Tipping the Velvet

by Sarah Waters

Tipping the Velvet

by Sarah Waters

Chapter 1

Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster? If you have, you will remember it. Some quirk of the Kentish coastline makes Whitstable natives - as they are properly called - the largest and the juiciest, the savouriest yet the subtlest, oysters in the whole of England. Whitstable oysters are, quite rightly, famous. The French, who are known for their sensitive palates, regularly cross the Channel for them; they are shipped, in barrels of ice, to the dining-tables of Hamburg and Berlin. Why, the King himself, I heard, makes special trips to Whitstable with Mrs Keppel, to eat oyster suppers in a private hotel; and as for the old Queen - she dined on a native a day (or so they say) till the day she died.

Did you ever go to Whitstable, and see the oyster-parlours there? My father kept one; I was born in it - do you recall a narrow, weather-boarded house, painted a flaking blue,

1

2

half-way between the High Street and the harbour? Do you could name you the contents of an oyster-cook's kitchen - remember the bulging sign that hung above the door, that could sample fish with a blindfold on, and tell you their said that Astley's Oysters, the Best in Kent were to be had variety. Whitstable was all the world to me, Astley's Parlour within? Did you, perhaps, push at that door, and step into my own particular country, oyster-juice my medium. the dim, low-ceilinged, fragrant room beyond it? Can you Although I didn't long believe the story told to me by recall the tables with their chequered cloths - the bill of fare Mother - that they had found me as a baby in an oysterchalked on a board - the spirit-lamps, the sweating slabs of shell, and a greedy customer had almost eaten me for lunch butter?

- for eighteen years I never doubted my own oyster-ish Were you served by a girl with a rosy cheek, and a saucy sympathies, never looked far beyond my father's kitchen for manner, and curls? That was my sister, Alice. Or was it a occupation, or for love.

man, rather tall and stooping, with a snowy apron falling It was a curious kind of life, mine, even by Whitstable from the knot in his neck-tie to the bow in his boots? That standards; but it was not a disagreeable or even a terribly was my father. Did you see, as the kitchen door swung to hard one. Our working day began at seven, and ended and fro, a lady stand frowning into the clouds of steam that twelve hours later; and through all those hours my duties rose from a pan of bubbling oyster soup, or a sizzling were the same. While Mother cooked, and Alice and my gridiron? That was my mother.

father served, I sat upon a high stool at the side of a vat of And was there at her side a slender, white-faced, natives, and scrubbed, and rinsed, and plied the oysterunremarkable-looking girl, with the sleeves of her dress knife. Some people like their oysters raw; and for them rolled up to her elbows, and a lock of lank and colourless your job is easiest, for you have merely to pick out a dozen hair forever falling into her eye, and her lips continually natives from the barrel, swill the brine from them, and place moving to the words of some street-singer's or music-hall them, with a piece of parsley or cress, upon a plate. But for song?

those who took their oysters stewed, or fried - or baked, or That was me.

scalloped, or put in a pie - my labours were more delicate. Like Molly Malone in the old ballad, I was a fishmonger, Then I must open each oyster, and beard it, and transfer it because my parents were. They kept the restaurant, and the to Mother's cooking-pot with all of its savoury flesh intact, rooms above it: I was raised an oyster-girl, and steeped in and none of its liquor spilled or tainted. Since a supperall the flavours of the trade. My first few childish steps I plate will hold a dozen fish; since oyster-teas are cheap; and took around vats of sleeping natives and barrels of ice; since our Parlour was a busy one, with room for fifty before I was ever given a piece of chalk and a slate, I was customers at once - well, you may calculate for yourself the handed an oyster-knife and instructed in its use; while I was vast numbers of oysters which passed, each day, beneath still lisping out my alphabet at the schoolmaster's knee, I my prising knife; and you might imagine, too, the redness

3

4

and the soreness and the sheer salty soddenness of my The Palace was a small and, I suspect, a rather shabby fingers at the close of every afternoon. Even now, two theatre; but when I see it in my memories I see it still with decades and more since I put aside my oyster-knife and quit my oyster-girl's eyes -I see the mirror-glass which lined the my father's kitchen for ever, I feel a ghostly, sympathetic walls, the crimson plush upon the seats, the plaster cupids, twinge in my wrist and finger-joints at the sight of a painted gold, which swooped above the curtain. Like our fishmonger's barrel, or the sound of an oyster-man's cry; oyster-house, it had its own particular scent - the scent, I and still, sometimes, I believe I can catch the scent of liquor know now, of music halls everywhere - the scent of wood and brine beneath my thumb-nail, and in the creases of my and grease-paint and spilling beer, of gas and of tobacco palm.

and of hair-oil, all combined. It was a scent which as a girl I I have said that there was nothing in my life, when I was loved uncritically; later I heard it described, by theatre young, but oysters; but that is not quite true. I had friends managers and artistes, as the smell of laughter, the very and cousins, as any girl must have who grows up in a small odour of applause. Later still I came to know it as the town in a large, old family. I had my sister Alice - my essence not of pleasure, but of grief.

dearest friend of all - with whom I shared a bedroom and a That, however, is to get ahead of my story.

bed, and who heard all my secrets, and told me all of hers. I I was more intimate than most girls with the colours and even had a kind of beau: a boy named Freddy, who worked scents of the Canterbury Palace — in the period, at least, of a dredging smack beside my brother Davy and my Uncle which I am thinking, that final summer in my father's Joe on Whitstable Bay.

house, when I became eighteen - because Alice had a beau And last of all I had a fondness - you might say, a kind of who worked there, a boy named Tony Reeves, who got us passion - for the music hall; and more particularly for seats at knock-down prices or for free. Tony was the music-hall songs and the singing of them. If you have nephew of the Palace's manager, the celebrated Tricky visited Whitstable you will know that this was a rather Reeves, and therefore something of a catch for our Alice. inconvenient passion, for the town has neither music hall My parents mistrusted him at first, thinking him 'rapid'

nor theatre - only a solitary lamp-post before the Duke of because he worked in a theatre, and wore cigars behind his Cumberland Hotel, where minstrel troupes occasionally ears, and talked glibly of contracts, London, and sing, and the Punch-and-Judy man, in August, sets his champagne. But no one could dislike Tony for long, he was booth. But Whitstable is only fifteen minutes away by train so large-hearted and easy and good; and like every other from Canterbury; and here there was a music hall - the boy who courted her, he adored my sister, and was ready to Canterbury Palace of Varieties - where the shows were be kind to us all on her account.

three hours long, and the tickets cost sixpence, and the acts Thus it was that Alice and I were so frequently to be found were the best to be seen, they said, in all of Kent. on a Saturday night, tucking our skirts beneath our seats

5

6

and calling out the choruses to the gayest songs, in the best sure, was perfectly smooth and clear, and my teeth were and most popular shows, at the Canterbury Palace. Like the very white; but these - in our family, at least - were counted rest of the audience, we were discriminating. We had our unremarkable, for since we all passed our days in a miasma favourite turns - artistes we watched and shouted for; songs of simmering brine, we were all as bleached and we begged to have sung and re-sung again and again until blemishless as cuttlefish.

the singer's throat was dry, and she - for more often than not

it was the lady singers whom Alice and I loved best - could No, girls like Alice were meant to dance upon a gilded sing no more, but only smile and curtsey.

stage, skirted in satin, hailed by cupids; and girls like me And when the show was over, and we had paid our respects were made to sit in the gallery, dark and anonymous, and to Tony in his stuffy little office behind the ticket-seller's watch them.

booth, we would carry the tunes away with us. We would Or so, anyway, I thought then.

sing them on the train to Whitstable - and sometimes others, The routine I have described - the routine of prising and returning home from the same show as merry as we, would bearding and cooking and serving, and Saturday-night visits sing them with us. We would whisper them into the to the music hall - is the one that I remember most from my darkness as we lay in bed, we would dream our dreams to girlhood; but it was, of course, only a winter one. From the beat of their verses; and we would wake next morning May to August, when British natives must be left to spawn, humming them still. We'd serve a bit of music-hall the dredging smacks pull down their sails or put to sea in glamour, then, with our fish suppers - Alice whistling as search of other quarry; and oyster-parlours all over England she carried platters, and making the customers smile to hear are obliged, in consequence, to change their menus or close her; me, perched on my high stool beside my bowl of brine, their doors. The business that my father did between singing to the oysters that I scrubbed and prised and autumn and spring, though excellent enough, was not so bearded. Mother said I should be on the stage myself. good that he could afford to shut his shop throughout the When she said it, however, she laughed; and so did I. The summer and take a holiday; but, like many Whitstable girls I saw in the glow of the footlights, the girls whose families whose fortunes depended upon the sea and its songs I loved to learn and sing, they weren't like me. They bounty, there was a noticeable easing of our labours in the were more like my sister: they had cherry lips, and curls warmer months, a kind of shifting into a slower, looser, that danced about their shoulders; they had bosoms that gayer key. The restaurant grew less busy. We served crab jutted, and elbows that dimpled, and ankles - when they and plaice and turbot and herrings, rather than oysters, and showed them - as slim and as shapely as beer-bottles. I was the filleting was kinder work than the endless scrubbing and tall, and rather lean. My chest was flat, my hair dull, my shelling of the winter months. We kept our windows raised, eyes a drab and an uncertain blue. My complexion, to be and the kitchen door thrown open; we were neither boiled

7

8

alive by the steam of the cooking-pots, nor numbed and never understand the attraction of the stalls ticket; it seemed frozen by barrels of oyster-ice, as we were in winter, but unnatural to me to seat oneself below the stage, and have to gently cooled by the breezes, and soothed by the sound of peer up at the artistes from a level somewhere near their fluttering canvas and ringing pulleys that drifted into our ankles, through the faint, shimmering haze of heat that rose kitchen from Whitstable Bay.

above the footlights. The circle gave a better view, but the The summer in which I turned eighteen was a warm one, gallery, though further away, to my mind gave the best of and grew warmer as the weeks advanced. For days at a time all; and there were two seats in the front row, at the very Father left the shop for Mother to run, and set up a cocklecentre of the gallery, that Alice and I particular favoured. and-whelk stall on the beach. Alice and I were free to visit Here you knew yourself to be not just at a show but in a the Canterbury Palace every night if we cared to; but just as theatre: you caught the shape of the stage and the sweep of no one that July wanted to eat fried fish and lobster soup in the seats; and you marvelled to see your neighbours' faces, our stuffy Parlour, so the very thought of passing an hour or and to know your own to be like theirs - all queerly lit by two in gloves and bonnet, beneath the flaring gasoliers of the glow of the footlights, and a damp at the lip, and with a Tricky Reeves's airless music hall, made us gasp and droop grin upon it, like that of a demon at some hellish revue. and prickle.

It was certainly as hot as hell in the Canterbury Palace on There are more similarities between a fishmonger's trade Gully Sutherland's opening night - so hot that, when Alice and a music-hall manager's than you might think. When and I leaned over the gallery rail to gaze at the audience Father changed his stock to suit his patrons' dulled and below, we were met by a blast of tobacco-and sweatover-heated palates, so did Tricky. He paid half of his scented air, that made us reel and cough. The theatre, as performers off, and brought in a host of new artistes from Tony's uncle had calculated, was almost full; yet it was the music halls of Chatham, Margate and Dover; most strangely hushed. People spoke in murmurs, or not at all. cleverly of all, he secured a one-week contract with a real When one looked from the gallery to the circle and the celebrity, from London: Gully Sutherland — one of the best stalls, one saw only the flap of hats and programmes. The comic singers in the business, and a guaranteed hall-filler flapping didn't stop when the orchestra struck up its few even in the hottest of hot Kentish summers.

bars of overture and the house lights dimmed; but it slowed Alice and I visited the Palace on the very first night of a little, and people sat up rather straighter in their seats. The Gully Sutherland's week. By this time we had an hush of fatigue became a silence of expectation. arrangement with the lady in the ticket-booth: we gave her The Palace was an old-fashioned music hall and, like many a nod and a smile as we arrived, then sauntered past her such places in the 1880s, still employed a chairman. This, window and chose any seat in the hall beyond that we of course, was Tricky himself: he sat at a table between the fancied. Usually, this was somewhere in the gallery. I could stalls and the orchestra and introduced the acts, and called

9

10

for order if the crowd became too rowdy, and led us in The next act was a comedian, the next a mentalist - a lady toasts to the Queen. He had a top-hat and a gavel - I have in evening dress and gloves, who stood blindfolded upon never seen a chairman without a gavel - and a mug of the stage while her husband moved among the audience porter. On his table stood a candle: this was kept lit for as with a slate, inviting people to write numbers and names long as there were artistes upon the stage, but it was upon it with a piece of chalk, for her to guess. extinguished for the interval, and at the show's close.

'Imagine the number floating through the air in flames of Tricky was a plain-faced man with a very handsome voice scarlet,' said the man impressively, 'and searing its way into a voice like the sound of a clarinet, at once liquid and my wife's brain, through her brow.' We frowned and penetrating, and lovely to listen to. On the night of squinted at the stage, and the lady staggered a little, and Sutherland's first performance he welcomed us to his show raised her hands to her temples.

and promised us an evening's entertainment we would The Power," she said, 'it is very strong tonight. Ah, I feel it never forget. Had we lungs? he asked. We must be prepared burning!'

to use them! Had we feet, and hands? We must make ready After this there was an acrobatic troupe - three men in to stamp, and clap! Had we sides? They would be split!

spangles who turned somersaults through hoops, and stood Tears? We would shed buckets of them! Eyes?

on one another's shoulders. At the climax of their act they

'Stretch 'em, now, in wonder! Orchestra, please. Limesformed a kind of human loop, and rolled about the stage to men, if you will.' He struck the table with his gavel - clack!a tune from the orchestra. We clapped at that; but it was too so that the candle-flame dipped. 'I give you, the marvellous, hot for acrobatics, and there was a general shuffling and the musical, the very, very merry, Merry" - he struck the whispering throughout this act, as boys were sent with table again -'Randalls!'

orders to the bar, and returned with bottles and glasses and The curtain quivered, then rose. There was a seaside mugs that had to be handed, noisily, down the rows, past backdrop to the stage and, upon the boards themselves, real heads and laps and grasping fingers. I glanced at Alice: she sand; and over this strolled four gay figures in holiday gear: had removed her hat and was fanning herself with it, and two ladies - one dark, one fair - with parasols; and two tall her cheeks were very red. I pushed my own little bonnet to gents, one with a ukulele on a strap. They sang 'All the the back of my head, leaned upon the rail before me with Girls are Lovely by the Seaside", very nicely; then the my chin upon my knuckles, and closed my eyes. I heard ukulele player did a solo, and the ladies lifted their skirts Tricky rise and call for silence with his gavel. for a spot of soft-shoe dancing on the sand. For a first turn,

'Ladies and gentlemen," he cried, 'a little treat for you now. they were good. We cheered them; and Tricky thanked us A little bit of helegance and top-drawer style. If you've very graciously for our appreciation.

champagne in your glasses' - there was an ironical cheering at this -'raise them now. If you've beer - why, beer's got

11

12

bubbles, don't it? Raise that too! Above all, raise your It was the hair, I think, which drew me most. If I had ever voices, as I give to you, direct from the Phoenix Theatre, seen women with hair as short as hers, it was because they Dover, our very own Kentish swell, our diminutive had spent time in hospital or prison; or because they were Faversham masher . . . Miss Kitty' -clack!-'Butler!'

mad. They could never have looked like Kitty Butler. Her There was a burst of handclapping and a few damp whoops. hair fitted her head like a little cap that had been sewn, just The orchestra struck up with some jolly number, and I for her, by some nimble-fingered milliner. I would say it heard the creak and whisper of the rising curtain. All was brown; brown, however, is too dull a word for it. It unwillingly I opened my eyes - then I opened them wider, was, rather, the kind of brown you might hear sung about - and lifted my head. The heat, my weariness, were quite a nut-brown, or a russet. It was almost, perhaps, the colour forgotten. Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a of chocolate - but then chocolate has no lustre, and this hair single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this there shone in the blaze of the limes like taffeta. It curled at her was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! - temple, slightly, and over her ears; and when she turned her that I had ever seen.

head a little to put her hat back on, I saw a strip of pale Of course, we had had male impersonator turns at the flesh at the nape of her neck where the collar ended and the Palace before; but in 1888, in the provincial halls, the hairline began that - for all the fire of the hot, hot hall - masher acts were not the things they are today. When Nelly made me shiver.

Power had sung The Last of the Dandies' to us six months She looked, I suppose, like a very pretty boy, for her face before she had worn tights and bullion fringe, just like a was a perfect oval, and her eyes were large and dark at the ballet-girl - only carried a cane and a billycock hat to make lashes, and her lips were rosy and full. Her figure, too, was her boyish. Kitty Butler did not wear tights or spangles. She boy-like and slender - yet rounded, vaguely but was, as Tricky had billed her, a kind of perfect West-End unmistakably, at the bosom, the stomach, and the hips, in a swell. She wore a suit -a handsome gentleman's suit, cut to way no real boy's ever was; and her shoes, I noticed after a her size, and lined at the cuffs and the flaps with flashing moment, had two-inch heels to them. But she strode like a silk. There was a rose in her lapel, and lavender gloves at boy, and stood like one, with her feet far apart and her her pocket. From beneath her waistcoat shone a stiffhands thrust carelessly into her trouser pockets, and her fronted shirt of snowy white, with a stand-up collar two head at an arrogant angle, at the very front of the stage; and inches high. Around the collar was a white bow-tie; and on when she sang, her voice was a boy's voice - sweet and her head there was a topper. When she took the topper off - terribly true.

as she did now to salute the audience with a gay 'Hallo!' - Her effect upon that over-heated hall was wonderful. Like one saw that her hair was perfectly cropped.

me, my neighbours all sat up, and gazed at her with shining eyes. Her songs were all well-chosen ones - things like

13

14

'Drink Up, Boys!', and 'Sweethearts and Wives', which the We called for her, but there were no more encores. The likes of G. H. Macdermott had already made famous, and curtain fell, the orchestra played; Tricky struck his gavel with which we could all, in consequence, join in - though it upon his table, blew out his candle, and it was the interval. was peculiarly thrilling to have them sung to us, not by a I peered, blinking, into the seats below, trying to catch sight gent, but by a girl, in neck-tie and trousers. In between each of the girl who had been thrown the flower. I could not song she addressed herself, in a swaggering, confidential think of anything more wonderful, at that moment, than to tone, to the audience, and exchanged little bits of nonsense receive a rose from Kitty Butler's hand.

with Tricky Reeves at his chairman's table. Her speaking I had gone to the Palace, like everyone else that night, to voice was like her singing one -strong and healthy, and see Gully Sutherland; but when he made his appearance at wonderfully warm upon the ear. Her accent was sometimes last -mopping his brow with a giant spotted handkerchief, music-hall cockney, sometimes theatrical-genteel, complaining about the Canterbury heat and sending the sometimes pure broad Kent.

audience into fits of sweaty laughter with his comical songs Her set lasted no longer than the customary fifteen minutes and his face-pulling -1 found that, after all, I hadn't the or so, but she was cheered and shouted back on to the stage heart for him. I wished only that Miss Butler would stride at the end of that time twice over. Her final song was a upon the stage again, to fix us with her elegant, arrogant gentle one - a ballad about roses and a lost sweetheart. As gaze - to sing to us about champagne, and shouting she sang she removed her hat and held it to her bosom; then

'Hurrah!' at the races. The thought made me restless. At last she pulled the flower from her lapel and placed it against Alice - who was laughing at Gully's grimaces as loudly as her cheek, and seemed to weep a little. The audience, in everybody else - put her mouth to my ear: 'What's up with sympathy, let out one huge collective sigh, and bit their lips you?'

to hear her boyish tones grow suddenly so tender.

'I'm hot,' I said; and then: 'I'm going downstairs.' And while All at once, however, she raised her eyes and gazed at us she sat on for the rest of the turn, I went slowly down to the over her knuckles: we saw that she wasn't'weeping at all, empty lobby - there to stand with my cheek against the cool but smiling - and then, suddenly, winking, hugely and glass of the door, and to sing again, to myself, Miss Butler's roguishly. Very swiftly she stepped once again to the front song, 'Sweethearts and Wives'.

of the stage, and gazed into the stalls for the prettiest girl. Soon there came the roars and stamps that meant the end of When she found her, she raised her hand and the rose went Gully's set; and after a moment Alice appeared, still fanning flying over the shimmer of the footlights, over the herself with her bonnet, and blowing at the dampened curls orchestra-pit, to land in the pretty girl's lap. which clung to her pink cheeks. She gave me a wink: 'Let's We went wild for her then. We roared and stamped and she, call on Tony.' I followed her to his little room, and sat and all gallant, raised her hat to us and, waving, took her leave. idly twisted in the chair behind his desk, while he stood

15

16

with his arm about her waist. There was a bit of chat about Plushes. You sit in a box, and make sure the audience gets a Mr Sutherland and his spotted handkerchief; then, 'What look at you: it might give them ideas above their station.'

about that Kitty Butler, eh?' said Tony. 'Ain't she a

'It might give Nancy ideas above her station,' said Alice. smasher? If she carries on tickling the crowd like she did

'We couldn't have that.' Then she laughed, as Tony tonight, I tell you, Uncle'll be extending her contract till tightened his grip about her waist and leaned to kiss her. Christmas.'

It would not have been quite the thing, I suppose, for city At that I stopped my twirling. 'She's the best turn I ever girls to go to music halls unchaperoned; but people weren't saw," I said, 'here or anywhere! Tricky would be a fool to so very prim about things like that in Whitstable. Mother let her go: you tell him from me.' Tony laughed, and said he only gave a frown and a mild tut-tut when I spoke, next would be sure to; but as he said it I saw him wink at Alice, day, of returning to the Palace; Alice laughed and declared then let his gaze dally, rather spoonily, over her lovely face. that I was mad: she wouldn't come with me, she said, to sit I looked away, and sighed, and said quite guilelessly: 'Oh, I all night in the smoke and the heat for the sake of a glimpse do wish that I might see Miss Butler again!'

of a girl in trousers - a girl whose turn we had seen and

'And so you shall,' said Alice, 'on Saturday.' We had all songs we had listened to not four-and-twenty hours before. planned to come to the Palace - Father, Mother, Davy, Fred, I was shocked by her carelessness, but secretly rather glad everyone - on Saturday night. I plucked at my glove. at the thought of gazing again at Miss Butler, all alone. I

'I know,' I said. 'But Saturday seems so very far away was also more thrilled than I cared to let on by Tony's Tony laughed again. 'Well, Nance, and who said you had to promise that I might sit in a box. For my trip to the theatre wait so long? You can come tomorrow night if you like - the night before I had worn a rather ordinary dress; now, and any other night you please, so far as I'm concerned. however - it had been a slow day in the Parlour, and Father And if there ain't a seat for you in the gallery, why, we'll let us shut the shop at six - I put on my Sunday frock, the put you in a box at the side of the stage, and you can gaze at frock I usually wore to go out walking in with Freddy. Miss Butler to your heart's content from there!'

Davy whistled when I came down all dressed up; and there He spoke, I'm sure, to impress my sister; but my heart gave were one or two boys who tried to catch my eye all through a strange kind of twist at his words. I said, 'Oh, Tony, do the ride to Canterbury. But I knew myself - for this one you really mean it?'

night, at least! - apart from them. When I reached the

'Of course.'

Palace I nodded to the ticket-girl, as usual; but then I left

'And really in a box?'

my favourite gallery seat for someone else to sweat in, and

'Why not? Between you and me, the only customers we made my way to the side of the stage, to a chair of gilt and ever get for those seats are the Wood family and the scarlet plush. And here - rather unnervingly exposed, as it turned out, before the idle, curious or envious gaze of the

17

18

whole, restless hall - here I sat, while the Merry Randalls satin that was cut at the shoulders and showing her arms. A shuffled to the same songs as before, the comic told his lovely girl I had never seen before but felt ready at that jokes, the mentalist staggered, the acrobats dived. Then moment to despise!

Tricky bade us welcome, once again, our very own Kentish I looked back to Kitty Butler. She had her topper raised and swell... and I held my breath.

was making her final, sweeping salute. Notice me, I This time, when she called 'Hallo!' the crowd replied with a thought. Notice me! I spelled the words in my head in great, genial roar: word must have spread, I think, of her scarlet letters, as the husband of the mentalist had advised, success. My view of her now, of course, was side-on and and sent them burning into her forehead like a brand. rather queer; but when she strode, as before, to the front of Notice me!

the stage it seemed to me her step was lighter - as if the She turned. Her eyes flicked once my way, as if to note admiration of the audience lent her wings. I leaned towards only that the box, empty last night, was occupied now; and her, my fingers hard upon the velvet of my unfamiliar seat. then she ducked beneath the dropping crimson of the The boxes at the Palace were very close to the stage: all the curtain and was gone.

time she sang, she was less than twenty feet away from me. Tricky blew out his candle.

I could make out all the lovely details of her costume - the

'Well,' said Alice a little later, as I stepped into our parlour watch-chain, looped across the buttons of her waistcoat, the our real parlour, not the oyster-house downstairs - 'and how silver links that fastened her cuffs - that I had missed from was Kitty Butler tonight?'

my old place up in the gallery.

'Just the same as last night, I should think,' said Father. I saw her features, too, more clearly. I saw her ears, which

'Not at all,' I said, pulling off my gloves. 'She was even were rather small and unpierced. I saw her lips - saw, now, better.'

that they were not naturally rosy, but had of course been

'Even better, my word! If she carries on like that, just think carmined for the footlights. I saw that her teeth were how good she'll be by Saturday!'

creamy-white; and that her eyes were brown as chocolate, Alice gazed at me, her lip twitching. 'D'you think you can like her hair.

wait till then, Nancy?' she asked.

Because I knew what to expect from her set - and because I

'I can,' I said with a show of carelessness, 'but I'm not sure spent so much time watching her, rather than listening to that I shall.' I turned to my mother, who sat sewing by the her songs - it seemed over in a moment. She was called empty grate. 'You won't mind, will you,' I said lightly, 'if I back, once again, for two encores, and she finished, as go back again tomorrow night?'

before, with the sentimental ballad and the tossing of the

'Back again?' said everyone in amusement. I looked only at rose. This time I saw who caught it: a girl in the third row, a Mother. She had raised her head and now regarded me with girl in a straw hat with feathers on it, and a dress of yellow a little puzzled frown.

19

20

'I don't see why not,' she said slowly. 'But really, Nancy, all Father leaned towards him. 'Well, we are told it is Kitty that way, just for one turn... And all on your own, too. Can't Butler,' he said. 'If you ask me' - and here he winked and you get Fred to take you along?'

rubbed his nose - 'I think there's a young chap in the Fred was the last person I wanted at my side, the next time I orchestra pit what she's got her eye on ..." saw Kitty Butler. I said, 'Oh he won't want to see an act like

'Ah,' said Joe, significantly. 'Let's hope poor Frederick don't that! No, I shall go on my own.' I said it rather firmly, as if catch on to it, then ..."

going to the Palace every night was some chore I had been At that, everybody looked my way, and I blushed - and so set to do and I had generously decided to do it with the seemed, I suppose, to prove my father's words. Davy minimum of bother and complaint.

snorted; Mother, who had frowned before, now smiled. I let There was a second's almost awkward silence. Then Father her - I let them all think just what they liked - and said said, 'You are a funny little thing, Nancy. All the way to nothing; and soon, as before, the talk turned to other Canterbury in the sweltering heat - and not even to wait for matters.

a glimpse of Gully Sutherland when you get there!' And at I could deceive my parents and my brother with my that, everybody laughed, and the second's awkwardness silences; from my sister Alice, however, I could keep passed, and the conversation turned to other things. nothing.

There were more cries of disbelief, however, and more

'Is there a feller you've got your eye on, at the Palace?' she smiles, when I came home from my third trip to the Palace asked me later, when the rest of the house lay hushed and and announced, shyly, my intention of returning there a sleeping.

fourth time, and a fifth. Uncle Joe was visiting us: he was

'Of course not,' I said quietly.

pouring beer from a bottle, carefully, into a tilted glass, but

'It's just Miss Butler, then, that you go to see?'

looked up when he heard the laughter.

'Yes.'

'What's all this?' he said.

There was a silence, broken only by the distant rumble of

'Nancy's mashed out on that Kitty Butler, at the Palace,' said wheels and faint thud of hooves, from the High Street, and Davy. 'Imagine that, Uncle Joe - being mashed on a the even fainter sucking whoosh of sea against shingle from masher!'

the bay. We had put out our candle but left the window I said, 'You shut up.'

wide and unshuttered. I saw in the gleam of starlight that Mother looked sharp. 'You shut up, please, madam.'

Alice's eyes were open. She was gazing at me with an Uncle Joe took a sip of his beer, then licked the froth from ambiguous expression that seemed half amusement, half his whiskers. 'Kitty Butler?' he said. 'She's the gal what distaste.

dresses up as a feller, ain't she?' He pulled a face. 'Pooh,

'You're rather keen on her, ain't you?' she said then. Nancy, the real thing not good enough for you any more?'

21

22

I looked away, and didn't answer her at once. When I spoke time I would leave Mother and Alice to work the shop, and at last it was not to her at all, but to the darkness. run down to the beach to ladle out cockles and crab-meat

'When I see her,' I said, 'it's like -I don't know what it's like. and whelks, and bread-and-butter, at Father's stall. It was a It's like I never saw anything at all before. It's like I am novelty, serving teas upon the shingle; but it was also hard filling up, like a wine-glass when it's filled with wine. I to stand in the sun, with the vinegar running from your watch the acts before her and they are like nothing - they're wrists to your elbows, and your eyes smarting from the like dust. Then she walks on the stage and - she is so pretty; fumes of it. Father gave me an extra half-crown for every and her suit is so nice; and her voice is so sweet. . . She afternoon I worked there. I bought a hat, and a length of makes me want to smile and weep, at once. She makes me lavender ribbon with which to trim it, but the rest of the sore, here.' I placed a hand upon my chest, upon the breastmoney I put aside: I would use it, when I had enough, to bone. 'I never saw a girl like her before. I never knew that buy a season ticket for the Canterbury train.

there were girls like her . . .' My voice became a trembling For I made my nightly trips all through that week, and sat whisper then, and I found that I could say no more. as Tony put it - with the Plushes, and gazed at Kitty Butler There was another silence. I opened my eyes and looked at as she sang; and I never once grew tired of her. It was only, Alice - and knew at once that I shouldn't have spoken; that I always, marvellous to step again into my little scarlet box; should have been as dumb and as cunning with her as with to gaze at the bank of faces, and the golden arch above the the rest of them. There was a look on her face - it was not stage, and the velvet drapes and tassels, and the stretch of ambiguous at all now - a look of mingled shock, and dusty floorboard with its row of lights - like open cockle nervousness, and embarrassment or shame. I had said too shells, I always thought them - before which I would soon much. I felt as if my admiration for Kitty Butler had lit a see Kitty stride and swagger and wave her hat . . . Oh! and beacon inside me, and opening my unguarded mouth had when she stepped on stage at last, there would be that rush sent a shaft of light into the darkened room, illuminating of gladness so swift and sharp I would catch my breath to all.

feel it, and grow faint.

I had said too much - but it was that, or say nothing. Alice's That is how it was on my solitary visits; but on Saturday, of eyes held my own for a moment longer, then her lashes course, as we had planned, my family came - and that was fluttered and fell. She didn't speak; she only rolled away rather different.

from me, and faced the wall.

There were nearly twelve of us in all - more by the time we The weather continued very fierce that week. The sun reached the theatre and took our seats, for we met friends brought trippers to Whitstable and to our Parlour, but the and neighbours on the train and at the ticket-booth, and they heat jaded their appetites. They called as often, now, for tea attached themselves to our gay party, like barnacles. There and lemonade, as for plaice and mackerel, and for hours at a wasn't room for us to sit in one long line: we spread

23

24

ourselves about in groups of threes and fours, so that when I wished, too, that I might be alone when she did so - alone one person asked Did we care for a cherry? or Did Mother in my little box with the door shut fast behind me - rather have her eau-de-cologne? or Why had Millicent not brought than seated in the midst of a crowd of people to whom she Jim? the message must be passed, in a shriek or a whisper, was nothing, and who thought my particular passion for her all along the gallery, from cousin to cousin, from aunt to only queer, or quaint.

sister to uncle to friend, disturbing all the rows along the They had heard me sing 'Sweethearts and Wives' a way.

thousand times; they had heard me tell the details of her So, anyway, it seemed to me. My seat was between Fred costume, of her hair and voice; I had burned all week to and Alice with Davy and his girl, Rhoda, on Alice's left, have them see her, and pronounce her marvellous. Now that and Mother and Father behind. It was crowded in the hall they were gathered here, however, gay and careless and hot and still very hot - though cooler than it had been on the and loud, I despised them. I could hardly bear for them to previous, sweltering Monday night; but I, who had had a look upon her at all; worse still, I thought I couldn't endure box to myself for a week, with the draught from the stage to to have them look upon me, as I watched her. I had that chill me, seemed to feel the heat more than anyone. Fred's sensation again, that there had grown a lantern or a beacon hand upon mine, or his lips at my cheek, I found inside me. I was sure that when she stepped upon the stage unbearable, like blasts of steam rather than caresses; even it would be like putting a match to the wick, and I would the pressure of Alice's sleeve against my arm, and the flare up, golden and incandescent but somehow painfully warmth of Father's face against my neck as he leaned to ask and shamefully bright; and my family and my beau would us our opinion of the show, made me flinch, and sweat, and shrink away from me, appalled.

squirm in my seat.

Of course, when she strode before the footlights at last, no It was as if I had been forced to pass the evening amongst such thing occurred. I saw Davy look my way and give a strangers. Their pleasure in the details of the show - which I wink, and heard Father's whisper: 'Here's the very gal, then, had sat through so often, so impatiently - struck me as at last'; but when I glowed and sparkled it was evidently incomprehensible, idiotic. When they sang out the chorus with a dark and secret flame which no one - except Alice, along with the maddening Merry Randalls, and shrieked perhaps -looked for or saw.

with laughter at the comedian's jokes; when they gazed As I had feared, however, I felt horribly far from Miss round-eyed at the staggering mentalist and called the Butler that night. Her voice was as strong, her face as human loop back on to the stage for another tumble, I lovely, as before; but I had been used to hearing the breaths chewed my nails. As Kitty Butler's appearance grew more she drew between the phrases, used to catching the glimmer imminent, I became ever more agitated and more wretched. of the limes upon her lip, the shadow of her lashes on her I could not but long for her to step upon the stage again; but powdered cheek. Now I felt as though I was watching her

25

26

through a pane of glass, or with my ears stopped up with I heard Mother ask, How did the lady in the evening dress wax. When she finished her set my family cheered, and read all those numbers with a blindfold on?

Freddy stamped his feet and whistled. Davy called, 'Stone The cheers were fading, Tricky's candle was out; the me, if she ain't just as wonderful as Nancy painted her!' - gasoliers flared, making us blink. Kitty Butler had looked then he leaned across Alice's lap to wink and add, Though for me - had raised her head and looked for me; and I was not so wonderful that I'd spend a shilling a week on train lost and sitting with strangers.

tickets to come and see her every night!' I didn't answer I spent the next day, Sunday, at the cockle-stall; and when him. Kitty Butler had come back for her encore, and had Freddy called that night to ask me out walking, I said I was already drawn the rose from her lapel; but it was no comfort too tired. That day was cooler, and by Monday the weather to me at all to know my family liked her - indeed, it made seemed really to have broken. Father came back to the me more wretched still. I gazed again at the figure in the Parlour full-time, and I spent the day in the kitchen, gutting shaft of limelight and thought quite bitterly, you would be and filleting. We worked till almost seven: I had just marvellous, if I were here or not. You would be marvellous, enough time between the closing of the shop and the without my admiration. I might as well be at home, putting leaving of the Canterbury train to change my dress, to pull crab-meat in a paper cone, for all you know of me!

on a pair of elastic-sided boots and to sit down with Father But even as I thought it, something rather curious and Mother, Alice, Davy and Rhoda for a hasty supper. happened. She had reached the end of her song - there was They thought it more than strange, I knew, that I should be the business with the flower and the pretty girl; and when returning to the Palace yet again; Rhoda, in particular, this was done she wheeled into the wing. And as she did it I seemed greatly tickled by the story of my 'mash'. 'Don't you saw her head go up - and she looked - looked, I swear it - mind her going, Mrs Astley?' she asked. 'My mother would towards the empty chair in which I usually sat, then never let me go so far alone; and I am two years older. But lowered her head and moved on. If I had only been in my then, Nancy is such a steady sort of girl, I suppose.' I had box tonight, I would have had her eyes upon me! If I had been a steady girl; it was over Alice - saucy Alice - that my only been in my box, instead of here -!

parents usually worried. But at Rhoda's words I saw Mother I glanced at Davy and Father: they were both on their feet look me over and grow thoughtful. I had on my Sunday calling for more; but letting their calls die, and beginning to dress, and my new hat trimmed with lavender; and I had a stretch. Beside me Freddy was still smiling at the stage. His lavender bow at the end of my plait of hair, and a bow of hair was plastered to his forehead, his lip was dark where the same ribbon sewn on each of my white linen gloves. he was letting whiskers grow; his cheek was red and had a My boots were black with a wonderful shine. I had put a pimple on it. 'Ain't she a peach?' he said to me. Then he spot of Alice's perfume - eau de rose - behind each ear; and rubbed his eyes, and shouted to Davy for a beer. Behind me I had darkened my lashes with castor oil from the kitchen.

27

28

Mother said, 'Nancy, do you really think -?' But as she dally with it a little longer than it should. I ceased my spoke the clock on the mantel gave a ting! It was a quarterwhispered singing and merely stared, and swallowed. I saw past seven, I should miss my train.

her leave the stage -again, her gaze met mine - and then I said, 'Good-bye! Good-bye!' - and fled, before she could return for her encore. She sang her ballad and plucked the delay me.

flower from her lapel, and held it to her cheek, as we all I missed my train anyway, and had to wait at the station till expected. But when her song was finished she did not peer the later one came. When I reached the Palace the show had into the stalls for the handsomest girl, as she usually did. begun: I took my seat to find the acrobats already on the Instead, she took a step to her left, towards the box in which stage forming their loop, their spangles gleaming, their I sat. And then she took another. In a moment she had white suits dusty at the knees. There was clapping; Tricky reached the corner of the stage, and stood facing me; she rose to say -what he said every night, so that half the was so close I could see the glint of her collar-stud, the beat audience smiled and said it with him - that You couldn't get of the pulse in her throat, the pink at the corner of her eye. many of those to the pound! Then - as if it were part of the She stood there for what seemed to be a small eternity; then overture to her routine and she could not work without it -I her arm came up, the flower flashed for a second in the gripped my seat and held my breath, while he raised his beam of the lime - and my own hand, trembling, rose to gavel to beat out Kitty Butler's name.

catch it. The crowd gave a broad, indulgent cheer of She sang that night like -I cannot say like an angel, for her pleasure, and a laugh. She held my flustered gaze with her songs were all of champagne suppers and strolling in the own more certain one, and made me a little bow. Then she Burlington Arcade; perhaps, then, like a fallen angel - or stepped backwards suddenly, waved to the hall, and left us. yet again like a falling one: she sang like a falling angel I sat for a moment as if stunned, my eyes upon the flower in might sing with the hounds of heaven fresh burst behind my hand, which had been so near, so recently, to Kitty him, and hell still distant and unguessed. And as she did so, Butler's cheek. I wanted to raise it to my own face - and I sang with her - not loudly and carelessly like the rest of was about to, I think, when the clatter of the hall pierced the crowd, but softly, almost secretly, as if she might hear my brain at last, and made me look about me and see the me the better if I whispered rather than bawled. inquisitive, indulgent looks that were turned my way, and And perhaps, after all, she did. I had thought that, when she the nods and the chuckles and the winks that met my upwalked on to the stage, she had glanced my way - as much turned gaze. I reddened, and shrank back into the shadows as to say, the box is filled again. Now, as she wheeled of the box. With my back turned to the bank of prying eyes before the footlights, I thought I saw her look at me again. I slipped the rose into the belt of my dress, and pulled on The idea was a fantastic one - and yet every time her gaze my gloves. My heart, which had begun to pound when Miss swept the crowded hall it seemed to brush my own, and Butler had stepped towards me across the stage, was still

29

30

beating painfully hard; but as I left my box and made my that you like her,' he said simply. 'Now will you come way towards the crowded foyer and the street beyond, it along, or what?'

began to feel light, and glad, and I began to want to smile. I I did not know what to say. So I said nothing, but let him had to place a hand before my lips so as not to appear an lead me away from the great glass doors with the blue, cool, idiot, smiling to myself as if at nothing.

Canterbury night behind them, past the archway that led to Just as I was about to step into the street, I heard my name the stalls, and the staircase to the gallery, towards an alcove called. I turned, and saw Tony, crossing the lobby with his in the far corner of the foyer, with a curtain across it, and a arm raised to catch my eye. It was a relief to have a friend, rope before it, and a sign swinging from the rope, marked at last, to smile at. I took the hand away, and grinned like a Private.

monkey.

'Hey, hey,' he said breathlessly when he reached my side, Chapter 2

'someone's merry, and I know why! How come girls never I had been back stage at the Palace with Tony once or twice look so gay as that, when / give them roses?' I blushed before, but only in the daytime, when the hall was dim and again, and returned my fingers to my lips, but said nothing. quite deserted. Now the corridors along which I walked Tony smirked.

with him were full of light and noise. We passed one

'I've got a message for you,' he said then. 'Someone to see doorway that led, I knew, to the stage itself: I caught a you.' I raised my eyebrows; I thought perhaps Alice or glimpse of ladders and ropes and trailing gas-pipes; of boys Freddy were here, come to meet me. Tony's smirk in caps and aprons, wheeling baskets, manoeuvring lights. I broadened. 'Miss Butler,' he said, 'would like a word.'

had the sensation then - and I felt it again in the years that My own grin faded at once. 'A word?' I said. 'Miss Butler? followed, every time I made a similar trip back stage - that I With me?'

had stepped into the workings of a giant clock, stepped That's right. She asked Ike, the fly-man, who was the girl through the elegant casing to the dusty, greasy, restless that sat in the box every night, on her own, and Ike said you machinery that lay, all hidden from the common eye, was a pal of mine, and to ask me. So she did. And I told behind it.

her. And now she wants to see you.'

Tony led me down a passageway that stopped at a metal

'What for? Oh, Tony, what on earth for? What did you tell staircase, and here he paused to let three men go by. They her?' I caught hold of his arm and gripped it hard. wore hats and carried overcoats and bags; they were sallow'Nothing, except the truth -' I gave his arm a twist. The truth faced and poor-looking, with a patina of flashness - I was terrible. I didn't want her to know about the shivering thought they might be salesmen carrying sample-cases. and the whispering, the flame and the streaming light. Tony Only when they had moved on, and I heard them sharing a prised my fingers from his sleeve, and held my hand. 'Just joke with the stage door-keeper, did I realise that they were

31

32

the trio of tumblers taking their leave for the night, and that was dressed in the trousers and the shoes that she had worn their bags contained their spangles. I had a sudden fear that for her act, but she had removed the jacket, the waistcoat, Kitty Butler might after all be just like them: plain, and, of course, the hat. Her starched shirt was held tight unremarkable, almost I unrecognisable as the handsome girl against the swell of her bosom by a pair of braces, but I had seen swaggering in the glow of the footlights. I very gaped at the throat where she had undipped her bow-tie. nearly called to Tony to take me back; but he had Beyond the shirt I saw an edge of creamy lace. descended the staircase, and when I caught up with him in I looked away. 'I do like your act,' I said.

the passageway below he was at a door, and had already

'I should think you do, you come to it so often!'

turned its handle.

I smiled. 'Well, Tony lets me in, you see, for nothing . . .'

The door was one of a row of others, indistinguishable from That made her laugh: her tongue looked very pink, her teeth its neighbours but for a brass figure 7, very old and extraordinarily white, against her painted lips. I felt myself scratched, that was screwed at eye level upon its centre blush. 'What I mean is,' I said, 'Tony lets me have the box. panel, and a hand-written card that had been tacked below. But I would pay if I had to, and sit in the gallery. For I do Miss Kitty Butler, it said.

so like your act, Miss Butler, so very, very much.'

I found her seated at a little table before a looking-glass; Now she did not laugh, but she tilted her head a little. 'Do she had half-turned - to reply, I suppose, to Tony's knock - you?' she answered gently.

but at my approach she rose, and reached to shake my hand.

'Oh, yes.'

She was a little shorter than me, even in her heels, and Tell me what it is you like then, so much.'

younger than I had imagined - perhaps my sister's age, of I hesitated. 'I like your costume,' I said at last. 'I like your one-or two-and-twenty.

songs, and the way you sing them. I like the way you talk to

'Aha,' she said, when Tony had left us - there was a hint, Tricky. I like your . . . hair.' Here I stumbled; and now she still, of her footlight manner in her voice - 'my mystery seemed to blush. There was a second's almost awkward admirer! I was sure it must be Gully you came to see; then silence - then, suddenly, as if from somewhere very near at someone said you never stay beyond the interval. Is it really hand, there came the sound of music - the blast of a horn me you stay for? I never had a fan before!' As she spoke she and the pulse of a drum - and a cheer, like the roaring of the leaned quite comfortably against the table - it was cluttered, wind in some vast sea-shell. I gave a jump, and looked I now saw, with jars of cream and sticks of grease-paint, about me; and she laughed. 'The second half," she said. with playing cards and half-smoked cigarettes and filthy After a moment the cheering stopped; the music, however, tea-cups - and crossed her legs at the ankle, and folded her went on pulsing and thumping like a great heart-beat. arms. Her face was still thickly powdered, and very red at She left off leaning against the table, and asked, Did I mind the lip; her lashes and eyelids were black with paint. She if she smoked? I shook my head, and shook it again when

33

34

she took up a packet of cigarettes from amongst the dirty

- her mouth stretching wide, out of a kind of sympathy with cups and playing cards, and held it to me. Upon the wall her eyelids, and her breath misting the mirror. For a second there was a hissing gas-jet in a wire cage, and she put her she seemed quite to have forgotten me. I studied the skin of face to it, to light the cigarette. With the fag at the side of her face and her throat. It had emerged from its mask of her lip, her eyes screwed up against the flame, she looked powder and grease the colour of cream - the colour of the like a boy again; when she took the cigarette away, lace on her chemise; but it was darkened at the nose and however, the cork was smudged with crimson. Seeing that, cheeks - and even, I saw, at the edge of her lip - by freckles, she tutted: 'Look at me, with all my paint still on! Will you brown as her hair. I had not suspected the existence of the sit with me while I clean my face? It's not very polite, I freckles. I found them wonderfully and inexplicably know, but I must get ready rather quick; my room is needed moving.

later by another girl..."

