Tipping the Velvet (23 page)

nakedness from me. From me!

I reached Kitty's door, and put my ear to it. I had expected It was Walter who spoke.

silence, but there was a sound from beyond it — a kind of

'Nan,' he said hesitantly -I had never heard his voice so dry lapping sound, as of a kitten at a saucer of milk. I thought, and bare - 'Nan, you have surprised us. We didn't look for Damn! She must be awake already and taking her tea; then you until tonight.' He took up a towel and rubbed at his face I caught the creak of the bedstead, and was sure of it.

with it. Then he stepped very quickly to the chair, seized his Disappointed, but gay with the expectation of seeing her, I jacket and pulled it on. His hands, I saw, were shaking.

caught hold of the door-handle and entered the room.

I had never seen him shake before.

She was indeed awake. She sat in bed, propped up against a I said, 'I caught an earlier train . . .' My mouth, like his, had pillow, with the blankets raised as far as her armpits and her dried; my voice, in consequence, sounded slow and thick.

naked arms upon the counterpane. There was a lamp lit, and

'Indeed, I thought it was still very early. How long, Walter, turned high; the room was not at all dark. At a little wash-have you been here?'

hand stand at the foot of the bed there was another figure.

He shook his head, as if the question pained him, and took a Walter. He was jacketless, and collarless; his shirt was step towards me. Then he said rather urgently: 'Nan, forgive 191

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me. This is not for your eyes. Will you come downstairs There was a silence, broken only by the sound of my with me and let us talk . . . ?'

ragged breathing, and Kitty's gentle weeping: just so had I His tone was strange; and hearing it, I knew for certain.

seen my sister weep, three days before. Nothing that Kitty

'No!' I folded my hands over my belly: there was a hot, sour ever did was good! she had said. I placed my cheek upon churning in there, as if they had fed me poison. At my cry the counterpane where it covered Kitty's thighs, and closed Kitty shivered and grew white. I turned to her. 'It isn't true!'

my eyes.

I said. 'Oh tell me, tell me - say it ain't true!' She wouldn't

'You made me think he was your friend,' I said. 'And then look at me, only placed her hands before her eyes and you made me think he didn't care for you, because of us.'

began to weep.

'I didn't know what else to do. He was only my friend; and Walter came closer and put his hand upon my arm.

then, and then -'

'Get away!' I cried, and stepped free of him towards the To think of you and him - for all that time -'

bed. 'Kitty? Kitty?' I knelt beside her, took her hand from

'It wasn't what you think, before last night.'

her face, and held it to my own lips. I kissed her fingers, her

'I don't believe you.'

nails, her palm, her wrist; her knuckles, that were damp

'Oh Nan, it's true, I swear! Before last night - how could from her own weeping, were soon drenched with tears and there have been anything? - before last night, there was slobber. Walter looked on, appalled, still trembling.

only talk and-kisses.'

At last, she met my gaze. 'It's true,' she whispered.

Before last night. . . Before last night I had been glad, I gave a start, and a moan - then heard her shriek, felt beloved, content, secure; before last night I had known Walter's fingers grip my shoulders, and realised that I had myself so full of love and desire I thought I should die of it!

bitten her, like a dog. She pulled her hand away and gazed At Kitty's words I saw that the pain of my love was not a at me in horror. Again I shook Walter off, then turned to tenth, not a hundredth, not a thousandth part of the pain I scream at him. 'Get away, get out! Get out, and leave us!'

should suffer, at her hands, now.

He hesitated; I kicked at his ankle with my foot until he I opened my eyes. Kitty herself looked ill and frightened. I stepped away.

said, 'And the - kisses: when did they start?' But even as I

'You are not yourself, Nan -'

asked it, I guessed the answer: That night, at Deacon's ..."

'Get out!'

She hesitated - then nodded; and I saw it all again, and

'I am afraid to leave you -'

understood it all: the awkwardness, the silences, the letters.

'Get out!'

I had pitied Walter - pitied him! When all the time it had He flinched. 'I shall go beyond the door- no further.' Then been I who was the fool; when all the time they had been he looked at Kitty, and when she nodded he left, closing the meeting, whispering together, caressing . . .

door behind him very gently.

