Tipping the Velvet (9 page)

My words startled her - as well they might, for I had never spoken like this before, to her or to anyone. She looked away from me, about the room, and ran her tongue over her lips. ‘And all of them, downstairs?' she said, nodding towards the door. ‘Your mother and father, your brother, Alice, Freddy?' As she spoke there came a shout, and the sound of voices raised in friendly argument.

They mean nothing to me,
I wanted to say, compared with
you ...
But I only shrugged, and smiled.

She smiled then, too. ‘And so you really will come? We must leave on Sunday, you know - a week from today. It doesn't give you long.'

I said it would be long enough; and she placed the faded rose upon the bed, and seized my hands and squeezed them hard.

‘Oh Nan! My dear Nan! We'll have such times together, I promise you!' As she spoke, she flung my hands aside and gripped me in a fierce embrace, and laughed with pleasure, so that I felt her body shudder in my arms.

Then, all too soon, she stepped away, and I had only empty air to clutch at.

There was more noise from below, then the sound of a door opening, followed by the thud of feet upon the staircase, and a cry: ‘Nancy!' It was Alice. She paused outside the bedroom door, but was too polite - or fearful - to turn the handle. ‘Everyone is leaving,' she called. ‘Mother says will Miss Butler just step down for a moment, please, for them to say good-bye.'

I looked at Kitty. ‘You go on,' I said, ‘without me, and I shall come down in a minute. And don't,' I added in a lower voice, ‘say anything to them about - our plans. I'll talk to them about it, later on.'

She nodded, and gave my hand another squeeze; then she opened the door and joined Alice on the landing, and I heard them step below, together.

I stood in the gathering shadows and put my trembling fingers before my face. I had taken to scrubbing my hands very carefully, since meeting Kitty Butler; and if they were ever a little stained at the creases now, it was as much with paint and hot-black and
blanc-de-perle,
as with vinegar. Even so, there was the scent of oysters on them still, and a slender thread - it might have been the bristle from the back of a lobster, the whisker from a shrimp - beneath one of my nails. How would it be, I thought, to surrender my family, my home, all my oyster-girl's ways?

And how would it be to live at Kitty's side, brim-full of a love so quick, and yet so secret, it made me shake?

I
wish, for sensation's sake, I could say that my parents heard one word of Kitty's proposal and forbade me, absolutely, to refer to it again; that when I pressed the matter, they cursed and shouted; that my mother wept, my father struck me; that I was obliged, in the end, to climb from a window at dawn, with my clothes in a rag at the end of a stick, and a streaming face, and a note pinned to my pillow saying
Do not try to follow me ...
But if I said these things, I would be lying. My parents were reasonable, not passionate, people. They loved me, and they feared for me; the idea of allowing their youngest daughter to travel in the care of an actress and a music-hall manager to the grimmest, wickedest city in England was, they knew, a mad one, that no sane parent should entertain for longer than a second. But because they loved me so, they could not bear to have me grieve. Anyone with half an eye could see that my heart lay all with Kitty Butler now; anyone might guess that, having once been offered the chance of a future at her side, and kept from it, I could never return to my father's kitchen and be happy there, as I had been before.

So when, an hour or so after Kitty's departure, I nervously put her plan before my parents, and argued and pleaded for their blessing, they listened to me wonderingly, but carefully; and when, the next day, Father stopped me on my way down to the kitchen to draw me into the parlour where it was quiet and still, his face was sad and serious, but kind. He asked me, first, whether I had not changed my mind? I shook my head, and he sighed. He said, if I was quite decided, then Mother and he could not keep me; that I was a grown-up woman, almost, and should be allowed to know my own mind; that they had thought to see me marry a Whitstable boy, and settle close at hand, and so have a share in my little happinesses and troubles - but that now, he supposed, I would go and hitch up with some London fellow, who wouldn't understand their ways at all.

But children, he concluded, weren't made to please their parents; and no father should expect to have his daughter at his side for ever... ‘In short, Nance, even was you going to the very devil himself, your mother and I would rather see you fly from us in joy, than stay with us in sorrow - and grow, maybe, to hate us, for keeping you from your fate.' I had never known him so grave before, nor so eloquent. I had never seen him weep either; but now as he spoke his eyes glistened, and he blinked, twice or thrice, to hold the tears back, and his voice grew thin. I placed my head against his shoulder and let my own tears rise and spill. He put an arm about me, and patted me. ‘It breaks our hearts to lose you, dear,' he went on. ‘You know it does. Only promise us that you won't forget us, quite. That you'll write to us, and visit us. And that, if things don't turn out as you might, quite, wish them, you won't be too proud to come home to those that love you -' Here his voice failed utterly, and he shuddered; and I could only nod against his neck and say, ‘I will, I will; I promise you, I will.'

But oh! hard-hearted daughter that I was, when he had left me my tears dried at once, and I felt the return of all my gladness of the night before. I hugged myself in pleasure, and danced a jig around the parlour - but delicately, on tiptoe, so that they wouldn't hear me in the dining-room below. Then quickly, before I should be missed, I ran to the post office and sent Kitty a card at the Palace - a picture of a Whitstable oyster-smack, upon whose sail I inked ‘To London', and on the deck of which I drew two girls with bags and trunks and outsize, smiling faces. ‘I can come!!!' I wrote upon the back, and added that she must do without her dresser for a few nights while I made all ready ... and I finished it ‘Fondly', and signed it, ‘Your Nan'.