She wiped her breath from the glass, then, and gave me a I did as she asked, and sat and watched her smear her wink, and asked me more about myself; and because it was cheeks with cream, then take a cloth to them. She worked somehow easier to talk to her reflection than to her face, I quickly and carefully, but distractedly; and as she rubbed at began at last to chat with her quite freely. At first she her face she held my gaze in the glass. She looked at my answered as I thought an actress should - comfortably, new hat and said, 'What a pretty bonnet!' Then she asked rather teasingly, laughing when I blushed or said a foolish how I knew Tony - was he my beau? I was shocked at that thing. Gradually, however - as if she was stripping the paint and said, 'Oh, no! He is courting my sister'; and she from her voice, as well as from her face - her tone grew laughed. Where did I live? she asked me then. What did I milder, less pert and pressing. At last - she gave a yawn, work at?

and rubbed her knuckles in her eyes - at last her voice was

'I work in an oyster-house,' I said.

just a girl's: melodious and strong and clear, but just a

'An oyster-house!' The idea seemed to tickle her. Still Kentish girl's voice, like my own.

rubbing at her cheeks, she began to hum, and then to sing Like the freckles, it made her - not unremarkable, as I had very low beneath her breath.

feared to find her; but marvellously, achingly real. Hearing

'As I was going down Bishopgate Street, An oyster-girl I it, I understood at last my wildness of the past seven days. I happened to meet -'

thought, how queer it is! - and yet, how very ordinary: I am A swipe at the crimson of her lip, the black of her lashes. in love with you.

'Into her basket I happened to peep, To see if she'd got any Soon her face was wiped quite bare, and her cigarette oysters . . .'

smoked to the filter; and then she rose and put her fingers to She sang on; then opened one eye very wide, and leaned her hair. 'I had better change,' she said, almost shyly. I took close to the glass to remove a stubborn crumb of spit-black

35

36

the hint, and said that I should go, and she walked the I put my glove back on. My fingers seemed to tingle against couple of steps with me to the door.

the cloth. 'Will you come and see me again, Miss

'Thank you, Miss Astley,' she said - she already had my Mermaid?' she asked. Her tone was light; incredibly, name from Tony - 'for coming to see me.' She held out her however, she seemed to mean it. I said, Oh yes, I should hand to me, and I lifted my own in response - then like that very much, and she nodded with something like remembered my glove - my glove with the lavender bows satisfaction. Then she made me another little bow, and we upon it, to match my pretty hat - and quickly drew it off and said good-night; and she closed the door and was gone. offered her my naked fingers. All at once she was the I stood quite still, facing the little 7, the hand-written card, gallant boy of the footlights again. She straightened her Miss Kitty Butler. I found myself unable to move from in back, made me a little bow, and raised my knuckles to her front of it - quite as unable as if I really were a mermaid lips.

and had no legs to walk on, but a tail. I blinked. I had been I flushed with pleasure - until I saw her nostrils quiver, and sweating, and the sweat, and the smoke of her cigarette, had knew, suddenly, what she smelled: those rank sea-scents, of worked upon the castor oil on my lashes to make my eyeliquor and oyster-flesh, crab-meat and whelks, which had lids very sore. I put my hand to them - the hand that she had flavoured my fingers and those of my family for so many kissed; then I held my ringers to my nose and smelled years we had all ceased, entirely, to notice them. Now I had through the linen what she had smelled, and blushed again. thrust them beneath Kitty Butler's nose! I felt ready to die In the dressing-room all was silent. Then at last, very low, of shame.

came the sound of her voice. She was singing again the I made, at once, to pull my hand away; but she held it fast song about the oyster-girl and the basket. But the song in her own, still pressed to her lips, and laughed at me over came rather fitfully now, and I realised of course that as she the knuckles. There was a look in her eye I could not quite was singing she was stooping to unlace her boots, and interpret.

straightening to shrug her braces off, and perhaps kicking

'You smell,' she began, slowly and wonderingly, 'like -'

free her trousers . . .

'Like a herring!' I said bitterly. My cheeks were hot now All this; and there was only the thickness of one slender and very red; there were tears, almost, in my eyes. I think door between her body and my own smarting eyes!

she saw my confusion and was sorry for it.

It was that thought which made me find my legs at last, and

'Not at all like a herring,' she said gently. 'But perhaps, leave her.

maybe, like a mermaid ..." And she kissed my fingers Watching Miss Butler perform upon the stage after having properly, and this time I let her; and at last my blush faded, spoken to her, and been smiled at by her, and had her lips and I smiled.

upon my hand, was a strange experience, at once more and less thrilling than it had been before. Her lovely voice, her

37

38

elegance, her swagger: I felt I had been given a kind of invitation, and been treated by her like a friend, she was secret share in them, and pinked complacently every time impressed. I worked harder than ever at my kitchen duties; I the crowd roared their welcome or called her back on to the filleted fish, washed potatoes, chopped parsley, thrust crabs stage for an encore. She threw me no more roses; these all and lobsters into pans of steaming water - and all so briskly went, as before, to the pretty girls in the stalls. But I know I barely had breath for a song to cover their shrieks with. she saw me in my box, for I felt her eyes upon me, Alice would say rather sullenly that my mania for a certain sometimes, as she sang; and always, when she left the person at the Palace made me dull; but I didn't speak to stage, there was that sweep of her hat for the hall, and a Alice much these days. Now every working day ended, for nod, or a wink, or the ghost of a smile, just for me. me, with a lightning change, and a hasty supper, and a run But if I was complacent, I was also dissatisfied. I had seen to the station for the Canterbury train; and every trip to beyond the powder and the strut; it was terribly hard to Canterbury ended in Kitty Butler's dressing-room. I spent have to sit with common audiences as she sang, and have more time in her company than I did watching her perform no more of her than they. I burned to visit her again - yet upon the stage, and saw her more often without her makealso feared to. She had invited me, but she hadn't named a up, and her suit, and her footlight manner, than with them. time; and I, in those days, was terribly anxious and shy. So For the friendlier we grew the freer she became, and the though I went as often as I was able to my box at the more confiding.

Palace, and watched and applauded her as she sang, and

'You must call me "Kitty",' she said early on, 'and I shall received those secret looks and tokens, it was a full week call you - what? Not "Nancy", for that is what everyone before I made my way again back stage, and presented calls you. What do they call you at home? "Nance", is it? myself, all pale, sweating and uncertain, at her dressingOr "Nan"? '"Nance",' I said. room door.

'Then I shall call you "Nan" - if I might?' If she might! I But when I did so, she received me with such kindness, and nodded and smiled like an idiot: for the thrill of being chided me so sincerely for having left her unvisited so long; addressed by her I would gladly have lost all of my old and we fell again to chatting so easily about her life in the name, and taken a new one, or gone nameless entirely. theatre, and mine as an oyster-girl in Whitstable, that all my So presently it was 'Well, Nan . . . !' this, and 'Lord, Nan . . . old qualms quite left me. Persuaded at last that she liked

!' that; and, increasingly, it was 'Be a love, Nan, and fetch me, I visited her again - and then again, and again. I went me my stockings ..." She was still too shy to change her nowhere else that month but to the Palace; saw no one else clothes before me, but one night when I arrived I found that

- not Freddy, not my cousins, not even Alice, hardly - but she had had a little folding screen set up, and ever her. Mother had begun to frown about it; but when I went afterwards she used to step behind it while we talked, and home and said that I had gone back stage at Miss Butler's hand me articles of her suit as she undressed, and have me

39

40

pass her the pieces of her ladies' costume from the hook that waistcoat and trousers that I had taken from her the night she had hung them on before the show. I adored being able before; to hold the powder-box while she dusted out her to serve her like this. I would brush and fold her suit with freckles, to dampen the brushes with which she smoothed trembling fingers, and secretly press its various materials - out the curl in her hair, to fasten the rose to her lapel. the starched linen of the shirt, the silk of the waistcoat and The first time I did all this I walked with her to the stage the stockings, the wool of the jacket and trousers - to my afterwards, and stood in the wing while she went through cheek. Each item came to me warm from her body, and her set, gazing in wonder at the limes-men who strode, with its own particular scent; each seemed charged with a nimble as acrobats, across the battens in the fly-gallery; strange kind of power, and tingled or glowed (or so I seeing nothing of the hall, nothing of the stage except a imagined) beneath my hand.

stretch of dusty board with a boy at the other end of it, his Her petticoats and dresses were cold and did not tingle; but arm upon the handle that turned the rope that brought the I still blushed to handle them, for I couldn't help but think curtain down. She had been nervous, as all performers are, of all the soft and secret places they would soon enclose, or and her nervousness had infected me; but when she stepped brush against, or warm and make moist, once she had into the wing at the end of her final number, pursued by donned them. Every time she stepped from behind the stamping, by shouts and 'Hurrahs!', she was flushed and gay screen, clad as a girl, small and slim and shapely, a false and triumphant. To tell the truth, I did not quite like her plait smothering the lovely, ragged edges of her crop, I had then. She seized my arm, but didn't see me. She was like a the same sensation: a pang of disappointment and regret woman in the grip of a drug, or in the first flush of an that turned instantly to pleasure and to aching love; a desire embrace, and I felt a fool to be at her side, so still and to touch, to embrace and caress, so strong I had to turn sober, and jealous of the crowd that was her lover. aside or fold my arms for fear that they would fly about her After that, I passed the twenty minutes or so that she was and press her close.

gone each night alone, in her room, listening to the beat of At length I grew so handy with her costumes she suggested her songs through the ceiling and walls, happier to hear the that I visit her before she went on stage, to help her ready cheers of the audience from a distance. I would make tea herself for her act, like a proper dresser. She said it with a for her - she liked it brewed in the pan with condensed kind of studied carelessness, as if half-fearful that I might milk, dark as a walnut and thick as syrup; I knew by the not wish to; she could not have known, I suppose, how changing tempos of her set just when to set the kettle on the dreary the hours were to me, that I must pass away from her hearth, so the cup would be ready for her return. While the

. . . Soon I never stepped into the auditorium at all, but tea simmered I would wipe her little table, and empty her headed, every night, back stage, a half-hour before she was ashtrays, and dust down the glass; I would tidy the cracked due before the footlights, to help her re-don the shirt and and faded old cigar-box in which she kept her sticks of

41

42

grease-paint. They were acts of love, these humble little She had been born, she said, in Rochester, to a family of ministrations, and of pleasure - even, perhaps, of a kind of entertainers. Her mother (she did not mention a father) had self-pleasure, for it made me feel strange and hot and died while she was still quite a baby, and she had been almost shameful to perform them. While she was being raised by her grandmother; she had no brothers, no sisters, ravished by the admiration of the crowd, I would pace her and no cousins that she could recall. She had taken her first dressing-room and gaze at her possessions, or caress them, bows before the footlights at the age of twelve, as 'Kate or almost caress them - holding my fingers an inch away Straw, the Little Singing Wonder', and had known a bit of from them, as if they had an aura, as well as a surface, that success in penny-gaffs and public-houses, and the smaller might be stroked. I loved everything that she left behind her kinds of halls and theatres. But it was a miserable sort of

- her petticoats and her perfumes, and the pearls that she life, she said - 'and soon I wasn't even little any more. Every clipped to the lobes of her ears; but also the hairs on her time a place came up there was a crush of girls queuing for combs, the eyelashes that clung to her sticks of spit-black, it at the stage door, all just the same as me, or prettier, or even the dent of her fingers and lips on her cigarette-ends. perter - or hungrier, and so more willing to kiss the The world, to me, seemed utterly transformed since Kitty chairman for the promise of a season's work, or a week's, or Butler had stepped into it. It had been ordinary before she even a night's.' Her grandmother had died; she had joined a came; now it was full of queer electric spaces, that she left dancing troupe and toured the seaside towns of Kent and ringing with music or glowing with light.

the South Coast, doing end-of-pier shows three times a By the time she returned to her dressing-room I would have night. She frowned when she spoke about these times, and everything tidy and still. Her tea, as I have said, would be her voice was bitter, or weary; she would place a hand ready; sometimes, too, I would have a cigarette lit for her. beneath her chin, and rest her head upon it, and close her She would have lost her fierce, distracted look, and be eyes.

simply merry and kind. 'What a crowd!' she'd say. 'They

'Oh, it was hard,' she'd say, 'so hard . . . And you never wouldn't let me leave!' Or, 'A slow one tonight, Nan; I made a friend, because you were never in one place long believe I was half-way through "Good Cheer, Boys, Good enough. And all the stars thought themselves too grand to Cheer" before they realised I was a girl!'

talk to you, or were afraid you would copy their routines. She would unclip her necktie and hang up her jacket and And the crowds were cruel, and made you cry . ..' The hat, then she would sip her tea and smoke her fag and –

thought of Kitty weeping brought the tears to my own eyes; since performing made her garrulous - she would talk to and seeing me so affected, she'd give a smile, and a wink, me, and I would listen, hard. And so I learned a little of her and a stretch, and say in her best swell accent: 'But those history.

days are all behind me now, don't you know, and I am on the path to fame and fortune. Since I changed my name and

43

44

became a masher the whole world loves me; and Tricky my parents thought her generous, allowing me my freedom Reeves loves me most of all, and pays me like a prince, to at her own expense. The truth was, I think, that she was prove it!' And then we would smile together, because we squeamish of mentioning Kitty now - and by that alone I both knew that if she really were a masher Tricky's wages knew that it was she, more than any of them, who was would barely keep her in champagne; but my smile would uneasy. I had said nothing more to her about my passion. I be a little troubled for I knew, too, that her contract was due had said nothing of my new, strange, hot desire to anyone. to expire at the end of August, and then she would have to But she saw me, of course, as I lay in my bed; and, as move to another theatre - to Margate, perhaps, she said, or anyone will tell you who has been secretly in love, it is in Broadstairs, if they would have her. I couldn't bear to think bed that you do your dreaming - in bed, in the darkness, what I would do when she was gone.

where you cannot see your own cheeks pink, that you ease What my family made of my trips backstage, my

back the mantle of restraint that keeps your passion dimmed marvellous new status as Miss Butler's pal and unofficial throughout the day, and let it glow a little.

dresser, I am not sure. They were, as I have said, impressed; How Kitty would have blushed, to know the part she played but they were also troubled. It was reassuring for them that in my fierce dreamings - to know how shamelessly I took it was a real friendship, and not just a schoolgirl mash, that my memories of her, and turned them to my own improper had me travelling so often to the Palace, and spending all advantage! Each night at the Palace she kissed me farewell; my savings on the train fare; and yet, I thought I heard them in my dreams her lips stayed at my cheek - were hot, were ask themselves, what manner of friendship could there be tender -moved to my brow, my ear, my throat, my mouth .. between a handsome, clever music-hall artiste, and the girl I was used to standing close to her, to fasten her collarin the crowd that admired her? When I said that Kitty had studs or brush her lapels; now, in my reveries, I did what I no young man (for I had found this out, early on, amongst longed to do then - I leaned to place my lips upon the edges the pieces of her history) Davy said that I should bring her of her hair; I slid my hands beneath her coat, to where her home, and introduce her to my handsome brother - though breasts pressed warm against her stiff gent's shirt and rose he only said it when Rhoda was near, to tease her. When I to meet my strokings .. .

spoke of brewing her pans of tea and tidying her table, And all this - which left me thick with bafflement and Mother narrowed her eyes: 'She's doing all right out of you pleasure - with my sister at my side! All this with Alice's by the sound of it. It's a little more help with the tea and the breath upon my cheek, or her hot limbs pressed against tables we could do with, from you, home here . . .'

mine; or with her eyes shining cold and dull, with starlight It was true, I suppose, that I rather neglected my duties in and suspicion.

the house for the sake of my trips to the Palace. They fell to But she said nothing; she asked me nothing; and to the rest my sister, though she rarely complained about it. I believe of the family, at least, my continuing friendship with Kitty

45

46

became in time a source not of wonder, but of pride. 'Have silly and a bore. 'Oh, how nice it would be,' she continued, you been to the Palace at Canterbury?' I would hear Father

'to sit in a proper parlour again, with a proper family - not say to customers as he took their plates. 'Our youngest girl just a room with a bed in it, and a dirty rug, and a bit of is very thick with Kitty Butler, the star of the show ..." By newspaper on the table for a cloth! And how nice to see the end of August, when the oyster season had started again where you live and work; and to catch your train; and to and we were back in the shop full-time, they began to press meet the people that love you, and have you with them all me to bring Kitty home with me, that they might meet her day . . .'

for themselves.

It made me fidget and swallow to hear her talk like this, all

'You are always saying as how she is your pal,' said Father unself-consciously, of how she liked me; tonight, however, one morning at breakfast. 'And besides - what a crime it I had no time even to blush: for as she spoke there came a would be for her to come so near to Whitstable, and never knock at her door - a sharp, cheerful, authoritative knock taste a proper oyster-tea. You bring her over here, before that made her blink and stiffen, and look up in surprise. she goes.' The idea of asking Kitty to sup with my family I, too, gave a start. In all the evenings I had spent with her, seemed a horrible one; and because my father spoke so she had had no visitors but the call-boy - who came to tell carelessly about the fact that she would soon have left for a her when she was wanted in the wing - and Tony, who new hall, I made him a stinging reply. A little later Mother sometimes put his head around the door to wish us both took me aside. Was my father's house not good enough for good-night. She had no beau, as I have said; she had no Miss Butler, she said, that I couldn't invite her here? Was I other 'fans' - no friends at all, it seemed, but me; and I had ashamed of my parents, and my parents' trade? Her words always been rather glad of it. Now I watched her step to the made me gloomy; I was quiet and sad with Kitty that night, door, and bit my lip. I should like to say I felt a thrill of and when after the show she asked me why, I bit my lip. foreboding, but I did not. I only felt piqued, that our time

'My parents want me to ask you over,' I said, 'for tea alone together - which I thought little enough! - should be tomorrow. You don't have to come, and I can say you're made shorter.

busy or sick. But I promised them I'd ask you; and now,' I The visitor was a gentleman: a stranger, evidently, to Kitty, finished miserably, 'I have.'

for she greeted him politely, but quite cautiously. He had a She took my hand. 'But Nan,' she said in wonder, 'I should silk I hat on his head which - seeing her, and then me love to come! You know how dull it is for me in lurking in the little room behind her - he removed, and held Canterbury, with no one but Mrs Pugh, and Sandy, to talk to his bosom. 'Miss Butler, I believe,' he said; and when she to!' Mrs Pugh was the landlady of Kitty's rooming-house; nodded, he gave a bow: 'Walter Bliss, ma'am. Your Sandy was the boy who shared her landing: he played in the servant.' His voice was deep and pleasant and clear, like band at the Palace, but drank, she said, and was sometimes Tricky's. As he spoke he produced a card from his pocket

47

48

and held it out. In the second or so it took Kitty to gaze at it and a great and and walked like a girl, with her plait and give a little 'Oh!' of surprise, I studied him. He was fastened to the back of her head and a parasol over her arm, very tall, even without his hat, and was dressed rather I felt a little pang of disappointment. This swiftly turned, fashionably in chequered trousers and a fancy waistcoat. however - as always - to desire, and then to pride, for she Across his stomach there was a golden watch-chain as thick looked terribly smart and handsome on that dusty as the tail of a rat; and more gold, I noticed, flashed from Whitstable platform. She kissed my cheek when I went up his fingers. His head was large, his hair a dull ginger; ginto her, and took my arm, and let me lead her from the gerish, too — and somehow at once both impressive and station to our house, across the sea-front. She said, 'Well!

rather comical - were the whiskers that swept from his top And this is where you were born, and grew up?'

lip to his ears, and his eyebrows, and the hair in his nose.

'Oh yes! Look there: that building, beside the church, is our His skin was as clear and shiny as a boy's. His eyes were old school. Over there - see that house with the bicycle by blue.

the gate? - that's where my cousins live. Here, look, on this When Kitty returned his card to him, he asked if he might step, I once fell down and cut my chin, and my sister held speak with her a moment, and at once she stood aside to let her handkerchief to it, the whole way home ..." So I talked him pass. With him in it, the little room seemed very full and pointed, and Kitty nodded, biting her lip. 'How lucky and hot. I rose, reluctantly, and put on my gloves and my you are!' she said at last; and as she said it, she seemed to hat, and said that I should go; and then Kitty introduced me sigh.

- 'My friend, Miss Astley,' she called me, which made me I had feared that the afternoon would be dismal and hard, in feel a little gayer - and Mr Bliss shook my hand. fact, it was merry. Kitty shook hands with everyone, and Tell your Mother,' said Kitty as she showed me to the door, had a word for them all, such as, 'You must be Davy, who

'that I shall come tomorrow, any time she likes.'

works in the smack', and 'You must be Alice, who Nancy

'Come at four,' I said.

talks about so often, and is so proud of. Now I can see why'

'Four it is, then!' She briefly took my hand again, and kissed

- which made Alice blush, and look to the floor in my cheek.

confusion.

Over her shoulder I saw the flashy gentleman fingering his With my father she was kind. 'Well, well, Miss Butler,' he whiskers, but with his eyes turned, politely, away from us. said when he took her hand, nodding at her skirts, 'this is I can hardly say what a curious mix of feelings mine were, rather a change, ain't it, from your usual gear?' She smiled the Sunday afternoon when Kitty came to call on us in and said it was; and when he added, with a wink, 'And Whitstable. She was more to me than all the world; that she something of an improvement, too - if you don't mind a should be visiting me in my own home, and supping with gentleman saying so', she laughed and said that, since my family, seemed both a delight too lovely to be borne

49

50

gentlemen were usually of that opinion, she was quite used room!', Kitty said that she was quite all right, Mrs Astley, to it, and did not mind a bit.

really; and I shifted a quarter of an inch to my right, but All in all she made herself so pleasant, and answered their kept my foot pressed against hers, and felt her leg, all hot, questions about herself, and the music hall, so sweetly and against my own.

cleverly, that no one - not even Alice, or spiteful Rhoda Father handed out the oysters, and Mother offered beer or could dislike her; and I - watching her gaze from the lempnade. Kitty picked up a shell with one hand and her windows at Whitstable Bay, or incline her head to catch a oyster-knife with the other, and brought them together story of my father's, or compliment my mother on some rather ineffectually. Father saw, and gave a shout. ornament or picture (she admired the shawl, above the

'Ho, there, Miss Butler, where are our manners! Davy, you fireplace!) -I fell in love with her, all over again. And my take that knife and show the lady how - else she might just love was all the warmer, of course, since I had that special, job the blade into her hand, and give herself a nasty cut.'

secret knowledge about Tricky, and the contract, and the

'I can do it,' I said quickly; and I took the oyster from her, extra four months.

and the knife, before my brother could get his fingers on She had come for tea, and presently we all sat down to it them. Kitty marvelling, as we did so, at the table. It was set for a

'You do it like this,' I said to her. 'You must hold the oyster real oyster-supper, with a linen cloth, and a little spirit-lamp in your palm so that the flat shell is uppermost - like this.' I with a plate of butter on it, waiting to be melted. On either held the shell to show her, and she gazed at it rather side of this there were platters of bread, and quartered gravely. Then you must take your blade and put it - not lemons, and vinegar and pepper castors - two or three of between the halves, but in the hinge, here. And then you each. Beside every plate there was a fork, a spoon, a must grasp it, and prise.' I gave the knife a gentle twist, and napkin, and the all-important oyster-knife; and in the the shell eased open. 'You must hold it steady,’ I went on, middle of the table there was the oyster-barrel itself, a white

'because the shell is full of liquor, and you mustn't spill a cloth bound about its top-most hoop, and its lid loosened by drop of it, for that's the tastiest part.' The little fish sat in my a finger's width - 'Just enough,' as my father would say, 'to palm in its bath of oyster-juice, naked and slippery. 'This let the oysters stretch a little'; but not enough to let them here,' I said, pointing with my knife, 'is called the beard; open their shells and sicken. We were rather cramped you must trim that away.' I gave the blade a flick, and the around the table, for there were eight of us in all, and we beard was severed. 'Then you must just cut your oyster free had had to bring up extra chairs from the restaurant below.

. . . And now you may eat it.' I slipped the shell carefully Kitty and I sat close, our elbows almost touching, our shoes into her hand, and felt her fingers warm and soft against my side by side beneath the table. When Mother cried, 'Do own as she cupped them to receive it. Our heads were very move along a bit, Nancy, and give Miss Butler some

51

52

near. She raised the oyster to her lips and held it for a more closely at it. Is it a he? I suppose they all must be, second before her mouth, her eyes on mine, unblinking. since they all have beards?'

I had not been aware of it, but I had spoken softly, and the Father shook his head, chewing. 'Not at all, Miss Butler, not others had quietened to listen. Now the table was hushed at all. Don't let the beards mislead you. For the oyster, you and still. When I took my eyes from Kitty's I saw a ring of see, is what you might call a real queer fish - now a he, now faces turned my way, and blushed.

a she, as quite takes its fancy. A regular morphodite, in At last, someone spoke. It was Father, and his voice was fact!'

very loud. 'No bolting him down whole now, Miss Butler,'

'Is that so?'

he said, 'like the gormays do. We won't have that at this Tony tapped his plate. 'You're a bit of an oyster, then, table. You go on and give him a real good chew.' He said it yourself, Kitty,' he said with a smirk.

kindly, and Kitty laughed. She peered into the shell in her She looked for a moment rather uncertain, but then she hand. 'And is it really alive?’ she said.

smiled. 'Why, I suppose I am,' she said. 'Just fancy! I've

'Alive alive-oh,' said Davy. 'If you listen very hard, you will never been likened to a fish before.'

hear him shrieking as he goes down.'

'Well, don't take it the wrong way, Miss Butler,' said There were protests at that from Rhoda and Alice. 'You will Mother, 'for spoken in this house, it is something of a make the poor girl sick,' said Mother. 'Don't you mind him, compliment.'

Miss Butler. You just eat your fish, and enjoy it.'

Tony laughed, and Father said, 'Oh, it was, it was!'

Kitty did so. With no more glances at me she threw the Kitty still smiled. Then she half-rose to reach a pepper contents of her shell into her mouth, chewed them hard and castor; and when she sat again she drew her feet beneath fast, and swallowed them. Then she wiped her lips with her her chair, and I felt my thigh grow cool.

napkin, and smiled at Father.

When the oyster-barrel was quite empty, and the lemonade

'Now,' he said, confidentially, 'tell the truth: have you ever and the Bass had all been drunk, and Kitty declared that she tasted an oyster such as that, before, or have you not?'

had never had a finer supper in all her life, we moved our Kitty said that she had not, and Davy gave a cheer; and for chairs away from the table, and the men lit cigarettes, and a while there was no sound at all but the delicate, Alice and Rhoda set out cups, for tea. There was more talk, diminutive sounds of good oyster-supper: the creak of and more questions for Kitty to answer. Had she ever met hinges, the slap of discarded beards, the trickle of liquor Nelly Power? Did she know Bessie Bellwood, or Jenny and butter and beer.

Hill, or Jolly John Nash? Then, on another tack: was it true I opened no more shells for Kitty, for she managed them that she had no young chap? She said she had no time for it. herself. 'Look at this one!' she said, when she had handled And had she family, in Kent, and when did she see them? half-a-dozen or so. 'What a brute he is!' Then she looked She had none at all, she said, since her grandmother died.

53

54

Mother tut-tutted over that, and said it was a shame; Davy who had just arrived. Then she whispered to George and to said she could help herself to some of our relations, if she me, and I fetched her a hat of Father's and a walking-cane, liked, for we had more than we knew what to do with. and she sang us a couple of masher songs, and ended with

'Oh yes?' said Kitty.

the ballad with which she finished her set at the Palace,

'Yes,' said Davy. 'You must have heard the song: about the sweetheart and the rose.

'There's her uncle, and her brother, and her sister, and her We cheered her then, and she had her hand shaken, and her mother,

back slapped, ten times over. She looked very flushed and And her auntie, and another, who is cousin to her mother..." hot at the end of it all, and rather tired. Davy said, 'How No sooner had he finished the verse, indeed, than there was about a song from you now, Nance?' I gave him a look. the sound of our street-door opening, and a shout up the

'No,' I said. I wouldn't sing for them with Kitty there, for stairs; and three of our cousins themselves appeared, anything.

followed by Uncle Joe and Aunt Rosina - all got up in their Kitty looked at me curiously. 'Do you sing, then?' she said. Sunday best, and all just popped in, they said, for a 'peek' at

'Nancy's got the prettiest voice, Miss Butler,' said one of the Miss Butler, if Miss Butler had no objection.

cousins, 'you ever heard.'

More chairs were brought up, and more cups; a fresh round

'Yes, go on, Nance, be a sport!' said another. of introductions was made, and the little room grew stuffy

'No, no, no!' I cried again - so firmly that Mother frowned, with heat and smoke and laughter. Somebody said what a and the others laughed.

shame it was we had no piano for Miss Butler to give us a Uncle Joe said, 'Well, that's a shame, that is. You should song; then George - my eldest cousin - said, 'Would a hear her in the kitchen, Miss Butler. She's a regular songharmonica serve the purpose?' and produced one from his bird, she is, then: a regular lark. Makes your heart turn over, jacket pocket. Kitty blushed, and said she couldn't; and to hear her.' There were murmurs of agreement throughout everyone cried, 'Oh please, Miss Butler, do!'

the room, and I saw Kitty look blinkingly my way. Then

'What do you think, Nan,' she said to me, 'should I shame George whispered rather loudly that I must be saving my myself?'

voice for serenading Freddy, and there was a fresh round of

'You know you won't,' I said, pleased that she had turned to laughter that set me gazing and blushing into my lap. Kitty me at the last, and used my special name before them all. looked bemused.

'Very well, then,' she said. A little space was cleared for She asked then, 'Who is Freddy?'

her, and Rlioda ran down to her house, to fetch her sisters

'Freddy is Nancy's young feller,' said Davy. 'A very to come and watch.

handsome chap. She must've boasted about him to you?'

She sang The Boy I Love is Up in the Gallery', and The

'No,' said Kitty, 'she has not.' She said it lightly, but I Coffee Shop Girl' - then The Boy' again for Rhoda's sisters, glanced up and saw that her eyes were strange, and almost

55

56

sad. It was true that I had never mentioned Fred to her. The My jug and bowl were on the side. I poured a little water fact was, I barely thought of him as my beau these days, for out and carried it to her, for her to wash her hands and since her arrival in Canterbury I had had no evenings spare splash her face. The water spotted her dress, and dampened to spend with him. He had recently sent me a letter to say, the fringe of her hair into dark little points. did I still care? — and I had put the letter in a drawer, and She had a purse swinging at her waist, and now she dipped forgotten to reply.

her fingers into it and drew out a cigarette and a box of There was more chaff about Freddy, then; I was glad when matches. She said, 'I am sure your mother would one of Rhoda's sisters caused a fuss, by snatching the disapprove, but I'm just about busting for a smoke.' She lit harmonica from George and giving us a tune so horrible it the cigarette, and drew upon it heavily.

made the boys all shout at her, and pull her hair, to make We gazed at one another not speaking. Then, because we her stop.

were weary and there was no where else for us to sit, we sat While they quarrelled and swore, Kitty leaned towards me upon the bed, side by side, and quite close. It was terribly and said softly, 'Will you take me to your room, Nan, or strange to be with her in the very room - on the very spot! somewhere quiet, for a bit - just you and me?' She looked where I had spent so many hours dreaming of her, so so grave suddenly I feared that she might faint. I got up, immodestly. I said, 'It ain't half strange -' But as I said it she and made a path for her across the crowded room, and told also spoke; and we laughed. 'You first,' she said, and drew my mother I was taking her upstairs; and Mother - who was again upon her fag.

gazing trou-bledly at Rhoda's sister, not knowing whether

'I was just going to say, how funny it is to have you here, to laugh at her or to scold - gave us a nod, distractedly, and like this.'

we escaped.

'And I,' she said, 'was going to say how funny it is to be The bedroom was cooler than the parlour, and dimmer, and here! And this is really your room, yours and Alice's? And

— although we could still hear shouts, and stamping, and your bed?' She looked about her, as if in wonder - as if I blasts from the harmonica - wonderfully calm compared to might have taken her to a stranger's chamber, and be trying the room we had just left. The window was raised, and to pass it off as my own - and I nodded.

Kitty crossed to it at once and placed her arms upon the sill. She was silent again, then, and so was I; and yet I sensed Closing her eyes against the breeze that blew in from the that she had more to say, and was only working up to bay, she took a few deep, grateful breaths.

saying it. I thought, with a little thrill, that I knew what it

'Are you poorly?' I said. She turned to me and shook her was; but when she spoke again it wasn't about the contract, head, and smiled; but again, her smile seemed sad. but about my family -about how kind they were, and how

'Just tired.'

much they loved me, and how lucky I was to have them. I remembered that she was an orphan, of sorts, and bit back

57

58

my protests, and let her talk; but my silence seemed only to

'London!' I could only echo her in disbelief. This was dampen her spirits the further.

terrible beyond all words. Had she gone to Margate or At last, when her cigarette was finished and thrown into the Broadstairs, I might have visited her sometimes. If she went grate, she took a breath and said what I had been waiting to London I would never see her again; she might just as for. 'Nan, I have something to tell you - a piece of good well go to Africa, or to the moon.

news, and you must promise to be happy for me.'

She went talking on, saying how Mr Bliss had friends at the I couldn't help myself. I had been longing to smile about it London halls, and had promised her a season at them all; all afternoon, and now I laughed and said, 'Oh Kitty, I know how he had said she was too good for the provincial stage; your news already!' She seemed to frown then, so I went on that she would find fame in the city, where all the big quickly, 'You mustn't be cross with Tony, but he told me - names worked, and all the money was ... I hardly listened, just today.'

but grew more and more miserable. At length I placed a

'Told you what?'

hand before my eyes, and bowed my head, and she grew

'That Tricky wants you to stay on, at the Palace; that you silent.

will be here till Christpas at least!'

'You're not happy for me, after all,' she said quietly. She looked at me rather strangely, then lowered her gaze

'I am,' I said - my voice was thick - 'but I am more unhappy, and gave an awkward little laugh. 'That's not my news,' she for myself.'

said. 'And nobody knows it but me. Tricky does want me to There was a silence then, broken only by the sound of stay on - but I've turned him down.'

laughter and scraping chairs from the parlour below, and

'Turned him down?' I stared at her. Still she would not catch the shriek of gulls outside the open window. The room my eye, but got to her feet, and crossed her arms over her seemed to have darkened since we entered it, and I felt waist.

colder, suddenly, than I had all summer.

'Do you remember the gentleman who called on me last I heard her take a step. In a second she was sitting beside night,' she said,' - Mr Bliss?' I nodded. She hadn't me again, and had taken my hand from my brow. 'Listen,'

mentioned him today; and in all my fussing over her visit, I she said. 'I have something to ask you.' I looked at her; her had forgotten to ask after him. Now she went on: 'Mr Bliss face was pale, except for its cloud of freckles, and her eyes is a manager - not a theatre manager, like Tricky, but a seemed large. 'Do you think that I look handsome today?'

manager for artistes: an agent. He saw my turn and - oh, she said. 'Do you think I have been kind, and pleasant, and Nan!' - she couldn't help but be excited now - 'he saw my good? Do you think your parents like me?' Her words turn and liked it so much, he has offered me a contract, at a seemed wild. I did not speak, but only nodded wonderingly. music hall in London!'

'I came,' she said, 'to make them. I wore my smartest frock, so they would think me grander than I am. I thought, they

59

60

might be the meanest and most miserable family in all of

'It's the flower I gave you.' She took it from me, and held it. Kent; yet I will work so hard at being nice, they'll trust me It was dry and limp, and its petals were brown at the edges like a daughter.

and coming loose; and it was rather flat, because I had slept

'But oh, Nan, they're not miserable or mean, and I didn't many nights with it beneath my pillow.

have to play at being nice at all! They are the kindest family

'When you threw this to me,' I said to her, 'my life changed. I ever met; and you are all the world to them. I cannot I think I must have been - asleep - till that moment: asleep, ask'you to give them up . . .'

or dead. Since I met you, I've been awake - alive! Do you My heart seemed to stop - and then to pound, like a piston. think I could give that up, now, so easily?'

'What do you mean?' I said. She looked away.

My words startled her - as well they might, for I had never

'I meant to ask you to come with me. To London.'

spoken like this before, to her or to anyone. She looked I blinked. 'To go with you? But how?'

away from me, about the room, and ran her tongue over her

'As my dresser,' she said, 'if you'd care to. As my - lips. 'And all of them, downstairs?' she said, nodding anything, I don't know. I have spoken to Mr Bliss: he says towards the door. 'Your mother and father, your brother, there will not be much money for you at first - but enough, Alice, Freddy?' As she spoke there came a shout, and the if you share my diggings.'

sound of voices raised in friendly argument.

'Why?' I said then. She raised her eyes to mine. They mean nothing to me, I wanted to say, compared with

'Because I - like you. Because you are good for me, and you . . . But I only shrugged, and smiled.

bring me luck. And because London will be strange; and She smiled then, too. 'And so you really will come? We Mr Bliss may not be all that he seems; and I shall have no must leave on Sunday, you know - a week from today. It one ..."

doesn't give you long.'

'And you truly thought,' I said slowly, 'that I would say no?'

I said it would be long enough; and she placed the faded

'This afternoon - yes. Last night, and this morning, I rose upon the bed, and seized my hands and squeezed them believed - Oh, it was so different in the dressing-room, hard.

when it was just the two of us! I didn't know then how it

'Oh Nan! My dear Nan! We'll have such times together, I was for you here. I didn't know then that you had a - a promise you!' As she spoke, she flung my hands aside and chap.'

gripped me in a fierce embrace, and laughed with pleasure, Her words made me bold. I drew my hand away from hers so that I felt her body shudder in my arms.

and got to my feet. I walked to the head of the bed, where Then, all too soon, she stepped away, and I had only empty there was a little cabinet, with a drawer in it. I opened it, air to clutch at.

and took something from it, and showed it to her. 'Do you There was more noise from below, then the sound of a door know this?' I said, and she smiled.

opening, followed by the thud of feet upon the staircase,

61

62

and a cry: 'Nancy!' It was Alice. She paused outside the from a window at dawn, with my clothes in a rag at the end bedroom door, but was too polite - or fearful - to turn the of a stick, and a streaming face, and a note pinned to my handle. 'Everyone is leaving,' she called. 'Mother says will pillow saying Do not try to follow me ... But if I said these Miss Butler just step down for a moment, please, for them things, I would be lying. My parents were reasonable, not to say good-bye.'

passionate, people. They loved me, and they feared for me; I looked at Kitty. 'You go on,' I said, 'without me, and I the idea of allowing their youngest daughter to travel in the shall come down in a minute. And don't,' I added in a lower care of an actress and a music-hall manager to the voice, 'say anything to them about - our plans. I'll talk to grimmest, wickedest city in England was, they knew, a mad them about it, later on.'

one, that no sane parent should entertain for longer than a She nodded, and gave my hand another squeeze; then she second. But because they loved me so, they could not bear opened the door and joined Alice on the landing, and I to have me grieve. Anyone with half an eye could see that heard them step below, together.

my heart lay all with Kitty Butler now; anyone might guess I stood in the gathering shadows and put my trembling that, having once been offered the chance of a future at her fingers before my face. I had taken to scrubbing my hands side, and kept from it, I could never return to my father's very carefully, since meeting Kitty Butler; and if they were kitchen and be happy there, as I had been before. ever a little stained at the creases now, it was as much with So when, an hour or so after Kitty's departure, I nervously paint and hot-black and blanc-de-perle, as with vinegar. put her plan before my parents, and argued and pleaded for Even so, there was the scent of oysters on them still, and a their blessing, they listened to me wonderingly, but slender thread - it might have been the bristle from the back carefully; and when, the next day, Father stopped me on my of a lobster, the whisker from a shrimp - beneath one of my way down to the kitchen to draw me into the parlour where nails. How would it be, I thought, to surrender my family, it was quiet and still, his face was sad and serious, but kind. my home, all my oyster-girl's ways?

He asked me, first, whether I had not changed my mind? I And how would it be to live at Kitty's side, brim-full of a shook my head, and he sighed. He said, if I was quite love so quick, and yet so secret, it made me shake? decided, then Mother and he could not keep me; that I was

a grown-up woman, almost, and should be allowed to know Chapter 3

my own mind; that they had thought to see me marry a I wish, for sensation's sake, I could say that my parents Whitstable boy, and settle close at hand, and so have a heard one word of Kitty's proposal and forbade me, share in my little happinesses and troubles - but that now, absolutely, to refer to it again; that when I pressed the he supposed, I would go and hitch up with some London matter, they cursed and shouted; that my mother wept, my fellow, who wouldn't understand their ways at all. father struck me; that I was obliged, in the end, to climb

63

64

But children, he concluded, weren't made to please their her dresser for a few nights while I made all ready . . . and I parents; and no father should expect to have his daughter at finished it 'Fondly', and signed it, 'Your Nan'. his side for ever ... 'In short, Nance, even was you going to I had to be glad only in snatches that day, for the scene that the very devil himself, your mother and I would rather see I had passed with Father, after breakfast, had to be you fly from us in joy, than stay with us in sorrow - and undergone again with Mother - who hugged me to her, and grow, maybe, to hate us, for keeping you from your fate.' I cried that they must be fools to let me go; and Davy - who had never known him so grave before, nor so eloquent. I said, quite absurdly, that I was too little to go to London, had never seen him weep either; but now as he spoke his and would be run down by a tram in Trafalgar Square the eyes glistened, and he blinked, twice or thrice, to hold the minute I set foot in it; and Alice - who said nothing at all tears back, and his voice grew thin. I placed my head when she heard the news, but ran from the kitchen in tears, against his shoulder and let my own tears rise and spill. He and could not be persuaded to take up her duties in the put an arm about me, and patted me. 'It breaks our hearts to Parlour until lunch-time. Only my cousins seemed happy lose you, dear,' he went on. 'You know it does. Only for me - and they were more jealous than happy, calling me promise us that you won't forget us, quite. That you'll write a lucky cat, and swearing that I would make my fortune in to us, and visit us. And that, if things don't turn out as you the city, and forget them all; or else that I would be ruined might, quite, wish them, you won't be too proud to come utterly, and come sneaking back to them in disgrace. home to those that love you -' Here his voice failed utterly, That week passed quickly. I spent my evenings in calling and he shuddered; and I could only nod against his neck on friends and family, and bidding them farewell; and in and say, 'I will, I will; I promise you, I will.'

washing and patching and packing my dresses, and sorting But oh! hard-hearted daughter that I was, when he had left out which little items to take with me, which to leave me my tears dried at once, and I felt the return of all my behind. I visited the Palace only once, and that was in the gladness of the night before. I hugged myself in pleasure, company of my parents, who came to reassure themselves and danced a jig around the parlour - but delicately, on that Miss Butler was still sensible and good, and to ask for tiptoe, so that they wouldn't hear me in the dining-room further particulars of the shadowy Walter Bliss. below. Then quickly, before I should be missed, I ran to the I had Kitty to myself for no more than a minute, while post office and sent Kitty a card at the Palace - a picture of Father chatted with Tony and Tricky, after the show. I had a Whitstable oyster-smack, upon whose sail I inked 'To feared all week that I had imagined the words that she had London', and on the deck of which I drew two girls with spoken to me on Sunday evening, or misunderstood them bags and trunks and outsize, smiling faces. 'I can come!!!' I entirely. Every night, almost, I had woken sweating from wrote upon the back, and added that she must do without dreams in which I presented myself at her door, with my bags all packed and my hat upon my head, and she looked

65

66

at me in wonder, and frowned, or laughed with derision; or disappointing one. I put my hand to my brow and gazed at else I arrived too late at the station, and had to chase the the glittering bay, at the distant fields and hedges of train along the track while Kitty and Mr Bliss gazed at me Sheppey, at the low, pitch-painted houses of the town, and from their carriage window, and would not lean outside to the masts and cranes of the harbour and the shipyard. It was pull me in ... That night at the Palace, however, she led me all as familiar to me as the lines on my own face, and - like to one side, and pressed my hand, and was quite as kind and one's face when viewed in a glass - both fascinating and excited as she had been before.

rather dull. No matter how hard I studied it, how fiercely I

'I've had a letter from Mr Bliss,' she said. 'He has found us thought, I shall not gaze at you again for months and rooms in a house in a place called Brixton — a place so months, it looked just as it always did; and at last I turned full, he says, of music-hall people and actors that they call it my eyes away, and walked sadly home.

"Grease-Paint Avenue".'

But it was the same there: nothing that I gazed at or touched Grease-Paint Avenue! I saw it instantly and it was was as special as I thought it should be, or changed by my marvellous, a street set out like a make-up box, with going in any way. Nothing, that is, except the faces of my narrow, gilded houses, each one with a different coloured family; and these were so grave, or so falsely merry and roof; and ours would be number 3 - with a chimney the stiff, that I could hardly bear to look at them at all. colour of Kitty's carmined lips!

So I was almost glad, at last, when it was time to say

'We are to catch the two o'clock train on Sunday,' she went farewell. Father wouldn't let me take the little train to on, 'and Mr Bliss himself will meet us at the station, in a Canterbury, but said I must be driven, and hired a gig from carriage. And I'm due to start the very next day at the Star the ostler at the Duke of Cumberland Hotel, to take me Music Hall, in Bermondsey.'

there himself. I kissed Mother, and Alice, and let my The Star,' I said. That's a lucky name.'

brother hand me to my seat at Father's side and place my She smiled. 'Let's hope so. Oh, Nan, let's only hope so!'

luggage at my feet. There was little enough of it: an old My last morning at home was — like every last morning in leather suitcase with a strap about it, that held my clothes; a history, I suppose - a sad one. We breakfasted together, the cap-box for my hats; and a little black tin trunk for five of us, and were bright enough; but there was a horrible everything else. The trunk was a goodbye gift from Davy. sense of expectation in the house that made anything except He had bought it new, and had my initials painted on the lid sighing, and drifting aimlessly from job to job, seem quite in swooning yellow capitals; and inside it he had pasted a impossible. By eleven o'clock I felt as penned and as stifled map of Kent, with Whitstable marked on it with an arrow - as a rat in a box, and made Alice walk with me to the to remind me, he said, where home was, in case I should beach, and hold my shoes and stockings while I stood at the forget.

water's edge one final time. But even this little ritual was a

67

68

We did not talk much, Father and I, on the drive to And soon, too, I had London to gaze at and marvel over; for Canterbury. At the station we found the train already in and in an hour we had arrived at Charing Cross. Here Kitty steaming, and Kitty, her own bags and baskets at her side, found a porter to help us with our bags and boxes, and frowning over her watch. It wasn't like my anxious dreams while he loaded them on to a trolley we looked round at all: she gave a great wave when she saw us, and a smile. anxiously for Mr Bliss. At last, 'There he is!' cried Kitty,

'I thought you might have changed your mind,' she cried, 'at and her pointing finger showed him striding up the the very last moment.' And I shook my head - in wonder platform, his whiskers and his coat-tails flying and his face that she could still think such a thing, after all I'd said!

very red.

