there was no Sims and mistress and let her worry about mending them and keeping Percy and Tootsie to keep us lively after shows; often we them neat. The crowds you have to play before are the would arrive back at Stamford Hill so weary we would kindest, gayest crowds there ever were: you will hurl all simply fall into the bed and snore. By November we were manner of nonsense at them and they will shriek with both so tired Walter said we must take a holiday. There was laughter, merely because it is Christmas and they are talk of a trip to the Continent - even, to America, where determined to be jolly. It is like a holiday from real life -

there were also halls at which we might build up a quiet except that you are paid twenty pounds a week, if you are reputation, and where Walter had friends who would lodge as lucky as we were then, to enjoy it.

us. But then, before the trip could be fixed, there came an The Cinderella in which we played that year was a invitation to play in pantomime, at the Britannia Theatre, particularly splendid one. The title role was taken by Dolly Hoxton. The pantomime was Cinderella, and Kitty and I Arnold -a lovely girl with a voice like a linnet's, and a waist were wanted for the First and Second Boy roles; and the so slim her trademark was to wear a necklace as a belt. It offer was too flattering to resist.

was rather odd to see Kitty spooning with her upon the My music-hall career, though brief enough, had been a stage, kissing her while the clock showed a minute-to-happy one; but I do not think that I was ever so content as I midnight - though it was odder still, perhaps, to think that 167

168

no one in the audience called out Toms! now, or even Brit, mingled with that familiar music-hall reek of dust and appeared to think it: they only cheered when the Prince and grease-paint, tobacco and beer. Even now, if you were to Cinderella were united at the end, and drawn on stage, by ask me, quickly, 'What is heaven like?' I should have to say half-a-dozen pygmy horses, in their wedding-car.

that it must smell of over-heated horsehair, and be filled Aside from Dolly Arnold, there were other stars - artistes with angels in spangles and gauze, and decorated with whose turns I had once paid to watch and clap at, at the fountains of scarlet and blue . . .

Canterbury Palace of Varieties. It made me feel very green, But not, perhaps, have Kitty in it.

to have to work with them and talk to them as equals. I had I did not think this then, of course. I was only only ever sung and danced, before, at Kitty's side; now, of extraordinarily glad to have a place in such a business, and course, I had to act — to walk on stage with a hunting with my true love at my side; and everything that Kitty said retinue and say, 'My lords, where is Prince Casimir, our or did only seemed to show that she felt just the same. I master?'; to slap my thigh and make terrible puns; to kneel believe we spent more hours at the Brit that winter than at before Cinderella with a velvet cushion, and place the our new home in Stamford Hill — more time in velvet suits slipper of glass upon her tiny foot — then lead the crowd in and powdered wigs than out of them. We made friends with three rousing cheers when it was found to fit it. If you have all the theatre people - with the ballerinas and the ever seen a panto at the Brit, you will know how wardrobe-girls, the gasmen, the property-men, the marvellous they are. For the transformation scene of carpenters and the call-boys. Flora, our dresser, even found Cinderella they dressed one hundred girls in suits of gauze herself a beau amongst them. He was a black fellow, who and bullion fringe, then harnessed them to moving wires had run away from a sailing family in Wapping to join a and had them swoop above the stalls. On the stage they set minstrel troupe; not having the voice for it, however, he had up fountains, which they lit, each with a different coloured become a stage-hand instead. His name, I believe, was lime. Dolly, as Cinderella in her wedding-gown, wore a Albert - but he paid about as much heed to that as anybody frock of gold, with glitter on the bodice. Kitty had golden in the business, and was known, universally, as 'Billy-Boy'.

pantaloons, a shining waistcoat, and a three-cornered hat, He loved the theatre more than any of us, and spent all his and I wore breeches and a vest of velvet, and square-toed hours there, playing cards with the door-men and the shoes with silver buckles. Standing at Kitty's side while the carpenters, hanging about in the flies, twitching ropes, fountains played, the fairies swooped, and the pigmy horses turning handles. He was good-looking, and Flora was very pranced and trotted, I was never sure I had not died on my keen on him; he spent a deal of time, in consequence, at our way to the theatre and woken up in paradise. There is a dressing-room door, waiting to take her home after the particular scent that ponies give off, when they are set too show -and so we came to know him very well. I liked him long beneath a too-hot lamp. I smelled it every night at the because he came from the river, and had left his family for 169