I had to be glad only in snatches that day, for the scene that I had passed with Father, after breakfast, had to be undergone again with Mother - who hugged me to her, and cried that they must be fools to let me go; and Davy - who said, quite absurdly, that I was too little to go to London, and would be run down by a tram in Trafalgar Square the minute I set foot in it; and Alice - who said nothing at all when she heard the news, but ran from the kitchen in tears, and could not be persuaded to take up her duties in the Parlour until lunch-time. Only my cousins seemed happy for me - and they were more jealous than happy, calling me a lucky cat, and swearing that I would make my fortune in the city, and forget them all; or else that I would be ruined utterly, and come sneaking back to them in disgrace.

That week passed quickly. I spent my evenings in calling on friends and family, and bidding them farewell; and in washing and patching and packing my dresses, and sorting out which little items to take with me, which to leave behind. I visited the Palace only once, and that was in the company of my parents, who came to reassure themselves that Miss Butler was still sensible and good, and to ask for further particulars of the shadowy Walter Bliss.

I had Kitty to myself for no more than a minute, while Father chatted with Tony and Tricky, after the show. I had feared all week that I had imagined the words that she had spoken to me on Sunday evening, or misunderstood them entirely. Every night, almost, I had woken sweating from dreams in which I presented myself at her door, with my bags all packed and my hat upon my head, and she looked at me in wonder, and frowned, or laughed with derision; or else I arrived too late at the station, and had to chase the train along the track while Kitty and Mr Bliss gazed at me from their carriage window, and would not lean outside to pull me in ... That night at the Palace, however, she led me to one side, and pressed my hand, and was quite as kind and excited as she had been before.

‘I've had a letter from Mr Bliss,' she said. ‘He has found us rooms in a house in a place called Brixton - a place so full, he says, of music-hall people and actors that they call it “GreasePaint Avenue”.'

Grease-Paint Avenue! I saw it instantly and it was marvellous, a street set out like a make-up box, with narrow, gilded houses, each one with a different coloured roof; and ours would be number 3 - with a chimney the colour of Kitty's carmined lips!

‘We are to catch the two o'clock train on Sunday,' she went on, ‘and Mr Bliss himself will meet us at the station, in a carriage. And I'm due to start the very next day at the Star Music Hall, in Bermondsey.'

‘The Star,' I said. ‘That's a lucky name.'

She smiled. ‘Let's hope so. Oh, Nan, let's only hope so!'

 

My last morning at home was - like every last morning in history, I suppose - a sad one. We breakfasted together, the five of us, and were bright enough; but there was a horrible sense of expectation in the house that made anything except sighing, and drifting aimlessly from job to job, seem quite impossible. By eleven o'clock I felt as penned and as stifled as a rat in a box, and made Alice walk with me to the beach, and hold my shoes and stockings while I stood at the water's edge one final time. But even this little ritual was a disappointing one. I put my hand to my brow and gazed at the glittering bay, at the distant fields and hedges of Sheppey, at the low, pitch-painted houses of the town, and the masts and cranes of the harbour and the shipyard. It was all as familiar to me as the lines on my own face, and — like one's face when viewed in a glass - both fascinating and rather dull. No matter how hard I studied it, how fiercely I thought, I shall not gaze at you again for months and months, it looked just as it always did; and at last I turned my eyes away, and walked sadly home.

But it was the same there: nothing that I gazed at or touched was as special as I thought it should be, or changed by my going in any way. Nothing, that is, except the faces of my family; and these were so grave, or so falsely merry and stiff, that I could hardly bear to look at them at all.

So I was almost glad, at last, when it was time to say farewell. Father wouldn't let me take the little train to Canterbury, but said I must be driven, and hired a gig from the ostler at the Duke of Cumberland Hotel, to take me there himself. I kissed Mother, and Alice, and let my brother hand me to my seat at Father's side and place my luggage at my feet. There was little enough of it: an old leather suitcase with a strap about it, that held my clothes; a cap-box for my hats; and a little black tin trunk for everything else. The trunk was a good-bye gift from Davy. He had bought it new, and had my initials painted on the lid in swooning yellow capitals; and inside it he had pasted a map of Kent, with Whitstable marked on it with an arrow - to remind me, he said, where home was, in case I should forget.

We did not talk much, Father and I, on the drive to Canterbury. At the station we found the train already in and steaming, and Kitty, her own bags and baskets at her side, frowning over her watch. It wasn't like my anxious dreams at all: she gave a great wave when she saw us, and a smile.

‘I thought you might have changed your mind,' she cried, ‘at the very last moment.' And I shook my head - in wonder that she could still think such a thing, after all I'd said!

Father was very kind. He greeted Kitty graciously and, when he kissed me good-bye he kissed her, too, and wished her happiness and luck. At the last moment, as I leaned from the carriage to embrace him, he drew a little chamois bag from his pocket and placed it in my hand, and closed my fingers over it. It held coins - sovereigns - six of them, and more, I knew, than he could afford to part with; but by the time I had drawn open the neck of the bag and seen the gleam of the gold inside it, the train had begun to move, and it was too late to thrust them back. Instead, I could only shout my thanks, and kiss my fingers to him, and watch as he raised his hat and waved it; then place my cheek against the window-glass when he was gone from sight, and wonder when I should see him next.

I did not wonder for long, I am afraid to say, for the thrill of being with Kitty - of hearing her talk again of the rooms we were to share, and the kind of life we were to have together in the city, where she was to make her fortune - soon overcame my grief. My family would have thought me cruel, I know, to see me laugh while they were sad at home without me; but oh! I could no more not have smiled, that afternoon, than not drawn breath, or sweated.

And soon, too, I had London to gaze at and marvel over; for in an hour we had arrived at Charing Cross. Here Kitty found a porter to help us with our bags and boxes, and while he loaded them on to a trolley we looked round anxiously for Mr Bliss. At last, ‘There he is!' cried Kitty, and her pointing finger showed him striding up the platform, his whiskers and his coat-tails flying and his face very red.