Father was very kind. He greeted Kitty graciously and,

'Miss Butler!' he cried when he reached us. 'What a when he kissed me good-bye he kissed her, too, and wished pleasure! What a pleasure! I feared I would be late; but here her happiness and luck. At the last moment, as I leaned you are exactly as we planned, and even more charming from the carriage to embrace him, he drew a little chamois than before.' He turned to me, then removed his hat - the bag from his

silk, again - and made me a low, theatrical bow. '"Off goes pocket and placed it in my hand, and closed my fingers his bonnet to an oyster-wrench!'" he said, rather loudly. over it. It held coins - sovereigns - six of them, and more, I

'Miss Astley - late of Whitstable, I believe?' He took my knew, than he could afford to part with; but by the time I hand and gripped it briefly. Then he snapped his fingers at had drawn open the neck of the bag and seen the gleam of the porter, and offered us each an arm.

the gold inside it, the train had begun to move, and it was He had left a carriage waiting for us on the Strand; the too late to thrust them back. Instead, I could only shout my driver touched his whip to his cap when we approached, thanks, and kiss my fingers to him, and watch as he raised and jumped from his seat to place our luggage on the roof. I his hat and waved it; then place my cheek against the looked about me. It was a Sunday and the Strand was rather window-glass when he was gone from sight, and wonder quiet - but I didn't know it; it might have been the racewhen I should see him next. track at the Derby to me, so deafening and dizzying was the I did not wonder for long, I am afraid to say, for the thrill of clatter of the traffic, so swift the passage of the horses. I felt being with Kitty - of hearing her talk again of the rooms we safer in the carriage, and only rather queer, to be so close to were to share, and the kind of life we were to have together a gentleman I did not know, being transported I knew not in the city, where she was to make her fortune - soon where, in a city that was vaster and smokier and more overcame my grief. My family would have thought me alarming than I could have thought possible.

cruel, I know, to see me laugh while they were sad at home There was much, of course, to look at. Mr Bliss had without me; but oh! I could no more not have smiled, that suggested we take in the sights a little before we headed for afternoon, than not drawn breath, or sweated.

Brixton, so now we rolled into Trafalgar Square - towards

69

70

Nelson on his pillar, and the fountains, and the lovely, took a turn before the footlights - as 'Walter Waters, bone-coloured front of the National Gallery, and the view Character Baritone' - for sheer love of the profession. I down Whitehall to the Houses of Parliament.

knew none of this that day in the brougham - but I began to

'My brother,' I said, as I pressed my face to the window to guess a little of it. For we had reached Pall Mall and turned gaze at it all, 'said I would be run down by a tram in into the Haymarket, where the theatres and the music halls Trafalgar Square, if ever I came to London.'

begin; and as we rumbled past them he raised his hand and Mr Bliss looked grave. 'Your brother was very sensible to tilted the brim of his hat in a kind of salute. I have seen old warn you, Miss Astley - but sadly misinformed. There are Irishwomen, passing before a church, do something similar. no trams in Trafalgar Square - only buses and hansoms, and

'Her Majesty's,' he said, nodding to a handsome building on broughams like our own. Trams are for common people; his left: 'my father saw Jenny Lind, the Swedish you should have to go quite as far as Kilburn, I'm afraid, or Nightingale, make her debut there. The Haymarket: Camden Town, in order to be struck by a tram.'

managed by Mr Beerbohm Tree. The Criterion, or Cri: a I smiled uncertainly. I did not know, quite, what to make of marvel of a theatre, built entirely underground.' Theatre Mr Bliss, to whom my future and my happiness had been so upon theatre, hall upon hall; and he knew all their histories. recently, and so unexpectedly, entrusted. While he

'Ahead of us, the London Pavilion. Down there' - we addressed himself to Kitty, and directed our attention every squinted along Great Windmill Street - 'the Trocadero so often to some scene or character in the street beyond, I Palace. On our right, the Prince's Theatre.' We passed into studied him. He was a little younger, I saw, than I had taken Leicester Square; he took a breath. 'And finally," he said - him to be at first. That night in Kitty's dressing-room I had and here he removed his hat entirely, and held it in his lap - thought him almost middle-aged; now I guessed him to be

'finally, the Empire and the Alhambra, the handsomest one-or two-and-thirty, at the most. He was an impressive, music halls in England, where every artiste is a star, and the rather than a handsome, man, but for all his flash and his audience is so distinguished that even the gay girls in the speeches, rather homely: I thought he must have a little gallery - if you'll pardon my French, Miss Butler, Miss wife who loved him, and a baby; and that if he did not - Astley - wear furs, and pearls, and diamonds.'

which, in fact, was the case - that he should have. I knew He tapped on the ceiling of the brougham, and the driver nothing, then, of his history, but learned later that he came drew to a halt at a corner of the little garden in the middle from an old, respectable, theatrical family (his real name of the square. Mr Bliss opened the carriage door, and led us was no more Bliss, of course, than Kitty's was Butler); that to its centre. Here, with William Shakespeare on his marble he had left the legitimate stage when he was still a young pedestal at our backs, we gazed, all three of us, at the man, in order to work the halls as a comic singer; and that glorious fagades of the Empire and the Alhambra - the he managed, now, a dozen artistes, but still, on occasion, former with its columns and its glinting cressets, its stained

71

72

glass and its soft electric glow; the latter with its dome, its or next month, perhaps, but soon, soon, I promise you - you minarets and fountain. I had not known there were theatres will stand within it, your feet upon its stage. Then it will be like this in the world. I had not known that there was such a you that sets the heart of London racing! You that makes place as this, at all - this place that was so squalid and so the throats of the city shout, "Brava!"'

splendid, so ugly and so grand, where every imaginable As he spoke he lifted his hat, and punched the air with it; manner of person stood, or strolled, or lounged, side by one or two passers-by turned their faces towards us, then side.

looked away quite unconcerned. His words, I thought, were There were ladies and gentlemen, stepping from carriages. marvellous ones - and I knew Kitty thought so, too, for she There were girls with trays of flowers and fruit; and coffeegripped my hand at the sound of them, and gave a little sellers, and sherbet-sellers, and soup-men.

shudder of delight; and her cheeks were flushed, as mine There were soldiers in scarlet jackets; there were off-duty were, and her eyes, like mine, were shining and wide. shop-boys in bowlers and boaters and checks. There were We didn't linger very long in Leicester Square after that. Mr women in shawls, and women in neck-ties; and women in Bliss hailed a boy, and gave him a shilling to fetch us three short skirts, showing their ankles.

foaming glasses from the sherbet-seller, and we sat for a There were black men, and Chinamen, and Italians and minute in Shakespeare's shadow, sipping our drinks and Greeks. There were newcomers to the city, gazing about gazing at the people who passed us by, and at the notices them as dazed and confounded as I; and there were people outside the Empire, where Kitty's name, we knew, would curled on steps and benches, people in clothes that were soon be pasted in letters three feet high. But when our crumpled or stained, who looked as if they spent all their glasses were empty, he slapped his hands together and said daylit hours here - and all their dark ones, too. we must be off, for Brixton and Mrs Dendy - our new I gazed at Kitty, and my face, I suppose, showed my landlady - awaited; and he led us back to the brougham and amazement, for she laughed, and stroked my cheek, then handed us to our seats. I felt my eyes, that had been so wide seized my hand and held it.

and dazzled, grow small again in the gloom of the coach,

'We are at the heart of London,' said Mr Bliss as she did so, and I began to feel, not thrilled, but rather nervous. I

'the very heart of it. Over there' - he nodded to the wondered what kind of lodgings he had found for us, and Alhambra -'and all around us' - and here he swept his hand what kind of lady Mrs Dendy would be. I hoped that neither across the square itself - 'you see what makes that great would be very grand.

heart beat: Variety! Variety, Miss Astley, which age cannot I need not have worried. Once we had left the West End wither, nor custom stale.' Now he turned to Kitty. 'We and crossed the river, the streets grew greyer and quite dull. stand,' he said, 'before the greatest Temple of Variety in all The houses and the people here were smart, but rather the land. Tomorrow, Miss Butler - tomorrow, or next week, uniform, as if all Grafted by the same unimaginative hand:

73

74

there was none of that strange glamour, that lovely, queer Inside, too, the house was rather cheerier. We were met at variety of Leicester Square. Soon, too, the streets ceased the door by Mrs Dendy herself - a white-haired, rather even to be smart, and became a little shabby; each corner portly lady, who greeted Mr Bliss like a friend, calling him that we passed, each public house, each row of shops and

'Wal', and offering him her cheek to kiss - and shown into houses, seemed dingier than the one before. Beside me, her parlour. Here she had us sit and remove our hats, and Kitty and Mr Bliss had fallen into conversation; their talk bade us make ourselves quite cosy; and a girl was called, was all of theatres and contracts, costumes and songs. I kept then swiftly dispatched to bring some cups and brew some my face pressed to the window, wondering when we should tea on our behalf.

ever leave behind these dreary districts and reach When the door was closed behind her Mrs Dendy gave us a Greasepaint Avenue, our home.

smile. 'Welcome, my dears,' she said - she had a voice as At last, when we had turned into a street of tall, flat-roofed damp and fruity as a piece of Christmas cake — 'Welcome houses, each with a line of blistered railings before it and a to Ginevra Road. I do hope that your stay with me will be a set of sooty blinds and curtains at its windows, Mr Bliss happy, and a lucky one.' Here she nodded to Kitty. 'Mr broke off his talk to peer outside and say that we were Bliss tells me that I'm to have quite a little star twinkling almost there. I had to look away from his kind and smiling beneath my eaves, Miss Butler.'

face, then, to hide my disappointment. I knew that my first, Kitty said modestly that she didn't know about that, and excited vision of Brixton - that row of golden make-up Mrs Dendy gave a chuckle that turned into a throaty cough. sticks, our house with the carmine-coloured roof - was a For a long moment the cough seemed to quite convulse her, foolish one; but this street looked so very grey and mean. It and Kitty and I sat up, exchanging glances of alarm and was no different really, I suppose, from the ordinary roads dismay. When the fit was passed, however, the lady seemed that I had left behind in Whitstable; it was only strange - just as calm and jolly as before. She drew a handkerchief but therefore slightly sinister. As we stepped from the from her sleeve, and wiped her lips and eyes with it; then carriage I glanced at Kitty to see if she, too, felt any she reached for a packet of Woodbines from the table at her stirrings of dismay. But her colour was as high, and her elbow, offered us each a cigarette, and took one for herself. eyes as damp and shining, as before; she only gazed at the Her fingers, I saw then, were quite yellow with tobacco house to which our chaperon now led us, and gave a little, stains.

tight-lipped smile of satisfaction. I understood, suddenly - After a moment the tea things appeared, and while Kitty what I had only half perceived before - that she had spent and Mrs Dendy busied themselves with the tray I looked her life in plain, anonymous houses like this one, and knew about me. There was much to look at, for Mrs Dendy's no better. The thought gave me a little courage - and made parlour was rather extraordinary. Its rugs and furniture were me ache, as usual, with sympathy and love.

plain enough; its walls, however, were wonderful, for every

75

76

one of them was crowded with pictures and photographs -

'I dare say you would like to see your rooms, and give your so crowded, indeed, that there was barely enough space faces a bit of a splash,' she said pleasantly. She turned to Mr between the frames to make out the colour of the wallpaper Bliss who had risen politely, when she had. 'Now, if you beneath.

could just apply your obliging arm to the young ladies'

'I can see you are quite taken with my little collection,' said boxes and things, Wal. . .' Then she led us from the parlour, Mrs Dendy as she handed me my tea-cup, and I blushed to and up the stairs. We climbed for three flights, the stairwell find all eyes suddenly turned my way. She gave me a smile, growing dimmer as we ascended, then lightening: the last and lifted her yellowed fingers to fiddle with the crystal set of steps were slim and uncarpeted, and had a little drop that hung, on a brass thread, from the hole in her ear. skylight above them, a quartered pane streaked with soot

'All old tenants of mine, my dear,' she said; 'and some of and pigeon-droppings, through which the blue of the them, as you will see, rather famous.'

September sky showed unexpectedly vivid and clear - as if I looked at the pictures again. They were all, I now saw, the sky itself were a ceiling, and, climbing, we had come portraits - signed portraits most of them - of artistes from nearer to it.

the theatres and the halls. There were, as Mrs Dendy had At the top of these steps there was a door, and behind this a claimed, several faces that I knew - the Great Vance, for very small room - not a bed-sitting room as I had expected, instance, had his photograph upon the chimney-breast, with but a tiny parlour with a pair of ancient, sagging armchairs Jolly John Nash, posed as 'Rackity Jack', at his side; and set before a hearth, and a shallow, old-fashioned dresser. above the sofa there was a framed song-sheet with a Beside the dresser was another door, leading to a second sprawling, uneven dedication: 'To Dear Ma Dendy. Kind chamber which a sloping roof made even smaller than the thoughts, Good wishes. Bessie Bell wood'. But there were first. Kitty and I stepped to its threshold and stood, side by many more that I did not recognise, men and women with side, gazing at what lay beyond: a wash-hand stand; a lyrelaughing faces, in gay, professional poses, and with backed chair; an alcove with a curtain before it; and a bed - costumes and names so bland, exotic or obscure - Jennie a bed with a high, thick mattress and an iron bedstead, and West, Captain Largo, Shinkaboo Lee -I could guess nothing beneath it a chamberpot - a bed rather narrower than the about the nature of their turns. I marvelled to think that they one I was used to sharing with my sister at home. had all stayed here, in Ginevra Road, with comely Mrs

'You won't mind doubling up, of course,' said Mrs Dendy, Dendy as their host.

who had followed us to the bedroom. 'You'll be quite on top We talked until the tea was drunk, and our landlady had of each other in here, I'm afraid - though not so tight as my smoked two or three more cigarettes; then she slapped her boys downstairs, who only have the one room. But Mr Bliss knees and got slowly to her feet.

did insist on a decent bit of space for the two of you.' She smiled at me, and I looked away. Kitty, however, said very

77

78

brightly: 'It's perfect, Mrs Dendy. Miss Astley and I will be She smiled, then bent to tug at the straps of the basket at her as cosy here as two peg-dolls in a dolls' house - won't we, feet; and after a moment of idling in the armchair, watching Nan?'

her busy herself with dresses and books and bonnets, I rose Her cheeks, I saw, had grown a little pink - but that might to help her.

have been from the climb up from the parlour. I said, 'We It took us an hour to unpack. My own few poor frocks and will', and lowered my gaze again; then moved to take a box shoes and underclothes took up little enough space, and from Mr Bliss.

were stowed away in a moment; but Kitty, of course, had Mr Bliss himself did not stay long after that - as if he not only her everyday dresses and boots to unpack and thought it indelicate to linger in a lady's chamber, even one brush and straighten, but also her suits and toppers. When he was paying for himself. He exchanged a few words with she started on these, I moved to take them from her. I said, Kitty regarding her appointment on the morrow at the

'You must let me take charge of your costumes now, you Bermondsey Star - for she had to meet the manager, and know. Look at these collars! They all need whitening. Look rehearse with the orchestra, in the morning, in preparation at these stockings! We must keep a drawer for the ones that for her first appearance in the evening - then he shook her have been cleaned, and another for the ones that need hand, and mine, and bade us farewell. I felt as anxious, mending. We must keep these links in a box or they will be suddenly, at the thought of him leaving us, as I had done a lost. . .'

few hours before at the prospect of meeting him at all. She stepped aside, and let me fuss over the studs and gloves But when he had gone - and when Mrs Dendy, too, had and shirt-fronts, and for a minute or two I worked in closed the door on us and wheezed and coughed her way silence, quite absorbed. I looked up at last to find her downstairs behind him -I lowered myself into one of the watching me; and when I caught her eye she winked and armchairs and closed my eyes, and felt myself ache with blushed at once. 'You cannot know,' she said then, 'how pleasure and relief simply to be alone at last with someone horribly smug I feel. Every second-rate serio longs to have who was more to me than a stranger. I heard Kitty step a dresser, Nan. Every hopeful, tired little actress who ever across the luggage, and when I opened my eyes she was at set foot upon a provincial stage aches to play the London my side and had raised a hand to tug at a lock of hair which halls - to have two nice rooms, instead of one, miserable had come loose from my plait and was falling over my one - to have a carriage to take her to the show at night, and brow. Her touch made me stiffen again: I was still not used drive her home, afterwards, while other, poorer, artistes to the easy caresses, the hand-holdings and cheek-strokings, must take the tram.' She was standing beneath the slope of of our friendship, and every one of them made me flinch the ceiling, her face in shadow and her eyes dark and large. slightly, and colour faintly, with desire and confusion.

'And now, suddenly, I have all these things, that I have

79

80

dreamed of having for so long! Do you know how that must set for dinner; more importantly, it was ringed with faces, feel, Nan, to be given your heart's desire, like that?'

every one of which looked up as we appeared and broke I did. It was a wonderful feeling - but a fearful one, too, for into a smile -the same quick, well-practised smile which you felt all the time that you didn't deserve your own good shone from all the pictures on the walls. It was as if half-afortune; that you had received it quite by error, in someone dozen of the portraits had come to life and stepped from else's place - and that it might be taken from you while your behind their dusty panes to join Mrs Dendy for supper. gaze was turned elsewhere. And there was nothing you There were eight places set — two of them vacant and would not do, I thought, nothing you would not sacrifice, to waiting, clearly, for Kitty and me, but the rest all taken. Mrs keep your heart's desire once you had been given it. I knew Dendy herself was seated at the head of the table; she was that Kitty and I felt just the same - only, of course, about in the process of dishing out slices from a plate of cold different things.

meats, but half rose when she saw us, to bid us make I should have remembered this, later.

ourselves at home, and to gesture, with her fork, to the We unpacked, as I have said, for an hour, and while we other diners - first to an elderly gentleman in a velvet worked I caught the sound of various shouts and stirrings in waistcoat who sat opposite to her.

the rest of the house. Now - it was six o'clock or so — there

'Professor Emery,' she said, without a hint of selfcame the creak of footsteps on the landing beneath ours, consciousness. 'Mentalist Extraordinary.'

and a cry: 'Miss Butler, Miss Astley!' It was Mrs Dendy, The Professor rose then, too, to make us a little bow. come to tell us that there was a bit of dinner for us, if we

'Mentalist Extraordinary, ah, as was,' he said with a glance wanted it, in the downstairs parlour - and 'quite a crowd, at our landlady. 'Mrs Dendy is too kind. It has been many besides, that'd like to meet you'.

years since I last stood before a hushed and gaping crowd, I was hungry, but also weary, and sick of shaking hands and guessing at the contents of a lady's purse.' He smiled, then smiling into strangers' faces; but Kitty whispered that we sat rather heavily. Kitty said that she was very pleased to had better go down, or the other lodgers would think us know him. Mrs Dendy pointed next to a thin, red-headed proud. So we called to Mrs Dendy to give us a moment, and boy on the Professor's right.

while Kitty changed her dress I combed and re-plaited my

'Sims Willis,' she said. 'Corner Man -'

hair, and beat the dust from the hem of my skirt into the

'Corner Man Extraordinary, of course,' he said quickly, fireplace, and washed my hands; and then we made our way leaning to shake our hands. 'As is. And this' - nodding to downstairs.

another hoy across the table from himself - 'this is Percy, The parlour was a very different room, now, to the one that my brother, who plays the Bones. He's also extraordinary.'

we had sat and taken tea in on our arrival. The table had As he spoke Percy gave a wink and, as if to prove his been opened out and pulled into the centre of the room, and brother's words, caught up a pair of spoons from the side of

81

82

his plate, and set them rattling upon the tablecloth in a

'Training you up?' This was Tootsie again. 'Take my advice wonderful tattoo.

and don't train her too well, Kitty, or some other artiste'll Mrs Dendy cleared her throat above the noise, then take her from you. I've seen that happen.'

gestured to the pretty, pink-lipped girl who had the seat Take her from me?' said Kitty with a smile. 'Oh, I couldn't next to Sims. 'And not forgetting Miss Flyte, our ballerina.'

have that. It is Nan that brings me my good luck ..." The girl gave a simper. 'You must call me Lydia,' she said, I looked at my plate, and felt myself redden, until Mrs extending a hand, 'which is what I am known as at - do Dendy, still busy with her platter, held a piece of quivering cheese it, Percy! — what I am known as at the Pav. Or meat my way and coughed: 'A bit of tongue, Miss Astley Monica, if you prefer, which is my real name.'

dear?'

'Or Tootsie,' added Sims, 'which is what her pals all call her The supper-talk was all, of course, theatrical tittle-tattle,

- and if you've read Ally Sloper's I'll leave you to work out and terribly dense and strange to my ears. There was no one why. Only let me say, Miss Butler, that she was in half a in that house, it seemed, who had not some link with the panic when Walter told us he was moving you in, lest you profession. Even plain little Minnie - the eighth member of turn out to he some flashy show-girl with a ten-inch waist. our party, the girl who had brought us tea on our arrival and When she learned you were a male impersonator, why, she had returned now to help Mrs Dendy dish and serve and turned quite gentle with relief.'

clear the plates - even she belonged to a ballet troupe, and Tootsie gave him a push. 'Pay no mind to him,' she said to had a contract at a concert hall in Lambeth. Why, even the us, 'he is always teasing. I am very pleased to have another dog, Bransby, which soon nosed its way into the parlour to girl about the place - two girls, I should say - flashy or beg for scraps, and to lean his slavering jaw against otherwise.' As she spoke she gave me a quick, satisfied Professor Emery's knee -even he was an old artiste, and had glance that showed plain enough which kind she thought I once toured the South Coast in a dancing dog act, and had a was; then - as Kitty took the seat beside her, leaving me stage name: 'Archie'.

with Percy for a neigh-hour - she went on: 'Walter says you It was a Sunday night, and nobody had a hall to rush to will be very big, Miss Butler. I hear you're to start at the after supper; no one seemed to have anything to do, indeed, Star tomorrow night. I remember that as a very fine hall.'

except sit and smoke and gossip. At seven o'clock there was

'So I've heard. Do call me Kitty

a knock upon the door, and a girl came halloo-ing her way

'And what about you, Miss Astley?' asked Percy as they into the house with a dress of tulle and satin and a gilt tiara: chatted. 'Have you been a dresser for long? You seem awful she was a friend of Tootsie's from the ballet at the Pav young for it.'

come to ask Mrs Dendy's opinion of her costume. While the

'I'm not really a dresser at all, yet. Kitty is still training me frock was spread out on the parlour rug, the supper-things up-'

were carried off; and when the table was cleared the

83

84

Professor sat at it and spread a deck of cards. Percy joined She came about a half-hour later. I didn't look at her or say him, whistling; his tune was taken up by Sims, who raised her name, and she didn't greet me, only moved very quietly the lid of Mrs Dendy's piano and began to strike the melody about the room - assuming, I suppose, I was asleep, for I out on that. The piano was a terrible one -'Damn this cheesy was lying very straight on my side and had my eyes hard old thing!' cried Sims as he hit at it. 'You could play shut. There was a little noise from the rest of the house - a Wagner on it, and I swear it would come out sounding like laugh, and the closing of a door, and the rushing of water a sea-shanty or a jig!' - but the tune was gay and it made through distant pipes. But then all was calm again; and soon Kitty smile.

there were only the gentle sounds of her undressing: the

'I know this,' she said to me; and since she knew it she tiny volley of thuds as she pulled at the buttons on her couldn't help but sing it, and had soon stepped over the bodice; the rustle of her skirt, and then of her petticoat; the sparkling frock upon the floor to lift her voice for the sighing of the laces through the eyes of her stays. At last chorus at Sims's side.

there came the slap of her feet on the floorboards, and I I sat on the sofa with Bransby, and wrote a postcard to my guessed that she must be quite naked.

family. 'I am in the queerest-looking parlour you ever saw,'

I had turned the gas down, but left a candle burning for her. I wrote, 'and everybody is extremely kind. There is a dog I knew that if I opened my eyes now, and tilted my face, I here with a stage-name! My landlady says to thank you for should see her clad in nothing but shadows and the candlethe oysters . . .'

flame's amber glow.

It was very cosy on the sofa, with everyone about me so But I did not turn; and soon there was another rustling, that gay; hut at half-past ten or so Kitty yawned - and at that I meant she had pulled on her nightgown. In a moment the gave a jump, and rose, and said it was my bedtime. I paid a light was extinguished; the bed creaked and heaved; and hasty visit to the privy out the back, then ran upstairs and she was lying beside me, very warm and horribly real. changed into my nightgown double-quick - you might have She sighed. I felt her breath upon my neck and knew that thought I had been kept from sleeping for a week and was she was gazing at me. Her breath came a second time, and about to die of tiredness. But I was not sleepy at all; it was then a third, then: 'Are you asleep?' she whispered. only that I wanted to be safely abed before Kitty appeared -

'No,' I said, for I could pretend no longer. I rolled on to my safely still and calm and ready for that moment that must back. The movement brought us even closer together - it shortly come, when she would be beside me in the dark, really was an extremely narrow bed - so I shifted, rather and there would be nothing but the two flimsy lengths of hurriedly, to my left, until I could not have shifted any our cotton nightgowns to separate her own warm limbs further without falling out. Now her breath was upon my from mine.

cheek, and warmer than before.

85

86

She said, 'Do you miss your home, and Alice?' I shook my my hand, and placed her arm over my middle, curling her head. 'Not just a little?'

fingers around the hollow of my waist. 'But we're like

'Well ..."

sisters now, aren't we Nan? You'll be a sister to me — won't I felt her smile. Very gently - but quite matter-of-factly - you?'

she moved her hand to my wrist, pulled my arm above the I patted her shoulder stiffly. Then I turned my face away bedclothes, and ducked her head beneath it to place her quite dazed, with mixed relief and disappointment. I said, temple against my collar-bone, my arm about her neck. The

'Oh yes, Kitty,' and she squeezed me tighter.

hand that dangled before her throat she squeezed, and held. Then she slept, and her head and arm grew slack and heavy. Her cheek, against my shallow breast, felt hotter than a flatI, however, lay awake - just as I had used to lie at Alice's iron.

side. But now I did not dream; I only spoke to myself rather

'How your heart beats!' she said — and at that, of course, it sternly.

beat faster. She sighed again - this time her mouth was at I knew that I would not, after all, pack my bags in the the opening of my nightgown, and I felt her breath upon the morning and bid Kitty farewell; I knew that, having come naked skin beneath - she sighed and said, 'So many times I so far, I could not. But if I were to stay with her, then it lay in that dull room at Mrs Pugh's and thought of you and must be as she said; I must learn to swallow my queer and Alice in your little bed beside the sea. Was it just like this, inconvenient lusts, and call her 'sister'. For to be Kitty's being with her?'

sister was better than to be Kitty's nothing, Kitty's no one. I didn't answer her. I, too, was thinking back to that little And if my head and my heart -and the hot, squirming centre bed. How hard it had been, having to lie next to slumbering of me - cried out at the shame of it, then I must stifle them. Alice, my heart and my head all filled with Kitty. How I must learn to love Kitty as Kitty loved me; or never be much harder would it be to have Kitty herself beside me, so able to love her at all.

close and so unknowing! It would be a torture. I thought: I And that, I knew, would be terrible.

shall pack my trunk tomorrow. I shall get up very early and

catch the first train back . . .

Chapter 4

Kitty spoke on, not minding my silence. 'You and Alice,'

The Star, when we reached it at noon the next day, turned she was saying again. 'Do you know, Nan, how jealous I out to be not a tenth as smart as those marvellous West End was . . . ?'

halls before which we had leaned, with Mr Bliss, to dream I swallowed. 'Jealous?' The word sounded terrible in the of Kitty's triumph; even so, however, it was quite darkness.

alarmingly handsome and grand. Its manager at this time

'Yes, I -' She seemed to hesitate; then, 'You see,' she went was a Mr Ling; he met us at the stage door and took us to on, 'I never had a sister like other girls did . . .' She let go of his office, to read aloud the terms of Kitty's contract and

87

88

secure her signature upon it; but then he rose and shook our

'Thank God, a woman with a cigarette! Give us one, ducks, hands and shouted for the call-boy, and had us shown, would you? I'm quite broke till pay-day.'

rather briskly, to the stage. Here, self-conscious and Kitty was booked to appear that night, a little way into the awkward, I waited while Kitty spoke with the conductor first half of the show. While I helped her with her collar and and ran through her songs with the band. Once a man her neck-tie and her rose, I felt quite steady; but when we approached me, with a broom on his shoulder, and asked walked to the wing to wait for her number to go up, to gaze me rather roughly who I was and what I did there. from the shadows at the unfamiliar theatre and its vast and

'I'm waiting for Miss Butler,' I said, my voice as thin as a careless crowd, I felt myself begin to tremble. I looked at whistle.

Kitty. Her face was white beneath its layer of paint - though

'Are you, then,' he said. 'Well, sweetheart, you'll have to whether with fear, or with fierce ambition, I could not tell. wait somewhere else, for I've to sweep this spot, and you With no other motive, I swear, than to comfort her - so are in my way. Go on, now.' And I moved away, blushing mindful was I of that new resolve, to play her sister and horribly, and had to stand in a corridor while boys with nothing more - I took her hand, and pressed it. baskets and ladders and pails of sand lumbered by me, When the stage-manager finally gave her his nod, however, looking me over, or cursing when I blocked their path. I had to turn my eyes away. There was no chairman at this Our return visit, however, in the evening, was an easier one, hall to bring the crowd to order, and the act Kitty had to for then we went straight to the dressing-room, where I follow was a popular one - a comedian, who had been knew my part a little better. Even so, when we entered the called back upon the stage four times, and who had had to room I felt my spirits tumble rather, for it was nothing like plead with the audience, in the end, to let him make his exit. the cosy little chamber at the Canterbury Palace, which They had done so grudgingly; they were disappointed and Kitty had had all to herself, and which I was used to distracted now when the orchestra struck up with the first keeping so neat and nice. Instead it was dim and dusty, with bars of Kitty's opening song. When Kitty herself stepped benches and hooks for a dozen artistes, and one greasy sink out into the glare of the footlights to wave her hat and call that must be shared by all, and a door that must be propped

'Hallo!', there was no answering roar from the gallery, only shut or left to sag and let in every glance of every stagea half-hearted ripple of applause from the boxes and stalls - hand and visitor that might be idling in the passageway for the sake, I suppose, of her costume. When I forced my beyond. We arrived late, and found most of the hooks gaze at last into the hall I saw that the audience was restless already taken, and several of the benches occupied by girls

- that people were on their feet, heading for the bar or the and women in varying stages of undress. They looked up lavatory; that boys were perched upon the gallery rail with when we arrived, and smiled, most of them; and when Kitty their backs to us; that girls were calling to friends three took out her packet of Weights and a match, someone cried, rows away, or gossiping with their neighbours, looking

89

90

everywhere but at the stage, where Kitty - lovely, clever wasn't so good,' she said at last, 'as I might have wished it. Kitty - sang and strode and sweated.

There was no-fizz, no sparkle.'

But slowly, slowly, the mood of the theatre changed - not Mr Bliss gave a snort, then spread his hands. 'My dear, your tremendously, but enough. When she finished her first song first night in the capital! A theatre larger than you have ever a man leaned from a balcony to shout, 'Now bring Nibs worked before! The crowd will come to know you, word back on!' - meaning Nibs Fuller, the comedian whom Kitty will spread. You must be patient. Soon they will be buying had replaced. Kitty didn't blink; while the band played the tickets just for you!' At that I saw the manager glance his warm-up to her next number she raised her hat to the man way through narrowed eyes; but Kitty, at least, allowed and called, 'Why, does he owe you money?' The crowd herself to smile. 'That's better,' said Mr Bliss then. 'And laughed -and listened more carefully to her next song, and now, if you'll permit me, ladies, I believe a light little clapped more briskly when she finished it. When, a little supper would be welcome. A light little supper - and, later, another man tried to call for Nibs, he was shushed by perhaps, a heavy large glass with some of that fizz in it, his neighbours; and by the time Kitty got round to her Miss Butler, that you seem so keen on.'

ballad and her bit of business with the rose the hall was on The restaurant to which he took us was a theatre people's her side, attentive and appreciative.

one, not very far away, and filled with gentlemen in fancy From my station at the side of the stage I watched her in waistcoats just like himself, and with girls and boys like wonder. When she stepped into the wing, weary and Kitty, with streaks of greasepaint on their cuffs and crumbs flushed, and her place was taken by a comic singer, I put of spit-black in the corners of their eyes. He seemed to have my hand upon her arm and pressed it hard. Then Mr Bliss a friend at every table, every one of whom saluted him as appeared with Mr Ling the manager. They had been he passed by; but he did not pause to chat with them, only watching from the front, and looked very satisfied; the waved his hat in general greeting, then led us to an empty former took Kitty's hand in both of his and shook it, crying, booth and called to a waiter for a recitation of the bill of

'A triumph, Miss Butler! A triumph, if ever I saw one.'

fare. When this was done, and we had made our choices, he Mr Ling was more restrained. He gave Kitty a nod, then beckoned the man a little closer and murmured something said, 'Well done, my dear. A difficult crowd, and you to him; the waiter withdrew, and returned a minute later handled it admirably. Once the band has grasped the pacing with a champagne bottle, which Mr Bliss proceeded of your business and your strolls — well, you will be ostentatiously to uncork. At that, there was a cheering at the splendid.' Kitty only frowned. I had brought a towel with other tables; and a woman began to sing, amidst much me from the change-room, and this she now caught up, and laughter and applause, that she wouldn't call for sherry, and pressed to her face. Then she took her jacket off, and she wouldn't call for beer, and she wouldn't call for cham handed it to me, and unfastened the bow-tie at her throat. 'It because she knew 'twould make her queer . . .

91

92

I thought of the postcard I would write when I got home: 'I imagine, Miss Astley, all the handsome gentlemen's toggery have had supper in a theatrical restaurant. Kitty made her that languishes, at this very minute, at the bottom of some debut at the Star and they are calling it a triumph ..." costumier's hamper, waiting, simply waiting, for Kitty Meanwhile, Mr Bliss and Kitty chatted; and when next I Butler to step inside it and lend it life! Only think of all concentrated on their talk I realised that it was rather those more than handsome fabrics -those ivory worsteds, serious.

those rippling silks, those crimson velvets and scarlet

'Now,' Mr Bliss was saying, 'I am going to ask you to do shalloons; only hear the snip of the tailor's scissors, the something which, if I were any other kind of gentleman prick of the sempstress's needle; only imagine her success, than a theatrical agent, I should be quite ashamed to. I am decked as a soldier, or a coster, or a prince . . .'

going to ask you to go about the city - and you must assist He paused at last, and Kitty smiled. 'Mr Bliss,' she said, 'I her, Miss Astley,' he added when he saw me looking - 'you do believe you could persuade a one-armed man into a must both of you go about the city and study the men!'

juggling turn, the way you talk.'

I gazed at Kitty and blinked, and she smiled back He laughed, and struck the table with his hand so that the uncertainly. 'Study the men?' she said.

cutlery rattled: it turned out that he had a one-armed juggler

'Scrutinise 'em!' said Mr Bliss, sawing at a piece of cutlet. for a client, and was billing him - with great success - as

'Catch their characters, their little habits, their mannerisms

'The Second Cinquevalli: Half the Capacity, Double the and gaits. What are their histories? What are their secrets? Skill!'

Have they ambitions? Have they hopes and dreams? Have And it was all quite as he promised and directed. He sent us they sweethearts they have lost? Or have they only aching to costumiers and tailors, and had Kitty decked out in a feet, and empty bellies?' He waved his fork. 'You must dozen different gentlemanly guises; and when the suits know it; and you must copy them, and make your audience were made he sent us to photographers, to have her likeness know it in their turn.'

taken as she held a policeman's whistle to her lip, or

'Do you mean, then,' I asked, not understanding, 'to change shouldered a rifle or a sailor's rope. He found songs to fit Kitty's act?'

the costumes, and brought them round to Ginevra Road

'I mean, Miss Astley, to broaden Kitty's repertoire. Her himself, to strike them out on Mrs Dendy's terrible old masher is a very fine fellow; but she cannot walk the piano for Kitty to try, and for the rest of us to listen to and Burlington Arcade, in lavender gloves, for ever.' He gazed consider. Most importantly of all he secured contracts, at at Kitty again, then wiped his mouth with a napkin and halls in Hoxton, and Poplar, and Kilburn, and Bow. Within spoke in a more confiding tone. 'What think you of a a fortnight, Kitty's London career was fairly launched. Now policeman's jacket? Or a sailor's blouse? What think you of she did not change into her ordinary girl's clothes when she peg-top trousers or a pearly coat?' He turned to me. 'Only finished her act at the Star; instead, I stood with her coat

93

94

and her basket ready, and when she stepped from before the which I passed on to my landlady to let her dish to us all at footlights we ran together to the stage door, to where our supper. And yet, somehow, my letters home grew more and brougham waited to lumber fitfully with us through the city more infrequent, my replies to their cards and presents traffic to the next theatre. Now, instead of wearing one suit increasingly tardy and brief. 'When are you coming to see for the whole of her turn she wore three or four; and I was us?' they would write at the end of their letters. 'When are her dresser in real earnest, helping her tear at buttons and you coming home to Whitstable?' And I would answer, links while the orchestra played between the songs, and the

'Soon, soon . . .' or, 'When Kitty can spare me ..." audience waited, half-way between expectation and But Kitty never could spare me. The weeks passed, the impatience, for her to reappear.

season changed; the nights grew longer and darker and The hours we kept now, of course, were rather strange ones, cold. Whitstable became - not dimmer, in my mind, but for as long as Kitty continued to work two, three or four overshadowed. It was not that I didn't think of Father and halls a night we would arrive back at Ginevra Road at halfMother, of Alice and Davy and my cousins - just that I past twelve or one, weary and aching but still giddy and hot thought of Kitty, and my new life, more . . .

from our moonlit criss-crossings of the city, our anxious For there was so very much to think about. I was Kitty's waits in dressing-rooms and wings. Here we would find dresser, but I was also her friend, her adviser, her Sims and Percy, and Tootsie and her girl-and boy-friends, companion in all things. When she learned a song I held the all fresh and flushed and gay as we, making tea and cocoa, sheet, to prompt her if she faltered. When tailors fitted her I Welsh rabbit and pancakes, in Mrs Dendy's kitchen. Then watched and nodded, or shook my head if the cut was Mrs Dendy herself would appear - for she had kept wrong. When she let herself be guided by the clever Mr theatrical lodgers for so long she had begun to keep Bliss - or 'Walter' I should call him, for so, by now, he had theatrical hours, too - and suggest a game of cards, or a become to us, just as we were 'Kitty' and 'Nan' to him - song or a dance. It could not long be kept secret, in that when she let herself be guided by Walter, and spent hours house, that I liked to sing and had a pretty voice, and so as he had advised in shops and market squares and stations sometimes I might raise a chorus or two, along with Kitty. studying the men, I went with her; and we learned together Now I never went to bed before three, and never woke in the constable's amble, the coster's weary swagger, the smart the morning before nine or ten o'clock - so swiftly and clip of the off-duty soldier.

completely had I forgotten my old oyster-maidish habits. And as we did so we seemed to learn the ways and manners I did not, of course, forget my family or my home. I sent of the whole unruly city; and I grew as easy, at last, with them cards, as I have said; I sent them notices of Kitty's London, as with Kitty herself-as easy, and as endlessly shows, and gossip from the theatre. They sent me letters in fascinated and charmed. We visited the parks - tho'se great, return, and little parcels - and, of course, barrels of oysters, handsome parks and gardens, that are so queer and verdant

95

96

in the midst of so much dust, yet have a little of the hardly knew whether to pity, patronise or fear, so closely pavements' quickness in them, too. We strolled the West did they resemble me, so easily might they have had my End; we sat and gazed at all the marvellous sights - not just role, I theirs.

the grand, celebrated sights of London, the palaces and And yet, with all this, she did not become what she longed monuments and picture galleries, but also the smaller, to be, what Walter had promised her she would be: a star. swifter dramas: the overturning of a carriage; the escape of The halls she worked remained the suburban ones, and the an eel from an eel-man's barrow; the picking of a pocket; better class of East End ones (and once or twice the not-sothe snatching of a purse. nice ones - Foresters, and the Sebright, where the crowd We visited the river - stood on London Bridge, and threw boots and trotter-bones at the acts they didn't like). Battersea Bridge, and all the bridges in between, just so that Her name never rose much or grew larger on the music-hall we might look, and marvel, at the great, stinking breadth of notices; her songs were never hummed or whistled about it. It was the Thames, I knew, which widened at its estuary the streets. The problem, Walter said, lay not with Kitty to form the kind, clear, oyster-bearing sea I had grown up herself but with the nature of her act. She had too many on. It gave me an odd little thrill, as I stood gazing at the rivals; male impersonation - once as specialised as platepleasure-boats beneath Lambeth Bridge, to know that I had spinning - had suddenly, inexplicably, become a cruelly journeyed against the current - had made the trip from overworked routine.

palpitating metropolis to mild, uncomplicated Whitstable in

'Why does every young lady who wants to do her bit of reverse. When I saw barges bringing fish from Kent I only business on the stage these days want to do it in trousers?'

smiled - it never made me homesick. And when the bargehe asked us, exasperated, when yet another male men turned, to make the journey back along the river, I did impersonator made her debut on the London circuit. 'Why not envy them at all.

does every perfectly respectable comedienne and serio And while we strolled and gazed and grew ever more suddenly want to change her act - to pull a pair of bellsisterly and content, the year drew to a close; we continued bottoms on, and dance the hornpipe? Kitty, you were born to labour over the act, and Kitty herself became something to play the boy, any fool can see it; were you an actress on of a success. Now, every contract that Walter found her was the legitimate stage you would be Rosalind, or Viola, or longer and more generous than the last; soon she was overPortia. But these tuppeny-ha'penny impersonators - Fannie booked, and turning offers down. Now she had admirers - Leslie, Fanny Robina, Bessie Bonehill, Millie Hylton - they gentlemen, who sent her flowers and dinner invitations look about as natural in their dinner-jackets as I would, clad (which - to my secret relief-she only laughed over and put in a crinoline or a bustle. It makes me rage' - he was seated aside); boys, who asked for her picture; girls, who gathered in our little parlour as he spoke, and here he slapped the at the stage door to tell her how handsome she was - girls I arm of his chair, so that the ancient seams gave a fart of

97

98

dust and hair - 'it makes me rage to see girls with a tenth of If she were famous, too, then she would also be richer. She your talent getting all the bookings that should be yours - might buy a house - we should have to leave Ginevra Road and worse! all the fame.' He stood, and placed his hands and all our new friends in it; we should have to leave our upon Kitty's shoulders. 'You are on the very edge of little sitting-room; we should have to leave our bed, and stardom,' he said, giving her a little push so that she had to take separate chambers. I could not bear the thought of it. I grasp his arms to stop herself from falling. There must be had grown used, at last, to sleeping with Kitty at my side. I something, something that we can do to just propel you no longer trembled, or grew stiff and awkward, when she over - something we can add to your act to set it apart from touched me, but had learned to lean into her embraces, to that of all those other prancing schoolgirls!'

accept her kisses, chastely, nonchalantly - and even, But, however hard we worked, we could not find it; and sometimes, to return them. I had grown used to the sight of meanwhile Kitty continued at the lesser theatres, in the her slumbering or undressed. I did not hold my breath in humbler districts - Islington, Marylebone, Battersea, wonder when I opened my eyes upon her face, still and Peckham, Hackney - circling Leicester Square, crossing the shadowed in the thin grey light of dawn. I had seen her strip West End on her nightly trips from hall to hall, but never to wash or to change her gown. I was as familiar with her entering those palaces of her and Walter's dreams: the body, now, as with my own - more so, indeed, because her Alhambra, and the Empire.

head, her neck, her wrists, her back, her limbs (which were To be honest, I didn't much mind. I was sorry, for Kitty's as smooth and as rounded and as freckled as her cheek), her sake, that her great new London career was not quite so skin (which she wore with a marvellous, easy grace, as if it great as she had hoped for; but I was also, privately, were another kind of handsome suit, perfectly tailored and relieved. I knew how clever and charming and lovely she pleasant to wear), were, I thought, so much lovelier and was, and while a part of me wanted, like Walter, to share more fascinating than my own.

the knowledge with the world, a greater part longed only to No, I didn't want a single thing to change - not even when I hug it to myself, to keep it secret and secure. For I was sure learned something about Walter that was rather that, were she truly famous, I would lose her. I didn't like it disconcerting.

when her fans sent flowers, or clamoured at the stage door Inevitably, we had spent so many hours with Walter - for photographs and kisses; more fame would bring more working upon songs at Mrs Dendy's piano, or supping with flowers, more kisses - and I could not believe that she him after shows - that we had begun to look upon him less would go on laughing at the gentlemen's invitations, could as Kitty's agent and more as a friend, to both of us. In time not believe that one day, amongst all those admiring girls, it wasn't only working-days that we were spending with there wouldn't be one she would like better then me . . . him, but Sundays, too; eventually, indeed, Sundays with Walter became the rule rather than the exception, and we

99

100

began to listen out for the rumble of his carriage in Ginevra sometimes, or grow thick, when he addressed her. I saw and Road, the pounding of his boots upon our attic stairs, his heard it all, now, because - it was the very reason that had rap upon our parlour door, his foolish, extravagant kept me blind and deaf to it before! - because his passion greetings. He would bring bits of news and gossip; we was my own, which I had long grown used to thinking would drive into town, or out of it; we would stroll together unremarkable, and right.

- Kitty with her hand in the crook of one of his great arms, I almost pitied him; I almost loved him. I did not hate him - me with mine in the crook of the other, Walter himself like or if I did, it was only as one loathes the looking-glass, that a blustering uncle, loud and lively and kind.

shows one one's imperfect form in strict and fearful clarity. I thought nothing of it, except that it was pleasant, until one Nor did I now begin to resent his presence on those strolls morning as I sat eating my breakfast beside Kitty and Sims and visits that I should otherwise have made with Kitty on and Percy and Tootsie. It was a Sunday, and Kitty and I my own. He was my rival, of sorts; but in some queer way were rather tardy; when Sims heard who it was that we it was almost easier to love her in his company, than out of were rushing for, he gave a cry: 'My word, Kitty, but it. His presence gave me a licence to be bold and gay and Walter must be expecting marvellous things of you! I've sentimental, as he was; to be able to pretend to worship her never known him spend so much time with an artiste

- which was almost as good as being able to worship her in before. Anyone would think he was your beau!' He seemed earnest.

to say it guilelessly enough; but as he did so I saw Tootsie And if I still longed yet feared to hold her - well, as I have smile and give a sideways glance at Percy - and, worse!

said, the fact that Walter felt the same showed that both my saw Kitty blush and turn her face away - and all at once I reticence and my love were only natural and proper. She understood what they all knew, and cursed to think I had was a star - my private star - and I would be content, I not guessed it sooner. A half-hour later, when Walter thought, like Walter, to fly about her on my stiff and distant presented himself at the parlour door, offering a gleaming orbit, unswervingly, for ever.

cheek to Kitty and crying 'Kiss me, Kate!', I didn't smile, I could not know how soon we would collide, nor how but only bit my lip, and wondered.

dramatically.

