Tipping the Velvet (25 page)

have said, for bread and tea and milk, she sometimes came The weeks, for all my carelessness to their passing, passed with more substantial foods, to try and tempt me into eating by anyway. There is little to say about them, except that them. 'You'll perish, miss,' she would say, 'if you don't get they were dreadful. The tenant in the room above my own your wittles'; and she'd hand me baked potatoes, and pies, moved out, and was replaced by a poor couple with a baby: and eels in jelly, which she bought hot from the stalls and the baby was colicky, and cried in the night. Mrs Best's son pie-shops on the Farringdon Road, and had bound with found a sweetheart, and brought her to the house: she was layers of newsprint into tight little parcels, steaming and given tea and sandwiches in the downstairs parlour; she damp. I took them - I might have taken arsenic, if she had sang songs, while someone played on the piano. Mary offered me a packet of that - and it became my habit, as I broke a window with a broom, and shrieked - then shrieked ate my potato or my pie, to flatten the wrappings across my again when Mrs Best rolled up her sleeve and slapped her.

lap and study the columns of print - the tales of thefts and Such were the sounds I caught, in my grim chamber. They murders and prizefights, ten days old. I would do this in the might have solaced me, except that I was beyond solace.

same dull spirit in which I gazed from my window at the They only kept me mindful of the things - all the ordinary streets of East London; but one evening, as I smoothed a things! the smack of a kiss, the lilt of a voice lifted in piece of newspaper over my knee and brushed the crumbs pleasure or anger - that I had left behind me. When I gazed of pastry from its creases, I saw a name I knew.

at the world from my dusty window, I might as well have The page had been torn from one of the cheap theatrical been gazing at a colony of ants, or a swarming bee-hive: I papers, and bore a feature entitled Music-Hall Romances.

could recognise nothing in it that had once been mine. It The words appeared in a kind of banner, held aloft by was only by the lightening and the warming of the days, cherubs; but beneath them there were three or four smaller and the thickening of the reek of blood from Smithfield, headlines -they said things like Ben and Milly Announce that I began to realise that the year was edging slowly into Their Engagement; Knockabout Acrobats to Wed; Hal spring.

Harvey and Helen's Heavenly Honeymoon! I knew none of I might have faded into nothingness, I think, along with the these artistes, nor did I linger over their stories; for in the carpet and the wallpaper. I might have died, and my grave very centre of the article there was a column of print and a 209

210

photograph from which, once I had seen it, I could not tear feared more than anything to hear the sound of my own my eyes.

mirth now, for I knew it would be terrible.

Butler and Bliss, the column was headed, Theatreland's When this fit had passed, I turned again to the paper. I had Happiest Newly-Weds! The photograph was of Kitty and wanted at first to destroy it, to tear or crumple it and cast it Walter in their wedding-suits.

on the fire. Now, however, I felt I could not let it from my I gazed at it in stupefaction for a moment, then I placed my sight. I ran a finger-nail around the edge of the article, then hand over the page and gave a cry - a quick, sharp, tore, slowly and neatly, where I had scored. The paper that agonised cry, as if the paper was hot and had burned me.

was left over I did cast into the grate; but the slip of The cry became a low, ragged moan that went on, and on, newsprint that bore Kitty and Walter's wedding-portrait I until I wondered that I had breath enough left to make it.

held carefully, in the palm of my hand - as carefully as if it Soon I heard footsteps on the stairs: Mrs Best was at the were a moth's wing that might tarnish with too much door, calling my name in curiosity and fear.

fingering. After a moment's thought I stepped to the At that I ceased my racket, and became a little calmer: I did looking-glass. There was a gap between the glass itself and not want her in my room, prying into my grief or offering the frame which held it, and into this I placed one edge of useless words of comfort. I called to her that I was quite all the piece of paper. Here it was held fast in space, and cut right -that I had had a dream, merely, which had upset me; across my own reflection - unmissable, in that tiny room, and after a moment I heard her take her leave. I looked from any vantage-point.

again at the paper on my knee, and read the story which Perhaps I was a little feverish; yet my head felt clearer than accompanied the photograph. It said that Walter and Kitty it had in a month and a half. I gazed at the photograph, and had married at the end of March, and honeymooned on the then at myself. I saw that I was wasted and grey, that my Continent; that Kitty was currently resting from the stage, eyes were swollen and purpled with shadows. My hair, but was expected to return to the halls - in an entirely new which I had loved before to keep so trim and sleek, was act, and with Walter as her partner - in the autumn. Her old long and filthy; my lips were bitten almost to the blood; my partner, it said, Miss Nan King, who had been taken ill frock was stained, and rancid at the armpits. They, I thought whilst playing at the Britannia Theatre, Hoxton, was busy

- the smiling couple in the photograph — they had done this with plans for a new career of her own. . .

to me!

