Tipping the Velvet (44 page)

'Hit me then!' I cried, still snivelling. 'Black my other eye She raised her hands to her mouth, to blow upon her for me, I deserve it!' But she only tossed her head, and fingers. 'You may sell 'em, miss; or you may walk down to wrapped her arms still tighter about her, and turned away.

the Edgware Road and stand at a lamp-post till a feller I wiped my eyes upon my sleeve, then, and tried to grow a offers you a coin . . .'

little calmer. It had been only just midnight when I had We sold them. We sold them to an old clothes seller who staggered from the drawing-room still dressed as Antinous; had a stall in a market off Kilburn Road. He was packing up I guessed it was about half-past now - a terrible time, his bags when Zena found him - the market had been because it meant we still had the longest, coldest hours to trading till midnight or so, but when we reached it the pass, before the dawn. I said, as humbly as I could, 'What barrows were mostly empty and the street was filled with am I to do, Zena? What am I to do?'

litter, and they were shutting down the naphtha lamps and She looked over her shoulder at me. 'I suppose, you shall tipping the water from their buckets into the drains. The have to go to your folks. You have folks, don't you? You man saw us coming and said at once: 'You're too late, I ain't have some friends?'

selling.' But when Zena opened the bag and pulled the suits

'I have nobody, now . . .'

from it, he tilted his head and gave a sniff. The soldier's I put a hand to my face again; she turned, and began to duds is hardly worth my keeping on the stall,' he said, chew on her lip. 'If you really have no one,' she said at last, spreading the jacket out across his arm; 'but I will take it,

'then we are both quite alike, for I have no one, neither: my for the sake of the serge, which might do for a fancy family all threw me over, over the business with Agnes and waistcoat. The coat and trousers is handsome enough, the police.' She gazed at my sailor's bag, and nudged it with likewise the shoes. I shall take them from you, for a guinea.'

her boot. 'Don't you have a bit of cash about you anywhere?

'A guinea!' I said.

What's in there?'

'A guinea is as fair a price as you will get, tonight.' He

'All my clothes,' I answered. 'All the boy's clothes I came to sniffed again. 'I daresay they are hot enough.'

Diana's with.'

They ain't hot at all,' said Zena. 'But the guinea will do; and

'Are they good ones?'

if you'll chuck in a couple of ladies' niceties and a pair of

'I used to think so.' I raised my head. 'Do you mean for us to hats with bows on, call it a pound.'

put them on, and pass as gents . . . ?'

The drawers and stockings he gave us were yellowed with age; the hats were terrible; and we were both, of course, 375

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still in need of stays. But Zena, at least, seemed satisfied We lay together very straight and stiff, our heads upon the with the deal. She pocketed the money, then led me to a same prickling bolster, but hers turned from mine and her baked-potato stall, and we had a potato each, and a cup of eyes shut fast. The coughing of the other lodgers, the tea between us. The potatoes tasted of mud. The tea was soreness at my cheek, my general wretchedness and panic, really tinted water. But at the stall there was a brazier, and kept me wakeful. When Zena gave a shiver, I put my hand this warmed us.

upon her; and when she didn't take the hand away, I moved Zena, as I have said, seemed very changed since our a little closer to her. I said, very low: 'Oh Zena, I cannot expulsion from the house. She did not tremble - it was I sleep, for thinking of it all!'

who trembled now - and she had an air of wisdom and

'I daresay.'

authority about her, a way of passing through the streets, as I trembled. 'Do you hate me, Zena?' She wouldn't answer. 'I if she were quite at her ease upon them. I had been at ease shan't blame you, if you do. But oh! do you know how upon them once; now, I think that, if she had let me hold sorry I am?' A woman in the bed beside us gave a shriek -I her hand, I would have done it - as it was, I could only think she was a drunkard - and that made both of us jump, stumble at her heels, saying wretchedly, 'What shall we do and brought our faces even closer. Her eyes were still hard next, Zena?' and 'Oh, Zena, how cold it is!' and even 'What shut, but I could tell that she listened. I thought of how do you suppose they are doing now, Zena, at Felicity Place?

differently we had lain together, only a few hours before.

Oh, can you believe that she has really cast me from her!'