He was a little in love with her; perhaps, indeed, rather By now it was December - a cold December to match the more than a little. I saw it now - saw the dampness of the sweltering August, so cold that the little skylight above our looks he sometimes turned upon her, and the awkwardness staircase at Ma Dendy's was thick with ice for days at a of the glances which, more hastily, he turned away. I saw time; so cold that when we woke in the mornings our breath how he seized every foolish opportunity to kiss her hand, or showed grey as smoke, and we had to pull our petticoats pluck her sleeve, or place his arm, heavy and clumsy with into bed with us and dress beneath the sheets. desire, about her slender shoulders; I heard his voice catch,

101

102

At home in Whitstable we hated the cold, because it made husband-and-wife team, 'The Teeny Weenies' - were all as the trawler-men's job so much the harder. I remember my complacent as we, and very jolly company.

brother Davy sitting at our parlour fire on January evenings, The show ended at Christmas. I should, perhaps, have and weeping, simply weeping with pain, as the life returned passed the holiday in Whitstable, for I knew my parents to his split and frozen hands, his chilblained feet. I would be disappointed not to have me there. But I knew, remember the ache in my own fingers as I handled pail after too, what Christmas dinner would be like at home. There frigid pail of winter oysters, and transferred fish, endlessly, would be twenty cousins gathered around the table, all from icy sea-water to steaming soup.

talking at once, all stealing the turkey from one another's At Mrs Dendy's, however, everybody loved the winter plates. There would be such a fuss and stir they could not months; and the colder they were, they said, the better. possibly, I thought, miss me - but I knew that Kitty would if Because frosts, and chill winds, fill theatres. For many I left her for them; and I knew, besides, that I should miss Londoners a ticket to the music hall is cheaper than a her horribly and only make the occasion miserable for scuttle of coal - or, if not cheaper, then more fun: why stay everybody else. So she and I spent it together - with Walter, in your own miserable parlour stamping and clapping to as ever, in attendance - at Mrs Dendy's table, eating goose, keep the cold out when you can visit the Star or the and drinking toast after toast to the coming year with Paragon, and stamp and clap along with your neighbours - champagne and pale ale.

and with Marie Lloyd as an accompaniment? On the very Of course, there were gifts: presents from home, which coldest nights the music halls are full of wailing infants: Mother forwarded with a stiff little note that I refused to let their mothers bring them to the shows rather than leave shame me; presents from Walter (a brooch for Kitty, a hatthem to slumber - perhaps to death — in their damp and pin for me). I sent parcels to Whitstable, and gave gifts at draughty cradles.

Ma Dendy's; and for Kitty I bought the loveliest thing that I But we didn't worry much over the frozen babies at Mrs could find: a pearl - a single flawless pearl that was Dendy's house that winter; we were merely glad and mounted on silver and hung from a chain. It cost ten times careless, because ticket sales were high and we were all in as much as I had ever spent on any gift before, and I work and a little richer than before. At the beginning of trembled when I handled it. Mrs Dendy, when I showed it December Kitty got a spot on the bill at a hall in to her, gave a frown. 'Pearls for tears,' she said, and shook Marylebone, and played there twice a night, all month. It her head: she was very superstitious. Kitty, however, was pleasant to sit gossiping in the green room between thought it beautiful, and had me fasten it about her neck at shows, knowing that we had no frantic trips to make across once, and seized a mirror to watch it swinging there, an London in the snow; and the other artistes - a juggling inch beneath the hollow of her lovely throat. 'I'll never take troupe, a conjuror, two or three comic singers and a dwarf

103

104

it off,' she said; and she never did, but wore it ever after - money on myself. Now I blushed to think that she had ever even on the stage, beneath her neck-ties and cravats. thought me dowdy.

She, of course, bought me a gift. It came in a box with a And so I kept the dress for Kitty's sake; and wore it, for the bow, and wrapped in tissue, and turned out to be a dress: first time, a few nights later. The occasion was a party - an the most handsome dress I had ever possessed, a long, slim end-of-season party at the Marylebone theatre at which we evening dress of deepest blue, with a cream satin sash about had spent such a happy month. It was to be a very grand the waist, and heavy lace at the bosom and hem; a dress, I affair. Kitty had a new frock of her own made for it, a knew, that was far too fine for me. When I drew it from its lovely, low-necked, short-sleeved gown of China satin, wrappings and held it up against me before the glass, I pink as the warm pink heart of a rose-bud. I held it for her shook my head, quite stricken. 'It's beautiful,' I said to Kitty, to step into, and helped her fasten it; then watched her as

'but how can I keep it? It's far too smart. You must take it she pulled her gloves on - aching all the time with the back, Kitty. It's too expensive.'

prettiness of her, for the blush of the silk made her red lips But Kitty, who had watched me handle it with dark and all the redder, her throat more creamy, her eyes and hair all shining eyes, only laughed to see me so uneasy. 'Rubbish!'

the browner and more rich. She wore no jewellery but the she said. 'It's about time you started wearing some decent pearl that I had given her, and the brooch that had been frocks, instead of those awful old schoolgirlish things you Walter's gift. They didn't really match - the brooch was of brought with you from home. I have a decent wardrobe - amber. But Kitty could have worn anything - a string of and so should you. Goodness knows we can afford it. And bottle-tops about her neck - and still, I thought, look like a anyway, it can't go back: it was made just for you, like queen.

Cinderella's slipper, and is too peculiar a size to fit anybody Helping Kitty with her buttons made me slow with my own else.'

dressing; I said that she should go on down without me. Made just for me? That was even worse! 'Kitty,' I said, 'I When she had done so I pulled on the lovely gown that she really cannot. I should never feel comfortable in it..." had given me, then stepped to the glass to study myself -

'You must,' she said. 'And, besides' - she fingered the pearl and to frown at what I saw. The dress was so transforming that I had so recently placed about her neck, and looked it was practically a disguise. In the half-light it was dark as away - 'I am doing so well, now. I can't have my dresser midnight; my eyes appeared bluer above it than they really running round in her sister's hand-me-downs for ever. It were, and my hair paler, and the long skirt, and the sash, ain't quite the thing, now is it?' She said it lightly - but all at made me seem taller and thinner than ever. I did not look at once I saw the truth of her words. I had my own income all like Kitty had, in her pink frock; I looked more like a now -I had spent two weeks' wages on her pearl and chain; boy who had donned his sister's ball-gown for a lark. I but I had a Whitstable squeamishness, still, about spending loosened my plait of hair, then brushed it - then, because I

105

106

had no time to tie and loop it, twisted it into a knot at the waltzes, and set tables in the wings bearing pastries and back of my head, and stuck a comb in it. The chignon, I jellies, and barrels of beer and bowls of punch, and row thought, brought out the hard lines of my jaw and cheekupon row of bottles of wine. bones, made my wide shoulders wider still. I frowned We were much complimented, Kitty and I, on our new again, and looked away. It would have to do - and would dresses; and over me, in particular, people smiled and have the merit, I supposed, of making Kitty look all the exclaimed - mouthing at me across the noisy hall, 'How fine daintier at my side.

you look!' One woman - the conjuror's assistant - took my I went downstairs to join her. When I pushed at the parlour hand and said, 'My dear, you're so grown-up tonight, I door I found her chatting with the others; they were all still didn't recognise you!': just what Mrs Dendy had said an at supper. Tootsie saw me first - and must have nudged hour before. Her words impressed me. Kitty and I stood Percy, beside her, for he glanced up from his plate and, side by side all evening but when, some time after catching sight of me, gave a whistle. Sims turned my way, midnight, she moved away to join a group that had gathered then, and looked at me as if he had never seen me before, a about the champagne tables, I hung back, rather pensive. I forkful of food suspended on its journey to his open mouth. wasn't used to thinking of myself as a grown-up woman, Mrs Dendy followed his gaze, then gave a tremendous but now, clad in that handsome frock of blue and cream, cough. 'Well, Nancy!' she

satin and lace, I began at last to feel like one -and to realise, said, 'and look at you! You have become quite the indeed, that I was one: that I was eighteen, and had left my handsome young lady - and right beneath our noses!'

father's house perhaps for ever, and earned my own living, And at that, Kitty herself turned to me - and showed me and paid rent for my own rooms in London. I watched such a look of wonder and confusion that it was as if, just myself as if from a distance - watched as I supped at my for a second, she had never seen me before; and I do not wine as if it were ginger beer, and chatted and larked with know whose cheeks at that moment were the pinker - mine, the stage-hands, who had once so frightened me; watched or hers.

as I took a cigarette from a fellow from the orchestra, and Then she gave a tight little smile. 'Very nice,' she said, and lit it, and drew upon it with a sigh of satisfaction. When had looked away; so that I thought, miserably, that the dress I started smoking? I couldn't remember. I had grown so must suit me even less than I had hoped, and readied myself used to holding Kitty's fag for her while she changed suits, for a wretched party.

that gradually I had taken up the habit myself. I smoked so But the party was not wretched; it was gay and genial and often, now, that half my fingers - which, four months loud, and very crowded. The manager had had to build a before, had been permanently pink and puckered, from so platform from the end of the stage to the back of the pit, to many dippings in the oyster-tub — were now stained carry us all, and he had hired the orchestra to play reels and yellow as mustard at the tips.

107

108

The musician - I believe he played the cornet - took a small, he at last gave up on me, and went back to his pals in the insinuating step my way. 'Are you a friend of the manager's, band.

or what?' he said. 'I haven't seen you in the hall before.'

I ran my hands over my sash again. I feared he really had I laughed. 'Yes you have. I'm Nancy, Kitty Butler's dresser.'

spoiled it, but couldn't see well enough to be sure. I finished He raised his eyebrows, and leaned away to look me up and my drink with a gulp - it was, I suppose, my sixth or down. 'Well! and so you are. I thought you was just a kid. seventh glass - and slipped from the stage. I made my way But here, just now, I took you for an actress, or a dancer.'

first to the lavatory, then headed downstairs to the changeI smiled, and shook my head. There was a pause while he room. This had been opened tonight only so that the ladies sipped at his glass and wiped at his moustache. 'I bet you should have a place to hang their coats, and it was cold and dance a treat, though, don't you?' he said then. 'How about empty and rather dim; but it had a looking-glass: and it was it?' He nodded to the crush of waltzing couples at the back to this that I now stepped, squinting and tugging at my of the stage.

dress to pull it straight.

'Oh, no,' I said. 'I couldn't. I've had too much cham.'

I had been there for no longer than a minute when there He laughed: 'All the better!' He put his drink aside, gripped came the sound of footsteps in the passageway beyond, and his cigarette between his lips, then put his hands on my then a silence. I turned my head to see who was there, and waist and lifted me up. I gave a shriek; he began to turn and found that it was Kitty. She had her shoulder against the dip, in a clownish approximation of a waltz-step. The doorframe and her arms folded. She wasn't standing as one louder I laughed and shrieked, the faster he turned me. A normally stands — as she usually stood - in an evening dozen people looked our way, and smiled and clapped. gown. She was standing as she did when she was on stage, At last he stumbled and almost fell, then put me down with with her trousers on - rather cockily. Her face was turned a thump. 'Now,' he said breathlessly, 'tell me I ain't a towards me and I couldn't see her rope of hair, or the swell marvellous dancer.'

of her breasts. Her cheeks were very pale; there was a stain

'You ain't,' I said. 'You've made me giddy as a fish, and' - I upon her skirt where some champagne had dripped upon it felt at the front of my dress - 'you have spoiled my sash!'

from an over-spilling glass.

'I'll fix that for you,' he said, reaching for my waist again. I

'Wot cheer, Kitty,' I said. But she did not return my smile, gave a yelp, and stepped out of his grasp.

only watched me, levelly. I looked uncertainly back to the

'No you won't! You can push off and leave me in peace.'

glass, and continued working at my sash. When she spoke Now he seized me, and tickled me so that I giggled. Being at last, I knew at once that she was rather drunk. tickled always makes me laugh, however little I care for the

'Seen something you fancy?' she said. I turned to her again tickler; but after several more minutes of this kind of thing in surprise, and she took a step into the room.

'What?'

109

110

'I said, "Seen something you fancy, Nancy?" Everybody made me terribly clumsy - at the buttons of my frock. Kitty else here tonight seems to have. Seems to have seen took hold of me again; soon we were almost tussling. something that has rather caught their eye.'

'I won't have you call me a flirt!' I said as she tugged at me. I swallowed, unsure of what reply to make to her. She

'How could you call me one? How could you? Oh! If you walked closer, then stopped a few paces from me, and just knew -' I put my hand to the back of my collar; her continued to fix me with the same even, arrogant gaze. 'You fingers followed my own, her face came close. Seeing it, I were very fresh with that horn-player, weren't you?' she felt all at once quite dazed. I thought I had become her said then.

sister, as she wanted. I thought I had my queer desires I blinked. 'We were just having a bit of a lark.'

cribbed and chilled and chastened. Now I knew only that

'A bit of a lark? His hands were all over you.'

her arm was about me, her hand on mine, her breath hot

'Oh Kitty, they weren't!' My voice almost trembled. It was upon my cheek. I grasped her - not the better to push her horrible to see her so savage; I don't believe that, in all the away, but in order to hold her nearer.

weeks that we had spent together, she had ever so much as Gradually we ceased our wrestling and grew still, our raised her voice to me in impatience.

breaths ragged, our hearts thudding. Her eyes were round

'Yes they were,' she said. 'I was watching - me and half the and dark as jet; I felt her fingers leave my hand and move party. You know what they'll be calling you soon, don't against my neck.

you?' "Miss Flirt".'

Then all at once there came a blast of noise from the Miss Flirt! Now I didn't know whether to cry or to laugh. passageway beyond, and the sound of footsteps. Kitty

'How can you say such a thing?' I asked her.

started in my arms as if a pistol had been fired, and took a

'Because it's true.' She sounded all at once rather sullen. 'I half-dozen steps, very rapidly, away. A woman - Esther, the wouldn't have bought you such a fine dress, if I'd known conjuror's assistant - appeared on the other side of the open you were only going to wear it to go flirting in.'

doorway. She was pale, and looked terribly grave. She said:

'Oh!' I stamped my foot, unsteadily -I was as drunk, I

'Kitty, Nan, you won't believe it.' She reached for her suppose, as she was. 'Oh!' I put my fingers to the neck of handkerchief, and put it to her mouth. 'There's some boys my gown, and began to fumble with its fastenings. 'I shall just come, from the Charing Cross Hospital. They are take the dam' dress off right here and you shall have it saying Gully Sutherland is there' - this was the comic singer back,' I said, 'if that's how you feel about it!'

who had appeared with Kitty at the Canterbury Palace - At that she took another step towards me and seized my

'they are saying Gully is there - that he has got drunk, and arm. 'Don't be a fool,' she said in a slightly chastened tone. I shot himself dead!'

shook her off and continued to work - quite fruitlessly, It was true - we all heard, next day, how horribly true it since the wine, together with my anger and surprise, had was. I should never have suspected it, but had learned since

111

112

coming to London that Gully was known in the business as her shake her head and step away, and seem to search for something of a lush. He never finished a show without me; and when she saw me - waiting for her, in the shadows calling into a public-house on his way home; and on the of the wing - she came and sighed. 'Poor Gully. They say night of our party he had been drinking at Fulham. Here, all his heart was shot right through ..."

hidden in a corner stall, he had overheard a fellow at the bar

'And to think,' I said, 'it was for Gully's sake that I first went say that Gully Sutherland was past his best, and should to Canterbury and saw you ..."

make way for funnier artistes; that he had sat through She looked at me, then, and trembled; and put a hand to her Gully's latest routine, and all the gags were flat ones. The cheek, as if made weak with sorrow. But I dared not move bar-man said that when Gully heard this he went to the man to comfort her - only stood, miserable and unsure. and shook him by the hand, and bought him a beer, then he When I said that we should go - since other people were bought beer for everyone. Then he went home and took a now leaving - she nodded. We returned to the change-room gun, and fired it at his own heart. . .

for our coats: its jets were all flaring now, and there were We didn't know all of this that night at Marylebone, we white-faced women in it with handkerchiefs before their knew only that Gully had had a kind of fit, and taken his eyes. Then we stepped to the stage door, and waited while life; but the news put an end to our party and left us all, like the doorman found a cab for us. This seemed to take an age. Esther, nervous and grave. Kitty and I, on hearing the news, It was two o'clock or later before we started on our journey went up to the stage - she seizing my hand as we stumbled home; and then we sat, on different seats, in silence - Kitty up the steps, but in grief now, I thought, rather than repeating only, now and then: 'Poor Gully! What a thing to anything warmer. The manager had had all the house-lights do!', and I still drunk, still dazed, still desperately stirred, lit, and the band had lain their instruments aside; some but still uncertain.

people were weeping, the cornet-player who had tickled me It was a bitterly cold and beautiful night - perfectly quiet, had his arm about a trembling girl. Esther cried, 'Oh isn't it once we had left the clamour of the party behind us, and awful, isn't it horrible!' -I suppose the wine made everybody still. The roads were foggy, and thick with ice: every so feel the shock of it the more.

often I felt the wheels of our carriage slide a little, and I, however, did not know what to make of it. I couldn't caught the sound of the horse's slithering, uncertain step, think of Gully at all: my thoughts were still with Kitty, and and the driver's gentle curses. Beside us the pavements with that moment in the change-room, when I had felt her glittered with frost, and each street-lamp glowed, in the fog, hand on me and seemed to feel a kind of understanding leap from the centre of its own yellow nimbus. For long between us. She hadn't looked at me since then, and now stretches, ours was the only vehicle on the streets at all; the she had gone to talk to one of the boys who had brought the horse, the driver, Kitty and I might have been the only news of Gully's suicide. After a moment, however, I saw wakeful creatures in a city of stone and ice and slumber.

113

114

At length we reached Lambeth Bridge, where Kitty and I Kitty shivered, and shook her head. 'The ice would break,'

had stood only a few weeks before and gazed at the she said. 'We would sink and drown; or else be stranded pleasure-boats below. Now, with our faces pressed to the and die of the cold!'

carriage window, we saw it all transformed - saw the lights I had expected her to smile, not make me a serious answer. of the Embankment, a belt of amber beads dissolving into I saw us floating down the Thames, out to sea - past the night; and the great dark jagged bulk of the Houses of Whitstable, perhaps - on a piece of ice no bigger than a Parliament looming over the river; and the Thames itself, pancake.

its boats all moored and silent, its water grey and sluggish The horse took a step, and its bridle jangled; the drive gave and thick, and rather strange.

a cough. Still we gazed at the river, silent and unmoving It was this last which made Kitty pull the window down, and both of us, finally, rather grave.

and call to the driver, in a high, excited voice, to stop. Then At last Kitty gave a whisper. 'Ain't it queer,' she said. she pushed the carriage door open, pulled me to the iron I made no answer, only stared at where the curdled water parapet of the bridge, and seized my hand.

swirled, thick and unwilling, about the columns of the

'Look,' she said. Her grief seemed all forgotten. Below us, bridge beneath our feet. But when she shivered again I in the water, there were great slivers of ice six feet across, moved a step closer to her, and felt her lean against me in drifting and gently turning in the winding currents, like response. It was icy cold upon the bridge; we should have basking seals.

moved back from the parapet into the shelter of the The Thames was freezing over.

carriage. But we were loath to leave the sight of the frozen I looked from the river to Kitty, and from Kitty to the river - loath too, perhaps, to leave the warmth of one bridge on which we stood. There was no one near us save another's bodies, now that we had found it.

our driver — and he had the collar of his cape about his I took her hand. Her fingers, I could feel, were stiff and ears, and was busy with his pipe and his tobacco-pouch. I cold inside her glove. I placed the hand against my cheek; it looked at the river again - at that extraordinary, ordinary did not warm it. With my eyes all the time on the water transformation, that easy submission to the urgings of a below I pulled at the button at her wrist, then drew the natural law, that was yet so rare and so unsettling. mitten from her, and held her fingers against my lips to It seemed a little miracle, done just for Kitty and me. warm them with my breath.

'How cold it must be!' I said softly. 'Imagine if the whole I sighed, gently, against her knuckles; then turned the hand, river froze over, if it was frozen right down from here to and breathed upon her palm. There was no sound at all save Richmond. Would you walk across it?'

the unfamiliar lapping and creaking of the frozen river. Then, 'Nan,' she said, very low.

115

116

I looked at her, her hand still held to my mouth and my gave a kind of nervous laugh, and a whisper: 'You will kiss breath still damp upon her fingers. Her face was raised to the life out of me!'

mine, and her gaze was dark and strange and thick, like the She moved into the carriage, and I clambered in behind her, water below.

trembling and giddy and half-blind, I think, with agitation I let my hand drop; she kept her fingers upon my lips, then and desire. Then the door was closed; the driver called to moved them, very slowly, to my cheek, my ear, my throat, his pony, and the cab gave a jerk and a slither. The frozen my neck. Then her features gave a shiver and she said in a river was left behind us - dull, in comparison with this new whisper: 'You won't tell a soul, Nan - will you?'

miracle!

I think I sighed then: sighed to know - to know for sure, at We sat side by side. She put her hands to my face again, last! - that there was something to be told. And then I and I shivered, so that my jaws jumped beneath her fingers. dipped my face to hers, and shut my eyes.

But she didn't kiss me again: rather, she leaned against me Her mouth was chill, at first, then very warm - the only with her face upon my neck, so that her mouth was out of warm thing, it seemed to me, in the whole of the frozen reach of mine, but hot against the skin below my ear. Her city; and when she took her lips away - as she did, after a hand, that was still bare of its glove and white with cold, moment, to give a quick, anxious glance towards our she slid into the gap at the front of my jacket; her knee she hunched and nodding driver - my own felt wet and sore and laid heavily against my own. When the brougham swayed I naked in the bitter January breezes, as if her kiss had flayed felt her lips, her fingers, her thigh come ever more heavy, them.

ever more hot, ever more close upon me, until I longed to She drew me into the shadow of the carriage, where We squirm beneath the pressing of her, and cry out. But she were hidden from sight. Here we stepped together, and gave me no word, no kiss or caress; and in my awe and my kissed again: I placed my arms about her shoulders, and felt innocence I only sat steady, as she seemed to wish. That her own hands shake upon my back. From lip to ankle, and cab-ride from the Thames to Brixton was, in consequence, through all the fussy layers of our coats and gowns, I felt the most wonderful and most terrible journey I have ever her body stiff against my own - felt the pounding, very made.

rapid, where we joined at the breast; and the pulse and the At last, however, we felt the carriage turn, then slow, and heat and the cleaving, where we pressed together at the finally stop, and heard the driver thump upon the roof with hips.

the butt of his whip to tell us we were home: we were so We stood like this for a minute, maybe longer; then the quiet, perhaps he thought we slumbered.

carriage gave a creak as the driver shifted in his seat, and I remember a little of our entry into Mrs Dendy's - the Kitty stepped quickly away. I could not take my hands from fumbling at the door with the latch-key, the mounting of the her, but she seized my wrists and kissed my fingers and darkened stairs, our passage through that still and sleeping

117

118

house. I remember pausing on the landing beneath the again a nervous laugh, and tilted her face against her skylight, where the stars showed very small and bright, and pillow.

silently pressing my lips to Kitty's ear as she bent to unlock

'Oh Nan,' she said, 'I think I shall die if you don't!'

our chamber door; I remember how she leaned against it Tentatively, then, I raised my hand, and dipped my fingers when she had it shut fast behind us, and gave a sigh, and into her hair. I touched her face - her brow, that curved; her reached for me again, and pulled me to her. I remember that cheek, that was freckled; her lip, her chin, her throat, her she wouldn't let me raise a taper to the gas-jet - but made us collar-bone, her shoulder . . . Here, shy again, I let my hand stumble to the bedroom through the darkness.

linger - until, with her face still tilted from my own and her And I remember, very clearly, all that happened there. eyes hard shut, she took my wrist and gently led my fingers The room was bitter cold - so cold it seemed an outrage to to her breasts. When I touched her here she sighed, and take our dresses off and bare our flesh; but an outrage, too, turned; and after a minute or two she seized my wrist again, to some more urgent instinct to keep them on. I had been and moved it lower.

clumsy in the change-room of the theatre, but I was not Here she was wet, and smooth as velvet. I had never, of clumsy now. I stripped quickly to my drawers and chemise, course, touched anyone like this before - except, then heard Kitty cursing over the buttons of her gown, and sometimes, myself; but it was as if I touched myself now, stepped to help her. For a moment - my fingers tugging at for the slippery hand which stroked her seemed to stroke hooks and ribbons, her own tearing at the pins which kept me: I felt my drawers grow damp and warm, my own hips her plait of hair in place -we might have been at the side of jerk as hers did. Soon I ceased my gentle strokings and a stage, making a lightning change between numbers. began to rub her, rather hard. 'Oh!' she said very softly; At last she was naked, all except for the pearl and chain then, as I rubbed faster, she said 'Oh!' again. Then, 'Oh, oh, about her neck; she turned in my hands, stiff and pimpled oh!': a volley of 'Oh!'s, low and fast and breathy. She with cold, and I felt the brush of her nipples, and of the hair bucked, and the bed gave an answering creak; her own between her thighs. Then she moved away, and the bedhands began to chafe distractedly at the flesh of my springs creaked; and at that, I didn't wait to pull the rest of shoulders. There seemed no motion, no rhythm, in all the my own clothes off but followed her to the bed and found world, but that which I had set up, between her legs, with her shivering there, beneath the sheets. Here we kissed one wet fingertip.

more leisurely, but also more fiercely, than we had before; At last she gasped, and stiffened, then plucked my hand at last the chill - though not the trembling - subsided. away and fell back, heavy and slack. I pressed her to me, Once her naked limbs began to strain against my own, and for a moment we lay together quite still. I felt her heart however, I felt suddenly shy, suddenly awed. I leaned away beating wildly in her breast; and when it had calmed a little from her. 'May I really - touch you?' I whispered. She gave she stirred, and sighed, and put a hand to her cheek.

119

120

'You've made me weep,' she murmured.

had simply been anxious, that I might only have been drunk I sat up. 'Not really, Kitty?'

.. . And then we gazed and gazed at one another; and for all

'Yes, really.' She gave a twitch that was half laughter, half a that I had gazed at her a thousand times before, I felt now sob, then rubbed at her eyes again, and when I took her that I was looking at her as if for the first time. We had fingers from her face I could feel the tears upon them. I lived and slept and laboured, side by side, for half a year; pressed her hand, suddenly uncertain: 'Did I hurt you? What but there had been a kind of veil between us, that our cries did I do that was bad? Did I hurt you, Kitty?'

and whispers of the night before had quite torn down. She She shook her head, and sniffed, and laughed more freely. looked flushed, washed - new-born; so that I could hardly

'Hurt me? Oh no. It was only - so very sweet.' She smiled. press her skin, for fear of marking it - so that I feared,

'And you are - so very good. And I -' She sniffed again, almost, to kiss her lips again in case they bruised. then placed her face against my breast and hid her eyes But I did kiss them; and then I lay, quite at my leisure, and from me. 'And I - oh, Nan, I do so love you, so very, very watched as she splashed water on her face and arms, and much!'

fastened on her underclothes and frock, and buttoned her I lay beside her, and put my arms about her. My own desire shoes. As she worked at her hair I lit a cigarette: I struck the I quite forgot, and she made no move to remind me of it. I match and let it burn almost to my fingers, gazing at the forgot, too, Gully Sutherland - who three hours before had flame as it ate its way along the wood. I said, 'When I first put a gun to his own heart, because a man had sat through knew you, I used to think that, whenever I thought of you, I his routine unsmiling. I only lay; and soon Kitty slept. And was all lit up, like a lamp. I was afraid that people would I studied her face, where it showed creamy pale in the see ..." She smiled. I gave the match a shake. 'Didn't you darkness, and thought She loves me, She loves me - like a know,' I said then, 'didn't you know, that I loved you?'

fool with a daisy-stalk, endlessly exclaiming over the same

'I'm not sure,' she answered; then she sighed. 'I didn't like to last browning petal.

think of it.'

The next morning we were shy together, at first - and Kitty,

'Why not?'

I think, was the shyest of all.

She shrugged. 'It seemed easier to be your friend

'How much we drank, last night!' she said, not gazing at

'But Kitty, that's just what I thought! And oh! wasn't it me; and for a terrible second I thought it might really have terribly hard! But I thought, that if you knew I liked you as been only the champagne that made her cling to me, and a, as a sweetheart - well, I never heard of such a thing say that she loved me, so very very much . . . But as she before, did you?'

spoke she blushed. I said, before I could stop myself: 'If you She moved to the glass to work again at the pins in her unsay all those things you said last night, oh Kitty, I'll die!'

plait, and now, without turning, she said, 'It's true I never and that made her raise her eyes to mine, and I saw that she cared for any other girl, like I care for you . . .' As she said

121

122

it I saw her neck and ears grow pink, and felt myself grow sick from the champagne and the excitements of the night. I weak and warm and silly in response; but I caught a said, 'Must we really get up?' and Kitty nodded. glimpse of something, too, behind her words.

'We must - for it's almost eleven, and Walter will be here

'It has happened before, then,' I said flatly, 'with you . . .'

soon. Had you forgotten?'

She grew redder than ever, but would make me no reply; It was a Sunday, and Walter was coming, as usual, to take and I fell silent. But the fact was, I loved her too much to us driving. I had not forgotten - but had had no time and no want to fret for very long about the other girls she might desire, yet, to think of ordinary things. Now, at the mention have kissed before me. 'When was it,' I asked next, 'that you of Walter's name, I grew thoughtful. It would be rather hard began to think of me like . . . When did you begin to think on him, now that this had happened.

that you might learn to - to love me?'

As if Kitty knew what I was thinking, she said, 'You will be Now she did turn, and smiled. 'I remember a hundred little sensible with Walter, won't you, Nan?' Then she repeated times,' she said. 'I remember how you made my dressingwhat she had said the night before upon the bridge: 'You room so nice and neat; I remember your blushes as I kissed won't let on, will you, to anyone? You will be careful - you good-night. I remember how you opened an oyster for won't you?'

me at your father's table -but then, I think I loved you then, I silently cursed her for being so prudent; but took her hand already. Indeed, I'm ashamed to say, that it must have been and kissed it. 'I have been being careful since the first that moment, at the Canterbury Palace, when I first smelled minute I saw you. I am the Queen of Carefulness. I shall go the oyster-liquor on your fingers, that I began to think of on being careful for ever, if you like - so long as I might be you as -as I shouldn't have.'

a bit reckless, sometimes, when we are quite alone.'

'Oh!'

Her smile, when she gave it, was a little distracted. 'After

'And I'm even more ashamed to say,' she went on in a all,' she said, 'things have not changed, so very much.' But I slightly different tone, 'that it wasn't until last night - when I knew that everything had changed - everything. saw you larking with that boy, and was so jealous - that I At length I rose too, and washed and dressed and used the learned how much, how much ..."

chamber-pot, while Kitty went downstairs. She came back

'Oh, Kitty ..." I swallowed. 'I'm glad you learned it, at last.'

with a tray of tea and toast - 'I could hardly look Ma Dendy She looked away, then came to me and took my fag, and in the eye!' she said, all shy and red again - and we had our gave me one brisk kiss.

breakfast in our own parlour, before the fire, kissing the

'So am I.'

crumbs and butter from one another's lips.

After that she bent to rub with a cloth at the leather of her There was a hamper of suits beneath the window, that we boots, and I found myself yawning: I was weary, and rather had had sent over from a costumier's and not yet properly examined; and now, as we waited for Walter, Kitty began

123

124

rather idly to sort through it. She pulled out a black tailI wouldn't exchange the girl I love, coat, very fine. 'Look at this!' she said. She slipped it on There's bliss in every look.

over her dress, and did a stiff little dance; then she began, To see her dance the polka,

very lightly, to sing.

I could faint with radiant love,

'In a house, in a square, in a quadrant,' she sang, 'In a street, May the Monument a hornpipe dance,

in a lane, in a road; Turn to the left, on the right hand, You If ever I cease to love!

see there my true love's abode.'

May we never have to pay the Income Tax,

I smiled. This was an old song of George Leybourne's: If ever I cease to love!'

everyone had used to whistle it in the 'seventies, and I had We finished with a flourish, and I attempted a twirl - then even once seen it sung by Leybourne himself, at the froze. Kitty had left the door ajar, and Walter stood at it Canterbury Palace. It was a silly, nonsensical, but rather watching us, his eyes as wide as if he had had some sort of infectious kind of song, and Kitty sang it all the sweeter for fright. I felt Kitty's gaze follow mine; she gripped my arm, singing it so softly and carelessly.

then dropped it sharply. I thought wildly of what he might

'I go there a courting and cooing,

have seen. The words of the song were foolish but, To my love, like a dove.

unmistakably, we had sung them to one another, and meant And swearing on my bended knee,

them. Had we also kissed? Had I touched Kitty where I If ever I cease to love,

shouldn't have?

May sheep's heads grow on apple trees,

While I still wondered, Walter spoke. 'My God,' he said. I If ever I cease to love.'

bit my lip - but he didn't frown, or curse, as I expected. I listened for a while, then raised my voice with hers for the Instead he broke into a great beaming smile, and slapped chorus:

his hands together, and stepped into the room to seize us

'If ever I cease to love,

both excitedly by the shoulders.

If ever I cease to love,

'My God - that's it! That's it! Why, oh why, didn't I see it May the moon be turned into green cheese,

before! That is what we have been looking for. This, Kitty'

If ever I cease to love.'

– he gestured to our jackets, our hats, our gentlemanly We laughed, then sang louder. I found a hat in the hamper, poses - 'this will make us famous!'

and tossed it to Kitty, then pulled out a jacket and a boater And so the day that I became Kitty's sweetheart was also for myself, and a walking-cane. I linked my arm with hers, the day that I joined her act, and began my career - my and imitated her dance. The song grew sillier. brief, unlooked-for, rather wonderful career — on the

'For all the money that's in the bank,

music-hall stage.

For the title of lord or duke,

125

126

A; first, the prospect of joining Kitty upon the stage, in a She didn't answer at first, but continued to chew profession for which I had never been trained, never distractedly at her fingertip. She looked from me to Walter, yearned, and had - as I thought - no special talent, filled me then back to me again, and narrowed her eyes.

with dismay.

'It might work,' she said.

'No,' I said to Walter that afternoon, when at last I I stamped my foot. 'Now you have both lost your minds, understood him. 'Absolutely not. I cannot. You, of all entirely! Think what you're saying. You come from families people, should know what a fool I would make of myself - where everybody is an actor. You live all your lives in and of Kitty!'

houses like this, where even the dam' dog is a dancing one. But Walter wouldn't listen.

Four months ago I was an oyster-girl in Whitstable!'

'Don't you see?' he said. 'How long have we been looking

'Four months before Bessie Bellwood made her debut,'

for something that will lift the act above the ordinary, and Walter replied, .'she was a rabbit-skinner in the New Cut!1 make it really memorable? This is it! A double act! A He put his hand upon my arm. 'Nan,' he said kindly, 'I am soldier - and his comrade! A swell - together with his not pressing you, but let us see if this thing will work, at chum! Above all: two lovely girls in trousers, instead of least. Will you just go and take a suit of Kitty's, and try it one! When did you ever see the like of it before? It will be on properly? And Kitty, you go and get fitted up, too. And a sensation!'

then we'll see what the two of you look like, side by side.'

'It might be a sensation,' I said, 'with two Kitty Butlers in it. I turned to Kitty. She gave a shrug. 'Why not?' she said. But Kitty Butler and Nancy Astley, her dresser, who never It seems strange to think that, in all my weeks of handling sang a song in her life -'

so many lovely costumes, I had never thought to try one on

'We have all heard you sing,' said Walter, 'a thousand times myself; but I had not. The piece of sport with the jacket and

- and very prettily, too.'

the boater had been a novel one, born of the gaiety of that

'Who never danced -' I went on.

marvellous morning; until then Kitty's suits had seemed too

'Pooh, dancing! A bit of shuffling about the stage. Any fool handsome, too special - above all, too peculiarly hers, too with half a leg can do it.'

fundamental to her own particular magic and swank - for

'Who never raised her voice before a crowd -'

me to fool with. I had cared for them and kept them neat;

'Patter!' he said carelessly. 'Kitty can take care of the patter!'

but I had never so much as held one up in front of me, I laughed, in sheer exasperation, then turned to Kitty before the glass. Now I found myself half-naked in our herself. So far she had taken no part in the exchange, only chilly bedroom, with Kitty beside me with a costume in her stood at my side, biting at the edge of one of her nails, and hand, and our roles quite reversed. I had removed my dress frowning. 'Kitty,' I said now, 'for goodness' sake, tell him and petticoats, and buttoned a shirt over my stays. Kitty had what madness he is talking!'

found a morning-suit of black and grey for me to wear, and

127

128

had a similar costume ready for herself. She looked me Kitty, I don't think I should be able to keep from kissing over.

you!'

'You must take your drawers off,' she said quietly - the door She put a finger to her lips; then pushed at the fringe of her was shut fast, but Walter was audibly pacing the little hair. She said, 'You will have to get used to it, for Walter's parlour beyond it - 'or else they'll bunch, beneath the plan to work. Otherwise - well, what a show that would be!; trousers.'

I laughed; but the words Walter's plan had made my I blushed, then slid the drawers down my thighs and kicked stomach lurch in sudden panic, and the laughter sounded them off, so that I stood clad only in the shirt and a pair of rather hollow. I gazed down at my own two legs. The stockings, gartered at the knee. I had once, as a girl, worn a trousers, after all, were far too short for me, and showed my suit of my brother's to a masquerade at a party. That, stockings at the ankle. I said, 'It won't do, will it, Kitty? He however, had been many years before; it was quite won't really think that it will do - will he?'

different, now, to pull Kitty's handsome trousers up my He did. 'Oh yes!' he cried when we emerged at last together, naked hips, and button them over that delicate place that all dressed up. 'Oh yes, but what a team you make!' He was Kitty herself had so recently set smarting. I took a step, and more excited than I had ever seen him. He had us stand blushed still harder. I felt as though I had never had legs together, with our arms linked; then he made us turn, and before - or, rather, that I had never known, quite, what it do again the little stiff-legged dance that he had caught us at really felt like to have two legs, joined at the top. before. And all the time he walked about us with narrowed I reached for Kitty, and pulled her to me. 'I wish Walter eyes, stroking his chin and nodding.

were not waiting for us,' I whispered - though, in truth,

'We shall need a suit for you, of course,' he said to me. 'A there was something rather thrilling about embracing her, in number of suits, indeed, to match Kitty's. But that we can such a costume, with Walter so near and so unknowing. easily arrange.' He took my hat from my head, and my plait That thought - and the soundless kiss which followed it fell down upon my shoulder. 'Something must he done made the trousers feel still stranger. When Kitty stepped about your hair; but the colour, at least, is perfect - a away to see to her own suit, I looked at her a little wonderful contrast with Kitty's, so the folk in the gallery wonderingly. I said, 'How can you dress like this, before a will have no trouble telling you apart.' He winked, then hall of strangers, every night, and not feel queer?'

stood surveying me a little longer with his hands behind his She fastened the clip of her braces, and shrugged. 'I have head. He had removed his jacket. He wore a shirt of green worn sillier costumes.'

with a deep white collar - he was always a fancy dresser -

'I didn't mean that it was silly. I meant - well, if I were to be and the armpits of the shirt were dark with sweat. I said, beside you, in these' - I took another couple of steps - 'oh

'You really mean it, Walter?' and he nodded: 'Nancy, I do.'

129

130

He kept us busy, that day, all through the afternoon. The me dull with him: I believe he thought he had overworked outing we had planned, the Sunday stroll, was all forgotten, me. So very soon he did leave; and when the door was the driver who was waiting he paid off and sent away. The closed on him I rose and went to Kitty, and put my arms house being empty, we worked at Mrs Dendy's piano, quite about her. She wouldn't let me kiss her in the parlour; but as hard as if it were a weekday morning - except that now I after a moment she led me up through the darkening house, sang too, and not to save Kitty's voice, as I had sometimes back to our bedroom. Here the suit - which I had, indeed, done before, but to try out my own alongside it. We sang grown rather used to while strolling in it for Walter - began again the song that Walter had caught us singing, 'If Ever I to feel strange again. When Kitty undressed I pulled her to Cease to Love' - but, of course, we were self-conscious me; and it was lewd to feel her naked hip come pressing in now, and it sounded terribly lame. Then we tried some of between my trousered legs. She ran her hand once, very Kitty's songs, that I had heard her sing at Canterbury and lightly, over my buttons, until I began to shake with the knew by heart; and they went a little better. And finally we wanting of her. Then she drew the suit from me entirely and tried a new song, one of the West End songs that were we lay together, naked as shadows beneath the counterpane; fashionable then - the one about strolling through Piccadilly and then she touched me again.

with a pocket so full of sovereigns all the ladies look, and We lay until the front door slammed, and we heard Mrs smile, and wink their eyes. It is sung by mashers even now; Dendy's cough, and Tootsie laughing on the stair. Then but it was Kitty and I who had it first, and when we tried it Kitty said we should rise, and dress, or the others might out together that afternoon - changing the author's T to 'we', wonder; and for the second time that day I lay and watched linking our arms, and promenading over the parlour-rug her wash, and pull on stockings and a skirt, through lazy with our voices raised in a harmony -well, it sounded eyes.

sweeter and more comical than I could have thought As I did so, I put a hand to my breast. There was a dull possible. We sang it once, and then a second time, and then movement there, a kind of pulling or folding, or melting, a third and fourth; and each time I grew a little freer, a little exactly as if my chest were the hot, soft wall of a candle, gayer, and a little less certain of the foolishness of Walter's falling in upon a burning wick. I gave a sigh. Kitty heard, plan . . .

and saw my stricken face, and came to me; then she moved At length, when our throats were hoarse and our heads were my hand away and placed her lips, very softly, over my swimming with sovereigns and winks, he closed the piano heart.

lid and let us rest. We made tea, and talked of other things. I was eighteen, and knew nothing. I thought, at that I looked at Kitty and remembered that I had another, more moment, that I would die of love for her.

pressing, reason to be gay and giddy, and I began to wish We did not see Walter, and there was no more talk about that Walter would leave us. That, and my tiredness, made his plan to put me on the stage at Kitty's side until two

131

132

evenings later, when he arrived at Mrs Dendy's with a boy with buttons and a belt. The thought, once again, was a parcel, marked Nan Astley. It was the last night of the year: saucy one; I felt I ought not to encourage it. I went down at he had come to supper, and to stay to hear the chimes of once to the parlour, put my hands in my pockets and posed midnight with us. When at last they came - struck out upon before them all, and made ready to receive their praises. the bells of Brixton church - he raised his glass. To Kitty When I stood turning upon the rug, however, Walter was and Nan!' he cried. He gazed at me, and then - more rather subdued, and Mrs Bendy thoughtful. When, at their lingeringly - at Kitty. 'To their new partnership, that will request, I took Kitty's arm and we sang a quick chorus, bring fame and fortune to us all in 1889, and ever after!' We Walter stood back, frowned, and shook his head. were at the parlour-table with Ma Dendy and the Professor,

'It's not quite right,' he said. 'It grieves me to say it, but - it and now we joined our voices with his, and took up his just won't do.'

toast; but Kitty and I exchanged one swift, secret glance, I turned, in dismay, to Kitty. She was fiddling with her and I thought - with a little thrill of pleasure and triumph necklace, sucking at the chain and tapping with the pearl that I couldn't quite suppress - poor man! how could he upon a tooth. She, too, looked grave. She said, There is know what we were really celebrating?

something queer about it; but I can't say what..." Only now did Walter present me with his package, and I gazed down at myself. I took my hands from my pockets smile to see me open it. But I knew already that it would and folded my arms, and Walter shook his head again. 'It's a hold: a suit, a stage suit of serge and velvet, cut to my size perfect fit,' he said. The colour is good. And yet there's to the pattern of one of Kitty's - but blue to match my eyes, something - unpleasing - about it. What is it?'

where hers was brown. I held it up against me, and Walter Mrs Bendy gave a cough. Take a step,' she said to me. I did nodded. 'Now that,' he said, 'will make all the difference. so. 'Now a turn - that's right. Now be a dear and light me a Just you trot upstairs and slip that on, and then we'll see fag.' I did this for her too, then waited while she drew on what Mrs Dendy has to say about it.'

her cigarette and coughed again.

I did as he asked; then paused for a moment to study myself

'She's too real,' she said at last, to Walter. in the glass. I had put on a pair of my own plain black boots Too real?'

and piled my hair up inside a hat. I had placed a cigarette Too real. She looks like a boy. Which I know she is behind my ear -I had even taken off my stays, to make my supposed to - but, if you follow me, she looks like a real flat chest flatter. I looked a little like my brother Davy - boy. Her face and her figure and her bearing on her feet. only, perhaps, rather handsomer. I shook my head. Four And that ain't quite the idea now, is it?'

nights before I had stood in the same spot, marvelling to see Now I felt more awkward than ever. I looked at Kitty and myself dressed as a grown-up woman. Now, there had been she gave a nervous kind of laugh. Walter, however, had lost one quiet visit to a tailor's shop and here I was, a boy - a his frown, and his eyes looked blue and wide as a child's.

133

134

'Damn it, Ma,' he said, 'but you're right!' He put his hand to The trousers were shorter, their line rather spoiled. The his brow, then stepped to the door: we heard his heavy, jacket flared a little, above and below the waist, quite as if I rapid tread upon the stairs, heard footsteps in the room had hips and a bosom - but it felt tighter than before, and above our heads -Sims's and Percy's room - and then the not a half as comfortable. My face, of course, I could not slam of a door, higher up. When he returned he held a see: I had to turn and squint into a picture over the hearth, strange assortment of objects: a pair of gentleman's shoes, a and saw it reflected there - all eyes and lips - over the red sewing-basket, a couple of ribbons, and Kitty's make-up nose and whiskers of 'Rackity Jack'. I looked at the others. box. These he dumped about me on the carpet. Then, with a Mrs Bendy and the Professor smiled. Kitty did not look at hasty 'Pardon me, Nancy', he pulled the jacket from me, and all nervous, now. Walter was flushed, and seemed awed by the boots. The jacket he handed to Kitty, along with the his own handiwork. He folded his arms.

sewing-basket: 'Put a few tucks down the inside of that

'Perfect,' he said.

waist,' he said, pointing to the seam. The boots he cast After that - clad not exactly as a boy but, rather aside, and replaced with the pair of shoes - Sims's shoes confusingly, as the boy I would have been, had I been more they were, and small, low-heeled and rather dainty; and of a girl - my entry into the profession was rather rapid. The Walter made them daintier still by tying ribbons in a bow at very next day Walter sent my costume to a seamstress, and the laces. To advertise the bows a bit - and because, without had it properly re-sewn; within a week he had borrowed a my boots, I was now a little shorter — he caught hold of the hall and a band from a manager who owed him a favour, bottom of my trouser-legs, and gave them cuffs. and had Kitty and I, in our matching suits, practising upon Next he seized my head and tilted it back, and worked upon the stage. It was not at all like singing in Mrs Dendy's my lips and lashes with carmine and spit-black from Kitty's parlour. The strangers, the dark and empty hall, box: he did this gently as a girl. Then he plucked the disconcerted me; I was still and awkward, quite unable to cigarette from behind my ear and cast it on to the mantel. master the few simple strolling steps that Kitty and Walter Finally he turned to Kitty and snapped his fingers. She, tried patiently to teach me. At last Walter handed me a infected by his air of haste and purpose, had begun to sew cane, and said I should just stand and lean upon it, and let as he had shown her. Now she raised the jacket to her cheek Kitty dance; and that was better, and I grew easier, and the to bite the final length of cotton from it, and when that was song began to sound funny again. When we had finished done he took it from her and shrugged me into it and and were practising our bows, some of the men in the buttoned it over my breast.

orchestra clapped us.