Reading this I felt a sudden, sickening desire not to moan, But for the first time in all those long, miserable weeks, I or weep — but to laugh. I put my fingers to my lips and thought too, what a fool I had been, to let them.

held them shut, as if to stem a tide of rising vomit. I had not I turned my head away, then and stepped to the door, and laughed in what seemed to be a hundred years or more; I gave a shout for Mary. When she came running, breathless and a little nervous, I told her I wanted a bath, and soap, 211

212

and towels. She looked at me rather strangely -I had never idea that one of our organs - our most vital organ, at that -

called for such a thing before - then she ran to the might baulk at its natural role, might conspire with itself to basement, and soon there came the thump of the tub upon choke, rather than to nurture, us, seemed an appalling one.

the stairs as she hauled it up behind her, and the clatter of For a week after the woman's death we talked of nothing pans and kettles in the kitchen. Soon, too, Mrs Best else. At night, in bed, we would lie trembling; we would emerged from her parlour, disturbed once again by the rub and worry at our ribs with sweating fingers, conscious noise. When I explained my sudden longing to bathe she of the unemphatic pulse beneath, terrified that the flimsy said, 'Oh Miss Astley, now is that really wise?', and looked rhythm would falter or slow, certain that - like hers, our pale and shaken. I believe she thought I intended to drown poor, dead, unsuspecting neighbour's - our hearts were myself, or cut my wrists into the water.

stealthily hardening, hardening, in the tender red cavities of I did, of course, neither. Instead I sat for an hour in the our breasts.

steaming tub, gazing into the fireplace or at Kitty's picture, Now, waking to the reality of the cooling tub, the colourless gently massaging the life back into my aching limbs and room, the photograph upon the wall, I found my fingers joints with a piece of soap and flannel. I washed my hair once again upon my breast-bone, probing and chafing, and cleaned the muck from my eyes; the flesh beneath my searching for the thickening organ behind it. This time, ears and behind my knees, in the crooks of my arms and however, it seemed to me that I found it. There was a between my legs, I rubbed till it was red and stinging.

darkness, a heaviness, a stillness at the very centre of me, At last I think I dozed; and as I did so I had a strange, that I had not known was growing there, but which gave unsettling vision.

me, now, a kind of comfort. My breast felt tight and sore -

I remembered a woman from Whitstable - an old neighbour but I didn't writhe, or sweat, beneath the pain of it, rather, I of ours - of whom I had not thought in years. She had died crossed my arms over my ribs, and embraced my dark and while I was still a child, quite unexpectedly, and of a thickened heart like a lover.

peculiar condition. Her heart, the doctors said, had Perhaps, even as I did it, Walter and Kitty were walking hardened. The outer skin of it had grown leathery and together, on a street in France or Italy; perhaps he leaned to tough; its valves had turned sluggish, then had begun to touch her, as I touched myself; perhaps they kissed; perhaps falter in their pumping, then ceased entirely. Save a little they lay in a bed ... I had thought such things a thousand tiredness and breathlessness there had been no warning; the times, and wept and bitten my lips to think them; but now I heart had worked away on its private, fatal, project, at its gazed at the photograph and felt my misery stiffen, as my own secret pace - then stopped.

heart had stiffened, with rage and frustration. They walked This story had thrilled and terrified my sister and me, when together, and the world smiled to see it! They embraced on we first heard it. We were young and well cared for; the the street, and strangers were glad! While all the time I 213

214

lived pale as a worm, cast out from pleasure, from comfort had not happened in my old life; perhaps, indeed, if I had and ease.