My wretchedness since then had knocked the fire right out

'Miss,' she said to me at last, 'don't take it the wrong way; of me; but because it hadn't been said by either of us, and I but if you don't shut up, I really shall be obliged to hit you, thought it ought to be, I whispered now: 'Oh, if only Diana after all.'

hadn't come when she did! It was fun - wasn't it? - before I said: 'I'm sorry, Zena.'

Diana came and stopped it. . .'

In the end she fell into conversation with a gay girl who had She opened her eyes. 'It was fun,' she said sadly. 'It is also come to stand beside the brazier; and from her she got always fun before they catch you.' Then she gazed at me, the details of a lodging-house nearby, that was said to take and swallowed.

people in, all through the night. It turned out to be a I said: 'It won't be so bad, Zena - will it? You're the only dreadful place, with one chamber for the women and torn I know in London, now; and since you're all alone, I another for the men; and everyone who slept there had a thought - we might make a go of it, mightn't we? We might cough. Zena and I lay two in a bed - she keeping her dress find a room, in a rooming-house. You could get work, as a on, for the sake of the warmth, but me still fretting over the sempstress or a char. I shall buy another suit; and when my creases in mine, and so placing it beneath the foot of the face is all healed up - well, I know a trick or two, for mattress in the hope that it would press flat overnight.

making money. We shall have your seven pounds back in a 377

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month. We shall have twenty pounds in no time. And then, cheeks, and to flatten my hair. My face, when I gazed at it you can make your trip out to the colonies; and I' -I gave a in the sliver of mirror that was glued to the wall, looked like gulp - 'I might go with you. You said they always need a face of wax, that had been set too near a spirit-lamp. My landladies there; surely, they'll always need gentlemen's feet, when I stepped on them, seemed to shriek: the shoes tarts, too - even in Australia . . . ?'

were ones I had used to wear as a renter, but either my feet She gazed at me as I murmured, saying nothing. Then she had grown since then, or I had become too used to gentle bent her head and kissed me once, very lightly, upon the leather; I had gained blisters in the walk to the Kilburn lips. Then she turned away again, and at last I slept.

Road, and now the blisters began to rub raw and wet, and When I woke, it was daylight. I could hear the sounds of the stockings to fray.

women coughing and spitting, and discussing, in low, We were not allowed to linger past the morning in the peevish voices, the nights that they had passed, and the bedroom of the lodging-house: at eleven o'clock a woman days they must now move on to. I lay with my eyes shut came, and chivvied us out with a broom. I walked a little and my hands before my face: I didn't want to look at them, way with the drunkard. When we parted, at the top of or at any part of the squalid world I was now obliged to Maida Vale, she took out the smallest screw of tobacco, share with them. I thought of Zena, and the plan that I had rolled two thread-like cigarettes, and gave me one.

put to her - I thought: It will be hard, it will be terribly hard; Tobacco, she said, was the best cure for a bruise. I sat on a but Zena will keep me from the worst of the hardness.

bench, and smoked till my fingers scorched; and then I Without Zena, it would be hard indeed . . .

considered my plight.

Then I took my hands from my face at last, and turned to My situation, after all, was a ridiculously familiar one: I gaze at the bed beside me; and it was empty. Zena was had been as cold and as ill and as wretched as this four gone. The money was gone. She had risen at dawn, with her years before, after my flight from Stamford Hill. Then, servant's habits; and she had left me, slumbering, with however, I had at least had money, and handsome clothes; I nothing.

had had food, and cigarettes - had all I required to keep me, Understanding it at last left me curiously blank: I think, I not happy, but certainly quick. Now, I had nothing. I was was too giddy already to be dazed any further, too wretched nauseous with hunger and with the after-effects of wine; to descend to greater depths. I rose, and drew my frock and to get so much as a penny for a cone of eels, I should from beneath the mattress - it was creased worse than ever -

have to beg for it - or do what Zena recommended, and try and buttoned it on. The drunkard in the neighbouring bed my luck as a tart, up against some dripping wall. The idea had spent a ha'penny on a bowl of tepid water, and she let of begging was hateful to me - I could not bear the thought me use it, after she had stood in it and washed herself of trying to extract pity and coins from the kind of down, to wipe the last remaining flakes of blood from my gentlemen who, a fortnight before, had admired the cut of 379

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my suit or the flash of my cuff-links as I passed amongst when I rang the bell and no one came, I thought: Well, I them at Diana's side. The thought of being fucked by one of will sit upon the step, Mrs Milne is never out for long; and them, as a girl, was even worse.

if I grow numb from the cold, it will serve me right. . .

