Tipping the Velvet (57 page)

'It was terribly hard! But also rather marvellous.'

And then, as if through some occult power of its own, the

'Did you never - never kiss her?'

space between our lips seemed to grow small, and then to

'I sometimes kissed her as she slept; I kissed her hair. Her vanish; and we were kissing. She lifted her hand to touch hair was handsome ..."

the corner of my mouth; and then her fingers came between I had a very vivid memory, then, of lying beside Kitty, in our pressing lips - they tasted, still, of sugar. And then I the days before we had ever made love. I said, in a slightly began to shake so hard I had to clench my fists and say to different tone: 'Did you watch her face, as she lay dreaming myself, 'Stop shaking, can't you? She'll think you've never

- and hope she dreamed of you?'

been kissed before, at all!'

'I used to light a candle, just to do it!'

When I raised my hands to her, however, I found that she

'Didn't you ache to touch her, as she lay at your side?'

was shaking just as badly; and when, after a moment, I

'I thought I would touch her! I was frightened half to death moved my fingers from her throat to the swell of her by it.'

breasts, she twitched like a fish - then smiled, and leaned

'But didn't you sometimes touch yourself - and wish the closer to me. 'Press me harder!' she said.

fingers were hers . . . ?'

We fell back together upon the bed, then - it shifted another

'Oh, and then blush to do it! One time, I moved against her inch across the carpet, on its wheels - and I undid the in the bed and she said, still sleeping, "Jim!" - Jim was the buttons of her shirt and pressed my face to her bosom, and name of her man-friend. And then she said it again: "Jim!" -

sucked at one of her nipples, through the cotton of her and in a voice I'd never heard her use before. I didn't know chemise, till the nipple grew hard and she began to stiffen whether to weep about it, or what; but what I really wanted and pant. She put her hands to my head again, and lifted me

-oh, Nance! what I really wanted was for her to sleep on, to where she could kiss me; I lay and moved upon her, and like a girl in a trance, so I could touch her and have her felt her move beneath me, felt her breasts against my own, think me him, and call out again, in that voice, as I did it. . .

till I knew I should come, or faint - but then she turned me,

!'

and raised my skirt, and put her hand between my legs, and 487

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stroked so slowly, so lightly, so teasingly, I hoped I might however, I saw that Florence had raised herself a little on never come at all...

the pillow, and was gazing at me, apparently quite wide At last, I felt her hand settle at the very wettest part of me, awake. I reached for her hand again, and kissed it, and felt and she breathed against my ear. 'Do you care for it,' she my insides give a kind of lurch. She smiled; but there was a murmured then, 'inside?' The question was such a gentle, darkness to the smile, that made me feel chill.

such a gallant one, I almost wept. 'Oh!' I said, and again she

'What's up?' I murmured. She stroked my hair.

kissed me; and after a moment I felt her move within me,

'I was only thinking ..."

first with one finger, then with two, I guessed, then three ...

'What?' She wouldn't answer. I propped myself up beside At last, after a second's pressure, she had her hand in me up her, quite wide awake myself, now. 'What, Florence?'

to the wrist. I think I called out - I think I shivered and

'I was looking at you in the darkness: I have never seen you panted and called out, to feel the subtle twisting of her fist, sleep before. You looked like quite a stranger to me. And the curling and uncurling of her sweet fingers, beneath my then I thought, you are a stranger to me . . .'

womb . . .

'A stranger? How can you say that? You have lived with When I reached my crisis I felt a gush, and found that I had me, for more than a year!'

wet her arm, with my spendings, from fingertip to elbow -

'And last night,' she answered, 'for the first time, I and that she had come, out of a kind of sympathy, and lay discovered you were once a music-hall star! How can you weak and heavy against me, with her own skirts damp. She keep a thing like that a secret? Why would you want to?

drew her hand free - making me shiver anew - and I seized What else have you done that I don't know about? You it and held it, and pulled her face to me and kissed her; and might have been in prison, for all I know. You might have then we lay very quietly with our limbs pressed hard been mad. You might have been gay!'

together until, like cooling engines, we ceased our pulsings I bit my lip; but then, remembering how kind she had been and grew still.

about the gay girls at the Boy, I said quickly, 'Flo, I did go When she rose at last, she cracked her head upon the on the streets one time. You won't hate me for it, will you?'

supper-table: we had jerked the truckle-bed from one side She took her hand away at once. 'On the streets! My God!

of the parlour to the other, and not noticed. She laughed.

