Tipping the Velvet (49 page)

my surprise I heard the thud of the front door, and found

'What a day I have had!' she said. 'Do I stink like a rat? I've that the girl had followed me. When I looked round she was been all afternoon down a drain-pipe.'

unbuttoning her coat, and gazing about her in wonder.

'Down a drain-pipe?'

'My God,' she said - her voice had a bit of breeding to it, but

'Down a drain-pipe. I'm an assistant at a sanitary she was not at all proud. 'I called because I saw the step, inspector's. You may not pull such a face; it was quite a and thought Florrie must have had some sort of fit. Now I triumph, I tell you, my getting the position at all. They see she's either lost her head entirely, or had the fairies in.'

think women too delicate for that sort of work.'

I said, 'I was me that did it all. . .'

'I think I would rather be delicate,' I said, 'than do it.'

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'Oh, but it's marvellous work! It's only now and then I have

'Is there someone out there?' It was Florence's voice. I heard to peer into sewers, as I did today. Mostly I measure, and her stepping, cautiously, into the kitchen. Then she must talk to workers, and see if they are too hot or too cold, have have seen her Mend. 'Annie, oh, it's you! Thank goodness.

enough air to breathe, enough lavatories. I have a For a moment I thought - what's the matter?'

government order, and do you know what that means? It Tm not sure.'

means I can demand to see an office or a workshop, and if

'Why do you look so queer? What's going on? What has it's not right, I can demand that it be put right. I can have happened to the step at the front of the house? And what's buildings closed, buildings improved ...' She waved her this mess on the stove?'

hands. 'Foremen hate me. Greedy masters from Bow to

'Florrie -'

Richmond absolutely loathe the sight of me. I wouldn't

'What?'

swap my work for anything!' I smiled at the enthusiasm in

'I think I might as well tell you; indeed, I really think I'm her voice; she might be a sanitary inspector, but she was quite obliged to tell you ..." 'What? You're frightening me.'

also, I could tell, something of an actress. Now she took

'There's a girl in your pantry.'

another mouthful of tea. 'So,' she said, when she had There was a silence then, during which I swiftly surveyed swallowed it, 'how long have you been a friend of my options. They were, I found, very few; so I decided on Florrie's?'

the noblest. I took hold of the handle of the pantry door,

'Well, friend isn't quite the word for it, really ..."

and slowly pushed it open. Florence saw me, and twitched.

'You don't know her terribly well?'

'I was just about to leave,' I said. 'I swear it.' I looked at the

'Not at all.'

girl called Annie, who nodded. 'She was,' she said. 'She That's a shame,' she said, shaking her head. 'She's not been was.'

herself, these past few months. Not been herself at all..."

Florence gazed at me. I stepped out of the pantry and edged She would have gone on, I think, if there had not, at that past her, into the parlour. She frowned.

moment, come the sound of the front door opening, and

'What on earth have you been doing?' she asked, as I then of feet upon the parlour floor.

searched for my hat. 'Why does everything look so strange?'

'Oh hell!' I said. I put my cup down, gazed wildly about me She picked up a box of matches, and lit the two oil-lamps for a second, then ran past the girl to the pantry door. I and then a couple of candles. The light was taken up by a didn't stop to think; I didn't say a word to her or even look thousand polished surfaces, and she started. 'You have at her. I simply hopped inside the little cupboard, and cleaned the house!'

pulled the door shut behind me. Then I put my ear to it, and

'Only the downstairs rooms. And the yard. And the front listened.

step,’ I said, in increasing tones of wretchedness. 'And I made you supper.'

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She gaped at me. 'Why!'

Now Florence's eyes were wider than ever. 'Clean and do

'Your house was dirty. The woman next door said you were my washing? Look after Cyril? I'm sure I couldn't let you famous for it..."

do all those things!'

'You met the woman next door?'

'Why not? I met fifty women in your street today, all doing

'She gave me some tea.'

exactly those things! It's natural, ain't it? If I was your wife

'I leave you in my home for one day and you quite

- or Ralph's wife, I mean -I should certainly do them then.'

transform it. You get yourself in with my neighbours.