I got up: it was too cold to sit upon the bench all day. I But then I pressed my face to the glass beside the door and remembered what Zena had said the night before - that I peered into the hall beyond, and I saw that the walls - that must go to my folks, that my folks would take me. I had used to have Gracie's pictures on them, the Light of the said that I had no one; but now I thought that there might, World and the Hindoo idol, and the others - I saw that they after all, be one place I could try. I did not think of my real were bare; that there were only marks upon them, where the family, in Whitstable: I had finished with them, it seemed pictures had been fastened. And at that, I trembled. I caught to me then, for ever. I thought instead of a lady who had hold of the doorknocker and banged it, in a kind of panic; been like a mother to me, once; and of her daughter, who and I called into the letter-box: 'Mrs Milne! Mrs Milne!' and had been a kind of sister. I thought of Mrs Milne, and

'Gracie! Grace Milne!' But my voice sounded hollow, and Gracie. I had had no contact with them in a year and a half.

the hall stayed dark. Then there came a shout, from the I had promised to visit them, but had never been at liberty tenement behind. 'Are you looking for the old lady and her to do so. I had promised to send them my address: I had daughter? They have gone, dear - gone a month ago!'

never sent them so much as a note to say I missed them, or I turned, and looked up. From a balcony above the street a a card on Grade's birthday. The truth was that, after my first man was calling to me, and nodding to the house. I went few, strange days at Felicity Place, I had not missed them at out, and gazed miserably up at him, and said, Where had all. But now I remembered their kindness, and wanted to they gone to?

weep. Diana and Zena between them had made an outcast He shrugged. 'Gone to her sister's, is what I heard. The lady of me; but Mrs Milne -I was sure of it! - was bound to take was took very bad, in the autumn; and the girl being a me in.

simpleton - you knew that, did you? - they didn't think it And so I walked, from Maida Vale to Green Street - walked clever to leave the pair of them alone. They have took all creepingly, in my misery and my shame and my pinching the furniture; I daresay that the house will come up for sale boots, as if every step were taken barefoot on open swords.

..." He looked at my cheek. 'That's a lovely black eye you The house, when I reached it at last, seemed shabby - but have,' he said, as if I might not have noticed. 'Just like in the then, I knew what it was, to leave a place for something song - ain't it? Except you only have one of 'em!'

grand, and come back to find it humbler than you knew.

I stared at him, and shivered while he laughed. A little fair-There was no flower before the door, and no three-legged haired girl had appeared on the balcony beside him, and cat - but then again, it was winter, and the street very cold now gripped the rail and put her feet upon the bars. I said, and bleak. I could think only of my own sorry plight; and 381

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'Where does the lady live - the sister they've gone to?' and lived here once, with Mrs Milne. I am looking for a girl, he pulled at his ear and looked thoughtful.

who called on you when you moved in. She worked for the

'Now, I did know, but have forgotten it ... I believe it was people that found you your flat.'

Bristol; or it may have been Bath . . .' 'Not London, then?'

He frowned. 'A girl, you say?'

'Oh no, certainly not London. Now, was it Brighton . . . ?' I

'A girl with curly hair. A plain-faced girl called Florence.

turned away from him, to gaze back up at Mrs Milne's Don't you know who I mean? Don't you have the name of house - at the window of my old room, and at the balcony the charity she worked for? It was run by a lady — a very where I had liked, in summer-time, to sit. When I looked at clever-looking lady. The lady played the mandolin.'

the man again, he had his little girl in his arms, and the He had continued to frown, and to scratch at his head; but at wind had caught her golden hair and made it flap about his this last detail he brightened. That one,' he said; 'yes, I cheeks: and I remembered them both, then, as the father remember her. And that gal what helped her, that was your and daughter that I had seen clapping their hands to the chum, was it?'