Then he stood back, and cocked his head.

Kitty sat and took a cup of tea, then; but Walter led me off I gazed down at myself once again. My new shoes looked to a seat in the stalls, away from the others, and looked quaint and girlish, like a principal boy's in a pantomime. grave.

135

136

'Nan,' he began, 'I told you when all this started that I would Tonight!'

not press you, and I meant it; I would give up the business

'Just one song. He'll find space for you in his programme; altogether before I forced a girl upon the stage against her and if they like you, he'll keep you there.'

will. There are fellows who do that sort of thing, you know, Tonight..." I looked at Walter in dismay. His face was very fellows who think of nothing but their own pockets. But I kind, and his eyes seemed bluer and more earnest than ever. am not one of them; and besides, you are my friend. But -'

But what he said made me tremble. I thought of the hall, he took a breath. 'We have come this far, the three of us; hot and bright and filled with jeering faces. I thought of that and you are good - I promise you, you are good.'

stage, so wide and empty. I thought: I cannot do it, not even

'With work, perhaps,' I said doubtfully. He shook his head. for Walter's sake. Not even for Kitty's.

'Not even with that. Haven't you worked, these past six I made to shake my head. He saw, and quickly spoke again months - harder than Kitty, almost? You know the act as

-spoke, perhaps for the first time in all the months that I had well as she; you know her songs, her bits of business - why, known him, with something that was almost guile. He said: you taught them to her, most of them!'

'You know, of course, that we cannot throw over the idea of

'I don't know,' I said. This is all so new, and strange. All my the double act, now that we have hit upon it. If you don't life I've loved the music hall, but I never thought of getting wish to partner Kitty, there'll be some other girl who does. up upon the stage, myself..."

We can spread the word, place notices, audition. You

'Didn't you?' he said then. 'Didn't you, really?' Every time mustn't feel that you are letting Kitty down

you saw some little serio-comic captivate the crowd, at that I looked from him to the stage, where Kitty herself sat on Palace of yours, in Canterbury, didn't you wish that it was the edge of a beam of limelight, sipping at her cup, you? Didn't you close your eyes and see your name upon swinging her legs, and smiling at some word of the the programmes, your number in the box? Didn't you sing conductor's. The thought that she might take another partner to your — oyster-barrel - as if it were a crowded hall, and

- might stroll before the footlights with another girl's arm you could make those little fishes weep, or shriek with through hers, another girl's voice rising and blending with laughter?'

her own - had not occurred to me. It was more ghastly than I bit my nail, and frowned. 'Dreams,' I said.

the image of the jeering hall; more ghastly than the prospect He snapped his fingers. 'The very stuff thai stages are made of being laughed and hissed off a thousand, thousand stages of.'

. . .

'Where would we start?' I said then. 'Who would offer us a So when Kitty stood in the wing of the theatre that night, spot?'

waiting for the chairman's cry, I stood beside her, sweating The manager here would. Tonight. I've already spoken with beneath a layer of grease-paint, biting my lips so hard I him-'

thought they would bleed. My heart had beat fast for Kitty

137

138

before, in apprehension and passion; but it had never the stage, drew out the coins that he had tipped into my thudded as it thudded now -I thought it would burst right pocket - they were only chocolate sovereigns, of course, but out of my breast, I thought I should be killed with fright. covered in foil to make them glitter - and cast them into the When Walter came to whisper to us, and to fill our pockets laughing crowd. A dozen hands reached up to snatch them. with coins, I could not answer him. There was a juggling There were calls for an encore, then; but we, of course, had turn upon the stage. I heard the creaking of the boards as none to make. We could only dance back beneath the the man ran to catch his batons, the clap-gasp-clap-gaspdropping curtain while the crowd still cheered and the c/ieer of the audience as he finished his set; and then carne chairman called for order. The next act - a couple of trickthe clack of a gavel, and the juggler ran by us, clutching his cyclists - was pushed hurriedly on to take our place; but gear. Kitty said once, very low, 'I love you!' - and I felt even at the end of their set there were still one or two voices myself half-pulled, half-thrust beneath the rising curtain, calling for us.

and knew that I must somehow saunter and sing. We were the hit of the evening.

At first, so blinded was I by the lights, I couldn't see the Back stage, with Kitty's lips upon my cheek, Walter's arm crowd at all; I could only hear it, rustling and murmuring about my shoulders, and exclamations of delight and praise loud, and close, it seemed, on every side. When at last I greeting me from every corner, I stood quite stunned, stepped for a second out of the glare of lime, and saw all unable either to smile at the compliments or modestly the faces that were turned my way, I almost faltered and disclaim them. I had passed perhaps seven minutes before lost my place - and would have done, I think, had not Kitty that gay and shouting crowd; but in those few, swift at that moment pressed my arm and murmured, 'We have minutes I had glimpsed a truth about myself, and it had left them! Listen!' under cover of the orchestra. I did listen then me awed and quite transformed.

- and realised that, unbelievably, she was right: there were The truth was this: that whatever successes I might achieve claps, and friendly shouts; there was a rising hum of as a girl, they would be nothing compared to the triumphs I expectant pleasure as we worked towards our chorus; there should enjoy clad, however girlishly, as a boy. was, finally, a bubbling cascade of cheers and laughter from I had, in short, found my vocation.

gallery to pit.

Next day, rather appropriately, I got my hair cut off, and The sound affected me like nothing I had ever known changed my name.

before. At once, I remembered the foolish dance that I had The hair I had barbered at a house in Battersea, by the same failed, all day, to learn, and left off leaning on my stick to theatrical hairdresser who cut Kitty's. He worked on me for join Kitty in her stroll before the footlights. I understood, an hour, while she sat and watched; and at the end of that too, what Walter had wanted of us in the wing: as the new time I remember he held a glass to his apron and said song drew to a close I advanced with Kitty to the front of warningly: 'Now, you will squeal when you see it — I

139

140

never cropped a girl before who didn't squeal at the first For our debut at Camberwell we had thought that our look,' and I trembled in a sudden panic.

ordinary names would do as well as any, and had been But when he turned the glass to show me, I only smiled to billed by the chairman as 'Kitty Butler and Nancy Astley'. see the transformation he had made. He had not clipped the Now, however, we were a hit: Walter's manager friend had hair as short as Kitty's, but had left it long and falling, offered us a four-week contract, and needed to know the Bohemian-like, quite to my collar; and here, without the names he should have printed on the posters. We knew we weight of the plait to pull it flat and lank, it sprang into a must keep Kitty's, for the sake of her successes of the past slight, surprising curl. Upon the locks which threatened to half-year; but Walter said 'Astley' was rather too common, tumble over my brow he had palmed a little macassar-oil, and could we think of a better one? I didn't mind, only said which turned them sleek as cat's fur, and gold as a ring. I should like to keep 'Nan' -since Kitty herself had reWhen I fingered them - when I turned and tilted my head -I christened me that; and we took our lunch, in consequence, felt my cheeks grow crimson. The man said then, 'You see, with everybody volunteering names they thought would you will find it queer,' and he showed me how I might wear match it. Tootsie said 'Nan Love', Sims 'Nan Sergeant'. my severed plait, as Kitty wore hers, to disguise his Percy said, 'Nan Scarlet - no, Nan Silver - no, Nan Gold ..." barbering.

Every name seemed to offer me some new and marvellous I said nothing; but it was not with regret that I had blushed. version of myself; it was like standing at the costumier's rail I had blushed because my new, shorn head, my naked neck, and shrugging on the jackets.

felt saucy. I had blushed because - just as I had done when I None, however, seemed to fit - till the Professor tapped the first pulled on a pair of trousers - I had felt myself stir, and table, cleared his throat, and said: 'Nan King'. And although grow warm, and want Kitty. Indeed, I seemed to want her I should like to be able to say - as other artistes do - that more and more, the further into boyishness I ventured. there was some terribly clever or romantic story behind the Kitty herself, however, though she also smiled when the choosing of my stage-name - that we had opened a special barber displayed me, smiled more broadly when the plait book at a certain place, and found it there; that I had heard was re-affixed. 'That's more like it,' she said, when I stood the word 'King' said in a dream, and quivered at it - I can and brushed my skirts down. 'What a fright you looked in give no better account of the matter than the truth: which short hair and a frock!'

was only that we needed a name, and the Professor said

'Nan King', and I liked it.

Back at Ginevra Road we found Walter waiting for us, and It was as 'Kitty Butler and Nan King', therefore, that we Mrs Dendy dishing up lunch; and it was here that I was returned to Camberwell that evening - to renew, and given a new name, to match my bold new crop.

improve upon our success of the night before. It was 'Kitty Butler and Nan King' that appeared on the posters; and

141

142

'Kitty Butler and Nan King' that began to rise, rather Kitty; now I received invitations to dinner, and requests and steadily, from middle-billing, to second-billing, to top-ofautographs, and letters ... the-list. Not just at the Camberwell hall but, over the next It took me weeks to understand that it was really happening, few months, at all the lesser London halls and - slowly, and to me; weeks to let myself believe in it, and to trust the slowly - some of the West End ones, too . . .

crowd that liked me. But when at last I learned to love my I cannot say what it was that made the crowds like Kitty new life, I loved it fiercely. The pleasures of success, I and me together, more than they had liked Kitty Butler on suppose, are rather easy to understand; it was my new her own. It may just have been, as Walter had foreseen, that capacity for pleasure — for pleasure in performance, we were novel: for though in later years we were rather display and disguise, in the wearing of handsome suits, the freely imitated, there was certainly no other act like ours in singing of ribald songs -that shocked and thrilled me most. I the London halls in 1889. It may also have been - again, as had been content till now to stand in the wings, looking on Walter had predicted - that the sight of a pair of girls in while Kitty dallied, in the lime-light, with the vast, gentlemen's suits was somehow more charming, more rumbustious crowd. Now, suddenly, it was I who wooed it, thrilling, more indefinably saucy, than that of a single girl me at whom it gazed in envy and delight. I could not help in trousers and topper and spats. We did, I know, go it: I had fallen in love with Kitty; now, becoming Kitty, I handsomely together - Kitty with her nut-brown crop, me fell in love a little with myself. I admired my hair, so neat with my head blonde and smooth and gleaming; she raised and so sleek. I adored my legs - my legs which, while they a little on her one-inch slippers, me in my flat effeminate had had skirts about them, I had scarcely had a thought for; shoes, my cleverly tailored suits that masked the slender but which were, I discovered, rather long and lean and angularity of my frame with girlish curves.

shapely.

Whatever it was that made the change, however, it worked, I sound vain. I was not - then - and could never have been, and worked extraordinarily. We became not just rather while Kitty existed as the wider object of my self-love. The popular, as Kitty had been, but really famous. Our wages act, I knew, was still all hers. When we sang, it was really rose; we worked three halls a night - four, sometimes - and she who sang, while I provided a light, easy second. When now, when our brougham was caught in traffic, our driver we danced, it was she who did the tricky steps: I only would yell, 'I've got Kitty Butler and Nan King in here, due strolled or shuffled at her side. I was her foil, her echo; I at the Royal, Holborn, in fifteen minutes! Clear a way there, was the shadow which, in all her brilliance, she cast across can't you?' -and the other drivers would shift a little to let us the stage. But, like a shadow, I lent her the edge, the depth, through, and smile and raise their hats to the windows as the crucial definition, that she had lacked before. we passed! Now there were flowers for me, as well as for It was very far from vanity, then, my satisfaction. It was only love; and the better the act became, I thought, the more

143

144

perfect that love grew. After all, the two things - the act, our these things were not so very different. A double act is love -were not so very different. They had been born always twice the act the audience thinks it: beyond our together - or, as I liked to think, the one had been born of songs, our steps, our bits of business with coins and canes the other, and was merely its public shape. When Kitty and and flowers, there was a private language, in which we held I had first become sweethearts, I had made her a promise. 'I an endless, delicate exchange of which the crowd knew will be careful,' I had said - and I had said it very lightly, nothing. This was a language not of the tongue but of the because I thought it would be easy. I had kept my promise: body, its vocabulary the pressure of a finger or a palm, the I never kissed her, touched her, said a loving thing, when nudging of a hip, the holding or breaking of a gaze, that there was anyone to glimpse or overhear us. But it was not said, You are too slow - you go too fast - not there, but here easy, nor did it become easier as the months passed by; it

— that's good - that's better! It was as if we walked before became only a dreary kind of habit. How could it be easy to the crimson curtain, lay down upon the boards, and kissed stand cool and distant from her in the day, when we had and fondled - and were clapped, and cheered, and paid for spent all night with our naked limbs pressed hot and close it! As Kitty had said, when I had whispered that wearing together? How could it be easy to veil my glances when trousers upon the stage would only make me want to kiss others watched, bite my tongue because others listened, her: 'What a show that would be!' But, that was our show; when I passed all our private hours gazing at her till my only the crowd never knew it. They looked on, and saw eyes ached of it, calling her every kind of sweet name until another turn entirely.

my throat was dry? Sitting beside her at supper at Mrs Well, perhaps there were some who caught glimpses . . . Dendy's, standing near her in the green-room of a theatre, I have spoken of my admirers. They were girls, for most walking with her through the city streets, I felt as though I part-jolly, careless girls, who gathered at the stage door, was bound and fettered with iron bands, chained and and begged for photographs, and autographs, and gave us muzzled and blinkered. Kitty had given me leave to love flowers. But for every ten or twenty of such girls, there her; the world, she said, would never let me be anything to would be one or two more desperate and more pushing, or her except her friend.

more shy and awkward, than the rest; and in them I Her friend - and her partner on the stage. You will not recognised a certain -something. I could not put a name to believe me, but making love to Kitty - a thing done in it, only knew that it was there, and that it made their interest passion, but always, too, in shadow and in silence, and with in me rather special. These girls sent letters - letters, like an ear half-cocked for the sound of footsteps on the stairs - their stage door manners, full of curious excesses or making love to Kitty, and posing at her side in a shaft of ellipses; letters that awed, repelled and drew me, all at once. limelight, before a thousand pairs of eyes, to a script I knew

'I hope you will forgive my writing to say that you are very by heart, in an attitude I had laboured for hours to perfect - handsome,' wrote one girl; another wrote: 'Miss King, I am

145

146

in love with you!' Someone named Ada King wrote to ask if stage in trousers, singing of girls whose eyes I had sent we were cousins. She said: 'I do so admire you and Miss winking, whose hearts I had broken, what did they see? Did Butler, but especially you. Could you I wonder send a they see that - something -that I saw in them? photograph? I would like to have a picture of you, beside

'They had better not!' said Kitty, when I put my idea to her; my bed ..." The card I sent her was a favourite of mine, a and though she laughed as she said it, the laughter was a picture of Kitty and me in Oxford bags and boaters, in little strained. She didn't like to talk about such things. which Kitty stood with her hands in her pockets and I She didn't like it, either, when one night in the change-room leaned with my arm through hers, a cigarette between my of a theatre we met a pair of women - a comic singer and fingers. I signed it 'To Ada, from one "King" to another"; her dresser - who, I thought, were rather like ourselves. The and it was very odd to think that it would be pinned to a singer was flashy, and had a frock with spangles on it that wall, or put in a frame, so that unknown girl might gaze at it must be fastened very tightly over her stays. Her maid was while she fastened her frock or lay dreaming.

an older woman in a plain brown dress; I saw her tugging at Then there were other requests, for odder things. Would I the frock, and thought nothing of it. But when she had the send a collar-stud, a button from my suit, a curl of hair? hooks fastened tight, she leaned and gently blew upon the Would I, on Thursday night - or Friday night - wear a singer's throat, where the power had clogged; and then she scarlet necktie - or a green neck-tie, or a yellow rose in my whispered something to her, and they laughed together with lapel; would I make a special sign, or dance a special step? their heads very close . . . and I knew, as surely as if they

- for then the writer would see, and know that I had had pasted the words upon the dressing-room wall, that received her note.

they were lovers.

'Throw them away,' Kitty would say when I showed her The knowledge made me blush like a beacon. I looked at these letters. 'They're cracked, those girls, and you mustn't Kitty, and saw that she had caught the gesture, too; her encourage them.' But I knew that the girls were not cracked, eyes, however, were lowered, and her mouth was tight. as she said; they were only as I had been, a year before - but When the comic singer passed us on her way to the stage, braver or more reckless. That, in itself, impressed me; what she gave me a wink: 'Off to please the public,' she said, and astonished and thrilled me now was the thought that girls her dresser laughed again. When she came back and took might look at me at all - the thought that in every darkened her make-up off, she wandered over with a cigarette and hall there might be one or two female hearts that beat asked for a light; then, as she drew on her fag, she looked exclusively for me, one or two pairs of eyes that lingered, me over. 'Are you going,' she said, 'to Barbara's party, after perhaps immodestly, over my face and figure and suit. Did the show?' I said I didn't know who Barbara was. She they know why they looked? Did they know what they waved her hand: 'Oh, Barbara won't mind. You come along looked for? Above all, when they saw me stride across the with Ella and me: you and your friend.' Here she nodded -

147

148

very pleasantly, I thought - to Kitty. But Kitty, who had had marvellous that there had ever been a time I hadn't known her head bent all this time, working at the fastenings of her it.

skirt, now looked up and gave a prim little smile. Now, when Kitty said it, she flinched. Toms. They make a 'How nice of you to ask,' she said; 'but we are spoken for a career-out of kissing girls. We're not like that!'

tonight. Our agent, Mr Bliss, is due to take us out to

'Aren't we?' I said. 'Oh, if someone would only pay me for supper.'

it, I'd be very glad to make a career out of kissing you. Do I stared: we had no arrangement that I knew of. But the you think there is someone who would pay me for that? I'd singer only gave a shrug. 'Too bad,' she said. Then she give up the stage in a flash.' I tried to pull her to me again, looked at me. 'You don't want to leave your pal to her but she knocked my hand away.

agent, and come on alone, with me and Ella?'

'You would have to give up the stage,' she said seriously,

'Miss King will be busy with Mr Bliss,' said Kitty, before I

'and so would I, if there was talk about us, if people thought could answer; and she said it so tightly the singer gave a we were — like that.'

sniff, then turned and went over to where her dresser waited But what were we like? I still didn't know. When I pressed with their baskets. I watched them leave - they didn't look her, however, she grew fretful.

back at me. When we returned to the theatre the next night,

'We're not like anything! We're just - ourselves.'

Kitty chose a hook that was far from theirs; and on the

'But if we're just ourselves, why do we have to hide it?'

night after that, they had moved on to another hall. . .

'Because no one would know the difference between us and At home, in bed, I said I thought it was a shame.

- women like that!'

'Why did you tell them Walter was coming?' I asked Kitty. I laughed. 'Is there a difference?' I asked again. She said: 'I didn't care for them.'

She continued grave and cross. 'I have told you,' she said.

'Why not? They were nice. They were funny. They were 'You don't understand. You don't know what's wrong or like us.'

right, or good . . .'

I had my arm about her, and felt her stiffen at my words.

'I know that this ain't wrong, what we do. Only that the She pulled away from me and raised her head. We had left world says it is.'

a candle burning and her face, I saw, was white and She shook her head. 'It's the same thing,' she said. Then she shocked.

fell back upon her pillow and closed her eyes, and turned

'Nan!' she said. They're not like us! They're not like us, at her face away.

all. They're toms.'

I was sorry that I had teased her - but also, I am ashamed to Toms?' I remember this moment very distinctly, for I had say, rather warmed by her distress. I touched her cheek, and never heard the word before. Later I would think it moved a little closer to her; then I took my hand from her face and passed it, hesitantly, down her night-dress, over

149

150

her breasts and belly. She moved away, and I slowed - but reassure themselves that I was quite content - and at that I did not stop - my searching fingers; and soon, as if despite had written at once to say, they must not think of coming, I itself, I felt her body slacken in assent. I moved lower, and was too busy, my rooms were too small... In short - so seized the hem of her shift and drew it high - then did the

'careful' had Kitty made me! -I was as unwelcoming as it same with my own, and gently slid my hips over hers. We was possible to be, this side of friendliness. Since then, our fitted together like the two halves of an oyster-shell - you letters had grown rarer than ever; and the business of my couldn't have passed so much as the blade of a knife fame upon the stage had been quite lost -I never mentioned between us. I said, 'Oh Kitty, how can this be wrong?' But it; they did not ask.

she did not answer, only moved her lips to mine at last, and Now, it was not of the act that I wrote to Alice. I wrote to when I felt the tug of her kiss I let my weight fall heavily tell her what had happened between Kitty and me - to tell upon her, and gave a sigh.

her that we loved each other, not as friends, but as I might have been Narcissus, embracing the pond in which I sweethearts; that we had made our lives together; and that was about to drown.

she must be glad for me, for I was happier than I had ever It was true, I suppose, what she said - that I didn't thought it possible to be.

understand her. Always, always, it came down to the same It was a long letter, but I wrote it easily; and when I had thing: that however much we had to hide our love, however finished it I felt light as air. I didn't read it through, but put guardedly we had to take our pleasure, I could not long be it in an envelope at once, and ran with it to the post-box. I miserable about a thing that was - as she herself admitted - was back before Kitty had even stirred; and when she woke so very sweet. Nor, in my gladness, could I quite believe I didn't mention it.

that anyone who cared for me would be anything but happy I didn't tell her about Alice's reply, either. This came a few for me, if only they knew.

days later - came while Kitty and I were at breakfast, and I was, as I have said before, very young. The next day, had to stay unopened in my pocket until I could make time while Kitty still slept, I rose and made my noiseless way to be alone and read it. It was, I saw at once, very neat; and into our parlour. There I did something that I had longed for knowing Alice to be no great pen woman, I guessed that months to do, but never had the courage. I took a piece of this must be the last of several versions.

paper and a pen, and wrote a letter to my sister, Alice. It was also, unlike my letter, very short - so short that, to I hadn't written home in weeks. I had told them, once, that I my great dismay and all unwillingly, I find that I remember had joined the act; but I had rather played the matter down it, even now, in its entirety. I feared they wouldn't think the life a decent one for their

'Dear Nancy,' it began.

own daughter. They had sent me back a brief, half-hearted,

'Your letter was both a shock to me and no surprise at all, puzzled note; they had talked of travelling to London, to for I have been expecting to receive something very like it

151

152

from you, since the day you left us. When I first read it I As for Alice: after that one brief, bitter epistle, she never did not now whether to weep or throw the paper away from wrote to me at all.

me in temper. In the end I burned the thing, and only hope

you will have sense enough to burn this one, likewise. Chapter 6

'You ask me to be happy on your behalf. Nance, you must The months, that year, seemed to slide by very swiftly; for, know that I have always only ever had your happiness at of course, we were busier now than ever. We continued to my heart, more nearly even than my own. But you must work our hit - the song about the sovereigns and the winks know too that I can never be happy while your friendship all through the spring and summer, but there were always with that woman is so wrong and queer. I can never like new songs, new routines to labour over and perfect, new what you have told me. You think you are happy, but you orchestras to grow familiar with, new theatres, and new are only misled -and that woman, your friend "so-called", is costumes. Of the latter, we acquired so many that we found to blame for it.

we couldn't manage them without help, and took on a girl to

'I only wish that you had never met her nor ever gone away, do my old job - to mend the suits and to help us dress in but only stayed in Whitstable where you belong, and with them, at the side of the stage.

those who love you properly.

We grew rich - or rich, at least, as far as I was concerned.

'Let me just say at the last what you must I hope know. At the Star, in Bermondsey, Kitty had started on a couple of Father, Mother and Davy know nothing of this, and won't pounds a week, and I had thought my own, small dresser's from my lips, since I would rather die of shame than tell share of that quite grand enough. Now I earned ten, twenty, them. You must never speak of it to them, unless you want thirty times that figure, on my own account, and sometimes to finish the job you started when you first left us, and more. The sums seemed unimaginable to me: I preferred, break their hearts completely and for ever.

perhaps foolishly, not to think of them at all, but let Walter

'Don't burden me, I ask you, with no more shameful secrets. worry over our wages. He, in response to our great But look to yourself and the path that you are treading, and successes, had found new agents for his other artistes and ask yourself if it is really Right.

was now our manager full-time. He negotiated our

'Alice.'

contracts, our publicity, and held our money for us; he paid She must have kept her word about not telling our parents, Kitty and she, as before, gave me whatever little cash I for their letters to me continued as before - still cautious, needed, when I asked her for it.

still rather fretful, but still kind. But now I got even less It was rather strange with Walter, now that Kitty and I had pleasure from them; only kept thinking, What would they grown so close. We saw him quite as often as we had write, if they knew? How kind would they be then? My before; we still went driving with him; we still spent long replies, in consequence, grew shorter and rarer than ever. hours with him at Mrs Dendy's piano (though the piano

153

154

itself had been changed, to a more expensive one). He was The Deacon's crowd were noticeably shabbier than the folk as kind and as foolish as ever - but a little dimmed, at Islington Green, but no less kind; if anything, indeed, somehow, a little shadowy, now that the blaze of Kitty's they were inclined to be kinder, jollier, more willing to be charms was more decidedly turned my way. Perhaps it only moved and thrilled and entertained. Our first week there seemed so to me; but I was sorry for him, and could not went well -they packed the hall for us. It was on the help but wonder what he thought. I was sure he hadn't Saturday night of the second week that the trouble came - guessed that Kitty and I were sweethearts — for, of course, on a Saturday night at the end of September, a night of fog - we were rather cool ourselves, in public, now. one of those grey-brown evenings, when all the streets and As rich as we became that year, we were never quite rich buildings of the city seem to waver a little at the edges. enough to be so very choosy about the kind of halls we The roads are always choked on such a night, and on this sang in. For the whole of September we played at the particular evening the traffic between Windmill Street and Trocadero - a very smart theatre, and one of the ones that Islington was horribly slow, for there had been an accident Walter had pointed out to us on our first, giddy tour of the along the way. A van had overturned; a dozen boys had West End, more than a year before. When we left the Troc, rushed to sit upon the horse's head, to stop the beast from however, it was to drive to Deacon's Music Hall, in rising; and our own carriage could not pass for half an hour Islington. This was an altogether different place: small and or more. We arrived at Deacon's terribly late, to find the old, with an audience drawn from the streets and courts of place as wild as the street we had just left. The crowd had Clerkenwell - and inclined, in consequence, to be rather had to wait for us, and were impatient. Some poor artiste rough.

had been sent on to sing a comic song and keep them We didn't mind a rowdy crowd, as a rule, for it could be occupied, but they had started to heckle him quite unnerving to work the prim West End theatres, where the mercilessly; at last - the fellow had begun a clog dance - ladies were too gentle or well-dressed to bang their hands two roughs had jumped upon the stage and pulled the boots together or to stamp, and where only the drunken swells of from him, and tossed them up to the gallery. When we the promenade really whistled and shouted as a proper arrived, breathless and flustered but ready to sing, the air music-hall audience should. We had never worked was thick with shouts and bellows and screams of laughter. Deacon's before, but we had once done a week at Sam The two roughs had hold of the comic singer by the ankles, Collins', up the road. There the crowd had been humble and and were holding him so that his head dangled over the gay - working-people, women with babies in their arms - flames of the footlights, in an attempt to set fire to his hair. the kind of audience I liked best of all, because it was the The conductor and a couple of stage-hands had hold of the kind of which, until very recently, I had myself been a roughs, and were trying to pull them into the wings. member.

155

156

Another stage-hand stood nearby, dazed, and with a Kitty straightened her collar. As she did so we heard the bleeding nose.

great roar, and the thunder of stamping feet, that told us that We had Walter with us, for we had arranged to eat with him our number had gone up. In a second, rising doggedly over later, after the show. Now he looked at the scene before us, the din, there came the first few bars of our opening song. aghast.

'If they hurl something,' she said quickly, 'we'll duck.' Then

'My God,5 he said. 'You cannot go on with them in such a she took a step, and nodded for me to follow.

mood as this.'

And after all the fuss, indeed, they received us very As he spoke, the manager came running. 'Not go on?' he graciously.

said, appalled. 'They must go on, or there will be a riot. It is

'Wot cheer, Kitty?' someone shouted, as we danced our way entirely because they did not go on when they were meant into the beam of the limes. 'Did you lose your way in the to that the damn trouble - excuse me, ladies - started.' He fog, then, or what?'

wiped his forehead, which was very damp. From the stage,

'Shocking awful traffic,' she called back - the first verse was however, there were signs that the scuffling, at last, was about to begin, and she was slipping further into character subsiding.

with every step she took - 'but not so bad as a road my Kitty looked at me, then nodded. 'He's right,' she said to friend and I were a-walking on the other afternoon. Why, it Walter. Then, to the manager: Tell them to put our number took us quite half a day to get from Pall Mall to Piccadilly up.'

..." And effortlessly, seamlessly - and with me beside her, The manager pocketed his handkerchief and stepped closer and more faithful than a shadow - she led us into our smartly away before she could change her mind; but Walter song.

still looked grave. 'Are you sure?' he asked us. He glanced When that was over we headed back into the wing, to back towards the stage. The roughs had been successfully where Flora, our dresser, waited with our suits. Walter kept carried off, and the singer had been placed in a chair in the his distance, but clasped his hands together before his chest wing across from us and given a glass of water. His clogs when we emerged, and shook them, in a gesture of triumph. must have been thrown back on to the stage, or else some He was pink-faced and smiling with relief.

kind soul had delivered or retrieved them; at any rate, they Our second number - a song called 'Scarlet Fever', for now stood rather neatly beneath his chair and beside his which we dressed in guardsmen's uniforms (red jackets and bruised and naked feet. There were still some shrieks and caps, white belts, black trousers, very smart) - went down a whistles, however, from the hall.

treat; it was during the next routine that all turned sour.

'You don't have to do it,' Walter went on. 'They may hurl There was a man in the stalls: I had noticed him earlier, for something; you might get hurt.'

he was large, and clearly very drunk; he slept noisily in his seat, with his knees spread wide, his mouth open and his

157

158

chin glistening slightly in the glow from the stage. For all I were squinting into the gloom. Half a dozen hands waved know, he might have slept through all the rumpus with the and pointed to where the man leaned over the footlights, his clog-dancer; now, however, by some horrible mischance, whiskers fluttering in the heat.

he had woken up. It was a very small theatre and I could He, now, had started banging on the stage with the heel of see him quite distinctly. He had stumbled over his his hand. I suppressed an urge to dance up to him and stamp neighbours' legs to get to the end of his row, swearing all upon his wrist (for, apart from anything else, I thought he the way, and drawing answering curses from everyone he was quite capable of seizing my ankle and dragging me into stepped on. He had reached the aisle at last -but there he the stalls.) Instead, I took my cue from Kitty. She had hold had grown confused. Instead of heading for the bar, the of my arm, and had pressed it, but her brow was smooth privy, or wherever it was that he had made up his gin-or and untroubled. At any moment, I thought, she would slow whisky-soaked mind to make for, he had wandered down the song, launch into the man, or call for the door-men to to the side of the stage. Now he stood, peering up at us, come and remove him.

with his hands over his eyes.

But they, at last, had spotted him, and had begun their

'What the devil - ?' he said; he said it during a lull between advance. He, all unknowing, ranted drunkenly on. verses, and it sounded very loud. A few people turned away

'Call that a song?' he shouted. 'Call that a song? I want my from us to look at him, and to titter or tut-tut. shilling back! You hear me? I want my bleeding shilling I exchanged a glance with Kitty, but kept my voice and back!'

steps in time with hers, my eyes still bright, my smile still

'You want your bleeding arse kicked, is what you want!'

broad. After a second the man began to curse even louder. answered someone from the pit. Then someone else, a The crowd - who were still, I suppose, rather ready for a bit woman, yelled, 'Stop your row, can't you? We can't hear the of sport - began to shout at him, to quieten him down. girls for all your racket.'

'Throw the old josser out!' called someone; and, 'Don't you The man gave a sneer; then he hawked, and spat. 'Girls?' he pay no mind to him, Nan, dear!' This was from a woman in cried. 'Girls? You call them girls? Why, they're nothing but the stalls. I caught her eye, and tipped my hat - it was a a couple of-a couple of tomsl'

boater; we were wearing the Oxford bags and boaters, now He put the whole force of his voice into it - the word that

- and saw her blush.

Kitty had once whispered to me, flinching and shuddering All the shouting, however, only seemed to enrage and as she said it! It sounded louder at that moment than the confuse the man still further. A boy stepped up to him, but blast of a cornet - seemed to bounce from one wall of the was knocked away; I saw the fellows in the orchestra begin hall to another, like a bullet from a sharp-shooter's act gone to gaze a little wildly over the tops of their instruments. At wrong.

the back of the hall two door-men had been summoned and Toms!

159

160

At the sound of it, the audience gave a great collective Far off in the gallery someone called something that I could flinch. There was a sudden hush; the shouts became not catch, and there was an awkward answering laugh. mumbles, the shrieks all tailed away. Through the shaft of If the shout cast a spell over the theatre, the laughter broke limelight I saw their faces - a thousand faces, self-conscious it. Kitty shifted, then seemed to see for the first time that and appalled.

our arms were joined. She gave a cry, and drew away from Even so, the awkwardness might have lasted no longer than me as if in horror. Then she put her hand to her eyes and a moment; they might have forgotten it at once, and grown stepped, with her head bowed, into the wing.

noisy and gay again - but for what happened, simultaneous For a second I stood, dazed and confounded; then I hurried with their silencing, upon the stage.

after her. The orchestra rattled on. There were shouts from For Kitty had stiffened; and then she had stumbled. We had the hall, at last, and cries of 'Shame!' The curtain, I think, been dancing with our arms linked. Now her mouth flew was rung hurriedly down.

open. Now it shut. Now it trembled. Her voice - her lovely, Back stage, everything was in a state of the greatest shining, soaring voice - faltered and died. I had never confusion. Kitty had run to Walter: he had his arm about known it happen before. I had seen her sail, quite at her her shoulders and looked grave. Flora stood by with a shoe ease, through seas of indifference, squalls of heckling. unlaced and ready, shocked and uncertain but desperately Now, upon that single, dreadful, drunken cry, she had curious. A knot of stage-hands and fly-men looked on, foundered.

whispering amongst themselves. I stepped up to Kitty and I, of course, should have sung all the louder, swept her reached for her arm; she flinched as if I had raised my hand across the stage, jollied the audience along; but I, of course, to strike her, and instantly I fell back. As I did so the was only her shadow. Her sudden silence stopped my manager appeared, more flustered than ever.

throat, and stunned me into immobility, too. I looked from

'I should like to know, Miss Butler, Miss King, what the her to the orchestra pit. There, the conductor had seen our blazes you mean by -'

confusion. The music had slowed and faded for a second -

'I should like to know,' interrupted Walter harshly, 'what the but now picked up, more briskly than before.

blazes you mean by sending my artistes on before that But the melody affected neither Kitty nor the audience. At rabble you call your audience. I should like to know why a the side of the stalls, the door-men had reached the drunken drunken fool is allowed to interfere with Miss Butler's man at last, and had hold of his collar. The crowd looked performance for ten minutes, while your men gather their not at him, however, but at us. They looked at us, and saw - scattered wits together, and make up their minds to remove what? Two girls in suits, their hair close-clipped, their arms him.'

entwined. Toms! For all the efforts of the orchestra, the The manager stamped his foot: 'How dare you, sir!'

man's cry still seemed to echo about the hall.

'How dare you, sir -!'

161

162

The debate went on. I didn't listen to it, only looked at deal. Kitty became choosier about the theatres we worked Kitty. Her eyes were dry, but she was white-faced and stiff. at; she began to question Walter, too, about the other acts She hadn't taken her head from Walter's shoulder, and she that we must share the bills with. Once he booked us to had not glanced towards me, at all.

appear alongside an American artist - a man called 'Paul or Finally Walter gave a snort, and waved the blustering Pauline?', whose turn was to dance in and out of an ebony manager away. He turned to me. He said, 'Nan, I am taking cabinet, dressed now as a woman, now as a man, and Kitty home, at once. There's no question now of you going singing soprano and baritone by turns. I thought the act was on for your final number; I'm afraid, too, that we must a good one; but when Kitty saw him work, she made us forfeit our supper. I shall hail us a hansom; will you follow cancel. She said the man was a freak, and would make us with Flora and the gear, in the carriage? I should like to get seem freakish by association . . .

Kitty back to Ginevra Road as swiftly as possible.' I We lost money on that deal, too. In the end I marvelled at hesitated, then looked at Kitty again. She raised her eyes to Walter's patience.

mine at last, very briefly, and nodded.

For that was another change. I have spoken of the curious

'All right,' I said. I watched them leave. Walter took up his dimming of Walter's brightness, of the subtle new distance cloak, and - though it was far too large for her, and trailed that had grown between us, since Kitty and I had become upon the dusty floor - he placed it over Kitty's slender sweethearts. Now the dimming and the distance increased. shoulders. She clasped it tight at the throat, then let him He remained kind, but his kindness was tempered by a usher her away, past the angry manager and the knot of surprising kind of stiffness; in Kitty's presence, in whispering boys.

particular, he grew easily flustered and self-conscious - and By the time I reached Ginevra Road - after having gathered then jolly, with a horrible, forced kind of jolliness, as if our boxes and bags together at Deacon's, and delivered ashamed of himself for being so awkward. His visits to Flora to her own house in Lambeth - Walter had gone, our Ginevra Road grew rarer. At last we saw him only to rooms were dark, and Kitty was in bed, apparently asleep. I rehearse new songs, or in the company of the other artistes bent over her, and stroked her head. She did not stir, and I we sometimes took supper or drinks with.

didn't like to wake her to perhaps more upset. Instead, I I missed him, and wondered at his change of heart - but simply undressed, and lay close beside her, and placed my didn't wonder very hard, I must confess, because I thought I hand upon her heart -which beat on, very fiercely, through knew what had caused it. That night at Islington he had her dreams.

learned the truth at last - had heard that drunken man's The disastrous night at Deacon's brought changes with it, shout, seen Kitty's terrible, terrified response, and and made some things a little strange. We did not sing at understood. He had driven her home - I did not know what the hall again, but broke our contract - losing money on the had passed between them then, for neither of them seemed

163

164

at all inclined to discuss any part of that dreadful evening - Tootsie was also leaving - leaving for France, for a part in a he had driven her home, but that tender gesture of his, to Parisian revue; and her room was being taken by a place his cloak about her trembling shoulders and see her comedian who whistled. The Professor had developed the safely to her door, had been his last. Now he could not be beginnings of a palsy - there was talk that he might end up easy with her - perhaps because he knew for sure that he in a home for old artistes. Sims and Percy were doing well, had lost her; more probably, because the idea of our love he and planned to take our rooms when we had left them; but found distasteful. And so he stayed away.

Percy had found a sweetheart, too, and the girl made Had we remained very long at Mrs Dendy's house, I think quarrels between them -I learned later that they split the act, our friends there would have noticed Walter's absence, and and found spots as minstrels in rival troupes. It's the way of quizzed us over it; but at the end of September came the theatrical houses, I suppose, to break up and refashion biggest change of all. We said good-bye to our landlady and themselves; but I was almost sadder, on my last day at Ginevra Road, and moved.

Ginevra Road, than I had been on leaving Whitstable. I sat We had talked vaguely of moving since the start of our in the parlour - my portrait was upon the wall, now, along fame; but we had always put the crucial moment off - it with all the others - and thought how much had changed seemed foolish to leave a place in which we had been, and since I had sat there first, a little less than thirteen months were still, so happy. Mrs Dendy's had become our home. It before; and for a moment I wondered if all the changes had was the house in which we had first kissed, first declared been good ones, and wished that I could be plain Nancy our love; it was, I thought, our honeymoon house - and for Astley again, whom Kitty Butler loved with an ordinary all that it was so cramped and plain, for all that our love she was not afraid to show to all the world. costumes now took up more space in the bedroom than our The street to which we moved was very new, and very bed, I was terribly loath to leave it.

quiet. Our neighbours, I think, were city men; their wives But Kitty said it looked queer, us still sharing a room, and a stayed at home all day, and their children had nurses, who bed, when we had the money to live somewhere ten times wheeled them, puffing, up and down the garden steps in the size; and she had a house agent look about for rooms for great iron perambulators. We had the top two floors of a us, somewhere more seemly.

house close to the station; our landlady and her husband It was to Stamford Hill that we moved, in the end lived beneath us, but they were not connected to the Stamford Hill, far across the river, in a bit of London I business, and we rarely saw them. Our rooms were smart, hardly knew (and thought, privately, a little dull). We had a we were the first to rent them: the furniture was all of farewell supper at Ginevra Road, with everyone saying how polished wood, and velvet and brocade, and was far finer sorry they were to see us go - Mrs Dendy herself even wept than anything either of us was used to -so that we sat upon a little, and said her house would never be the same. For the chairs and sofas rather gingerly. There were three

165

166

bedrooms, and one of them was mine - which meant only, was that winter, playing Dandini to Kitty's Prince, at the of course, that I kept my dresses in its closet, my brushes Britannia. Any artiste will tell you that it is their ambition and combs upon its wash-hand stand, and my nightgown to work in pantomime; it is not until you play in one beneath the pillow of its bed-this was for the sake of the girl yourself, however, at a theatre as grand and as famous as who came to clean for us, three days a week. My nights the Brit, that you understand why. For the three coldest were really spent in Kitty's chamber, the great front months of the year you are settled. There is no dashing bedroom with its great high bed that the house-builders had about from hall to hall, no worrying about contracts. You meant for a husband and wife. It made me smile to lie in it. mix with actors and ballet-girls, and make friends with

'We are married,' I would say to Kitty. 'Why, we don't have them. Your dressing-room is large and private and warm - to lie here at all, if we don't wish to! I could carry you down for you are really expected to change and make-up in it, not to the parlour carpet, and kiss you there!' But I never did. arrive, breathless, at the stage door, having buttoned on For though we were at liberty at last to be as saucy and as your costume in your brougham. You are handed lines to clamorous as we chose, we found we couldn't break speak, and you speak them, steps to take, and you take ourselves of our old habits: we still whispered our love, and them, costumes to wear - the most wonderful costumes you kissed beneath the counterpane, noiselessly, like mice. ever saw in your life, costumes of fur and satin and velvet - That, of course, was when we had time for kisses. We were and you wear them, then pass them back to the wardrobeworking six nights a week now, and there was no Sims and mistress and let her worry about mending them and keeping Percy and Tootsie to keep us lively after shows; often we them neat. The crowds you have to play before are the would arrive back at Stamford Hill so weary we would kindest, gayest crowds there ever were: you will hurl all simply fall into the bed and snore. By November we were manner of nonsense at them and they will shriek with both so tired Walter said we must take a holiday. There was laughter, merely because it is Christmas and they are talk of a trip to the Continent - even, to America, where determined to be jolly. It is like a holiday from real life - there were also halls at which we might build up a quiet except that you are paid twenty pounds a week, if you are reputation, and where Walter had friends who would lodge as lucky as we were then, to enjoy it.

us. But then, before the trip could be fixed, there came an The Cinderella in which we played that year was a invitation to play in pantomime, at the Britannia Theatre, particularly splendid one. The title role was taken by Dolly Hoxton. The pantomime was Cinderella, and Kitty and I Arnold -a lovely girl with a voice like a linnet's, and a waist were wanted for the First and Second Boy roles; and the so slim her trademark was to wear a necklace as a belt. It offer was too flattering to resist.

was rather odd to see Kitty spooning with her upon the My music-hall career, though brief enough, had been a stage, kissing her while the clock showed a minute-tohappy one; but I do not think that I was ever so content as I midnight - though it was odder still, perhaps, to think that

167

168

no one in the audience called out Toms! now, or even Brit, mingled with that familiar music-hall reek of dust and appeared to think it: they only cheered when the Prince and grease-paint, tobacco and beer. Even now, if you were to Cinderella were united at the end, and drawn on stage, by ask me, quickly, 'What is heaven like?' I should have to say half-a-dozen pygmy horses, in their wedding-car. that it must smell of over-heated horsehair, and be filled Aside from Dolly Arnold, there were other stars - artistes with angels in spangles and gauze, and decorated with whose turns I had once paid to watch and clap at, at the fountains of scarlet and blue . . .