Now she folded her arms. 'In this house, Miss Astley, that's You're thick, I suppose, with my best friend. And what has possibly the very worst argument you could have hit upon.'

she been telling you?'

As she spoke, however, the front door opened and Ralph

'I haven't told her anything, I'm sure!' called Annie from the appeared. He had an evening paper under one arm, and kitchen.

Cyril under the other.

I pulled at a thread that had come loose at my cuff. 'I

'My word,' he said, 'look at the shine on this step! I am thought you would be pleased,' I said quietly, 'to have a tidy frightened to tread on it.' He saw me and smiled - 'Hallo, house. I thought -' I had thought that it would make her like still here?' - then he glanced about the room. 'And look at me. In Diana's world, it would have. It, or something all this! I haven't come into the wrong parlour, have I?'

similar.

Florence stepped across to him to take the baby, then

'I liked my house the way it was,' she said.

propelled him out towards the kitchen. Here I heard him

'I don't believe you,' I replied; and then, when she hesitated, exclaiming very warmly - first over Annie, and then over I said - what, I suppose, I had been planning to say to her, the beef and potatoes, and finally over the pineapple.

all along - 'Let me stay, Miss Banner! Oh, please let me Florence struggled with Cyril for a moment: he was stay!'

squirming and fractious and about to cry. I went to her, and She gave me a bewildered look. 'Miss Astley, I cannot!'

- with terrible boldness, for the last baby I had held had

'I could sleep in here, like I did last night. I could clean and been my cousin's child, four years before: and he had cook, like I did today. I could do your washing.' I was screamed in my face - I said, 'Give him to me, babies love growing more rash and desperate as I spoke. 'Oh, how I me.' She handed him over and, through some extraordinary longed to do those things, when I was in the house in St miracle - perhaps I was holding him so inexpertly, the grip John's Wood! But that devil I lived with said I must let the quite stunned him - he fell against my shoulder, and sighed, servants do it - that it would spoil my hands. But if I stayed and grew calm.

here - well, I could look after your little boy while you are I might have thought, if I had had more experience in the at work, I wouldn't give him laudanum when he cried!'

matter, that the sight of her foster-son content and still in another girl's arms would be the last thing to convince a 421

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mother to allow that girl to stay in her own house; and yet, that she was rather plain, and rather ordinary. She had taken when I looked at Florence again I saw that her eyes were out a handkerchief, and was wiping at her nose; now she upon me, and her expression - as it had been once, last was calling out to Ralph, to put the kettle on the stove. My night - was strange and almost sad, but also desperately lusts had been quick, and driven me to desperate pleasures: tender. One curl had worked its way out of her knot of hair, but she, I knew, would never raise them. My too-tender and hung, rather limply, over her brow. When she raised a heart had once grown hard, and had lately grown harder -

hand to brush it from her eye, it seemed to me that the but there was no chance of it softening, I thought, at Quilter finger came away a little damp at the tip.

Street.

I thought: Blimey, I was wasted in male impersonation, I should have been in melodrama. I bit my lip, and gave a
Chapter 17

gulp. 'Good-bye, Cyril,' I said, in a voice that shook a little.

One of the ladies who had come dressed as Marie

'I must put on my damp bonnet now, and head off into the Antoinette to Diana's terrible party had come clad, not as a darkening night, and find some bench to sleep on ..."

queen, but as a shepherdess, with a crook: I had heard her But this, after all, proved too much. Florence sniffed, and tell another guest (who had mistaken her for Bo Peep, from her face grew stern again.

the nursery poem) about how Marie Antoinette had had a

'All right,' she said. 'You may stay - for a week. And if the little cottage built in the garden of her palace, and had week works out, we shall try it for a month: you may have a thought it droll to play in it, with all of her friends dressed share of the family salary, I suppose, for the sake of up as dairymaids and yokels. I remembered that story, in watching Cyril and keeping house. But if it does not work, the first few weeks of my time at Quilter Street, a little then you must promise me, Miss Astley, that you will go.'