had a baby or a bundle on me now, and was walking I rose from the bath, all heedless of the spilling water, and purposefully or with my gaze fixed low, they might have let took up the photograph again; but this time I crushed it. I me pass untroubled. But, as I have said, I walked fitfully, gave a cry, I paced the floor: but it was not with blinking at the traffic about me; and such a girl, I suppose, wretchedness that I paced, it was as if to try out new limbs, is a kind of invitation to sport and dalliance . . .

to feel my whole self shift and snap and tingle with life. I The stares and the strokings affected me like the curses: hauled open the window of my room, and leaned out into they made me shake. I returned to Mrs Best's and turned the the dark - into the never-quite-dark of the London night, key in my door; then I lay upon my rancid mattress and with its sounds and its scents that, for so long, I had been shivered and wept. I had thought myself brilliant with new shut from. I thought, I will go out into the world again; I life and promise, but the streets that I thought would will go back into the city - they have kept me from it long welcome me had only cast me back into my former misery.

enough!

Worse, they had frightened me. How, I thought, will I bear But oh! how terrible it was, making my way into the streets it? How will I live? Kitty had Walter now; Kitty was next morning - how busy I found them, how dirty and married! But I was poor and alone and uncared for. I was a crowded and dazzling and loud! I had lived for a year and a solitary girl, in a city that favoured sweethearts and half in London, and called it my own. But when I walked in gentlemen; a girl in a city where girls walked only to be it before, it was with Kitty or Walter; often, indeed, we had gazed at.

not walked at all, but taken carriages and cabs. Now, for all I had discovered it, that morning. I might have learned it that I had borrowed a hat and a jacket of Mary's to make me sooner, from all the songs I'd sung at Kitty's side.

seemly, I felt as though I might as well be stumbling I thought then what a cruel joke it was that I, who had through Clerkenwell in no clothes at all. Part of it was my swaggered so many times in a gentleman's suit across the nervous fear that I would turn a corner and see a face I stages of London, should now be afraid to walk upon its knew, a face to remind me of my old life, or - worst of all -

streets, because of my own girlishness! If only I were a boy, Kitty's face, tilted and smiling as she walked on Walter's I thought wretchedly. If only I were really a boy . ..

arm. This fear made me falter and flinch, and so I was Then I gave a start, and sat up. I remembered what Kitty jostled worse than ever, and had curses thrown at me. The had said, that day in Stamford Hill - that I was too much curses seemed as sharp as nettle-stings, and set me like a boy. I remembered Mrs Dendy's reaction, when I had trembling.

posed for her in trousers: She's too real. The very suit that I Then again, I was stared at and called after - and twice or had worn then -the blue serge suit that Walter had given me thrice seized and stroked and pinched - by men. This, too, on New Year's Eve - was here, beneath my bed, still 215

216

crumpled in the sailor's bag with all the other costumes that of Farringdon and St Paul's, before I could accept the I'd taken from the Brit, I slid from the mattress and drew the jostling and the roars, and the stares of the men, without bag free, and in a moment I had all the suits upon the floor.

smarting. Then there was the problem of where - if I really They lay about me, impossible handsome and vivid in that was to stroll about in costume -I should change. I did not colourless room: all the shades and textures of my former want to live as a boy full-time; nor did I want, just yet, to life, with all the scents and songs of the music hall, and my give up my room at Mrs Best's. I could imagine that lady's old passion, in their seams and creases.

face, however, if I presented myself before her one day in a For a second I sat trembling: I feared the memories would pair of trousers. She would think that I had lost my mind, overcome me, and set me weeping again. I almost returned entirely; she might call for a doctor or a policeman. She the costumes to the bag - but then I took a breath, and would certainly throw me out - and then I would be willed my hands to steady and my dampening eyes to dry. I homeless again. I didn't want that, at all.

placed my hand upon my breast - upon the heaviness, and I needed somewhere, away from Smithfield; I needed, in the darkness, that had so strengthened me.

fact, a dressing-room. But so far as I knew, there were no I picked up the blue serge suit and shook it. It was horribly such places for hire. The gay girls of the Haymarket, I creased, but apart from that not damaged at all by its believe, transformed themselves in the public lavatories of confinement to the bag. I tried it on, with a shirt and a neck-Piccadilly - put their make-up on at the wash-hand basins, tie. I had become so thin that the trousers sagged about my and changed into their gaudy frocks while the latch on the waist; my hips were narrower, my breasts even shallower, door said Occupied. This seemed to me a sensible scheme -