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The thought was a torment to me. Walter was our friend -

'We should never be careful enough! You are too much -

mine, as well as hers. I knew he loved her, but — he Nan, you are too much like a boy ..."

seemed so old, so uncle-ish, still. Could she ever, really, Too much - like a boy? You've never said it before! Too have brought herself to want to lie with him? It was as if I much like a boy - yet, you'd rather go with Walter! Do you had caught her in bed with my own father!

-love him?’

I began, once more, to weep. 'How could you?' I said She looked away. 'He's very - kind,' she said.

through my tears: I sounded like a stage husband in some

'Very kind.' I heard my voice grow hard and bitter at last. I penny gaff. 'How could you?" Beneath the blankets I felt sat up, and leaned away from her. 'And so you had him her squirm.

come, while I was gone; and he was kind to you, in our bed

'I didn't like to do it!' she said miserably. 'At times I could

..." I got to my feet, suddenly conscious of the soiled sheets hardly bear it -'

and mattress; of her bare flesh, that he had put his hands

'I thought you loved me! You said that you loved me!'

upon, his mouth . . . 'Oh, God! How long would you have

'I do love you! I do, I do!'

carried on? Would you let me kiss you, after him?’

'You said there was nothing you wanted, but me! You said She reached for me, to seize my hand. 'We planned, I we would be together, for ever!'

swear, to tell you tonight. Tonight was when you were to

'I never said -'

know it all. . .'

'You let me think it! You made me think it! You said, so There was something queer about the way she said it. I had many times, how glad you were. Why couldn't we have been pacing at her side; now I grew still. 'What do you gone on, as we were . . . ?'

mean?' I said. 'What do you mean, by all?’

'You know why! It is all right, that sort of thing, when you She took her hand away. 'We are - oh, Nan, don't hate me are girls. But as we got older . .. We're not a couple of for it! We are to be - married.'

scullery-maids, to do as we please and have no one notice

'Married?' If I had had time to think about it I might have it. We are known; we are looked at -'

expected it; but I had had no time at all, and the word made

'I don't want to be known, then, if it means losing you! I me giddier and sicker than ever. 'Married? But what - but don't want to be looked at, if not by you, Kitty ..."

what about me? Where shall I live? What shall I do? What She pressed my hand. 'But I do,' she said. 'I do. And so long about, what about -' I had thought of something new. 'What as I am looked at, I cannot bear also to be - laughed at; or about the act? How shall we work . . . ?'

hated; or scorned, as a -'

She looked away. 'Walter has a plan. For a new act. He

'As a tom!'

wants to return to the halls ..."

'Yes!'

To the halls? After this? With you and me -?'

'But, we could be careful -'

'No. With me. Just me.'

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Just her. I felt myself begin to shake. I said, 'You have dangling below the hem of his jacket, his collarless shirt killed me, Kitty.' My voice sounded strange even to my still flapping at his throat. He ran to the other side of the own ears; I believe it frightened her, for she glanced a little bed, and took Kitty in his arms.

wildly to the door, and began to speak, very fast, but in a

'If you have hurt her -' he said. I laughed outright at that.

kind of shrill whisper.

'Hurt her? Hurt her? I should like to kill her! Had I only a

'You mustn't say such things,' she said. 'It has been a shock pistol on me now I would shoot her through the heart - and for you. But you will see, in time - we shall be friends myself as well! And leave you to marry a corpse!'

again, the three of us!' She reached for me; her voice grew

'You have gone mad,' he said. This has driven you quite shriller yet quieter still. 'Can you not see, how this is for the crazed.'

best? With Walter as my husband, who would think, who

'And do you wonder at it? Do you know - has she told you -

would say -' I pulled away; she gripped me tighter - then what we are - what we were - to one another?'

cried at last, in a kind of panic: 'Oh, you don't think, do you,

'Nan!' said Kitty quickly. I kept my eyes fixed upon Walter.

that I'll let him take me from you?'

'I know,' he said slowly, 'that you were - sweethearts, of a At that I pushed her, and she fell back against her pillow.

kind.'