bitterly. I think I had felt rather like Marie Antoinette, the I promised it. Then I hitched the baby a little higher at my day that I put on an apron and cleaned Florence's house for shoulder, and Florence turned away. I didn't look to see her and cooked her supper; I think I even felt like her, the what her expression was, now. I only smiled; and then I put second day I did it. By the third day, however - the third my lips to Cyril's head - he smelt rather sour - and kissed day of waiting in the street for the stand-pipe to spit out its him.

bit of cloudy water, of black-leading the fireplaces and the How thankful I was then, that I had lied about Diana! What stove, of whitening the step, of scouring out the privy - I did it matter, that I was not all that I pretended? I had been was ready to hang up my crook and return to my palace.

a regular girl once; I could be regular again - being regular, But the palace doors, of course, had been closed on me; I indeed, might prove a kind of holiday. I thought back over must work, now, in earnest. And I must work, too, with a my recent history, and gave a shudder; and then I glanced at baby squirming on my arm - or rolling about the floor, Florence, and was glad - as I had been glad once before -

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shrieking out, from his crib upstairs, for milk and bread-Then again, there were so many people who came calling.

and-butter. For'} all my promises to Florence, if there had There was, for example, Florence's family: a brother and his been gin in the house,'

wife and children; a sister, Janet. The brother was the oldest I think I would have given it to him - or else, I might have of the sons in the family portrait (the middle one was gone swallowed some of it myself, to make the chores a little to Canada); he worked as a butcher, and sometimes brought gayer. But there was no gin; and Cyril stayed lively, and the us meat; but he was rather boastful - he had moved to a chores remained hard. And I could not complain, not even house in Epping, and thought Ralph a fool for remaining in to myself: for I knew that, dreary as they were, they were Quilter Street, where the family had all grown up. I didn't not so dreary as the habits I should have to learn if I left like him much. Janet, however, who called oftener, I took Bethnal Green to try my luck, all friendless and in winter, to at once. She was eighteen or nineteen, big-boned and upon the streets.

handsome; a born barmaid I had thought her when studying So, I did not complain; but I did think, often, of Felicity her photograph - so I was rather tickled to learn that she Place. I thought of how quiet and how handsome that worked as a tapstress in a City public-house, lodging with square was; of how grand Diana's villa was, how pleasant the family who ran it, in their rooms above the bar.

its chambers, how light, how warm, how perfumed, how Florence fretted over her like anything: their mother had polished -how different, in short, to Florence's house, which died while the sisters were still quite young (their father had was set in one of the poorest, noisiest quarters of the city; died many years before that), Florence had had all the had one dark room to do duty as bed-chamber, dining-raising of the girl to do herself and, like older sisters room, library and parlour; had windows that rattled and everywhere, was sure that Janet would be led astray by the chimneys that smoked, and a door that was continually first young man who got his hands on her. 'She will marry opening, shutting, or being banged by a fist. The whole without giving it a second's thought,' she said wearily to street, it seemed to me, might as well be made of India me, when Janet paid her first visit after I moved in. 'She'll rubber - there was such a passage of shouts and laughter be dragged down having babies all her life, and her good and people and smells and dogs, from one house to its looks will be spoiled, and she'll die worn out at forty-three, neighbours. I should not have minded it -after all, I had like our own mother did.' When Janet came for supper, she grown up in a street that was similar, in a house where stayed the night; then she would sleep up in Florence's bed, cousins thundered up and down the stairs, and the parlour and I'd hear their murmurs and their laughter as I lay in the might be full, on any night of the week, with people parlour below - the sound made me terribly restless. But drinking beer and playing cards and sometimes quarrelling.

Janet herself seemed marvellously unsurprised to see me But I had lost the habit of enduring it; and now it only made dishing up the herrings at the breakfast-table, or putting her me weary.

brother's linen, on a wash-day, through the mangle. 'All 425

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right, Nancy,' she would say - she called me 'Nancy' from weren't blushing into their tea-cups over it, they were taking the start. The first time we met I still had the bruise at my me aside to ask me, privately, Was I quite well now? and to eye, and when she saw it, she whistled. She said, 'I bet it recommend some man who would prove helpful if I was a girl done that - wasn't it? A girl always goes for the thought to take my case to court, or else some vegetable yes, every time. A bloke goes for the teeth.'