Of course I won't hate you, but - oh, Nance! To think of you We shuffled off our clothes, and she turned down the lamp, as one of them sad girls ..."

and we lay beneath the blankets in our damp petticoats.

'I wasn't sad,' I said, and looked away. 'And to tell the truth When she fell asleep I put my hands to her cheeks, and I - well, I wasn't quite a girl, either.'

kissed her brow where she had bruised it.

'Not a girl?' she said. 'What can you mean?'

I woke to find it still the night, but a little lighter. I didn't I scraped at the silken edge of the blanket with my nail.

know what had disturbed me; when I looked about me, Should I tell my story - the story I had kept so close, so 489

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long? I saw her hand upon the sheet and, as my stomach

'Sometimes, sometimes.'

gave another slide, I remembered again her fingers, easing

'And the lady who was so fond of you, in Green Street. Do me open, and her fist inside me, slowly turning . . .

you never think to call on her, and her daughter?'

I took a breath. 'Have you ever,' I said, 'been to Whitstable .

'They have moved away; and I tried to find them. And

. . ?'

anyway, I was ashamed, because I had neglected them ..."

Once I began it, I found I could not stop. I told her

'Neglected them, for that - what was her name?'

everything - about my life as an oyster-girl; about Kitty

'Diana.'

Butler, whom I had left my family for, and who had left me,

'Diana. Did you care for her, then, so very much?'

in her turn, for Walter Bliss. I told her about my madness;

'Care for her?' I propped myself upon my elbow. 'I hated my masquerade; my life with Mrs Milne and Grace, in her! She was a kind of devil! I have told you -'

Green Street, where she had seen me first. And finally I told

'And yet, you stayed with her, so long ..."

her about Diana, and Felicity Place, and Zena.

I felt suffocated, all at once, by my own story, and by the When I stopped talking it was almost light; the parlour meanings she was teasing from it. 'I can't explain,' I said.

seemed chillier than ever. Through all my long narrative

'She had a power over me. She was rich. She had - things.'

Florence had been silent; she had begun to frown when I

'First you told me it was a gent that threw you out. Then had reached the part about the renting, and after that the you said it was a lady. I thought, that you had lost some girl frown had deepened. Now it was very deep indeed.

..."

'You wanted to know,' I said, 'what secrets I had ..."

'I had lost a girl; but it was Kitty, and it was years before.'

She looked away. 'I didn't think there would be quite so

'And Diana was rich; and blacked your eye and cut you, and many.'

you let her. And then she chucked you out because you -

'You said you wouldn't hate me, over the renting.'

kissed her maid.' Her voice had grown steadily harder.

'It's so hard to think you did those things - for fun. And -oh,

'What happened to her?’

Nance, for such a cruel kind of fun!'

'I don't know. I don't know!'

'It was very long ago.'

We lay a while in silence, and the bed seemed suddenly

'To think of all the people you have known - and yet you terribly slim. Florence gazed at the lightening square of have no friends.'

curtain at the window, and I watched her, miserably. When

'I left them all behind me.'

she put a finger to her mouth to chew at a nail. I lifted my

'Your family. You said when you came here that your hand to stop her; but she pushed my arm away, and made to family had thrown you over. But it was you threw them rise.

over! How they must wonder over you! Do you never think

'Where are you going?' I asked.

of them?'

'Upstairs. I want to sit a little while and think.'

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'No!' I cried; and as I cried it, Cyril, in his crib upstairs,

'I liked to think of you,' she said quietly, 'as Venus in a sea-woke up, and began to call out for his mother. I reached for shell. I never thought of the sweethearts you had, before Florence and seized her wrist and, all heedless of the baby's you came here ..."

cries, pulled her back and pressed her to the bed. 'I know

'Why must you think of them now?'

what you mean to do,' I said. 'You mean to go and think of

'Because you do! Suppose Kitty were to show up again, and Lilian!'

ask you back to her?'