170

the theatre's sake, as I had. Sometimes, in the afternoons or We had opened at the Brit on Boxing Day, and rehearsed late at night, he and I would leave Kitty and Flora fussing all through the weeks before it. Christmas, therefore, had over the costumes and take a stroll through the dim and been rather swallowed up; and when Mother had written -as silent theatre, just for the pleasure of it. He had, somehow, she had the year before - to ask me home for it, I had had to acquired copies of all the keys to all the Britannia's dusty, send another apologetic note, to say I was again too busy. It secret places - the cellars and the attics and the ancient was now almost a year and a half since I had left them; a property-rooms - and he would show me hampers full of year and a half since I had seen the sea and had a decent costumes from the shows of the 'fifties, papier-mache fresh oyster-supper. It was a long time — and no matter crowns and sceptres, armour made of foil. Once or twice he how gloomy and spiteful Alice's letter had made me, I led me up the great high ladders at the side of the stage, into could not help but miss them all and wonder how they the flies: here we would stand with our chins upon the rails, fared. One day in January I came across my old tin trunk sharing a cigarette, gazing at the ash as it fluttered through with its yellow enamel inscription. I lifted the lid - and the web of ropes and platforms to the boards, sixty feet found Davy's map of Kent pasted on the underside, with below us.

Whitstable marked with a faded arrow, 'To show me where It was quite like being at Mrs Dendy's again, with all our home was, in case I forgot.' He had meant it as a joke; they friends around us - except, of course, that Walter wasn't one had none of them thought I really would forget them. Now, of them. He came only occasionally to the Brit, and hardly however, it must seem to them that I had.

at all to Stamford Hill; when he did, I couldn't bear to see I closed the trunk with a bang; I had felt my eyes begin to him so ill at ease, and so found business of my own to keep smart. When Kitty came running to see what the noise was, me occupied elsewhere, and left Kitty to deal with him.

I was weeping.

She, I noticed, was as awkward and self-conscious as he

'Hey,' she said, and put her arm about me. 'What's this? Not when he came calling, I and seemed to prefer his letters to tears?'

his person - for he sent his news to her by post, these days,

'I thought of home,' I said, between my sobs, 'and wanted to so drastically had our old friendship dwindled. But she said go there, suddenly.'

she did not mind, and I understood she didn't wish to talk of She touched my cheek, then put her fingers to her lips and something that was painful to her. I knew it must be very licked them. 'Pure brine,' she said. 'That's why you miss it.

hard for her, to think that Walter had guessed her secret, I'm amazed you have managed to survive this long away and hated it.

from the sea, without shrivelling up like a bit of old seaweed. I should never have taken you away from
Chapter 7

Whitstable Bay. Miss Mermaid ..."

171

172

I smiled, at last, to hear her use a name I thought she had Urged on by Kitty - for she had grown suddenly gallant forgotten; then I sighed. 'I would like to go back,' I said, 'for about letting me go - I took my chance. I wrote to Mother a day or two ..."

and told her that, if I was still welcome, I should be home

'A day or two! I shall die without you!' She laughed, and the following day - that was Sunday - and would stay till looked away; and I guessed that she was only partly joking, Wednesday night. Then I went shopping, to buy presents for in all the months that we had spent together, we had not for the family: there was something thrilling after all, I been separated for so much as a night. I felt that old queer found, about the idea of returning to Whitstable after so tightness in my breast, and quickly kissed her. She raised long, with a parcel of gifts from London . . .

her hands to hold my face; but again she turned her gaze Even so, it was hard to part from Kitty.

away.

'You will be all right?' I said to her. 'You won't be lonely

'You must go,' she said, 'if it makes you sad like this. I shall here?'

manage.'

'I shall be horribly lonely. I expect you will come back and

'I shall hate it too,' I said. My tears had dried; it was I, now, find me dead from loneliness!'

who was doing the consoling. 'And anyway, I shan't be able

'Why don't you come with me? We might catch a later train to go until we close at Hoxton - and that is weeks away.'

-'

She nodded, and looked thoughtful.

'No, Nan; you should see your family without me.'

It was weeks away, for Cinderella was not due to finish

'I shall think about you every minute.'

until Easter; in the middle of February, however, I found

'And I shall think of you

myself suddenly and unexpectedly at liberty. There was a

'Oh, Kitty ..."

fire at the Britannia. There were always fires in theatres in She had been tapping at her tooth with the pearl of her those days - halls were regularly being burned to the necklace; when I put my mouth upon hers I felt it, cold and ground, then built up again, better than before, and no one smooth and hard, between our lips. She let me kiss her, then thought anything of it; and the fire at the Brit had been moved her head so that our cheeks touched; then she put small enough, and no one got injured. But the theatre had her arms about my waist and held me to her rather fiercely -

had to be evacuated, and there had been problems with the quite as if she loved me more than anything.

exits; afterwards an inspector came, looked at the building, Whitstable, when I drew into it later that morning, seemed and said a new escape door must be added. He closed the very changed - very small and grey, and with a sea that was theatre while the work was done: tickets were returned, wider, and a sky that was lower and less blue, than I apologies pasted up; and for a whole half-week we found remembered. I leaned from the carriage window to gaze at ourselves on holiday.