Canterbury Palace of Varieties. It made me feel very green, But not, perhaps, have Kitty in it.

to have to work with them and talk to them as equals. I had I did not think this then, of course. I was only only ever sung and danced, before, at Kitty's side; now, of extraordinarily glad to have a place in such a business, and course, I had to act — to walk on stage with a hunting with my true love at my side; and everything that Kitty said retinue and say, 'My lords, where is Prince Casimir, our or did only seemed to show that she felt just the same. I master?'; to slap my thigh and make terrible puns; to kneel believe we spent more hours at the Brit that winter than at before Cinderella with a velvet cushion, and place the our new home in Stamford Hill — more time in velvet suits slipper of glass upon her tiny foot — then lead the crowd in and powdered wigs than out of them. We made friends with three rousing cheers when it was found to fit it. If you have all the theatre people - with the ballerinas and the ever seen a panto at the Brit, you will know how wardrobe-girls, the gasmen, the property-men, the marvellous they are. For the transformation scene of carpenters and the call-boys. Flora, our dresser, even found Cinderella they dressed one hundred girls in suits of gauze herself a beau amongst them. He was a black fellow, who and bullion fringe, then harnessed them to moving wires had run away from a sailing family in Wapping to join a and had them swoop above the stalls. On the stage they set minstrel troupe; not having the voice for it, however, he had up fountains, which they lit, each with a different coloured become a stage-hand instead. His name, I believe, was lime. Dolly, as Cinderella in her wedding-gown, wore a Albert - but he paid about as much heed to that as anybody frock of gold, with glitter on the bodice. Kitty had golden in the business, and was known, universally, as 'Billy-Boy'. pantaloons, a shining waistcoat, and a three-cornered hat, He loved the theatre more than any of us, and spent all his and I wore breeches and a vest of velvet, and square-toed hours there, playing cards with the door-men and the shoes with silver buckles. Standing at Kitty's side while the carpenters, hanging about in the flies, twitching ropes, fountains played, the fairies swooped, and the pigmy horses turning handles. He was good-looking, and Flora was very pranced and trotted, I was never sure I had not died on my keen on him; he spent a deal of time, in consequence, at our way to the theatre and woken up in paradise. There is a dressing-room door, waiting to take her home after the particular scent that ponies give off, when they are set too show -and so we came to know him very well. I liked him long beneath a too-hot lamp. I smelled it every night at the because he came from the river, and had left his family for

169

170

the theatre's sake, as I had. Sometimes, in the afternoons or We had opened at the Brit on Boxing Day, and rehearsed late at night, he and I would leave Kitty and Flora fussing all through the weeks before it. Christmas, therefore, had over the costumes and take a stroll through the dim and been rather swallowed up; and when Mother had written -as silent theatre, just for the pleasure of it. He had, somehow, she had the year before - to ask me home for it, I had had to acquired copies of all the keys to all the Britannia's dusty, send another apologetic note, to say I was again too busy. It secret places - the cellars and the attics and the ancient was now almost a year and a half since I had left them; a property-rooms - and he would show me hampers full of year and a half since I had seen the sea and had a decent costumes from the shows of the 'fifties, papier-mache fresh oyster-supper. It was a long time — and no matter crowns and sceptres, armour made of foil. Once or twice he how gloomy and spiteful Alice's letter had made me, I led me up the great high ladders at the side of the stage, into could not help but miss them all and wonder how they the flies: here we would stand with our chins upon the rails, fared. One day in January I came across my old tin trunk sharing a cigarette, gazing at the ash as it fluttered through with its yellow enamel inscription. I lifted the lid - and the web of ropes and platforms to the boards, sixty feet found Davy's map of Kent pasted on the underside, with below us.

Whitstable marked with a faded arrow, 'To show me where It was quite like being at Mrs Dendy's again, with all our home was, in case I forgot.' He had meant it as a joke; they friends around us - except, of course, that Walter wasn't one had none of them thought I really would forget them. Now, of them. He came only occasionally to the Brit, and hardly however, it must seem to them that I had.

at all to Stamford Hill; when he did, I couldn't bear to see I closed the trunk with a bang; I had felt my eyes begin to him so ill at ease, and so found business of my own to keep smart. When Kitty came running to see what the noise was, me occupied elsewhere, and left Kitty to deal with him. I was weeping.

She, I noticed, was as awkward and self-conscious as he

'Hey,' she said, and put her arm about me. 'What's this? Not when he came calling, I and seemed to prefer his letters to tears?'

his person - for he sent his news to her by post, these days,

'I thought of home,' I said, between my sobs, 'and wanted to so drastically had our old friendship dwindled. But she said go there, suddenly.'

she did not mind, and I understood she didn't wish to talk of She touched my cheek, then put her fingers to her lips and something that was painful to her. I knew it must be very licked them. 'Pure brine,' she said. 'That's why you miss it. hard for her, to think that Walter had guessed her secret, I'm amazed you have managed to survive this long away and hated it.

from the sea, without shrivelling up like a bit of old

seaweed. I should never have taken you away from Chapter 7

Whitstable Bay. Miss Mermaid ..."

171

172

I smiled, at last, to hear her use a name I thought she had Urged on by Kitty - for she had grown suddenly gallant forgotten; then I sighed. 'I would like to go back,' I said, 'for about letting me go - I took my chance. I wrote to Mother a day or two ..."

and told her that, if I was still welcome, I should be home

'A day or two! I shall die without you!' She laughed, and the following day - that was Sunday - and would stay till looked away; and I guessed that she was only partly joking, Wednesday night. Then I went shopping, to buy presents for in all the months that we had spent together, we had not for the family: there was something thrilling after all, I been separated for so much as a night. I felt that old queer found, about the idea of returning to Whitstable after so tightness in my breast, and quickly kissed her. She raised long, with a parcel of gifts from London . . . her hands to hold my face; but again she turned her gaze Even so, it was hard to part from Kitty.

away.

'You will be all right?' I said to her. 'You won't be lonely

'You must go,' she said, 'if it makes you sad like this. I shall here?'

manage.'

'I shall be horribly lonely. I expect you will come back and

'I shall hate it too,' I said. My tears had dried; it was I, now, find me dead from loneliness!'

who was doing the consoling. 'And anyway, I shan't be able

'Why don't you come with me? We might catch a later train to go until we close at Hoxton - and that is weeks away.'

-'

She nodded, and looked thoughtful.

'No, Nan; you should see your family without me.'

It was weeks away, for Cinderella was not due to finish

'I shall think about you every minute.'

until Easter; in the middle of February, however, I found

'And I shall think of you

myself suddenly and unexpectedly at liberty. There was a

'Oh, Kitty ..."

fire at the Britannia. There were always fires in theatres in She had been tapping at her tooth with the pearl of her those days - halls were regularly being burned to the necklace; when I put my mouth upon hers I felt it, cold and ground, then built up again, better than before, and no one smooth and hard, between our lips. She let me kiss her, then thought anything of it; and the fire at the Brit had been moved her head so that our cheeks touched; then she put small enough, and no one got injured. But the theatre had her arms about my waist and held me to her rather fiercely - had to be evacuated, and there had been problems with the quite as if she loved me more than anything.

exits; afterwards an inspector came, looked at the building, Whitstable, when I drew into it later that morning, seemed and said a new escape door must be added. He closed the very changed - very small and grey, and with a sea that was theatre while the work was done: tickets were returned, wider, and a sky that was lower and less blue, than I apologies pasted up; and for a whole half-week we found remembered. I leaned from the carriage window to gaze at ourselves on holiday.

it all, and so saw Father and Davy, at the station, a moment or two before they saw me. Even they looked different - I

173

174

felt a rush of aching love and strange regret, to think it - had soaked it. The stairs we climbed were dark and narrow, Father a little older, a little shrunken, somehow; Davy the room into which I finally emerged smaller and more slightly stouter, and redder in the face.

cramped than I could have believed possible. Worst of all When they saw me, stepping from the train on to the the street, the stairs, the room, the people in it, all reeked of platform, they came running.

fish! It was a stink that was as familiar to me as the scent of

'Nance! My dearest girl . . . !' This was Father. We my own armpit; but I was startled, now, to think that I had embraced - awkwardly, for I had all my parcels with me, ever lived in it and thought it ordinary.

and a hat upon my head with a veil around it. One of the My surprise, I hope, was lost in the general bustle of my parcels fell to the ground and he bent to retrieve it, then arrival. I had expected Mother and Alice to be waiting for hurried to help me with the others. Davy, meanwhile, took me; they were - but so were half-a-dozen other people, each my hand, then kissed my cheek through the mesh of my one of whom exclaimed when I appeared, and stepped veil.

forward (except for Alice) to embrace me. I had to smile

'Just look at you,' he said. 'All dressed up to the ninetyand submit to being squeezed and patted until I grew quite nines! Quite the lady, ain't she, Pa?' His cheek grew redder breathless.

than ever.

Rhoda - still my brother's sweetheart - was there, looking Father straightened, and looked me over, then gave a wide perter than ever; Aunty Ro, too, had come along to smile that seemed to pull, somewhat, at the corners of his welcome me back, together with her son, my cousin eyes.

George, and her daughter, Liza, and Liza's baby - except

'Very smart,' he said. 'Your mother won't know you, hardly.'

that the baby was not a baby at all now, but a little boy in I did indeed, I suppose, look a little dressy, but I had not frills. Liza, I saw, was large with child again; I had been thought about it until that moment. All my clothes were told this in a letter, I believe, but had forgotten it. good ones, these days, for I had long ago got rid of those I took off my hat once all the welcomes had been said, and girlish hand-me-downs with which I'd first left home. I had my heavy coat with it. Mother looked me up and down. She only wanted, that morning, to look nice. Now I felt selfsaid, 'My goodness, Nance, how tall and fine you look! I do conscious.

believe you're taller, almost, than your Father.' I did feel tall The self-consciousness did not diminish as I walked, on in that tiny, overcrowded room; but I could hardly, I Father's arm, the little distance to our oyster-shop. The thought, have really grown. It was just that I was standing house, I thought, was shabbier than ever. The weatherrather straighter. I gazed around - a little proud, despite my boards above the shop showed more wood, now, than blue awkwardness - and found a seat, and tea was brought. I still paint; and the sign - Astley's Oysters, the Best in Kent - had not exchanged a word with Alice.

hung on one hinge, and was cracked where the rainwater

175

176

Father asked after Kitty, and I said that she was well. pistol that at any second might go off; but I dutifully took Where was she playing now? they asked me. Where were his fingers in my own, and squeezed them. Of course, he we living? Rosina said, there had been talk that I had gone snatched his hand away at once, and only wailed the louder. upon the stage myself -? And at that I only answered, that I Everybody laughed. George caught the baby up and swung did 'sometimes join Kitty in the act'.

him high, so that his hair brushed the cracked and yellowed

'Well, fancy that!'

plaster of the ceiling. 'Who's a little soldier, then?' he cried. I cannot say what squeamishness still made me keep the I looked at Alice, and she glanced away.

fact of my success from them. It was, I think, because the The baby quietened at last; the room grew warmer. I saw act - as I have said - was so entangled with my love: I could Rhoda lean towards my brother and whisper, and when he not bear to have them pry at it, or frown at it, or pass the nodded, she coughed. She said, 'Nancy, you won't have idea of it on to others, carelessly . . .

heard our bit of good news.' I looked at her properly. She It was, I suppose now, a kind of priggishaess; indeed, I had her jacket off and her feet, I noticed, were bare but for a hadn't been amongst them more than half-an-hour before pair of woollen stockings. She seemed very much at home. George, my cousin, gave a cry: 'What's happened to your Now she held out her hand. On the second finger from the accent, Nance? You've gone all lardy-dah.' I looked at him left there was a narrow strip of gold, with a tiny stone - in real surprise, then listened hard next time I spoke. It was sapphire or diamond, it was too small to tell — mounted quite true, my voice had changed. I was not posh, as he had upon it. An engagement ring.

claimed, but there is a certain lilt that theatre people have - I blushed - I don't know why - and forced a smile. 'Oh, a rather odd, unpredictable mixture of all the accents of the Rhoda! I am glad. Davy! How nice for you.' I was not glad; halls, from coster-man to lion comique; and I, all it was not nice; the thought of having Rhoda as a sister-inunknowingly, had I picked it up. I sounded rather like Kitty law -of having any kind of sister-in-law! - was peculiarly

- occasionally, even like Walter. I had never realised it till horrible. But I must have sounded pleased enough, for they now.

both grew pink and smug.

We drank our tea; there was a lot of fussing over the little Then Aunt Rosina nodded towards my own hand. 'No sign boy. Someone handed him to me for me to nurse - when I of a ring on your finger yet, Nance?'

took him, however, he cried.

I saw Alice shift in her seat, and shook my head: 'Not yet,

'Oh dear!' said his mother, tickling him. 'Your Aunty Nance no.' Father opened his mouth to speak; I could not bear, will think you a real cry-baby.' She took him from me, then however, for the conversation to run down that particular held him near my face: 'Shake hands!' She seized his arm road. I got up, and retrieved my bags. 'I've bought you all and waved it. 'Shake hands with Aunty Nancy, like a proper some things,' I said, 'from London.'

little gent!' He jerked at her hip, like some great swollen

177

178

There were murmurs and little interested 'Oh's at that. saw that she had thought the same. 'Really, Nance ..." she Mother said I shouldn't have, but reached for her spectacles said; and her words were almost a reproof.

and looked expectant. I went to my Aunt, first, and handed There were murmurs, now, from all around the room, as her a bag full of packages. These are for Uncle Joe, and people compared presents. Aunt Rosina held up a pair of Mike and the girls. This is for you.' George next: I had garnet earrings, and blinked at them. George fingered his bought him a silver hip-flask. Then Liza, and the baby ... I flask, and asked me, rather nervously, whether I had won went all around the crowded room, and finished up at Alice: the sweepstakes. Only Rhoda and my brother seemed really

'This is for you.' Her parcel - a hat, in a hat box - was the pleased with their gifts. For Davy I had bought a pair of biggest. She took it from me with the smallest, straightest, shoes, hand-sewn and soft as butter: now he rapped on their stiffest smile you ever saw, and began slowly and selfsoles with his knuckles, then stepped over the discarded consciously to pull at its ribbons.

paper and strings to kiss my cheek. 'What a little star you Now everybody had a gift but me. I sat and watched as they are,' he said. 'I shall save these for my wedding-day and be tore at their packages, chewing at my knuckle and smiling the best-shod bloke in Kent.'

into my hand. One by one the objects appeared, and were His words seemed to remind everybody of their manners, turned and examined in the late morning light. The room and suddenly they all rose to kiss and thank me, and there grew quite hushed.

was a general, embarrassed shuffling. I looked over their

'My word, Nancy,' said Father at last, 'you have done us shoulders to where Alice still sat. She had taken the lid proud.' I had bought him a watch-guard, thick and bright as from the hat-box, but had not removed the hat, only held it, the one that Walter wore; he held it in his hand, and it listlessly, in her fingers. Davy saw me looking. 'What've seemed brighter than ever against the red of his palm, the you got, Sis?' he called. When she reluctantly tipped up the faded wool of his jacket. He laughed: 'I shall look quite the box for him to see, he whistled: 'What a stunner! With an thing in this, now, shan't I?' The laugh, however, didn't ostrich feather and a diamond on the brim. Aren't you going sound quite natural.

to try it on?'

I looked at Mother. She had a silver-backed brush and a

'I will, later,' she said.

hand-glass to match: they sat in their wrappers, in her lap, Now everyone turned to look at her.

as if she were afraid to pick them up. I thought at once -

'Oh, what a beautiful hat!' said Rhoda. 'And what a lovely what had never occurred to me in Oxford Street - how shade of red. What shade of red do they call that, Nancy?'

queer they would look beside her cheap coloured perfume

'"Buffalo Red",' I said miserably; I could not have felt more bottles, her jar of cold-cream, on her old chest of drawers of a fool if I had given them all a pile of trash - cotton-reels with its chipped glass handles. She caught my eye, and I and candle-stubs, toothpicks and pebbles - wrapped up in tissue and ribbons and silks.

179

180

Rhoda did not notice. '"Buffalo Red"!' she cried. 'Oh, Alice, their usual habits, and hiding themselves behind the Sunday do be a sport and give us a look at it on you.'

papers, would put me at my ease.

'Yes, go on, Alice.' This was Rosina. 'Nancy'll think you We had our dinner, then took a walk to Tankerton and sat don't like it, otherwise.'

pitching stones into the water. The sea was grey as lead; far

'It's all right,' I said quickly. 'Let her try it later.' But George out upon it there were a couple of yawls and barges - bound had jumped over to Alice's chair, taken the hat from her, for London, where Kitty was. What was she doing now, I and now tried to set it on her head.

wondered, apart from missing me?

'Come on,' he said. 'I want to see if you look like a buffalo Later there was tea, after which more cousins appeared, to in it.'

thank me for their presents and to beg for a look at my

'Leave off!' said Alice. There was a scuffle. I closed my handsome new clothes. We sat upstairs and I showed them eyes, heard the rip of stitches, and when next I looked my my frocks, my hat with the veil upon it, and my painted sister had the bonnet in her lap, and George had half the stockings. There was more talk about young men. Alice, I ostrich feather in his fingers. The chip of diamante had learned - they were surprised she hadn't told me this - had flown off, and been lost.

finished with Tony Reeves from the Palace, and had started Poor George began to gulp and cough; Rosina said sternly stepping out with a boy who worked at the shipyard; he was that she hoped that he was satisfied. Liza took the hat and much taller, they said, than Tony, but not as funny. Freddy, the feather and tried awkwardly to reunite them: 'Such a my old beau, was also seeing a new girl, and seemed likely pretty bonnet,' she said. Alice started to sniff, then placed to marry her . . . When they asked me, again, if I was her hands before her eyes and hurried from the room. courting, I said I wasn't; but I hesitated over it, and they Father said, 'Well, now!'; he still held his gleaming watchsmiled. There was someone, they pressed - and just to keep guard. Mother looked at me and shook her head. 'What a them quiet, I nodded.

shame,’ she said. 'Oh Nancy, what a shame!'

'There was a boy. He played the cornet in an orchestra ..." I In time Rosina and the cousins left, and Alice, still rather looked away, as if it made me sad to think of him, and felt swollen-eyed, went out to call on a friend. I took my bags them exchange significant glances.

up to my old room, and washed my face; when I came And what about Miss Butler? Surely she had a young man? down a little later, the presents I had brought had all been

'Yes, a man named Walter . ..' I hated myself for saying it - tidied out of sight, and Rhoda was helping Mother peel and but thought, too, How Kitty will laugh at this, when I tell boil potatoes in the kitchen. They shooed me away when I her!

offered to join them, and said I was a guest; and so I sat I had forgotten what early hours they all kept. The cousins with Father and Davy - who seemed to think that keeping to left at ten; at half-past everybody else started yawning. Davy saw Rhoda home, and Alice bade the rest of us good 181

182

night. Father rose and stretched, then came to me and put I took off the rest of my clothes, then pulled my night-gown his arm about my neck. 'It's been a treat for us, Nance, to over my head - then remembered my hair. I could not sleep have you home again - and you grown into such a beauty!'

with the plait still fastened to me. I glanced towards Alice Then Mother smiled at me - the first real smile that I had again - she had paled at my words, but still watched - then seen upon her face that day; and I knew then how really pulled at the hairpins until the chignon came loose. From glad I was to be at home, amongst them all.

the corner of my eye I saw her mouth fall open. I ran my But the gladness didn't last long. In a few minutes more I fingers through my flat, shorn locks; the action - and the said my own good-nights, and found myself alone, at last, cigarette that I had just smoked - made me feel wonderfully with Alice, in our - her - room. She was in bed, but the calm.

lamp was still high, and her eyes were open. I did not I said: 'You can't tell, can you, that it's a false one?'

undress, but stood with my back to the door, quite still, Now Alice sat up with the blankets gripped before her. 'You until she looked at me.

needn't look so horrified,' I said. 'I told you all, I wrote and

'I'm sorry about the hat,' she said.

told you: I've joined the act; I'm not Kitty's dresser any

'It doesn't matter.' I stepped to the chair by the fireplace, more. I'm on the stage myself, now, doing what she does. and began to unbutton my boots.

Singing, dancing..."

'You shouldn't have spent so much,' she went on. She said, 'You never wrote it like it was really true. If it was I pulled a face: 'I wish I hadn't.' I stepped out of the shoes, true we would have heard! I don't believe you.'

kicked them to one side, and started on the hooks of my

'I don't care whether you believe me or not.'

dress. She had closed her eyes, and seemed disinclined to She shook her head. 'Singing,' she said. 'Dancing. That's a say anything else. I slowed my hand, and looked at her. tart's life. You couldn't. You wouldn't. ..'

'Your letter,' I said, 'was horrible.'

I said, 'I do"; and just to show her that I meant it, I lifted my I don't want to talk about any of that,' she answered quickly, nightie and did a little shuffle across the rug. turning away. 'I told you what I think. I haven't changed.'

The dance seemed, like the hair, to frighten her. When she

'Neither have I.' I tugged harder at the hooks and stepped spoke next it was with a show of bitterness - but her voice free of the dress, then slung it over the back of the chair. I was thick with rising tears. 'I suppose you lift your skirts felt peevish and not at all tired. I went to one of my bags like that, do you? and show your legs, on stage, for all the and got out a cigarette, and when I struck the match to light world to look at!'

it Alice raised her head. I shrugged: 'Another nasty little

'My skirts?' I laughed. 'Good heavens, Alice, I don't wear habit Kitty taught me.' I sounded just like some hard-faced skirts! I didn't get my hair cut off to wear a frock. It's bitch of a ballet-girl.

trousers I wear: I wear gentlemen's suits -!'

183

184

'Oh!' Now she had begun to cry. 'What a thing to do! What I got up, put my coat over my shoulders, and smoked a thing to do, in front of strangers!'

another cigarette. Alice did not stir.

I said. 'You thought it good enough when Kitty did it.'

I squinted at my watch: half-past eleven. I wondered, again,

'Nothing she did was ever good! She took you off, and has what Kitty was doing; and sent a mental message through made you strange. I don't know you at all. I wish you'd the night, to Stamford Hill, to make her pause - whatever never gone with her - or never come back!'

her business was just then - and remember to think of me, She lay down, pulled the blankets to her chin, and wept; in Whitstable.

and since I don't know a girl who is not moved to tears by My visit, after that poor start, was not brilliant. I had the sight of her own sister weeping, I climbed in beside her, arrived on a Sunday, and the following days, of course, and my own eyes began to sting.

were working ones. I didn't fall asleep, that first night, until But when she felt me close she gave a jerk. 'Get off me!'

very late, but the next morning I woke when Alice woke, at she cried, and wriggled away. She said it with such real half-past six, and forced myself to rise and eat my breakfast passion, such horror and grief, I could do nothing but what with the others, at the parlour-table. Then, however, I didn't she asked, and let her lie at the cold edge of the bed. Soon know whether to offer to take up my old duties in the she ceased her shaking, and fell silent; and my own eyes kitchen, with the oyster-knife - I couldn't tell whether they dried, and my face grew hard again. I reached for the lamp, would like it or expect it, or even whether I could bear to and put it out; then lay on my back and said nothing. try it. In the end I drifted down with them and found I The bed, that had been chill, grew warmer. I began at last to wasn't needed anyway; for they had a girl, now, to sever wish that Alice would turn, and talk to me. Then I began to and beard the natives, and she was just as quick, it seemed, wish that Alice was Kitty. Then I began -I couldn't help it! as I had been. I stood beside her - she was rather pretty - to think of all that I would do with her, if she was. The and made some half-hearted passes with my knife at a sudden force of my desire unnerved me. I remembered all dozen or so shells . . . But the water chilled and stung me, the times that I had lain here and pictured similar things, and soon I preferred to sit and watch - then I closed my before Kitty and I had ever even kissed. I remembered eyes and placed my head upon my arms, and listened to the when I had first slept beside her at Ginevra Road, when I hum of gossip from the restaurant, and the bubble of the was used only to sharing with my sister. Now Alice's body pans . . .

felt strange to me; it seemed queer and wrong, somehow, to hi short, I fell asleep; and only woke when Father, hurrying lie so close to someone and not kiss and stroke them .. . by me, stumbled over my skirts and spilled a pot of liquor. I thought suddenly, Suppose I fall asleep, forget that she Then it was suggested that I go upstairs - out of their way, isn't Kitty, and put a hand upon her, or a leg —? they meant. And so I passed the afternoon alone, alternately nodding over the Illustrated Police News and pacing the

185

186

parlour to keep myself awake - and wondering, frankly, He shrugged. 'I knew she'd never marry me or nothing like why I had come home at all.

that. But I do miss her; and she was a lovely looker - The next day, if anything, was worse. Mother said straight though not quite as lovely, if you don't mind my saying so, out that I must not think of spoiling my dress and hurting as her sister has gone and turned out..." my hands by trying to help them in the kitchen; that I was I didn't mind, for I knew that he was only flirting - indeed, here to have a holiday, not to work. I had read the Police it was rather pleasant to be flirted with by an old beau of News from cover to cover: all there was now was Father's Alice's. Instead I asked him about the hall - about how it Fish Trades Gazette, and I couldn't bear the thought of a did, who he had had there, what they had sung. At the end day upstairs with that. I put my travelling-dress back on and of it he picked up a pen that lay on his desk, and began to went out walking; I started out so early that by ten o'clock I fiddle with it.

had strolled as far as Seasalter and back. At last, desperate

'And when are we to have Miss Butler back again?' he for some amusement, I took the train to Canterbury - and asked. 'I gather you and she've teamed up properly now.' I while my parents and sister laboured in the oyster-house, I stared, then felt my cheeks grow red; but he only meant, of passed the day as a tourist, wandering about the cloisters of course, the act: 'I hear you're working the halls together; a cathedral which, in all the years that I had lived so near to and are quite a pair, by all accounts.'

it, I'd never cared to visit.

Now I smiled. 'How did you find that out? I am very quiet But on the way back to the station I passed before the about it with my family.'

Palace. It looked very different to me, now that I had an eye

'I read the Era, don't I? "Kitty Butler and Nan King". I for halls; and when I stepped up to the posters to look at the know a stage-name when I see one ..."

bill, I saw that all the acts were rather second-rate. The I laughed, 'Oh, isn't it funny, Tony? Isn't it just the most doors, of course, were closed, and the foyer dark; but I marvellous thing? We are in Cinderella at the minute, at the couldn't resist it, and wandered round to the stage door and Brit. Kitty's the Prince, and I'm Dandini. I have to speak, asked for Tony Reeves.

sing, dance, slap my thigh, the works, in velvet breeches. I had my hat and veil on: when he saw me, he didn't And the crowd go mad for it!'

recognise me. When he knew me at last, however, he He smiled at my pleasure - it was lovely to be allowed to be smiled and kissed my hand.

pleased with myself, at last! - then shook his head. 'Your

'Nancy! What a treat!' He, at least, had not changed at all. folks, from what I've heard them say, don't know the half of He led me to his office and sat me down. I said I was here it. Why don't you have them up to see you on the stage? on a visit, and had been sent out to keep myself amused. I Why the big secret?'

said, too, that I was sorry to hear about him and Alice. I shrugged, then hesitated; then, 'Alice doesn't care for Kitty

..." I said.

187

188

'And you and Kitty: you're still in her pocket? You're still I laughed. 'It's not so far.'

struck with her like you always was?' I nodded. He sniffed.

'Far enough,' she said, 'to keep you from us for a year and a Then, she's a lucky girl. . .'

half.'

He seemed only to be flirting again; but I had the queerest

'I've been busy,' I said. 'We have been terribly busy, both of impression, too, that he knew more than he was letting on us.' She nodded, not much impressed: she had heard all this and didn't care a fig about it. I answered, 'I'm the lucky one,'

before, in letters.

and held his gaze.

'Just make sure it's not so long before you come home He tapped with his pen again upon his blotter. 'Maybe.'

again. It is very nice to get your parcels; it was very nice to Then he winked.

get those gifts; but we would rather have you, than, a I stayed at the Palace until it became rather obvious that hairbrush or a pair of boots.' I looked away, abashed; I still Tony had other business to get on with, then took my leave felt foolish when I thought about the presents. Even so, I of him. Once outside, I stood again before the foyer doors, didn't think she needed to be quite so rusty about it, quite so reluctant to resign the reek of beer and grease-paint and hard.

confront the altogether different scents of Whitstable, our Having made the decision to leave sooner, I grew impatient. Parlour and our home. It had been good to talk of Kitty - so I packed my bags that night, and rose, next morning, even good that, seated at the supper-table later, between silent earlier than Alice. At seven, when the breakfast things were Alice and nasty Rhoda with her tiny, flashing sapphire, I cleared away, I was ready to go. I embraced them all, but missed her all the more. I was due to spend another day my parting was not so sad, nor so sweet, as it had been the with them, but now I thought I could not face it. I said, as first time I had left them; and I had no premonition of we started on our puddings, that I had changed my mind anything to come, to make it sadder. Davy was kind, and and would take the morning, rather than the evening train made me promise I would come home for his wedding, and tomorrow - that I had remembered things that I must do at said I might bring Kitty if I liked, which made me love him the theatre, that I shouldn't put off till Thursday. all the more. Mother smiled, but her smile was tight; Alice They didn't seem surprised, though Father said it was a was so chill that, in the end, I turned my back on her. Only shame. Later, as I kissed them good-night, he cleared his Father hugged me to him as if really loath to get me go; and throat. There you are,' he said, 'back up to London in the when he said that he would miss me, I knew he meant it. morning, and I've barely had time for a proper look at you.'

No one could be spared, this time, to walk me to the station, I smiled. 'Have you had a nice time with us, Nance?'

so I made my own way there. I didn't look at Whitstable, or

'Oh yes.'

the sea, as my train pulled away from it; I certainly did not

'And you will take care of yourself, in London?' asked think, I shan't see you again, for years and years - and if I Mother. 'It seems very far away.'

had, I am ashamed to say it would not much have troubled

189

190

me. I thought only of Kitty. It was still only half-past seven; tucked roughly into his trousers, but his braces dangled, she wouldn't rise, I knew, till ten, and I planned to surprise almost to his knees. He was bending over the bowl of her - to let myself into our rooms at Stamford Hill, and water, bathing his face - that had been the lapping sound creep into her bed. The train rolled on, through Faversham that I had heard. His whiskers were dark and gleaming and Rochester. I was not impatient now. I did not need to where he had wet them.

be impatient. I merely sat and thought of her warm, It was his eye that I caught first. He gazed at me in sheer slumbering body that I would soon embrace; I imagined her surprise, his hands lifted, the water running from them into pleasure, her surprise, her rising love, at seeing me returned his sleeves; then his face gave a kind of twitch, horrible to so soon.

behold - and at the same time, from the corner of my eye, I Our house, when I gazed up at it from the street, was, as I saw Kitty twitch, too, beneath the bedclothes. had hoped, quite dark and shuttered. I walked on tip-toe up Even then, I think, I didn't quite understand. the steps, and eased my key into the lock. The passageway

'What's this?' I said, and laughed a little, nervously. I looked was quiet: even our landlady and her husband seemed still at Kitty, waiting for her to join in my laughter - to say, 'Oh, abed. I laid down my bags, and took off my coat. There was Nan! How funny this must look to you! It isn't how it a cloak already hanging from the hat-stand, and I squinted seems, at all.'

at it: it was Walter's. How queer, I thought, he must have But she did not even smile. She gazed at me with fearful come here yesterday, and forgotten it! - and soon, creeping eyes, and pulled the blankets higher, as if to hide her up the darkened staircase, I forgot it myself. nakedness from me. From me!

I reached Kitty's door, and put my ear to it. I had expected It was Walter who spoke.

silence, but there was a sound from beyond it — a kind of

'Nan,' he said hesitantly -I had never heard his voice so dry lapping sound, as of a kitten at a saucer of milk. I thought, and bare - 'Nan, you have surprised us. We didn't look for Damn! She must be awake already and taking her tea; then you until tonight.' He took up a towel and rubbed at his face I caught the creak of the bedstead, and was sure of it. with it. Then he stepped very quickly to the chair, seized his Disappointed, but gay with the expectation of seeing her, I jacket and pulled it on. His hands, I saw, were shaking. caught hold of the door-handle and entered the room. I had never seen him shake before.

She was indeed awake. She sat in bed, propped up against a I said, 'I caught an earlier train . . .' My mouth, like his, had pillow, with the blankets raised as far as her armpits and her dried; my voice, in consequence, sounded slow and thick. naked arms upon the counterpane. There was a lamp lit, and

'Indeed, I thought it was still very early. How long, Walter, turned high; the room was not at all dark. At a little washhave you been here?'

hand stand at the foot of the bed there was another figure. He shook his head, as if the question pained him, and took a Walter. He was jacketless, and collarless; his shirt was step towards me. Then he said rather urgently: 'Nan, forgive

191

192

me. This is not for your eyes. Will you come downstairs There was a silence, broken only by the sound of my with me and let us talk . . . ?'

ragged breathing, and Kitty's gentle weeping: just so had I His tone was strange; and hearing it, I knew for certain. seen my sister weep, three days before. Nothing that Kitty

'No!' I folded my hands over my belly: there was a hot, sour ever did was good! she had said. I placed my cheek upon churning in there, as if they had fed me poison. At my cry the counterpane where it covered Kitty's thighs, and closed Kitty shivered and grew white. I turned to her. 'It isn't true!'

my eyes.

I said. 'Oh tell me, tell me - say it ain't true!' She wouldn't

'You made me think he was your friend,' I said. 'And then look at me, only placed her hands before her eyes and you made me think he didn't care for you, because of us.'

began to weep.

'I didn't know what else to do. He was only my friend; and Walter came closer and put his hand upon my arm. then, and then -'

'Get away!' I cried, and stepped free of him towards the To think of you and him - for all that time -'

bed. 'Kitty? Kitty?' I knelt beside her, took her hand from

'It wasn't what you think, before last night.'

her face, and held it to my own lips. I kissed her fingers, her

'I don't believe you.'

nails, her palm, her wrist; her knuckles, that were damp

'Oh Nan, it's true, I swear! Before last night - how could from her own weeping, were soon drenched with tears and there have been anything? - before last night, there was slobber. Walter looked on, appalled, still trembling. only talk and-kisses.'

At last, she met my gaze. 'It's true,' she whispered. Before last night. . . Before last night I had been glad, I gave a start, and a moan - then heard her shriek, felt beloved, content, secure; before last night I had known Walter's fingers grip my shoulders, and realised that I had myself so full of love and desire I thought I should die of it!

bitten her, like a dog. She pulled her hand away and gazed At Kitty's words I saw that the pain of my love was not a at me in horror. Again I shook Walter off, then turned to tenth, not a hundredth, not a thousandth part of the pain I scream at him. 'Get away, get out! Get out, and leave us!'

should suffer, at her hands, now.

He hesitated; I kicked at his ankle with my foot until he I opened my eyes. Kitty herself looked ill and frightened. I stepped away.

said, 'And the - kisses: when did they start?' But even as I

'You are not yourself, Nan -'

asked it, I guessed the answer: That night, at Deacon's ..."

'Get out!'

She hesitated - then nodded; and I saw it all again, and

'I am afraid to leave you -'

understood it all: the awkwardness, the silences, the letters.

'Get out!'

I had pitied Walter - pitied him! When all the time it had He flinched. 'I shall go beyond the door-no further.' Then been I who was the fool; when all the time they had been he looked at Kitty, and when she nodded he left, closing the meeting, whispering together, caressing . . .

door behind him very gently.

193

194

The thought was a torment to me. Walter was our friend 'We should never be careful enough! You are too much mine, as well as hers. I knew he loved her, but — he Nan, you are too much like a boy ..."

seemed so old, so uncle-ish, still. Could she ever, really, Too much - like a boy? You've never said it before! Too have brought herself to want to lie with him? It was as if I much like a boy - yet, you'd rather go with Walter! Do you had caught her in bed with my own father!

-love him?’

I began, once more, to weep. 'How could you?' I said She looked away. 'He's very - kind,' she said. through my tears: I sounded like a stage husband in some

'Very kind.' I heard my voice grow hard and bitter at last. I penny gaff. 'How could you?" Beneath the blankets I felt sat up, and leaned away from her. 'And so you had him her squirm.

come, while I was gone; and he was kind to you, in our bed

'I didn't like to do it!' she said miserably. 'At times I could

..." I got to my feet, suddenly conscious of the soiled sheets hardly bear it -'

and mattress; of her bare flesh, that he had put his hands

'I thought you loved me! You said that you loved me!'

upon, his mouth . . . 'Oh, God! How long would you have

'I do love you! I do, I do!'

carried on? Would you let me kiss you, after him?’

'You said there was nothing you wanted, but me! You said She reached for me, to seize my hand. 'We planned, I we would be together, for ever!'

swear, to tell you tonight. Tonight was when you were to

'I never said -'

know it all. . .'

'You let me think it! You made me think it! You said, so There was something queer about the way she said it. I had many times, how glad you were. Why couldn't we have been pacing at her side; now I grew still. 'What do you gone on, as we were . . . ?'

mean?' I said. 'What do you mean, by all?’

'You know why! It is all right, that sort of thing, when you She took her hand away. 'We are - oh, Nan, don't hate me are girls. But as we got older . .. We're not a couple of for it! We are to be - married.'

scullery-maids, to do as we please and have no one notice

'Married?' If I had had time to think about it I might have it. We are known; we are looked at -'

expected it; but I had had no time at all, and the word made

'I don't want to be known, then, if it means losing you! I me giddier and sicker than ever. 'Married? But what - but don't want to be looked at, if not by you, Kitty ..." what about me? Where shall I live? What shall I do? What She pressed my hand. 'But I do,' she said. 'I do. And so long about, what about -' I had thought of something new. 'What as I am looked at, I cannot bear also to be - laughed at; or about the act? How shall we work . . . ?'

hated; or scorned, as a -'

She looked away. 'Walter has a plan. For a new act. He

'As a tom!'

wants to return to the halls ..."

'Yes!'

To the halls? After this? With you and me -?'

'But, we could be careful -'

'No. With me. Just me.'

195

196

Just her. I felt myself begin to shake. I said, 'You have dangling below the hem of his jacket, his collarless shirt killed me, Kitty.' My voice sounded strange even to my still flapping at his throat. He ran to the other side of the own ears; I believe it frightened her, for she glanced a little bed, and took Kitty in his arms.

wildly to the door, and began to speak, very fast, but in a

'If you have hurt her -' he said. I laughed outright at that. kind of shrill whisper.

'Hurt her? Hurt her? I should like to kill her! Had I only a

'You mustn't say such things,' she said. 'It has been a shock pistol on me now I would shoot her through the heart - and for you. But you will see, in time - we shall be friends myself as well! And leave you to marry a corpse!'

again, the three of us!' She reached for me; her voice grew

'You have gone mad,' he said. This has driven you quite shriller yet quieter still. 'Can you not see, how this is for the crazed.'

best? With Walter as my husband, who would think, who

'And do you wonder at it? Do you know - has she told you - would say -' I pulled away; she gripped me tighter - then what we are - what we were - to one another?'

cried at last, in a kind of panic: 'Oh, you don't think, do you,

'Nan!' said Kitty quickly. I kept my eyes fixed upon Walter. that I'll let him take me from you?'

'I know,' he said slowly, 'that you were - sweethearts, of a At that I pushed her, and she fell back against her pillow. kind.'

The counterpane was still before her, but it had slipped a

'Of a kind. The kind that - what? Hold hands? Did you little. I caught sight of the swell of her breast, the pink of think, then, that you were the first to have her, in this bed? her nipple. An inch below the downy hollow of her throat - Didn't she tell you that I fuck her?'

jerking with each breath and pounding heart-beat - hung the He flinched - and so did I, for the word sounded terrible: I pearl that I had bought her, on its silver chain. I had never said it before, and had not known I was about to remembered kissing it, three days before; perhaps, last use it now. His gaze, however, remained steady: I saw, with night or this morning, Walter had felt it chill and hard increasing misery, that he knew it all, and did not care; that against his own tongue.

perhaps - who knows? - he even liked it. He was too much I stepped towards her, seized the necklace, and - again, just the gentleman to make me a foul-mouthed reply, but his as if I were a character in a novel or a play - I tugged at it. expression - a curious mixture of contempt, complacency, At once the chain gave a satisfying snap! and dangled and pity -was a speaking one. It said, That was not fucking, broken from my hand. I gazed at it for a second, then as the world knows it! It said, You fucked her so well, that dashed it from me and heard it scutter across the she has left you! It said, You may have fucked her first, but floorboards.

I shall fuck her now and ever after!

Kitty shouted -I believe she shouted Walter's name. At any He was my rival; and had defeated me, at last. rate, the door now opened and he appeared, white-faced I took a step away from the bed, and then another. Kitty above his ginger whiskers, and with his braces still swallowed, her head still upon Walter's great breast. Her

197

198

eyes were large and lustrous with unshed tears, her lip red I had reached a little bridge over a canal. There were barges where she had bitten it; her cheeks were pale, and the on the water, but they were some way off yet, and the water freckles very dark upon them - there were freckles, too, below me was perfectly smooth and thick. I thought of that upon the flesh of her shoulder and chest, where it showed night, when Kitty and I had stood above the Thames, and above the blankets. She was about as beautiful as I had ever she had let me kiss her ... I almost cried out at the memory. seen her.

I placed my hands upon the iron rail: I believe that, for a Good-bye, I thought - then I turned and fled.

second, I really considered heaving myself over it, and I ran down the stairs; my skirts snagged about my feet and I making my escape that way.

almost stumbled. I ran past the open parlour-door; past the But I was as cowardly, in my own fashion, as Kitty herself. hat-stand, where my coat hung next to Walter's; past the I could not bear the thought of that brown water sucking at suitcase I had brought from Whitstable. I didn't pause to my skirts, washing over my head, filling up my mouth. I pick anything up, not even so much as a glove or a bonnet. I turned away and put my hands before my eyes, and forced could touch nothing in that place now - it had become like a my brain to stop its dreadful whirling. I could not, I knew, plague-house to me. I ran to the door and pulled it open, keep running all day. I should have to find a place to hide then left it wide behind me as I hurried down the steps and myself. I had nothing on me but my dress. I groaned aloud, into the street. It was very cold, but the air was still and dry. and gazed about me again - but this time rather desperately. I didn't look behind me.

Then I held my breath. I recognised this bridge: we had I continued running until my side began to ache; then I half driven over it every night since Christmas, on our way to walked, half trotted, until the pain subsided; then I ran Cinderella. The Britannia Theatre was nearby; and there again. I had reached Stoke Newington and was headed was money, I knew, in our dressing-room.

south on the long straight road that led to Dalston, I set off, wiping my face with my sleeve, smoothing my Shoreditch, and the City. Beyond that, I could not think: I dress and my hair. The door-man at the theatre eyed me had wit enough only to keep Stamford Hill - and her, and rather curiously when he let me in, but was pleasant him - continually behind me; and to run. I was half-blind enough. I knew him well, and had often stopped to chat with weeping; my eyeballs felt swollen and hot in their with him; today, however, I only nodded to him as I took sockets, my face was soaked with slobber, and growing icy. my key, and hurried by without a smile. I didn't care what People must have stared as I passed by them; I believe one he thought; I knew I should not be seeing him again. or two fellows reached out to pluck me by the arm; but I The theatre, of course, was still shut up: there were sounds saw and heard them not, simply hurried, stumbling over my of hammering from the hall as the carpenters finished their skirts, until sheer exhaustion made me slow my pace and work, but apart from that the corridors, the green-room - all look about me.

were quiet. I was glad: I didn't want to be seen by anyone. I

199

200

walked very fast but very quietly to the dressing-rooms, I held the card between my fingers for a moment; then I until I reached the door that said Miss Butler and Miss returned it to its box and placed the paper sheet above it, as King. Then very stealthily - for I half-feared, in my fevered before. Then I laid my head upon the table, and wept, again, state, that Kitty might be on the other side, awaiting me - I until I could weep no more.

unlocked the door and pushed it open.

I opened the tin box at last, and took, without counting it, The room beyond it was dark: I stepped across it in the light all the money that lay inside - about twenty pounds, as it from the corridor, struck a match and lit a gas-jet, then would turn out, and only a fraction, of course, of my total closed the door as softly as I could. I knew just what I earnings of the past twelve months; but I felt so dazed and wanted. In a cupboard beneath Kitty's table there was a ill at that moment I could hardly imagine what I would ever little tin box with a pile of coins and notes in it - a portion need money for, again. I put the cash into an envelope, of our wages went there every week, for us to draw on as tucked the envelope into my belt, and turned to go. we chose. The key to it lay mixed up with her sticks of I hadn't glanced about me, yet, at all; now, however, I took grease-paint, in the old cigar-box in which she kept her a last look round. One thing only caught my eye, and made make-up. I took this box, and tipped it up; the sticks fell me hesitate: our rail of costumes. They were all here, the out, and so did the key - and so, I saw, did something else. suits that I had worn upon the stage at Kitty's side - the There had always been a sheet of coloured paper at the velvet breeches, the shirts, the serge jackets, the fancy bottom of the box, and I had never thought to lift it. Now it waistcoats. I took a step towards them, and ran my hand had come loose and behind it was a card. I picked it up with along the line of sleeves. I would never take them up again . trembling fingers, and studied it. It was creased, and stained

. .

with make-up, but I knew it at once. On the front was a The thought was too much; I couldn't leave them. There picture of an oyster-smack; two girls smiled from its deck were a couple of old sailors' bags nearby - giant great things through a patina of powder and grease, and on the sail that we had used once or twice to rehearse with, in the someone had inked, 'To London'. There was more writing afternoons, when the Britannia stage was quiet and clear. on the back - Kitty's address at the Canterbury Palace, and a They were filled with rags: very quickly I took one of them message: 'I can come!!! You must do without your dresser and loosened the cord at its neck, and pulled all its stuffing for a few nights, though, while I make all ready ..." It was out upon the floor until it was quite empty. Then I stepped signed: 'Fondly, Your Nan'.

to the rail, and began to tear my costumes from it - not all It was the card that I had sent her, so long ago, before we of them, but the ones I could not bear to part with, the blue had even moved to Brixton; and she had kept it, secretly, as serge suit, the Oxford bags, the scarlet guardsman's uniform if she treasured it.

- and stuffed them into the bag. I took shoes, too, and shirts, and neck-ties — even a couple of hats. I didn't stop to think

201

202

about it, only worked, sweating, until the bag was full and than to hide from her, to lose myself in the grey anonymous almost as tall as myself. It was heavy, and I staggered when spaces of the city. I wanted a room - a small room, a mean I lifted it; but it was strangely satisfying to have a real room, a room that would prove invisible to any pursuing burden upon my shoulders - a kind of counterweight to my eye. I saw myself entering it and covering my head, like terrible heaviness of heart.

some burrowing or hibernating creature, a wood-louse or a Thus laden, I made my way through the corridors of the rat. So I kept to the streets where I thought I should find it, Britannia. I passed no one; I looked for no one. Only when the grim and uninviting streets where there were lodgingI reached the stage door did I see a face that I was rather houses, doss-houses, houses with cards in the window glad to see: Billy-Boy sat in the doorman's office, quite saying Beds-to-Rent. Any one of them, I suppose, might alone, with a cigarette between his fingers. He looked up have suited me; but I was looking for a sign to welcome when I approached, and gazed in wonder at my bag, my me.

swollen eyes, my mottled cheeks.

And at last it seemed to me I found it. I had strayed through

'Lord, Nan,' he said, getting to his feet. 'Whatever is up with Moorgate, wandered towards St Paul's, then turned and you? Are you sick?'

finished up almost at Clerkenwell. Still I had given no I shook my head. 'Give me your fag, Bill, will you?' He did thought to the people about me - to the men and the so, and I pulled on it and coughed. He watched me warily. children who stared, or sometimes laughed, to see me

'You don't look right, at all,' he said. 'Where's Kitty?'

trudging, blank-faced, with my sailor's load. My head was I drew on the fag again, and handed it hack to him. bowed, my eyes half-closed; but I became aware now that I

'Gone,' I said. Then I pulled at the door and stepped into the had entered some kind of square -grew conscious of a street beyond. I heard Billy-Boy's voice, lifted in anxiety bustle, a hum of business close at hand; grew conscious, and alarm, but the closing door shut off his words. I raised too, of a smell: some rank, sweet, sickening odour I vaguely my bag a little higher on my shoulder, and began to walk. I recognised but could not name. I walked more slowly, and took one turning, and then another. I passed a squalid felt the road begin to pull, a little stickily, at the soles of my tenement, entered a busy street, and joined a throng of shoes. I opened my eyes: the stones I stood upon were red pedestrians. London absorbed me; and for a little while I and running with water and blood. I looked up, and saw a ceased, entirely, to think.

graceful iron building filled with vans and barrows and

porters, all bearing carcases.