The counterpane was still before her, but it had slipped a

'Of a kind. The kind that - what? Hold hands? Did you little. I caught sight of the swell of her breast, the pink of think, then, that you were the first to have her, in this bed?

her nipple. An inch below the downy hollow of her throat -

Didn't she tell you that I fuck her?'

jerking with each breath and pounding heart-beat - hung the He flinched - and so did I, for the word sounded terrible: I pearl that I had bought her, on its silver chain. I had never said it before, and had not known I was about to remembered kissing it, three days before; perhaps, last use it now. His gaze, however, remained steady: I saw, with night or this morning, Walter had felt it chill and hard increasing misery, that he knew it all, and did not care; that against his own tongue.

perhaps - who knows? - he even liked it. He was too much I stepped towards her, seized the necklace, and - again, just the gentleman to make me a foul-mouthed reply, but his as if I were a character in a novel or a play - I tugged at it.

expression - a curious mixture of contempt, complacency, At once the chain gave a satisfying snap! and dangled and pity -was a speaking one. It said, That was not fucking, broken from my hand. I gazed at it for a second, then as the world knows it! It said, You fucked her so well, that dashed it from me and heard it scutter across the she has left you! It said, You may have fucked her first, but floorboards.

I shall fuck her now and ever after!

Kitty shouted -I believe she shouted Walter's name. At any He was my rival; and had defeated me, at last.

rate, the door now opened and he appeared, white-faced I took a step away from the bed, and then another. Kitty above his ginger whiskers, and with his braces still swallowed, her head still upon Walter's great breast. Her 197

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eyes were large and lustrous with unshed tears, her lip red I had reached a little bridge over a canal. There were barges where she had bitten it; her cheeks were pale, and the on the water, but they were some way off yet, and the water freckles very dark upon them - there were freckles, too, below me was perfectly smooth and thick. I thought of that upon the flesh of her shoulder and chest, where it showed night, when Kitty and I had stood above the Thames, and above the blankets. She was about as beautiful as I had ever she had let me kiss her ... I almost cried out at the memory.

seen her.

I placed my hands upon the iron rail: I believe that, for a Good-bye, I thought - then I turned and fled.

second, I really considered heaving myself over it, and I ran down the stairs; my skirts snagged about my feet and I making my escape that way.

almost stumbled. I ran past the open parlour-door; past the But I was as cowardly, in my own fashion, as Kitty herself.

hat-stand, where my coat hung next to Walter's; past the I could not bear the thought of that brown water sucking at suitcase I had brought from Whitstable. I didn't pause to my skirts, washing over my head, filling up my mouth. I pick anything up, not even so much as a glove or a bonnet. I turned away and put my hands before my eyes, and forced could touch nothing in that place now - it had become like a my brain to stop its dreadful whirling. I could not, I knew, plague-house to me. I ran to the door and pulled it open, keep running all day. I should have to find a place to hide then left it wide behind me as I hurried down the steps and myself. I had nothing on me but my dress. I groaned aloud, into the street. It was very cold, but the air was still and dry.

and gazed about me again - but this time rather desperately.

I didn't look behind me.

Then I held my breath. I recognised this bridge: we had I continued running until my side began to ache; then I half driven over it every night since Christmas, on our way to walked, half trotted, until the pain subsided; then I ran Cinderella. The Britannia Theatre was nearby; and there again. I had reached Stoke Newington and was headed was money, I knew, in our dressing-room.

south on the long straight road that led to Dalston, I set off, wiping my face with my sleeve, smoothing my Shoreditch, and the City. Beyond that, I could not think: I dress and my hair. The door-man at the theatre eyed me had wit enough only to keep Stamford Hill - and her, and rather curiously when he let me in, but was pleasant him - continually behind me; and to run. I was half-blind enough. I knew him well, and had often stopped to chat with weeping; my eyeballs felt swollen and hot in their with him; today, however, I only nodded to him as I took sockets, my face was soaked with slobber, and growing icy.

my key, and hurried by without a smile. I didn't care what People must have stared as I passed by them; I believe one he thought; I knew I should not be seeing him again.