'I cannot help but think of Lilian!' she answered, stricken. 'I

'She won't. Kitty's gone, Flo. Like Lilian. Believe me, cannot help it. And you - you're just the same, only I never there's more chance of her coming back!' I began to smile.

knew it. Don't say - don't say you weren't thinking of her, of

'And if she does, you can go to her, and I won't say a word.

Kitty, last night, as you kissed me!'

And if Kitty comes for me, you can do similar. And then, I I took a breath - but then I hesitated. For it was true, I suppose, we shall have our paradises - and will be able to couldn't say it. It was Kitty I had kissed first and hardest; wave to one another from our separate clouds. But till then and it was as if I had had the shape or the colour or the taste

- till then, Flo, can't we go on kissing, and just be glad?'

of her kisses upon my lips, ever after. Not the spendings As lovers' vows go, this one was, I suppose, rather curious; and the tears of all the weeping sods of Soho, nor the wine but we were girls with curious histories - girls with pasts and the damp caresses of Felicity Place, had quite washed like boxes with ill-fitting lids. We must bear them, but bear those kisses away. I had always known it - but it had never them carefully. We should do very well, I thought, as matter with Diana, nor with Zena. Why should it matter Florence sighed and raised her hand to me at last; we with Florence?

should do very well, so long as the boxes stayed unspilled.

What should it matter who she thought of, as she kissed me?

Chapter 19

'All I know is,' I said at last, 'if we had not lain together last That afternoon, we put the truckle-bed back in the attic - I night, we would have died of it. And if you tell me now we think its castors had got permanently skewed - and I moved shall never lie together again, after that, that was so my night-things to Florence's room, and put my gown marvellous -!'

beneath her pillow. We did it while Ralph was out; and I still held her to the bed, and Cyril still cried; but now, by when he came home, and gazed at the place where the bed some miracle, his cries began to die - and Florence, in her had used to be propped, and then at us, with our blushes turn, grew slack in my arms, and turned her head against and our shadowy eyes and swollen lips, he blinked about a me.

dozen times, and swallowed, and sat and raised an issue of Justice before his face; but when he rose to go to his room that night, he kissed me very warmly. I looked at Florence.

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'Why doesn't Ralph have a sweetheart?' I said, when he had

'I wouldn't have been a torn at all,' I said, more hurt by her left us. She shrugged.

words than I was willing to show, 'if it hadn't been for Kitty

'Girls don't seem to care for him. Every torn friend of mine Butler.'

is half in love with him, but regular girls - well! He goes for She looked me over: I had my trousers on. 'Now that,' she dainty ones; the last one gave him up for the sake of a said, 'I cannot believe. You would have met some woman, boxer.'

sooner or later.'

'Poor Ralph,' I said. Then: 'He is remarkably forbearing on

'When I was married to Freddy, probably, and had a dozen the matter of your - leanings. Don't you think?'

kids. I should certainly never have met you.'

She came and sat on the arm of my chair. 'He's had a long

'Well, then I suppose I have something to thank Kitty Butler time to get used to them,' she said.

for.'

'Have you always had them, then?'

The name, when spoken aloud like that, still grated on my

'Well, I suppose there was always a girl or two, somewhere nerves a little and set them tingling; I think she knew it. But about the place. Mother never was able to figure it out.

now I said lightly, 'You do. Be sure you remember it. In Janet don't care - she says it leaves more chaps for her. But fact, I have something that will remind you . . .' I went to Frank' -this was the older brother, who came visiting from the pocket of my coat, and drew out the photograph of Kitty time to time with his family - 'Frank never liked to see girls and me, that I had got from Jenny, at the Boy in the Boat; calling for me, in the old days: he slapped me over it once, and I carried it to the bookcase and set it there, beneath the I've never forgotten it. He wouldn't be at all tickled to see other portraits. 'Your Lilian,' I said, 'may have got a thrill you here, now.'