Chapter 8

I was at Smithfield, at the Dead Meat Market.

I walked for something like an hour before I rested again; I gave a kind of sigh to know it. Close at hand there was a but the course I took was a random one that sometimes tobacconist's booth: I went to it and bought a tin of doubled back upon itself: my aim was less to run from Kitty cigarettes and some matches; and when the boy handed me

203

204

my change I asked him if there were any lodging-houses The room to which she led me was cramped and mean and nearby, that might have rooms to spare. He gave me the perfectly colourless; everything in it - the wallpaper, the names of two or three -adding, in a warning sort of way: carpets, even the tiles beside the hearth - having been

'They ain't werry smart, miss, the lodgings round these rubbed or bleached or grimed to some variety of grey. parts.' I only nodded, and turned away; then walked on, to There was no gas, only two oil-lamps with cracked and the first address that he had mentioned.

sooty chimneys. Above the mantel there was one small It turned out to be a tall, crumbling house in an unswept looking-glass, as cloudy and as speckled as the back of an row, very close to the Farringdon Street railway. The front old man's hand. The window faced the Market. It was all yard had a bedstead in it, and a dozen rusty cans and about as different from our house at Stamford Hill as it was broken-down crates; in the yard next door there was a possible for any room to be: that, at least, gave me a dreary group of barefoot children, stirring water into pails of earth. kind of satisfaction and relief. All I really saw, however, But I hardly raised my eyes to any of it. I only stepped to was the bed - a horrible old down mattress, yellow at the the door, laid my bag upon the step, and knocked. Behind edges and blackened in the middle with an ancient me, in the cut of the railway, a train rumbled and hissed. As bloodstain the size of a saucer - and the door. The bed, for it passed, the step on which I rested gave a shake. all its rankness, seemed at that moment wonderfully My knock was answered by a pale little girl who stared inviting. The door was solid, and had a key in it. hard at me while I enquired after the vacant rooms, then I told Mrs Best therefore that I should like to take the room turned and called into the darkness behind her. After a at once, and drew out the envelope that held my money. second, a lady came; and she, too, looked me over. I When she saw that, she sniffed -I think she took me for a thought then of how I must appear, in my expensive dress gay girl. 'It is only fair to tell you now,' she said, 'that the but hatless and gloveless, and with red eyes and a running house I keep here is a tidy one; and I like my lodgers ditto. I nose. But I considered this image of myself rather listlessly, have had trouble with single ladies in the past. I don't care as if it did not much concern me; and the lady at last must what you do or who you see outside my house; but one have thought me harmless enough. She said her name was thing I won't have, that's men-friends in a single lady's Mrs Best, that she had one room left for rent; that the room . . .'

charge was five shillings a week - or seven, with I said that I would give her no trouble on that score. attendance; and that she liked her rent in advance. I must have been a queer sort of tenant for Mrs Best, in Would the terms suit me? I gave a quick, half-hearted show those first weeks after my flight from Stamford Hill. I paid of calculation - I felt quite incapable of serious thought - my rent very promptly, but never went out. I received no then said that they would.

visits, no letters or cards; kept stubbornly to my room, with

205

206

the shutters closed fast — there to pace the creaking floor, unable, after all, to gaze upon. I placed them beneath my or to mumble or to weep .. .

bed, still in their bag, and left them there to moulder. I think my fellow tenants thought me mad; perhaps I was No one came after me, for no one knew where I was. I was mad. My life, however, seemed sensible enough to me then. hidden, lost. I had cast off all my friends and joys, and For where else, in my misery, could I have run to? All my embraced misery as my career. For a week — and then London friends - Mrs Dendy, Sims and Percy, Billy-Boy another - and another, and another - I did nothing but and Flora - were also Kitty's friends. If I went to them, what slumber, and weep, and pace my chamber; or else I would would they say? They would only be glad, to know that stand with my brow pressed to the dirty window, gazing at Kitty and Walter were lovers at last! And if I went home, to the Market, watching as the carcases were brought and Whitstable, what would they say? I had come away from piled, and heaved about, and sold, and taken away. The there so recently, and been so proud; and it seemed as if only faces I saw were those of Mrs Best, and Mary - the they had all been promising I would be humbled from the little skivvy who had opened the door to me, who changed very day I left them. It had been hard to live among them, my pot and brought me coal and water, and who I wanting Kitty. How could I return to them, and take up my sometimes sent on errands to buy me cigarettes and food. old habits, having lost her?

Her expression as she handed me my packages showed me So, though I imagined their letters arriving at Stamford Hill, how strange I had become; but to her fear and her wonder and lying there unopened and unanswered; though I alike, I was indifferent. I was indifferent to everything guessed that, recalling my archness, they would think that I except my own grief - and this I indulged with a strange had turned my back on them, and soon stop writing at all, I and horrible passion.

could not help it. If I remembered the things I had left I believe I barely washed in all those weeks - and certainly I behind me - my women's clothes, and my wages; my letters did not change my dress, for I had no other. Very early on I and cards from fans and admirers; my old tin trunk with my gave off wearing my false chignon, too, and let my hair initials on it - I remembered them dully, as if they were the straggle greasily about my ears. I smoked, endlessly - my pieces of some other person's history. When I thought of fingers grew brown, from the nail to the knuckle; but I ate Cinderella, and how I had broken my contract and let them hardly at all. For all that I liked to watch the carcases being down at the Britannia, I didn't much care. I was known in towed about at Smithfield, the thought of meat upon my my new home as 'Miss Astley'. If my neighbours had ever tongue made me nauseous, and I had stomach for none but seen Nan King upon the stage, they did not see her now, in the blandest of foods. Like a woman quickening with child me - indeed, I barely recognised her there myself. The I developed a curious appetite: I longed only for sweet, costumes I had brought with me I found myself quite white bread. I gave Mary shilling after shilling, and sent her to Camden Town and Whitechapel, Limehouse and Soho,

207

208

for bagels, brioches and flat Greek loaves, and buns from gone unvisited and unmarked. I might have remained in my the Chinese bakeries. These I would eat dipped in mugs of stupor till doomsday - I think I would have - if something tea, which I brewed, ferociously strong, in a pot on the hadn't happened, at last, to rouse me from it. hearth, and sweetened with condensed milk. It was the I had been at Mrs Best's for about seven or eight weeks, and drink I had used to make for Kitty, in our first days together had not once stepped beyond her door. I still ate only what at the Canterbury Palace. The taste of it was like the taste of Mary brought me; and though I only ever sent her off, as I her; and a comfort, and a frightful torment, all at once. 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 neckPiccadilly - 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 - than before. All that spoilt the illusion of my being a boy but hardly one that I could copy, since it would blue my was the foolish, tapered jacket - but its seams had not been project, rather, to be seen emerging from a ladies' lavatory cut, I saw, only tucked and sewn. There was a knife on the in a suit of serge and velvet and a boater.

mantel that I used to slice my bread; I seized it, and applied It was indeed amidst the gay life of the West End, however, it to the stitches. Soon the jacket was its old, masculine self that I at last found the answer to the problem. I had begun again. With my hair trimmed, I thought, and a pair of to walk, each day, as far as Soho; and I had noticed there proper boy's shoes upon my feet, anyone - even Kitty the tremendous number of houses bearing signs that herself! - might meet me on the streets of London, and advertised Beds Let By The Hour. In my naivety I never know me for a girl, at all.

wondered at first, who would want to sleep there, for an There were one or two obstacles to be overcome, of course, hour? Then, of course, I realised that no one would: the before I could begin to put my daring plan into practice. rooms were for the girls to bring their customers to; to lie Firstly, I must properly reacquaint myself with the city: it abed in, certainly — but not to sleep. I stood one day at a took another week of wandering every day about the streets coffee-stall in the mouth of an alley off Berwick Street, and

217

218

watched the entrance to one of these houses. There was, I dark heart, all the time, beating fast as a clock. As I had saw, a constant flow of men and women over its threshold, expected, the old bawd on the step barely raised her eyes as and no one paid the slightest heed to any of them save the I went past her; and so, a little hesitantly, I began the walk leering old woman who sat in a chair at the door, taking down Berwick Street. With every glance that came my way, their coins — and her alertness lasted only until she had I flinched; at any moment I expected the cry to be let up: 'A palmed her pennies and handed her customers their key. I girl! There is a girl, here, in boy's clothing!' But the glances believe a pantomime horse could have sashayed over that did not settle on me: they only slithered past me, to the girls step with a harlot's hand upon its bridle and — so long as behind. There was no cry; and I began to walk a little the horse had its coin at the ready - no one would have straighter. At St Luke's Church, on the corner, a man stopped their business to turn and look . . .

brushed by me with a barrow, calling, 'All right, squire!" A few days later, therefore, I put my costume in a bag, Then a woman with a frizzed fringe put her hand upon my presented myself at the house, and asked for a room. The arm, and tilted her head and said: 'Well now, pretty boy, old woman looked me over and grinned, quite mirthlessly; you look like a lively one. Fancy payin' a visit, to a nice then, when I gave her my shilling, she thrust a key at me, little place I know . . . ?'

and nodded me into the darkened passageway behind her. The success of that first performance made me bold. I The key was sticky; the handle of my chamber was sticky; returned to Soho for another turn, and walked further; and indeed, the house was entirely horrible - damp and stinking, then I went again, and then again ... I became quite a and with walls as thin as paper, so that, unpacking my bag regular at the Berwick Street knocking-shop - the madam and straightening my costume, I heard all the business from kept a room there for me, three days a week. She early on the rooms above, below, and on either side of it - all the found out the purpose of my visits, of course - though, from grunts and slaps and giggles, and pounding mattresses. a certain narrowing of her gaze when she dealt with me, I I changed very quickly, growing all the time, with every think she was never quite sure if I were a girl come to her grunt and titter, less certain and less brave. But when I house to pull on a pair of trousers, or a boy arrived to gazed at myself - there was'a looking-glass, with a crack change out of his frock. Sometimes, I was not sure myself. across it, and blood in the crack - when I gazed at myself at For on every visit I found some new trick to better my last, I smiled, and knew my plan was a good one. I had impersonation. I called at a barber's shop, and had my old borrowed a flat-iron from my landlady's kitchen, and effeminate locks quite clipped away. I bought shoes and pressed the suit free of all its creases; I had given my hair a socks, singlets and drawers and combinations. I trim with a pair of sewing-shears - now I smoothed it flat experimented with bandages in an effort to get the subtle with spittle. I left my dress and purse upon a chair, went out curves of my bosom more subtle still; and at my groin I upon the landing, and locked the door behind me - my new

219

220

wore a handkerchief or a glove, neatly folded, to simulate about her freckled shoulders, and she would turn her guilty the bulges of a modest little cock.

eyes from me, to him.

I could not say that I was happy - you must not think that I I did not wake weeping from such dreams now, however; I was ever happy, now. I had spent too many miserable would only let them prick me back to Berwick Street. They weeks at Mrs Best's to be anything other than wretched in seemed, I thought, to lend a brilliance to my disguise. my room there: I was bleached of hope and colour, like the How very fine it was, however, I did not realise until one wallpaper. But London, for all my weeping, could never night, in August, at the hot end of the summer, as I idled in wash dim; and to walk freely about it at last - to walk as a the Burlington Arcade.

boy, as a handsome boy in a well-sewn suit, whom the It was about nine o'clock. I had been walking, but now people stared after only to envy, never to mock - well, it stood before the window of a tobacconist's shop, and was had a brittle kind of glamour to it, that was all I knew, just gazing at the goods on show - at the cases and cigarthen, of satisfaction. trimmers, the silver toothpicks and the tortoiseshell combs.

'Let Kitty see me now,' I would think. 'She would not have The month had been a warm one. I was wearing not the me when I was a girl - so let her only see me now!' And I blue serge suit, but the costume I had worn to sing the song remembered a book that Mother had had once from the called 'Scarlet Fever' - a guardsman's uniform, with a neat library, in which a woman, cast out, returned to her home to little cap. I had unfastened the button at my throat, to let the care for her children in the guise of a nurse. If only I could air in.

meet Kitty once again, I thought, and woo her as a man - As I stood there I became aware at last of the presence of a and then reveal myself, to break her heart, as she had fellow at my side. He had joined me at the window, and broken mine!

seemed slowly to have inched his way towards me; now he But though I thought it, I made no attempt to contact her; was really very close indeed — so close that I could feel the and the possibility of accidentally meeting her - of seeing warmth of his arm against my own, and smell the soap on her with Walter - still made me shake. Even when June him. I didn't turn to examine his face; I could see that his came, and then July, and she must surely have returned shoes, however, were highly polished and rather fine. from her gay honeymoon, I never saw her name on any After a minute or two of silence, he spoke: 'A pleasant poster outside any hall or theatre; and I never bought a evening.'

theatrical paper, to look for it there - so never learned how Still I didn't look round, only agreed - all guilelessly - that it she fared, as Walter's wife. The only glimpses I ever had of was. There was another silence.

her were in my dreams. In those she was still sweet and

'You are admiring the display, perhaps?' he went on then. I lovely, still calling my name and offering me her mouth to nodded - now I did turn to glance at him - and he looked kiss; but still, at the last, there would come Walter's arm pleased. Then we are kindred spirits, I can tell!' He had the

221

222

voice of a gentleman, but kept his tone rather low. 'Now, disturbed. He had continued to murmur, and made all his I'm not a smoker; and yet I find myself quite unable to lewd proposals in the same swift undertone, his moustaches resist the lure of a really good tobacconist's. The cigars, the hardly lifting to let the words out. Any stranger looking on, brushes, the nail-clippers . . .' He gestured with his hand. I thought, would think us two quite unconnected fellows,

'There is something so very masculine about a tobacconist's lost in our own worlds.

shop - don't you think?' His voice, at the last, had dipped to The thought made me smile. In the same humouring tone as little more than a murmur. Now he said in the same tone but before, I said: 'How much, then, will you give me for it?'

very fast: 'Are you up for it, Private?'

At that, his face took on a cynical expression, as if he had His words made me blink. 'Pardon?'

expected no better of me; but behind the hardness, too, I He looked about him with an eye that was quick, practised, caught a flash of heat - as if he wouldn't really have wanted smooth as a well-oiled castor; then he glanced back to me. me any other way. He said, 'A sovereign, for a suck or for a

'Are you up for a lark? Have you a room we might go to?'

Robert' - he meant, of course, a Robert Browning. 'Half a

'I don't know what you mean,' I said - although, to be frank, guinea for a dubbing.'

I felt the stirrings of an idea.

I made to shake my head - to tilt my cap to him and move He, at least, must have thought that I was teasing. He away, with the joke quite finished. But in his impatience he smiled, and licked at his moustaches. 'Don't you, now. And half-turned, and I caught a gleam of something at his I thought all you guardsmen fellows knew the game all middle. It was a fat, gold watch-chain. The waistcoat it right 'Not me,' I said primly. 'I only joined up last week.' He swung from was striped and rather flash. And when I smiled again. 'A raw recruit! And you've never done it with looked again at the man's face - there was light upon it, another lad, I suppose? A handsome fellow like you?' I now, from the lamp at the window - I saw that his whiskers shook my head. 'Well' - he swallowed - 'won't you do it and his hair were gingerish and thick. His eyes were brown, now, with me?'

his cheeks rather hollow; but for all that, he looked quite

'Do what?' I said. Again there was that swift, wellunmistakably like Walter. Like Walter, whom Kitty lay lubricated glance.

with and kissed.

'Put your pretty arse-hole at my service - or your pretty lips, The idea had a peculiar effect on me. I spoke - but it was as perhaps. Or simply your pretty white hand, through the slit if someone else were doing the speaking, not me. I said: in my breeches. Whatever, soldier, you prefer; only cease

'All right. I'll do it. I'll - touch you; for a sov.'

your teasing, I beg you. I'm as hard as a broom-handle, and He grew business-like. When I stepped away I felt him aching for a spend.'

linger a moment at the window, then follow. I went not to Through all this astonishing exchange our outward show of my old knocking-shop - I had only the most confused sense gazing into the tobacconist's window had barely been of what I was about, but knew I oughtn't to get stuck in a

223

224

room with him, and risk having him opt for the Robert after I could not answer him - the fact was, I felt almost ready to all - but to a little court nearby, where there was a nook, weep. He handed me my sovereign; then, after a moment's above a grating, which the gay girls used as a lavatory. As I hesitation, he stepped to me and kissed my cheek. The approached it, indeed, a woman emerged, pressing her gesture made me flinch; and when he felt the shudder, he skirts between her legs to dry herself: she gave me a wink. misunderstood, and looked wistful.

When she had gone, I stood waiting; and a moment later the

'No,' he said, 'you don't like that, you soldier-boys, do you?'

man appeared. He had a newspaper shielding the fork of his His tone was strange; when I studied him, I saw that his trousers, and when he took the paper away I saw a bulge eyes were gleaming.

there the size of a bottle. I had a moment of panic; but then His excitement had stirred me to strangeness, before; his he came and stood before me, and looked expectant. When emotion, now, made me terribly thoughtful. When he I began to pull at his buttons, he closed his eyes. turned and left the court, I remained there, trembling - not I got his cock out, and studied it: I had never seen one with sadness, but with a creeping kind of relish. The man before, so close, and - no disrespect to the gent concerned - had looked like Walter; I had pleasured him, in some queer it seemed quite monstrous. But there are always jokes about way, for Kitty's sake; and the act had made me sicken. But such things in the music hall: I had a pretty good idea of he was not like Walter, who might take his pleasure where how they worked. Seizing hold of it, I began - very he chose it. His pleasure had turned, at the last, to a kind of inexpertly, I am sure, though he didn't seem to mind - to grief; and his love was a love so fierce and so secret it must pump it.

be satisfied, with a stranger, in a reeking court like this. I

'How thick and long it is,' I said then -I had heard that it knew about that kind of love. I knew how it was to bare was every man's ambition to be spoken to thus, at such your palpitating heart, and be fearful as you did so that the moments. The fellow gave a sigh, and opened his eyes. beats should come too loudly, and betray you.

'Oh, I do wish you would kiss me there,' he whispered. I had kept my heart-beats smothered; and had been

'Your mouth is such a perfect one - quite like a girl's.'

betrayed, anyway.

I slowed my rhythm, and took another look at his straining And now I had betrayed another, like myself.

cock; and again, when I knelt, it was as if it were someone I put away the gentleman's sovereign, and walked to else who was kneeling, not myself. I thought, This is how Leicester Square.

Walter tastes!

This was one place which, in all my careless West End Afterwards I spat his spendings out upon the cobbles, and wanderings, I had tended to avoid or pass through swiftly: I he thanked me very graciously.

was always mindful of the first trip I had made there, with

'Perhaps,' he said, buttoning himself up, 'perhaps I shall see Kitty and Walter, and it was not a memory I cared, very you again, in the same spot?'

often, to revisit. Tonight, however, I walked there rather

225

226

purposefully. I went to the statute of Shakespeare, where or grasped their import. Now, however, I grasped it very we had stood that time, and I leaned before it, gazing at the well — and I trembled again, as I did so, with satisfaction view that we had looked on then. I remembered Walter and spite. I had first donned trousers to avoid men's eyes; to saying that we were at the very heart of London, and did I feel myself the object of these men's gazes, however, these know what it was that made that great heart beat? Variety! I men who thought I was like them, like that — well, that had looked around me that afternoon and seen, astonished, was not to be pestered; it was to be, in some queer way, what I thought was all the world's variety, brought together revenged.

in one extraordinary place. I had seen rich and poor, For a week or two I continued to wander, and to watch, and splendid and squalid, white man and black man, all bustling to learn the ways and gestures of the world into which I had side by side. I had seen them make a vast harmonious stumbled. Walking and watching, indeed, are that world's whole, and been thrilled to think that I was about to find my keynotes: you walk, and let yourself be looked at; you own particular place in it, as Kitty's friend. watch, until you find a face or a figure that you fancy; there How had my sense of the world been changed, since then! I is a nod, a wink, a shake of the head, a purposeful stepping had learned that London life was even stranger and more to an alley or a rooming-house ... At first, as I have said, I various than I had ever thought it; but I had learned too that took no part in these exchanges, but only studied others at not all its great variety was visible to the casual eye; that them, and received a thousand questing glances on my own not all the pieces of the city sat together smoothly, or account — some of which I held, rather teasingly, but most graciously, but rather rubbed and chafed and jostled one of which I turned aside, after a second, with a show of another, and overlapped; that some, out of fear, kept carelessness. But then, one afternoon, I was approached themselves hidden, and only exposed themselves to those once again by a gentleman who, it seemed to me, bore some upon whose sympathies they could be sure. Now, all slight resemblance to Walter. He wanted my hand upon unwittingly, I had been marked out by one such secret him, merely, and to have a string of lewd endearments element, and claimed by it as a member.

whispered in his ears as I dubbed him off — it didn't seem I looked into the crowds that passed me by on every side. like much. If I hesitated, I don't believe he saw. I named my There were three hundred, four hundred, perhaps five terms - a sovereign, again - and led him to the nook where I hundred men there. How many of them were like the had served his predecessor. His cock seemed rather small; gentleman whose parts I had just fingered? Even as I again, however, I said how thick and fine it was. wondered it I saw one fellow gaze my way, deliberately -

'You're a beautiful boy,' he whispered to me afterwards. and then another.

There was no trouble over the coin.

Perhaps there had been many such looks since I had returned to the world as a boy; but I had never noticed them

227

228

Thus easily - as easily, and fatefully, as I had first begun only life he knew, but he liked it well enough. 'It's better, my music-hall career - thus easily did I refine my new anyway,' he said, 'than working in an office or a shop. I impersonations, and become a renter.

believe that, if I had to work in the same little room all day,

perched on the same little stool and staring at the same dull Chapter 9

faces, I would go mad, just mad!'

It might seem a curious kind of leap to make, from musicWhen he asked for my history, I told him that I had come hall masher to renter. In fact, the world of actors and up to London from Kent, that I had been treated rather artistes, and the gay world in which I now found myself badly by someone, and was now forced to find my living on working, are not so very different. Both have London as the streets; all of which was true enough, in its way. I their proper country, the West End as their capital. Both are believe he felt sorry for me - or maybe it was just the a curious mix pf magic and necessity, glamour and sweat. coincidence of our sisters' names that warmed him to me - Both have their types - their ingenues and grandes dames, anyway, he began to look out a little for me, and to give me their rising stars, their falling stars, their bill-toppers, their tips and cautions. We would sometimes meet up at the hacks . . .

coffee-stalls of Leicester Square, and have a little boast, or All this I learned, slowly but steadily, in the first few weeks grumble, about our fortunes. And while we talked his eyes of my apprenticeship, just as I had learned my music-hall would be darting, darting, darting all about, looking for new trade at Kitty's side. Luckily for me, I found a friend and customers, or old ones, or for sweethearts and friends. adviser - a boy with whom I fell into conversation late one

'Polly Shaw,' he would say, inclining his head as some night, as we sheltered together from a sudden shower in the slight young man tripped by us, smiling. 'A daisy, an doorway of a building on the edge of Soho Square. He was absolute daisy, but never let her talk you into lending her a a very girlish type - what they call a true mary-anne - and, quid.' Or, less kindly: 'My eyes! but doesn't that puss like many of them, he gave himself a girl's name: Alice. always land with her nose in the cream!' as another boy

'That's my sister's name!' I said, when he told me, and he drew up in a hansom, and disappeared into the Alhambra on smiled: it was his sister's name, too - only his sister, he said, the arm of a gentleman with a red silk lining to his cape. was dead. I said I didn't know if mine was dead or not, and Finally, of course, his drifting gaze would settle and harden, didn't care; and this did not surprise him.

and he would give a little nod, or wink, and hastily put This Alice was, I guessed, about my age. He was as pretty down his cup. 'Whoops!' he would say, 'I see a porter who as a girl - prettier, indeed, than most girls (including me), wants to punch Sweet Alice's ticket. Adieu, cherie. A for he had glossy black hair and a heart-shaped face, and thousand kisses on your marvellous eyes!' He would touch eye-lashes impossibly long and dark and thick. He had his fingertip to his lips, then lightly press it to the sleeve of rented, he said, since he was twelve; renting, now, was the my jacket; then I would see him picking his careful way

229

230

across the crowded square to the fellow who had gestured My own renter persona was, of necessity, a rather curious to him.

mixture of types. Never a very virile boy, I held no appeal When he asked me, early on, what my name was, I for the kind of gentleman who liked a rough hand through answered: Kitty.

the slit of his drawers, or a bit of a slap in the shadows; It was Sweet Alice who introduced me to the various renter equally, however, I could never afford to let myself be seen types, and explained to me their costumes, and their habits, as one of those lily-white lads whom the working-men go and their skills. Foremost amongst them, of course, were for, and make rather free with. Then again, I was choosy. the mary-annes, the other boys like himself, who could be There were many fellows with curious appetites in the seen strolling up and down the Haymarket at any time of streets round Leicester Square; but not all of them were the the day or night, with their lips rouged and their throats sort I was after. Most men, to be frank, will step aside with powdered, and clad in trousers as tight and revealing, a renter as you or I might call into a public-house, on our almost, as a ballerina's fleshings. These boys took their way home from the market: they take their pleasure, give a customers to lodging-houses and hotels; their aim was to be belch, and think no more of it than that. But still there are spotted by some manly young gentleman or lord and set up always some - they are gentlemen, for the most part; I as his mistress in apartments of their own. More succeeded learned to spot them from afar - who are fretful, or wistful, in this ambition than you might think.

or romantic - who could, like the fellow from the Then again, there were the more ordinary-looking fellows, Burlington Arcade, be brought to kiss me, or thank me, or the clerks and shop-boys: they rather despised the maryeven weep over me, as I was handling them. annes, and went with gentlemen - or so they claimed - for And, as they did so - as they strained and gasped, and the money rather than for the thrill of it; some of them, I whispered their desires to me in some alley or court or believe, even kept wives and sweethearts. The aristocracy dripping lavatory stall — I would have to turn my face or leading men of this particular branch of the profession away to hide my smiles. If they favoured Walter, then so were the guardsmen: it had been as one of these that I had much the better. If they did not — well, they were all gents costumed myself, when I had donned that scarlet uniform - and (whatever their own opinion on the matter) with their all innocently, of course, for I had known nothing of their trousers unbuttoned they all looked the same.

reputation in this direction, then. These men, I was assured, I never felt my own lusts rise, raising theirs. I didn't even were cock-handlers and -suckers, almost exclusively. They need the coins they gave me. I was like a person who, occasionally obliged a gentleman with a poke or two, when having once been robbed of all he owns and loves, turns they were feeling friendly; but they never let their own thief himself-not to enjoy his neighbours' chattels, but to parts be fondled or kissed. They were proud to the point of spoil them. My one regret was that, though I was daily mania, Sweet Alice said, on that score.

giving such marvellous performances, they had no

231

232

audience. I would gaze about me at the dim and dreary not see Nan King in me, I know it; and if I had an urge to place in which my gentleman and I leaned panting, and cross to her and reveal myself and ask for news of Kitty, it wish the cobbles were a stage, the bricks a curtain, the lasted for only a moment; and in that moment the driver scuttling rats a set of blazing footlights. I would long for shook his horses into life, and the carriage rumbled off. just one eye - just one! - to be fixed upon our couplings: a No, my only contact with the theatre now was a renter. I bold and knowing eye that saw how well I played my part, discovered that the music halls of Leicester Square - the how gulled and humbled was my foolish, trustful partner. very same halls which Kitty and I had gazed at, all Bat that - considering the circumstances - seemed quite hopefully, two years before - were rather famous in the impossible.

renter world as posing-grounds and pick-up spots. The All continued smoothly for, perhaps, six months or so: my Empire, in particular, was always thick with sods: they colourless life at Mrs Best's went on, and so did my trips to strolled side-by-side with the gay girls of the promenade, or the West End, and my renting. My little stash of money stood, in little knots, exchanging gossip, comparing dwindled, and finally disappeared; and now, since renting fortunes, greeting one another with flapping hands and was all I knew and cared for, I began to live entirely from high, extravagant voices. They never looked at the stage, what I earned upon the streets. I still had had no word of never cheered or applauded, only gazed at themselves in the Kitty - not a word! I concluded at last that she must have mirror-glass or at each other's powdered faces, or - more gone abroad, to try her luck with Walter - to America, covertly - at the gentlemen who, rapidly or rather perhaps, where we had planned to go. My months upon the lingeringly, passed them by.

music-hall stage seemed very distant to me now, and quite I loved to walk with them, and watch them, and be watched unreal. Once or twice on my trips around the city I saw by them in turn. I loved to stroll about the Empire - the someone I knew, from the old days - a fellow with whom handsomest hall in England, as Walter had described it, the we'd shared a bill at the Paragon, a wardrobe-mistress from hall to which Kitty had longed so ardently so uselessly! for the Bedford, Camden Town. One night I leaned against a an invitation - I loved to stroll about it with my back to its pillar in Great Windmill Street and watched as Dolly glorious golden stage, my costume bright beneath the Arnold -who had played Cinderella to Kitty's Prince, at the ungentle glare of its electric chandeliers, my hair gleaming, Britannia -made her exit from the door of the Pavilion and my trousers bulging, my lips pink, my figure and pose was helped into a carriage. She looked at me, and blinked - reeking, as the gay boys say, of lavender, their import bold then looked away again. Perhaps she thought she knew my and unmistakable - but false. The singers and comedians I face; perhaps she thought I was a boy that she had worked never looked at once. I had finished with that world, with; perhaps she only thought I was a miserable ningle, entirely.

haunting the shadows in search of a gent. Anyway, she did

233

234

All, as I have said, went smoothly; then, in the first few just as I was about to turn and begin my descent, however, I warm weeks of 1891 - that is, a year and more after my heard the creaking of a door and saw the bobbing glow of a flight from Kitty - there came a bothersome interruption to candle.

my little routine.

'Miss Astley -' It was my landlady's voice, sounding thin I returned to the knocking-shop after an evening of rather and querulous in the darkness. 'Miss Astley, is that you?'

heavy renting to find the old proprietress missing, her chair I didn't stop to answer her, but hurled myself up the overturned, and the door to my chamber splintered and remaining stairs and ran into my room. With the door flung wide. What had happened I never found out for sure; closed behind me I tore the jacket from my shoulders and it seemed that the madam had been taken or chased away - the trousers from my legs, and stuffed them, with my shirt though whether by a policeman or a rival bawd, no one and drawers, into the little curtained alcove where I hung professed to know. Anyway, thieves had taken advantage of my clothes. I found myself a night-gown, and pulled it on; her absence to steal into the house, to frighten and threaten as I fastened the buttons at the throat, however, I heard the girls and their customers, and help themselves to what I had dreaded to hear: the sound of rapid, heavy anything that they could lift: the oozing mattresses and footsteps on the stairs, followed by a hammering at my door rugs, the broken looking-glasses, the few rickety bits of and Mrs Best's voice, loud and shrill.

furniture - also my frocks, shoes, bonnet and purse. The

'Miss Astley! Miss Astley! It would oblige me if you would loss was not a great one to me; but it meant that I must go open this door. I have found a peculiar item in the home in my masculine attire -I was wearing the old Oxford downstairs passage, and believe that you have someone in bags, and a boater - and attempt to reach my room at Mrs there as you should not!'

Best's without her catching me.

'Mrs Best,' I answered, 'what do you mean?'

It was quite late, and I walked very slowly to Smithfield, in

'You know what I mean, Miss Astley. I am warning you. I the hope that all the Bests might be abed and sleeping by have my son with me!' She caught hold of the door-knob, the time I got there - and, indeed, when I reached the house, and shook it. Above our heads there were more footsteps: the windows were dark and all seemed still. I let myself in the baby had been woken by the noise, and begun to cry. and stepped silently up the stairs - horribly mindful of the I turned the key, and opened the door. Mrs Best, clad in a last time I had crept, noiselessly, through a slumbering night-dress and a tartan wrap, pushed past me, into the house, and all that the creeping had led to. Perhaps it was room. Behind her, in a shirt and nightcap, stood her son. He the memory that made me blunder: for half-way up I put had a terrible complexion.

my hand to my head - and my hat went soaring over the I turned to the landlady. She was gazing about her in banister to land with a thud in the passageway below. I frustration. 'I know there is a gentleman in here came, cursing, to a halt. I knew I must go down to fetch it; somewhere!' she cried. She pulled the covers from the bed,

235

236

then stopped to look beneath it. At last, of course, she I bowed my head; she turned on her heel. Behind her, her headed for the alcove. I darted to stop her, and she curled son at last gave me a sneer. Tart,' he said. Then he spat, and her lip in satisfaction. 'Now we'll have him!' she said. She followed his mother into the darkness.

reached past me and tweaked the curtain back, then stepped Being not exactly overburdened with articles to pack, I was away with a gasp. There were about four suits there, as well out of the house next morning just as soon as I had washed. as the one that I had just taken off. 'Why, you little Mrs Best curled her lip as I passed by her. Mary, however, strumpet!' she cried. 'I believe you was planning a regular gazed at me with a kind of admiration in her eyes, as if horgyl'

awed and impressed that I had proved myself so normal - so

'A horgy? A horgy?' I folded my arms. 'They're bits of spectacularly normal - at the last. I gave her a shilling, and mending, Mrs Best. It's not a crime, is it, to take in sewing, patted her hand. Then I took a final turn around Smithfield for gentlemen?'

Market. It was a warm morning, and the reek of the She picked up the pair of underthings that I had so recently carcases was terrible, the hum of flies about them as deep kicked off, and sniffed at them. These drawers are still and steady as the buzz of a motor; but for all that, I felt a warm!' she said. 'From the heat of your needle, I suppose kind of bleak fondness for the place, which I had gazed at, you'll be telling me? From the heat of his needle, more so often, in my weeks of madness.

like!' I opened my mouth - but could find no answer to I moved on at last, and left the flies to their breakfast. I had make her. While I hesitated she stepped to the window and only the vaguest ideas about where I should make for, but I looked out of it. This, I suppose, is where they made their had heard that the streets around King's Cross were full of escape. The villains! Well, they won't get far, that's for sure, rooming-houses, and thought perhaps that I might try my in their birthday suits!'

luck up there. In the end, however, I did not get even so far I looked again at her son. He was gazing at my ankles as that. In the window of a shop on the Gray's Inn Road I where they showed beneath my night-gown.

saw a little card: Respectible Lady Seeks Fe-Male Lodger,

'I'm sorry, Mrs Best,' I said. 'I won't do it again, I promise and an address. I gazed at it for a minute or so. The you!'

Respectible was off-putting: I couldn't face another Mrs

'You certainly shan't do it again, in my house! I want you Best. But there was something very appealing about that out of here, Miss Astley, in the morning. I've always found Fe-Male. I saw myself in it - in the hyphen.

you a very peculiar tenant, I don't mind admitting - and I memorised the address. It was for a road named Green now, to go and try and play the hussy on me like this! I Street, which turned out to be wonderfully near - a narrow won't have it; no, certainly I won't! I warned you when you little street off the Gray's Inn Road itself, with a well-kept moved in.'

terrace on one side, and a rather grim-looking tenement on the other. The number I sought was one of the houses, and

237

238

looked very pleasant, with a pot of geraniums upon the step these opened on to a little iron balcony, that overlooked and, beside that, a three-legged cat, washing its face. The Green Street and faced the shabby tenement.

cat gave a hop as I approached, and lifted its head for me to

'It'll be eight shillings for the rent,' said Mrs Milne as I tickle.

gazed about me. I nodded. 'You're not the first girl that I've I pulled on the bell, and was greeted by a kind-faced, whiteseen,' she went on, 'but, to be honest, I was hoping for an haired lady in an apron and slippers; she let me in at once older lady - I thought perhaps a widow. My niece was here when I explained my visit, introduced herself as 'Mrs until very recently, but had to leave us to get married. You Milne', then spent a moment fussing over the cat. While she might be thinking of getting married yourself, rather soon?'

did so I looked about me, and blinked. The hallway was as

'Oh no,' I said.

crowded with pictures, almost, as Mrs Dendy's old front

'You've no young man?'

parlour. These pictures were not, however, theatrical in

'Not one.'

theme; indeed, so far as I could make out, they had nothing That seemed to please her. She said, 'I am glad. You see, it in common at all save the fact that each of them was very is just myself and my daughter here, and she is rather an brightly-hued. Most seemed rather cheap - some had unusual, trusting sort of girl. I wouldn't like to have young evidently been cut from books and papers, and pinned fellers, coming in and out..."

frameless to the wall - but there were one or two rather There's no young man,' I said firmly.

famous images. Above the umbrella-stand, for example, She smiled again; then seemed to hesitate. 'Might I ask hung a copy of that gaudy painting The Light of the World; might I - why you are leaving your present address?' At that beneath it was an Indian picture, of a slender blue god I hesitated - and her smile grew smaller.

wearing spit-black on the eyes, and holding a flute. I To be truthful,' I said, 'there was a little bit of wondered whether Mrs Milne was perhaps some form of unpleasantness with my landlady ..."

religious maniac - a theosophist, or a Hindoo convert.

'Ah.' She stiffened a little, and I realised that in telling the When she saw me looking at the walls, however, she smiled truth I had blundered.

in a most Christian-like way. 'My daughter's pictures,' she

'What I mean,' I began - but I could see her mind working. said, as if that explained it all. 'She does like the colours.' I What did she think? That my landlady had caught me nodded, then followed her up the stairs.

kissing her husband, probably.

She took me directly to the room that was for rent. It was a

'You see,' she began again, regretfully, 'my daughter . . .'

pleasant, ordinary kind of chamber, and everything in it was This daughter must be a beauty and a half, I thought - or clean. Its chief attraction was its window: this was long, else a complete erotomaniac - if the mother is so eager to and split down the middle to form a pair of glass doors; and keep her safe and close, away from young men's eyes. And yet, just as I had been drawn to that mispelt card in the

239

240

shopkeeper's window, so, now, there was something about I had expected some extraordinary beauty. Grace Milne was the house and its owner that tugged at me, unaccountably. not beautiful - but she was, I saw at once, rather I took a chance.

extraordinary. Her age was hard to judge. She might, I

'Mrs Milne,' I said, 'the fact of it is I have a curious thought, have been anything between seventeen and thirty; occupation - a theatrical occupation, you could call it - that her hair, however, was as yellow and fine as flax, and hung obliges me sometimes to dress in gentlemen's suits. My loose about her shoulders like a girl's. She was clad in an landlady caught me at it, and took against me. I know for odd assemblage of clothes - a short blue dress, and a yellow certain that, if I live here, I shall never bring a chap over pinafore, and beneath that gaudy stockings with clocks your threshold. You may wonder how I know that, but I can upon them, and red velvet slippers. Her eyes were grey, her only say, I do. I shan't ever get behind with my rent; I shall cheeks very pale. Her features had a strange, smooth quality keep myself to myself and you won't hardly know that I am to them, as if her face was a drawing to which someone had here at all. If you and Miss Milne will only not object to the halfheartedly taken a piece of india-rubber. When she spoke sight of a girl in a pair of bags and a neck-tie now and again her voice was thick and slightly braying. I realised then,

- well, then I think I might be the lodger you are seeking.'

what I might have guessed before: that she was rather I had spoken in earnest — more or less — and now Mrs simple.

Milne looked thoughtful. 'Gentlemen's suits, you say,' she I saw all this, of course, in less than a moment. Grace had said - not unkindly or incredulously, but with a rather put her arm through her mother's and, on being introduced interested air. I nodded, then pulled at the cord of my bag to me, had indeed hung back rather shyly. Now, however, and drew out a jacket - it happened to be the top half of the she gazed with obvious delight at the jacket that I held guardsman's uniform. I gave it a shake and held it up before me, and I could see that she was desperate to seize against myself, rather hopefully. 'My eyes,' she said, folding its coloured sleeve and stroke it.

her arms, 'he's a beauty, in' he? Now my little girl would And after all, it was a lovely jacket. I asked her, 'Would you like him.' She gestured to the door. 'If you'll permit me . . . like to try it on?'

?' She stepped out on to the landing and gave a shout: She nodded, then glanced at her mother: 'If I might.' Mrs

'Gracie!' I heard the sound of footsteps below. Mrs Milne Milne said she might. I raised the jacket for her to step into, tilted her head. 'Now, she's a mote shy,' she said in a low then moved around her to fasten the buttons. The scarlet voice, 'but don't you pay no mind to her if she starts being serge and the gold trim went bizarrely well with her hair, silly on you. It's just her way.' I smiled, uncertainly. In a her eyes, her dress and stockings.

second Gracie had begun her ascent; a few seconds more,

'You look like a lady in a circus,' I said, as her mother and I and she was in the room and at her mother's side. stood back to study her. 'A ring-master's daughter.' She

241

242

smiled - then took a clumsy bow. Mrs Milne laughed and It was like rooming with angels. I could keep the hours I clapped.

liked, wear the costumes I chose, and Mrs Milne said

'May I keep it?' Gracie asked me then. I shook my head. nothing. I could come home in a jacket crusted, at the To be honest, Miss Milne, I don't believe that I can spare it. collar, with a man's rash spendings - and she would only Had I only two the same ..."

pluck it from my nervous hands, and wash it at the tap: 'I

'Now Gracie,' said her mother, 'of course you can't keep it. never saw a girl so careless with her soup!' I could wake Miss Astley needs the costume for her theatricals.' Grace wretched, plagued with memories, and she would pile my pulled a face, but did not seem very seriously dismayed. breakfast plate the higher, asking nothing. She was as Mrs Milne caught my eye. 'She might borrow it, though, simple, in her way, as her own simple daughter; she was mightn't she,' she whispered, 'from time to time . . . ?'

good to me for Grade's sake, because I liked her, and was

'She can borrow all my suits, all at once, so far as I care,' I kind to her.

said; and when Grace looked up I gave her a wink, and her I was patient, for example, over the issue of Grace's interest pale cheeks pinked a little, and her head went down. in the colourful. You could not have spent three minutes in Mrs Milne gave a mild tut-tut, and folded her arms that house without noticing it; but after three days there I complacently. 'I do believe that, after all, Miss Astley, you began to sense a kind of system to her mania which, if I had will suit us very well.'

had routines of my own, like an ordinary girl, might have I moved in at once. That first afternoon I passed in proved rather maddening. When, on my first Wednesday unpacking my few little things, with Gracie beside me there, I went down to breakfast in a yellow waistcoat, Mrs exclaiming over them all, and Mrs Milne bringing tea, and Milne flinched and said: 'Grade don't quite like to see then more tea, and cake. By supper-time I had become yellow in the house,' she said, 'on a Wednesday.' Three days

'Nancy' to them both; and supper itself-which was a pie later, however, we had a custard for tea: food on a and peas and gravy, and afterwards, blancmange in a mould Saturday, it seemed, must be yellow, or nothing . . .

- was the first that I had eaten, at a family table, since my Mrs Milne had grown so used to the fads, she had almost last dinner at Whitstable just over a year before. ceased to notice them; and in time, as I have said, I grew The next day, Gracie tried my suits, in every combination, used to them, too - calling, 'What colour today, Grace?' as I and her mother clapped. There were sausages for supper, dressed in the mornings. 'May I wear my blue serge suit, or and later cake. The cake being eaten, I changed for Soho; must it be the Oxfords?' 'Shall we have gooseberries for and when Mrs Milne saw me in my serge-and-velvet, she supper, or a Battenburg cake?' I didn't mind, it came to clapped again. She had had a key cut for me, so that when I seem a kind of game; and Grade's way was quite as valid a came home late I should not wake them . . .

philosophy, I thought, as many others. And her basic passion, for the vivid and the bright, I understood very well.

243

244

For there were so many lovely colours in the city; and in a of my family. Davy, I supposed, would be married by now, sense she tutored me to look at them anew. As I strolled and possibly a father - that made me an aunt. Alice would about I would keep a watch for pictures and dresses that I be twenty-five. They would all be celebrating the turning of knew that she would like, then bring them home for her. the year, today, without me -wondering, perhaps, where I She had a number of huge albums, into which she pasted was, and how I did; and Kitty and Walter might be doing cuttings and scraps: I would find her magazines and little the same. I thought: Let them wonder. When Mrs Milne books, to worry at with her scissors; I would buy her raised her glass at the dinner-table, and wished the three of flowers from the flower-girls' stalls: violets, carnations, us all the luck of the Season and the New Year, I gave her a lavender statice and blue forget-me-nots. When I presented smile, and then a kiss upon the cheek.

them to her - producing them with a flourish, from under

'What a Christmas!' she said. 'Here I am, with my two best my coat, like a conjuror - she would flush with pleasure, girls beside me. What a lucky day it was for me and Grace, and perhaps dip me a playful little curtsey. Mrs Milne Nance, the day you knocked upon our door!' Her eyes would look on, pleased as anything, but shaking her head glistened a little; she had said this sort of thing before, but and pretending to chide.

never so feelingly. I knew what she was thinking. I knew

'Tut!' she would say to me. 'You will turn that girl's head she had begun to look upon me as a kind of daughter - as a right round, one of these days, I swear it!' And I would sister, anyway, to her real daughter: a kindly older sister think for a second how queer it was that she - who had been who might be relied upon, perhaps, to care for Grade when so careful to keep her daughter from the covetous glances she herself was dead and gone . . .

of fresh young men - should encourage Grace and me to The idea, at that moment, made me shiver - and yet I had no play at sweethearts, so blithely, and with such seeming other plans; no other family, now; no sister of my own; and unconcern.

certainly no sweetheart. So, 'What a lucky day it was for But it was impossible to think very hard about anything in me,' I answered. 'If only everything might stay just as it is, that household, where life was so even and idle and sweet. for ever!' Mrs Milne blinked her tears away and took my And because, since losing Kitty, thinking was the soft white hand in her old, hardened one. Grade gazed at us, occupation I cared for least, this suited me best of all. pleased, but distracted by the splendours of the day, her hair So the months slid by. My birthday arrived: I had not shining in the candle-light like gold.

marked its passing at all the year before; but now there That night I went as usual to Leicester Square. There are were gifts, and a cake with green candles. Christmas came, gents there, looking for renters, even at Christmas. bringing more presents, and a dinner. I remembered with The trade is poor, though, in the winter months. The fogs some small, insistent portion of my brain the two gay and the early darkness are kind to the furtive; but no one Christmases that I had spent with Kitty; and then I thought likes unbuttoning himself when there are icicles upon the

245

246

wall - nor did I much care for kneeling on slippery cobbles, wearing, I remember, plain linen trousers and a shirt left or wandering around the West End in a short jacket merely open at the neck, and a little straw sailor-hat I had put on for the sake of showing off my lovely bum and the roll of against the strong late-afternoon sun, and forgotten to the hankie at the fork of my trousers. I was glad to have a remove. The room behind me I had let darken; I guessed home that was cosy: gay people go down like skittles in that, apart from the occasional dancing glow of my January, with fevers and influenza, or worse; Sweet Alice cigarette tip, I must be quite invisible against its shadows. coughed all through that winter - said he was afraid he My eyes were closed, I was thinking of nothing, when all at should do it while he knelt to a gent, a bite his cock off. once I heard music. Someone had begun to strum some As spring came again, however, the evenings warmed and kind of sweet, twangy instrument -not a banjo, not a guitar - my curious gaslit career grew easier; but I, if anything, and a lilting gypsy melody was playing upon the bare grew lazier. Now, more often than I ventured out into the evening breezes. Soon a woman's voice, high and streets, I kept at home in my room - not sleeping, only quavering, had risen to accompany it.

lying, open-eyed, half-clothed; or smoking, while the night I opened my eyes to find the source of the sound; it came grew thicker and still, and a candle burned low, and not, as I had expected, from the street below, but from the trembled, and died. I took to throwing wide my windows to building opposite - the old tenement that had used to be so let the voices of the city in: the clatter of cabs and vans grim and empty, and such a contrast to the pleasant little from the Gray's Inn Road; the hoots and the rattles and terrace in which my landlady had her house. Labourers had hisses of steam, from King's Cross; snatches of quarrels and been at work upon it for a month and more, and I had been confidences and greetings, from passers-by - 'Well now, dimly aware of them as they hammered and whistled and Jenny!'; Till Tuesday, till Tuesday ..." When the stifling leaned from ladders; now the building was spruce and heat of June arrived I got into the habit of placing a chair on mended, hi all my time at Green Street the windows my little balcony high above Green Street, and sitting there opposite mine had been dark. Tonight, however, they were long into the cooling night.

thrown open, and the curtains behind them were drawn I passed about fifty nights like this that summer, and quite wide. It was from here that the gay little melody was daresay I could not distinguish so many as five of them issuing: the parted drapes gave me a perfect view of the from all of their fellows. But one of those nights, I curious scene that was being enacted within.

remember very

The player of the instrument - it was, I now saw, a well.

mandolin - was a handsome young woman in a wellI had set my chair as usual upon my balcony, but had turned tailored jacket, a white blouse, a neck-tie, and spectacles; I its back to the street and sat lazily straddling it, with my put her down at once for a lady clerk or a college girl. As arms across each other and my chin upon my arms. I was she sang, she smiled; and when her voice fell short of the

247

248

higher notes, she laughed. She had tied a bunch of ribbons behind the curtain ceased her intermittent fanning and rose. to the neck of her mandolin, and these shook and Stepping carefully around the group, she approached the shimmered as she strummed it.

window: it, like my own, opened on to a little balcony, The little group of people to whom she sang, however, were upon which she now stepped, and from which she surveyed, not quite so gay. A man, in a suit that was rather rough, sat with a mild glance and a yawn, the quiet street beneath. beside her, nodding with a fixed and hopeful smile; on his There were not more than twelve yards between us, and we knee he held a sweet little girl in a patched frock and apron, were almost level; but, as I had guessed , I was only another whose hands he made to clap in approximate time to the shadow against my own shadowy chamber, and she hadn't melody. At his shoulder leaned a boy, his hair shaved to a noticed me. I, for my part, had still not seen her face. The stubble around his narrow neck and his large, flushed ears. window and curtains framed her beautifully, but the light Behind him stood a tired-looking hard-faced woman - the was all from behind. It streamed through her hair, which man's wife, I guessed - and she held another infant listlessly seemed curly as a corkscrew, and lent her a kind of flaming at her breast. The final member of the party, a stocky girl in nimbus, such as a saint might have in the window of a a smartish jacket, was only partly visible beyond the edge church; her face, however, was left in darkness. I watched of the curtain. Her face was hidden, but I could see her her. When the music stopped, and there was a selfhands -which were slender and rather pale - with peculiar conscious smattering of applause and then a bit of desultory clarity: they held a card or a pamphlet, which they flapped chatter, still she kept her place on the balcony and didn't in the still, warm air like a fan.

look round.

All of these figures were gathered around a table, upon At last my cigarette burned down, almost to my fingers, and which stood a jar of flaccid little daisies and the remains of I cast it into the street below. She caught the gesture: gave a an economical supper: tea and cocoa, cold meat and pickle, start, then squinted at me, then grew stiff. Her confusion and a cake. Despite the long faces and forced smiles, there despite the darkness, I could see from the tips of her ears was something celebratory about the scene. It was, I that she flushed - disconcerted me, till I recollected my supposed, a sort of house-warming party - though I could gentleman's costume. She took me for some insolent not fathom the relationship between the lady mandolinist voyeur! The thought gave me an odd mixture of shame and and the poor, drab little family to whom she played. Nor embarrassment and also, I must confess, pleasure. I took was I sure about the other girl, with the pale hands; she, I hold of my boater and raised it, politely.

thought, could have belonged in either camp.

'G'night, sweetheart,' I said in a low, lazy tone. It was the The tune changed, and I could sense the family growing kind of thing rough fellows of the street - costers and roadrestless. I lit a cigarette and studied the scene: it was as menders - said to passing ladies all the time. I don't know good a thing to watch, I thought, as any. At length the girl why, just then, I thought to copy them.

249

250

The girl gave another twitch, then opened her mouth as if to governesses airing babies, and shop-girls taking their make me some rusty reply; at that moment, however, her lunches on the grass. Any of these, I knew, might be led friend approached the window. She had a hat fixed to her into a little conversation by a girl with a smile and a head, and was pulling on her gloves. She said, 'We must go, handsome dress; and I had a fancy - a rather curious fancy - Florence' - the name sounded very romantic, in the halffor women's company that day. light. 'It is time for the children to be put to bed. Mr Mason It was in this mood, and with these plans, and in that says he will walk with us as far as King's Cross.'

costume, that I saw Florence.

The girl gave not a glance more my way then, but turned I recognised her at once, for all that I had seen so little of quickly into the room. Here she kissed the children, shook her before. I had just let myself out of the house, and the mother's hand, and politely took her leave; from my lingered for a moment on the lowest step, yawning and place on the balcony I saw her, and her friend, and their rubbing my eyes. She was emerging into the sunlight from rough chaperon Mr Mason, quit the building and make their a passageway on the other side of Green Street, a little way way up towards the Gray's Inn Road. I thought she might down on my left, and she was dressed in a jacket and skirt turn to see if I still watched but she did not; and why should the colour of mustard - it was this, struck by the sun and set I mind it? With the lamplight at last turned upon her face I glowing, that had caught my eye. Like me, she had paused: had seen that she was not at all handsome.

she had a sheet of paper in her hand, and seemed to be I might have forgotten all about her, indeed, except that a consulting it. The passageway led to the tenement flats, and fortnight or so after I had watched her in the darkness, I saw I guessed she had been visiting the family that had held the her again - but this time in daylight.

party. I wondered idly which way she would go. If she It was another warm day, and I had woken rather early. Mrs moved towards King's Cross again, I should miss her. Milne and Grace were out on a visit, and I had in At last she stowed the paper in a satchel that was slung, consequence nothing at all in the world to do, and no one to crosswise, over her chest, and turned - to her left, towards please but myself. Before my money had all run out I had me. I kept to my step and, as I had before, I watched her; bought myself a couple of decent frocks; and it was one of slowly she drew level with me until, once again, there was those that I had put on, today. I had my old plait of false no more than the width of the road between us. I saw her hair, too: it looked wonderfully natural under the shadow of eyes flick once towards mine, then away, and then, as she the stiff brim of a black straw hat. I had a mind to make my felt the persistence of my gaze, to mine again. I smiled; she way to one of the parks -Hyde Park, I thought, then on slowed her step and, with a show of uncertainty, smiled perhaps to Kensington Gardens. I knew men would pester back: but I could see that she had not the least idea who I me along the way; but parks, I have found, are full of might be. I couldn't let the moment pass. While my eyes women - full of nursemaids wheeling bassinets, and still held her questioning, amiable gaze, I lifted my hand to

251

252

my head and raised my hat, and said in the same low tone End accent, more or less; but her voice was deep and that I had used on her before: 'G'mornin!’

slightly breathy. 'We have been trying for ages to get our As before, she started. Then she glanced up at the balcony hands on some of the flats in this block here, and that night above my head. And then she pinked. 'Oh! It was you then you saw me we had moved our first family in - a bit of a was it?'

success for us, we are only a small affair - and Miss Derby I smiled again, and gave a little bow. My stays creaked; it thought we should make a party of it.'

felt all wrong, being gallant in a skirt, and I had a sudden

'Oh yes? Well, she plays very nicely. You should tell her to fear that she might take me not for an impertinent voyeur, come and busk round here more often.'

but for a fool. But when I raised my eyes to hers again her

'You live there then, do you?' she asked, nodding towards flush was fading, and her face showed neither contempt, Mrs Milne's.

nor discomfiture, but a kind of amusement. She tilted her

'I do. I like to sit out on the balcony ..." head.

She raised her hand to tuck away a lock of hair beneath her A van passed between us, followed by a cart. In lifting my bonnet. 'And always in trousers?' she asked me then, so that hat to her this time I had thought only, and vaguely, to I blinked.

correct the earlier misunderstanding; perhaps, to make her

'Only sometimes in trousers.'

smile. But when the street was once again clear and she still

'But always, to gaze at the women and give them a start?'

stood there it seemed a kind of invitation. I crossed, and Now I blinked two or three times. 'I never thought to do it,'

stood before her. I said, 'I'm sorry if I frightened you the I answered, 'before I saw you.' It was the plain truth; but she other night.' She seemed embarassed at the memory, but laughed at it, as if to say, Oh yes. The laugh, and the laughed.

exchange which had provoked it, was unsettling. I studied

'You didn't frighten me,' she said, as if she were never her more closely. As I had seen on that first night, she was frightened. 'You just gave me a bit of a start. If I'd known not what you might term a beauty. She was thick at the you were a woman - well!' She blushed again - or it may waist and almost stout, and her face was broad, her chin a have been the same blush as before, I couldn't tell. Then she firm one. Her teeth were even, but not perfectly white; her glanced away; and we fell silent.

eyes were hazel, but the lashes not long; her hands,

'Where's your friend the musician?' I said at last. I held an however, seemed graceful. Her hair was the kind of hair we imaginary mandolin to my waist and gave it a couple of had all been thankful, as girls, that we did not have - for strums.

though she had bound it into a bun at her neck, the curls

'Miss Derby,' she said with a smile. 'She is back at our kept springing from it and twisting about her face. With the office. I do a bit of work with a charity, finding houses for lamp behind it, too, it had seemed auburn; but it would poor families that've lost their homes.' She had a plain East really be more truthful to say that it was brown.

253

254

I believe I liked it better that she was not more handsome. I didn't care a button about the families; but I did care, And though there was something wonderfully intriguing suddenly at the thought that I might lose her. I said, 'Well, about her tranquillity at my strange behaviour - as if women then I shall have to see you when you come again to Green donned gents' trousers all the time; as if they made love to Street. When will that be?'

girls on balconies so often that she was used to it, and

'Ah well, you see,' she said, 'it won't. I shall be leaving this thought it merely naughty - I did not think I saw that trick post in a couple of days, and.I am to help with the running in her, that furtive something, that I had recognised in other of a hostel, at Stratford. It is better for me, since it's nearer girls. Certainly nobody, gazing at her, would ever think to where I live, and I know the local people; but it means I sneer and call out Torn] Again, though, I was glad of it. I shall be spending most of my days down East..." had quit the business of hearts and kisses; I was in quite

'Oh,' I said. 'And shall you never be coming into town, at another trade altogether, these days!

all, after that?'

And yet would it hurt me after all this time to have a She hesitated; then: 'Well, I do sometimes come in, in the friend?

evenings. I go to the theatre, or to the lectures at the I said, 'Look here, will you come to the park with me? I was Athenaeum Hall. You might come with me, to one of those just on my way there when I saw you.'

places .. .'

She smiled, but shook her head: 'I'm working, I couldn't.'

I only went to the theatre, now, as a renter; I wouldn't sit in

'It's too hot for working.'

a velvet seat before a stage again, even for her. I said, 'The The work must still be done, you know. I have a visit to Athenaeum Hall? I know that place. But lectures - what do make at Old Street - a lady Miss Derby knows might have you mean? Church stuff?'

some rooms for us. I should be there now, really.' And she

'Political stuff. You know, the Class Question, the Irish frowned down at a little watch that hung from a ribbon at Question ..."

her breast like a medal.

I felt my heart sink. The Woman Question.'

'Can't you send to Miss Derby and make her go? It seems

'Exactly. They have speakers, and readings, and afterwards awfully hard on you. I bet she's sitting in the office with her debates. Look here.' She reached into her satchel and drew feet upon her desk, playing a tune on the mandolin; and forth a slim blue pamphlet. The Athenaeum Hall Society here are you out in the sun doing all the tramping about. Lecture Series, it said; Women and Labour: An Address by You need a bit of ice-cream, at the least; there's an Italian Mr-and it gave a name I now forget, followed by a little lady in Kensington Gardens who sells the best ices in piece of explanatory text, and a date that was for four or London, and she lets me have them at half-price . . .'

five days ahead.

She smiled again. 'I cannot. Else, what would happen to all I said, 'Lord!' in an ambiguous sort of way. She lifted her our poor families?'

head, took the pamphlet back from me, and said: 'Well,

255

256

perhaps, after all, you would prefer the ice-cream cart in I was amongst them. For two days almost I had kept Kensington Gardens ..." There was a hint of rustiness about indoors in a kind of hot stupor, drinking endless cups of the words, that I found I could not bear to hear. I said at lemonade with Mrs Milne and Gracie in their darkened once, 'Good heavens, no: this looks a treat!' But I added, parlour, or dozing naked on my bed with the windows that if they really didn't sell ices in the hall, then I thought thrown open and the curtains pulled. Now the promise of a we ought to take some refreshment first. There was, I had night of chilly liberty on the swarming, gaudy streets of the heard, a little public-house at the King's Cross corner of West End drew me like a magnet. My purse, too, was Judd Street with a ladies' room at the back of it, where they almost empty - and I was mindful of the supper I would did a very nice, very inexpensive supper. The lecture began have to take care of, with Florence, the following night. So at seven - would she meet me there beforehand? At, say, six I needed, I thought, to cut something of a dash. I washed, o'clock? I said -because I thought it would please her - that and combed my hair flat and brilliant with macassar; and I might need some instruction, in the ins and outs of the when I dressed I put on my favourite costume - the Woman Question.

guardsman's uniform, with its brass buttons and its piping, At that she snorted, and gave me another knowing look; its scarlet jacket and its neat little cap. I hardly ever wore though what it was she thought she knew, I wasn't sure. She this outfit. The military pips and buckles meant nothing to did, however, agree to meet me - with a warning that I must me, but I had a vague terror that some real soldier might not let her down. I said there was not a chance of it, held one day recognise them, and claim me for his regiment; or out my hand; and for a second felt her fingers, very firm else that some emergency might occur - the Queen be and warm in their grey linen glove, clasp my own. assaulted while I was strolling by Buckingham Palace, for It was only after we had parted that I realised we had not instance - and I would be called upon to play some exchanged names; but by then she had turned the corner of impossible role in its resolution. But the suit was a lucky Green Street, and was gone. But I had, as a piece of secret one, too. It had brought me the bold gentleman of the knowledge from our earlier, darker encounter, her own Burlington Arcade, whose kiss had proved such a fateful romantic Christian name, at least. And besides, I knew I one; and it had tipped the wavering balance at my first should be seeing her again within the week.

interview at Mrs Milne's. Tonight, I thought, I should be

content enough if it would only net me a sovereign. Chapter 10

And there was a curious quality to the city that night, that The days that week grew ever warmer, until at last even I seemed all of a piece with the costume I had chosen. The began to tire of the heat. All London longed for a break in air was cool and unnaturally clear, so that colours - the red the weather; and on Thursday evening, when it finally of a painted lip, the blue of a sandwich-man's boards, the came, crowds took to the streets of the city in sheer relief. violet and the green and the yellow of a flower-girl's tray -

257

258

seemed to leap out of the gloom. It was just as if the city from my friends at Leicester Square, were demanding. were a monstrous carpet to which a giant hand had applied They paid well, but expected correspondingly large the beater, to make all glow again. Infected by the mood I favours: bum-work, bed-work - nights, sometimes, in had sensed even in my Green Street chamber, people had, hotels. Even so, it never hurt to show off a bit: the gent like me, put on their finest. Girls in gay dresses walked the inside might remember me on another, more pedestrian, pavements in long, intimidating lines, or spooned with their occasion. I had ambled up and down the edges of the bowler-hatted beaux on steps and benches. Boys stood Square for a good ten minutes, occasionally reaching down drinking at the doors of public-houses, their pomaded heads to give a twitch to my groin - for, in the rather flamboyant gleaming, in the gas-light, like silk. The moon hung low spirit in which I had dressed that night, I had padded my above the roofs of Soho, pink and bright and swollen as a drawers with a rolled silk cravat, instead of my usual Chinese lantern. One or two stars winked viciously kerchief or glove, and the material was slippery, and kept alongside it.

edging along my thigh. Still, I thought, such a gesture might And through it all sauntered I, in my suit of scarlet; and yet not prove unpleasing to the distant eye of an interested gent. by eleven o'clock, when the streets were thinning, I had had

. .

no luck at all. A couple of gents had seemed to like the look The carriage, however, with its taciturn driver and bashful of me, and one rough-looking man had set himself to follow occupant, had at last jerked into life and pulled away. me, right the way from Piccadilly to Seven Dials and back Since then my admirers had all, apparently, been as again. But the gents, at the last, had been lured by other cautious as that last one; I had sensed a few interested renters; and the rough man was not the type I cared for. I glances slither my way, but had managed to hook none of had given him the slip in a lavatory with two exits. them with my own more frankly searching one. By now it And then there had been yet another almost-encounter, had grown very dark, and almost chill. It was time, I later, while I was idling beside a lamp-post in St James's thought, to pick my slow way home. I felt disappointed. Square. A brougham had driven slowly by, then stopped; Not with my own performance, but with the evening itself, and then, like me, it had lingered. No one had got out of it, which had opened with such promise and had finished such no one had got in. The driver had had a high collar a flop. I had not earned so much as a threepenny-bit: I shadowing his face, and had never moved his gaze from his should now have to borrow a little cash from Mrs Milne, horse - but there had been a certain twitching of the lace at and spend longer, more resolute, less choosy hours on the the dark carriage windows, that let me know that I was streets over the following week, until my luck turned. The being observed, carefully, from within.

thought did not cheer me: renting, which had seemed such a I had strolled about a bit, and lit a cigarette. I didn't, for holiday at first, had come to seem, of late, a little tiresome. obvious reasons, do carriage jobs. Gents on wheels, I knew

259

260

It was in these spirits that I began to make my way back to disappeared from my view completely. In the darkness the Green Street - avoiding, now, the busier routes that I had brougham seemed quite black, but where the light from a trod for fun before, and taking back roads: Old Compton guttering street-lamp spilled on it, it gleamed a deep Street; Arthur Street; Great Russell Street, which took me crimson, touched here and there with gold. The gent inside, by the pale, silent mass of the British Museum; and finally I thought, must be a very rich one.

Guilford Street, which would lead me by the Foundling Well, he would be disappointed; he had followed me for Hospital and on to the Gray's Inn Road.

nothing. I quickened my step, and made to move past, head Even on these quieter routes, however, the traffic seemed down. But as I drew level with the rear wheel I heard the unusually heavy - unusually, and puzzlingly, for though soft click of a latch undone: the door swung silently open, few carts and hansoms seemed actually to pass me, the low blocking my path. From the shadows beyond the doorframe clatter of wheels and hooves formed a continuous drifted a thread of blue tobacco smoke; I heard a breath, a accompaniment to my own slow footfalls. At last, at the rustle. Now I must either retrace my steps and cross behind entrance to a dim and silent mews, I understood why; for the vehicle, or squeeze between the swinging door and the here I paused to tie my lace and, as I stooped, looked wall on my left -and catch a glimpse, perhaps, of its casually behind me. There was a carriage moving slowly enigmatic occupant. I confess, I was intrigued. Any gent towards me out of the gloom, a private carriage with a who could bring such a sense of drama to the staging of an particular, well-greased rumble I now knew for the one that encounter which, in the ordinary course of things, might be had pursued me all the way from Soho, and a hunched and settled so unspectacularly - by a word, or a nod, or the muffled driver I thought I recognised. It was the brougham fluttering of one spit-blacked lash - was clearly someone that had waited near me in St James's Square. Its shy special. I was also, frankly, flattered; and having been master, who had watched while I had posed beneath a flattered, generous. Since he had had to make do so far with lamppost and strolled the pavement with my fingers at my admiring my bottom from a distance, I felt it only fair to crotch, evidently fancied another look.

give him the chance of a closer look *-though he must, of My lace tied, I straightened up, but cautiously kept my course, be content only to look.

place. The carriage slowed, then — in its dark interior still I advanced a little towards the open door. Within, all was hidden behind the heavy lace at its windows - it passed me dark; I saw only the vague outline of a shoulder, an arm, a by. Then, a little way on, it drew to a halt. I began, knee, against the lighter square of the far window. Then uncertainly, to walk towards it.

briefly the end of a cigarette glowed bright in the blackness, The driver, as before, was impassive and still: I could see and glimmered redly on a pale gloved hand, and a face. The only the curve of his shoulders and the rise of his hat; hand was slender, and had rings upon it. The face was indeed, as I approached the rear of the vehicle he powdered: a woman's face.

261

262

I was too surprised even to laugh - too startled, for a I put my hand on the carriage-door and made to swing it to. moment, to do anything but stand at the rim of gloom that But again she spoke. 'If you won't,' she said, 'let me drive seemed to spill out from the carriage, and gape at her; and you home, then won't you, as a favour, ride with me a in that moment, she spoke.

while? As you see, I am quite alone; and I've rather a

'Can I offer you a ride?'

yearning for company, tonight.' Her voice seemed to Her voice was rich and rather haughty, and somehow tremble - though whether with melancholy, or anticipation, arresting. It made me stammer. I said: 'That, that's very kind or even laughter, I could not tell.

of you, madam' - I sounded like a mincing shop-boy

'Look missis,' I said then, into the gloom, 'you're on the refusing a tip -'but I'm not five minutes from home, and I wrong track. Let me pass, and get your driver to take you shall get there all the quicker if you'll let me say goodanother turn around Piccadilly.' Now I laughed: 'Believe night, and pass on my way.' I tilted my cap towards the dark me, I haven't got what you're after.'

place where the voice had come from, and, with a tight little The carriage creaked; the red end of the cigarette bobbed smile, I made to move on.

and brightened and illuminated, once again, a cheek, a But the lady spoke again.

brow, a lip. The lip curled.

'It's rather late,' she said, 'to be out on one's own, in streets

'On the contrary, my dear. You have exactly what I'm after.'

like these.' She drew on her cigarette, and the tip glowed Still I did not guess, but only thought, Blimey, she's keen! I bright again in the shadows. 'Won't you let me drop you glanced about me. A few carriages bowled along the Gray's somewhere? I have a very capable driver.'

Inn Road, and two or three late pedestrians passed quickly I thought, I am sure you do: her man was still hunched from sight, behind them. A hansom had pulled up at the end forward in his seat, his back to me, his thoughts his own. I of the mews, quite near us, and was letting its passengers felt suddenly weary. I had heard stories in Soho about dismount; they disappeared into a doorway, and the hansom ladies like this - ladies who rode the darkened streets with rolled by and away, and all was still again. I took a breath, well-paid servants, on the lookout for idle men or boys like and leaned into the dark interior of the coach. me who'd give them a thrill for the price of a supper. Rich

'Madam,' I hissed, 'I ain't a boy at all. I'm -' I hesitated. The ladies with no husbands, or absent husbands, or even (so end of the cigarette disappeared: she had thrown it out of Sweet Alice claimed) husbands at home, warming the bed, the window. I heard her give one impatient sigh - and all at with whom they shared their startled catches. I had never once I understood.

known quite whether to believe in such ladies; here,

'You little fool,' she said. 'Get in.'

however, was one before me, haughty and scented and hot Well, what should I have done? I had been weary, but I was for a lark.

not weary now. I had been disappointed, my expectations What a mistake she had made this time!

for the evening dashed; but with this one, unlooked-for

263

264

invitation the glamour of the night seemed all restored.

'I thought - the uniform ..." She gestured towards my suit. True, it was very late, and I was alone, and this woman was It, too, seemed to have lost some of its bravado, seemed to clearly a stranger of some determination, and with odd and be bleeding its crimson into the shadows of the coach. I felt secret tastes ... But her voice and manner were, as I have I was letting her down. I said, with an effort at music-hall said, compelling ones. And she was rich. And my purse was sauce, 'Oh, the uniform is my disguise for the streets, not a empty. I hesitated for a moment; then she held out her hand party. I find that a girl in skirts, on her own in the city, gets and, where the lamplight fell upon her rings, I saw how looked at, rather, in a way not always nice.'

large the stones were. It was that - only that, just then - She nodded. 'I see. And you don't care for that? - being which decided me. I took her hand, and climbed into the looked at, I mean. I should never have guessed it.'

carriage.

'Well... It depends, of course, on who's doing the looking.'

We sat together in the gloom. The brougham lurched I was getting back into my stride at last; and she, I could forward with a muted creak, and started on its smooth, sense it, was also warming up. I felt for a second - what I quiet, expensive way. Through the heavy lace of its had not felt, it seemed, for a hundred years - the thrill of windows the streets seemed changed, quite insubstantial. performing with a partner at my side, someone who knew This, I realised, was how the rich saw the city all the time. the songs, the steps, the patter, the pose . . . The memory I glanced at the woman at my side. She wore a dress or brought with it an old, dull ache of grief; but it was cloak of some sombre, heavy material, indistinguishable overlaid, in this new setting, with a keen, expectant from the dark upholstery of the carriage's interior; her face pleasure. Here we were, this strange lady and I, on our way and gloved hands, illuminated by the regular gleam of to I knew not what, playing whore and trick so well we passing street-lamps, their surface fantastically marbled by might have been reciting a dialogue from some handbook the shadow of the drapes, seemed to float, pale as waterof tartery! It made me giddy. lilies, in a pool of gloom. She was, as far as I could tell, Now she raised her hand to finger the braided collar of my handsome, and quite young - perhaps ten years older than coat. 'What a little impostor you are!' she said mildly. Then: myself.

'But you have a brother in the Guards, I think. A brother - For a full half-minute neither of us spoke; then she tilted or, perhaps, a beau . . . ?' Her fingers trembled slightly, and back her head, and looked me over. She said, 'You are, I felt the chillest of whispers of sapphire and gold upon my perhaps, on your way home from a costume ball?' Her voice throat.

had a new, slightly arrogant drawl to it.

I said, 'I work in a laundry, and a soldier brought this in. I

'A ball?' I answered. To my own surprise I sounded reedy, thought he wouldn't notice if I borrowed it." I smoothed out rather trembly.

the creases around my crotch, where the slippery cravat still rudely bulged. 'I liked the cut,' I added, 'of the trousers.'

265

266

After the briefest of pauses her hand - as I knew it must had you, dear, a dozen times: but oh! as I said, why spoil moved to my knee, then crept to the top of my thigh, where the chase! Tonight - what was it, decided me at last? she let it rest. Her palm felt extraordinarily hot. It was an Perhaps it was the uniform; perhaps the moon ..." And she age since anyone had touched me there; indeed, I had kept turned her face to the carriage window, where the moon such a close guard over my own lap lately, I had to fight showed - higher and smaller than before, but still quite back the urge to brush her fingers away.

pink, as if ashamed to look upon the wicked world to which Perhaps she felt me stiffen, for she removed the hand it was compelled to lend its light.

herself and said, 'I'm rather afraid that you are something of I, too, flushed at the lady's words. What she had said was a tease.'

strange, was shocking - and yet, I guessed, might easily be

'Oh,' I said, recovering, 'I can tease all right - if that's what true. In the bustle and swarm of the streets on which I plied you care for .. .'

my shadowy trade, a stationary or a lingering carriage

'Ah.'

would be unremarkable - especially to me, who attended to

'And besides,' I added pertly, 'it's you who's the tease: I saw the traffic of the pavements rather than the roads. It made you in St James's Square, watching me. Why didn't you me horribly uneasy to think she really had been observing stop me then, if you wanted - company-so badly?'

me, all those times . .. And yet, was it not just such an

'And spoil the fun with hastening it? Why, the wait was half audience that I had longed for? Had I not lamented, again the pleasure!' As she said it she raised the fingers of her and again, precisely the fact that my new nocturnal other hand - her left hand - to my cheek. The gloves, I performances must be staged in the dark, under cover, thought, were rather damp about the tips; and they were unguessed? I thought of all the parts I had handled, the scented with a scent that made me draw back in confusion gents I'd knelt to and the cocks I'd sucked. I had done it all, and surprise.

as cool as Christmas; now, the idea that she had watched She laughed. 'But how prim you have turned! You are never me went direct to the fork of my drawers and made me wet. so dainty, I'm sure, with the gentlemen of Soho.'

I said - I didn't know what else to say -I said, 'Am I then so There was a knowingness to the remark. I said, 'You have

- special?'

watched me before - before tonight!'

'We shall see,' she answered.

She answered: 'Well, it is rather marvellous what one may After that, we spoke no more.

catch, from one's carriage, if one is quick and keen and She took me to her home, in St John's Wood; and the house, patient. One may follow one's quarry like a hound with a as I guessed it must be, was grand - a high, pale villa in a fox - and all the time the fox not know itself pursued - well-swept square, with a wide front door and tall casement might think itself only about its little private business: windows with many panes of glass. In one of these a single lifting its tail, arching its eye, wiping its lips ... I might have lamp sat gleaming; the neighbouring houses, however,

267

268

presented only black, shuttered windows, and the clatter of her gesture was not lost on me. This was the third and most our carriage sounded atrocious, to me, in the stillness -I was alarming threshold I had crossed for her tonight. I felt a not then used to that total, unnatural hush which fills the prick, now, not of desire, but of fear: her face, lit from streets and houses of the rich, when they are sleeping. beneath by the smoking lamp, seemed all at once macabre, She led me to her door, saying nothing. Her knock was grotesque. I wondered at this lady's tastes, and how they answered by a grim-faced servant, who received her might have decked the room that lay behind this unspeaking mistress's cloak, looked once at me from beneath her lashes, door, in this silent house, with its curious, incurious but after that kept her eyes quite lowered. The lady paused servants. There might be ropes, there might be knives. to read the cards upon her table; and I, self-conscious, There might be a heap of girls in suits — their pomaded looked about me. We were in a spacious hall, at the bottom heads neat, their necks all bloody. The lady smiled, and of a wide staircase winding up to darker, higher floors. turned. The door swung open. She led me in.

There were doors - closed - to the left and the right of us. It was, after all, a kind of parlour; nothing more. A small The floor was paved with marble, in squares of black and fire had burned itself ashy in the grate, and a bowl of pink. The walls, to match it, were painted a deep, deep rose; browning petals upon the mantel above it made the thick air and this darkened further, where the staircase curved and thicker with a heady perfume. The window was tall, and lifted, like the interior whorls of a shell. I heard my hostess close-drawn with velvet drapes; against the wall which say, 'That will do, Mrs Hooper', and the servant, with a faced it were two armless, ladder-backed chairs. A door bow, took her leave. The lady lifted the lamp from the table beside the fireplace led into a further room; it was ajar, but I at my side and, still with no word for me, began to ascend could not see beyond it.

the stairs. I followed. We climbed to one floor, and then Between the chairs there was a bureau, and now the lady another. At each step the house grew darker, until at last crossed to it. She poured a glass of wine, and took up a there was only the narrow pool of light from my chaperon's rose-tipped cigarette and lit it.

hand to guide my uncertain footsteps through the gloom. Wlin me lamp umu m. n.<^+ uu&». -— __.. „ „

She led me down a short passage to a closed door, then

•

turned and stood before it, one hand raised upon the panels, invitation or perhaps with challenge. She looked, to tell the the other with the lamp held at her thigh. Her dark eyes 1

gleamed, with

•'--'Ti-U*. «t i\,n Wm-lrl' tViat

I

-.1 _u-ii———— C^o l™Vorl tn tfill the I had seen already that she was older, less handsome, but inVlUHlUU Ul JJCiliapo .viui ^.^———-o--more striking than I'd thought at first. Her forehead was truth, like nothing so much as the 'Light of the World' that broad and pale - all the paler for being framed by the hung above the umbrella-stand in Mrs Milne's hallway; but rippled blackness of her hair and her heavy dark brows. Her

269

270

nose was very straight; her mouth was a full mouth that had aside with my corset and chemise - seemed at her touch to once, I guessed, been fuller. Her eyes were a deep hazel rise and swell and strain against their wrappings. I felt like and, in the dim light of the low-turned gas-jets, seemed all a man being transformed into a woman at the hand of a pupil. When she narrowed them - which she did now, the sorceress. My cigarette smouldered at my lip, forgotten. better to study me through the blue haze of tobacco smoke - Her hands moved lower, and stopped at my lap, which now, one noticed the network of wrinkles, fine and not so fine, in as before, began to pulse and heat. The silken cravat lay which they were set.

rolled there; and as she fingered it, I blushed. She said, The room was terribly warm. I unfastened the button at my

'Now you are prim again!' and began to unfasten my throat, then lifted my cap and raked my fingers through my buttons. In a moment she had her hand through the slit of hair - afterwards rubbing my palm against the wool of my my drawers, had seized a corner of the cravat, and began to thigh, to wipe the oil from it. And all the time she watched tug at it. The silk uncurled, and squirmed and susurrated its me. Then she said, 'You must think me rather rude.'

way out of my trousers, like

'Rude?'

an eel.

To have brought you so far, without enquiring after your She looked absurdly like a stage magician, producing a name.'

handkerchief or a string of flags from a fist, or an ear, or a I said, without hesitation, 'It's Miss Nancy King, and you lady's purse - and, of course, she was too clever not to know might at least offer me a cigarette, I think.'

it: one dark eyebrow lifted, and her lip gave its ironical curl, She smiled, and came to me, and placed her own fag, halfand she whispered 'Presto!' when the cravat was free. But smoked and damp at the end, between my lips. I caught the then her looked changed. She held the silk to her lips, and reek of it on her breath, together with the faint spice of the gazed at me above it. 'All your promise has come to wine that she had swallowed.

nothing, after all,' she said. Then she laughed, and stepped

'If you were King of Pleasure,' she said, 'and I were Queen away, and nodded to my trousers - now gaping whitely, of of Pain ..." Then, in a different tone: 'You're very course, at the buttons. 'Take them off.' I did so at once, handsome, Miss King.'

fumbling with my shoes and stockings in my haste. My fag I took a long pull on the cigarette: it made me giddy as a showered me with ash, and I cast it into the grate. 'And the glass of cham. I said: 'I know.' At that, she raised her hands underthings,' she went on,' -but leave the jacket. That's to the front of my jacket - she was still wearing gloves, with good.'

the rings on top - and ran them over me, delicately and Now I had a heap of discarded clothes at my feet. My jacket lingeringly, and sighing as she did so. Beneath the wool of ended at my hips; beneath it, in the dim light, my legs my uniform my nipples sprang up stiff as little sergeants; looked very white, the triangle of hair between them very my breasts - which had grown used to being as it were put dark. The lady watched me all the while, making no move

271

272

to touch me further. But when I was finished, she went to a all. For on the top of the jumble, on a square of velvet, lay drawer in the bureau; and when she turned back to me she the queerest, lewdest thing I ever saw.

held something in her hand. It was a key.

It was a kind of harness, made of leather: belt-like, and yet

'In my bedroom,' she said, nodding towards the second not quite a belt, for though it had one wide strap with door, 'you'll find a trunk, which this will open.' She handed buckles on it, two narrower, shorter bands were fastened to it to me. It felt very chill upon my overheated palm, and for this and they, too, were buckled. For one alarming moment a moment I merely gazed stupidly at it. Then she clapped I thought it might be a horse's bridle; then I saw what the her hands: 'Presto!' she said again; and this time, she did not straps and the buckles supported. It was a cylinder of smile, and her voice was rather thick.

leather, rather longer than the length of my hand and about The room next door was smaller than the parlour, but quite as fat, in width, as I could grip. One end was rounded and as rich, and just as dim and hot. On one side there was a slightly enlarged, the other fixed firm to a flattened base; to screen, with a commode behind it; on the other stood a this, by hoops of brass, the belt and the narrower bands japanned press, its surface hard and black and glossy, like a were all also fastened.

beetle's back. At the bottom of the bed there was, as she had It was, in short, a dildo. I had never seen one before; I did promised, a trunk: a handsome, antique chest made of some not, at that time, know that such things existed and had desiccated, perfumed wood - rosewood, I think — with four names.

claw feet and corners of brass, and elaborate carvings on its For all I knew of it, this might be an original, that the lady sides and lid which the dull glow of the fire threw into had had fashioned to a pattern of her own.

exaggerated relief. I knelt before it, placed the key in the Perhaps Eve thought the same, when she saw her first lock; and felt the shifting, as I turned it, of some deep apple.

interior spring.

Even so, it didn't stop her knowing what the apple was for A movement in the corner of the room made me turn my

...

head. There was a cheval-glass there, big as a door, and I But in case I still wondered, the lady now spoke. 'Put it on,'

saw myself reflected in it: pale and wide-eyed, breathless she called - she must have caught the opening of the trunk - and curious, but for all that an unlikely Pandora, with my

'put it on, and come to me.'

scarlet jacket and my saucy cap, my crop and my bare bare I struggled for a moment or two over the placing of the bum. In the room next door all was hushed and still. I straps, and the tightening of the buckles. The brass bit into turned to the trunk again, and lifted its lid. Inside was a the white flesh of my hips, but the leather was wonderfully jumble of bottles and scarves, of cords and packets and supple and warm. I glanced again towards the lookingyellow-bound books. I didn't pause to gaze upon these glass. The base of the phallus was a darker wedge upon my objects then, however; indeed, I hardly registered them at own triangular shield of hair, and its lowest tip nudged me

273

274

in a most insinuating way. From this base the dildo itself

'Not yet,' she said. 'Not yet, not yet!'

obscenely sprang -not straight out, but at a cunning angle, With my hands still clasped in hers she led me to one of the so that when I looked down at it I saw first its bulbous straight-backed chairs and sat me on it, the dildo all the head, gleaming in the red glow of the fire and split by a while straining from my lap, rude and rigid as a skittle. I near-invisible seam of tiny, ivory stitches.

guessed her purpose. With her hands close-pressed about When I took a step, the head gave a nod.

my head and her legs straddling mine, she gently lowered

'Come here,' said the lady when she saw me in the doorway; herself upon me; then proceeded to rise and sink, rise and and as I walked to her, the dildo bobbed still harder. I lifted sink, with an ever speedier motion. At first I held her hips, my hand to still it; and when she saw me do that she placed to guide them; then I returned a hand to her drawers, and let her own fingers over mine, and made them grasp the shaft the fingers of the other creep round her thigh to her and stroke it. Now the base's insinuating nudges grew more buttocks. My mouth I fastened now on one nipple, now on insinuating still: it was not long before my legs began to the other, sometimes finding the salt of her flesh, tremble and she, sensing my rising pleasure, began to sometimes the dampening cotton of her chemise. breathe more harshly. She took her hands away, and turned Soon her breaths became moans, then cries; soon my own and lifted her hair from the nape of her neck, and gestured voice joined hers, for the dildo that serviced her also for me to undress her.

pleasured me - her motions bring it with an ever faster, ever I found the hooks of her gown, and then the laces of her harder pressure against just that part of me that cared for corset: beneath this, I saw, she was mottled scarlet from the pressure best. I had one brief moment of selfhundred tiny creases of her chemise. She stooped to remove consciousness, when I saw myself as from a distance, her petticoats, but retained her drawers, her stockings and straddled by a stranger in an unknown house, buckled her boots and, still, her gloves. Very daring - for I had not inside that monstrous instrument, panting with pleasure and touched her at all, yet - I slid a hand into the slit of her sweating with lust. Then in another moment I could think drawers; and with the other I caught hold of one of her nothing, only shudder; and the pleasure - mine and hers - nipples, and pressed it.

found its aching, arching crisis, and was spent. At that, she put her mouth to mine. Our kisses were After a second she eased herself from my lap, then imperfect ones, as all new lovers' kisses are, and tasted of straddled my thigh and rocked gently there, occasionally tobacco; but - again, like all new lovers' kisses - their very jerking, and at last growing still. Her hair, which had come strangeness made them thrilling. The more I fingered her loose, was hot against my jaw.

the harder she kissed me, and the hotter I grew between my At length she laughed, and moved again against my hip. legs, behind my sheath of leather. Finally she pulled away,

'Oh, you exquisite little tart!' she said.

and seized my wrists.

275

276

And thus we clasped one another, sated and spent, our legs was a handkerchief on the little table before the fire, and inelegantly straddling that elegant, high-backed chair; and with this I wiped first it, and then myself. I lit two as the minutes passed I thought with something like dismay cigarettes, and left one smouldering. Then I poured myself of how the night would now proceed. I thought, She's had a glass of wine and, in between gulps, began to retrieve my me fuck her; now she'll send me home. If I'm in luck I stockings, my trousers and my boots from the pile of might get a pound, for my trouble. It was the prospect of clothes that lay strewn across the carpet.

the sovereign, after all, which had lured me to her parlour in The lady reappeared, and seized her fag. She had changed the first place. And yet, now, there was something into a dressing-gown of heavy green silk, and her feet were inexpressibly dreary to me at the idea of quitting her bare; she had that long second toe that you sometimes see company - of surrendering the toy to which I was strapped, on the statues done by the Greeks. Her hair had been and quieting the tommish urges it and its mistress had all properly unfastened, combed out, and rebound into a long, unexpectedly revived.

loose plait, and she had at last removed her white kid She raised her head and saw, I suppose, my downcast look. gloves. The flesh of her hands was almost as pale.

'Poor child,' she said. 'And do you always grow sorry, when

'Do leave all that,' she said, nodding towards the trousers your business is complete?' She put a hand to my chin and over my arm. 'The maid will deal with it in the morning.'

tilted my face to the lamplight, and I caught her wrist and Then she saw the dildo, and caught it up by one of its shook my head free. My cap - which had remained on my straps. 'I should, however, remove this.'

head through all our violent kisses - now fell off. She at I was not sure that I had heard her properly. 'The morning?'

once returned her hands to my face, and fingered my I said. 'Do you mean that I should stay?'

pomade-stiffened hair; then she laughed, and rose, and

'Why, of course.' She looked genuinely surprised. 'Are you walked into her bedroom. Tour yourself some wine,' she not able? Will you be missed?' I felt light-headed suddenly. called. 'And light me a cigarette, will you?' I heard the hiss I told her that I lodged with a lady who, though she would of water against china, and guessed that she was using the wonder at my absence, wouldn't worry over it. Then she commode.

asked if I had an employer - perhaps at the laundry I had I moved to the glass, and examined myself. My face was as mentioned? - who would expect me on the morrow. I scarlet, almost, as my jacket, my hair was ruffled, my lips laughed at that, and shook my head: 'There is no one at all looked bruised and swollen. I remembered the dildo at my to miss me. I've only myself to think of and please.'

hip, and stooped to unfasten it. Its lustre was cloudy now, As I said it, the toy at her thigh began to swing. and its nether straps were sodden and limp from my own She said, 'You did, before tonight. Now, however, you have lavish spendings; yet it was as indecently rigid and ready as me . . .'

before -that never happened with the gents in Soho. There

277

278

Her words, her expression, made a mockery of my efforts The lady was still gazing at me. She said, 'I have waited for with the handkerchief: I was wet for her anew. I reunited you to wake, before ringing for breakfast.' There was a bellmy trousers with her discarded petticoats, and added my pull set into the wall beside the fireplace: I had not seen that jacket to the pile. Next door, the silken counterpane had the night before, either. 'I hope you are hungry?'

been turned back, and the sheets beneath looked very white I was, I realised, very hungry indeed; but also slightly and cool. The chest kept its still, enigmatic place at the foot nauseous. My mouth, moreover, tasted abominable: I hoped of the bed. The clock on the mantel showed half-past two. she wouldn't try to kiss me again. She didn't, but kept her It was four, or thereabouts, before we slumbered; and distance. Soon, piqued by her new, queer, self-conscious perhaps eleven when I woke. I remembered stumbling to air, I began to think that she might, at least, come and put the commode some time in the early morning, and recalled her lips to my hand.

the brief renewal of passion which had followed my return There was a low, respectful knock on the outer door of the to her arms; but my sleep since then had been a heavy, adjoining room. At her call the door was opened; I heard dreamless one, and when next I knew the bed I was alone in footsteps, and the rattle of china. To my amazement the it: she had donned her dressing-gown and stood at the halfrattle grew louder, the footsteps approached: the servant - opened window, smoking, and gazing thoughtfully at the who I thought would deposit her burden in the room next view beyond. I stirred, and she turned and smiled. door, and discreetly take her leave - appeared in the

'You sleep like a child,' she said. 'I have been up this halfdoorway of ours, I pulled the sheet to my throat and lay hour, making a fearful row, and still you've slumbered on.'

quite still; neither the mistress nor the maid, however,

'I was so very weary.' I yawned - then I recalled all that had appeared in any way discomfited by my presence there. The wearied me. A slight awkwardness seemed to fall between latter - not the pale-faced woman I had seen the night us. The room last night had been as unreal as a stage-set: a before, but a girl a little younger than myself - gave a bob place of lamplight and shadows, and colours and scents of and, with her eyes lowered, made space for a tray on the impossible brilliance, in which we had been given a licence dressing-table. When she had finished with the china she to be not ourselves, or more than ourselves, as actors are. paused with her head bent and her hands folded over her Now, in the late morning light that flowed between the apron.

partly-drawn drapes, I saw that there was nothing fantastic

'Very good, Blake, that will be all for now,' said the lady. about the chamber at all; I saw that it was really elegant,

'But have a bath ready for Miss King by half-past twelve. and rather austere. I felt, all at once, quite horribly out of And tell Mrs Hooper I shall speak to her about luncheon, place. How does a tart take leave of her customer? I did not later.' Her tone was quite polite, yet colourless; I had heard know; I had never had to do it.

ladies and gentlemen use that tone on cabmen and shopgirls and porters a thousand times.

279

280

The girl gave another little duck to her head - 'Yes m'm' seventy years; or he may live in pleasure - with a princess and withdrew. She had not looked towards the bed, at all. for a wife, and servants to bathe him, and robes of gold - he With the breakfast things to busy ourselves over, the next may live in pleasure, for five hundred days.' She paused; few minutes passed easily. I raised myself into a sitting then said: 'Which would you choose, if you were that position - wincing all the time, for my body ached as if it beggar?'

had been pummelled, or stretched on a rack - and the lady I hesitated. Those stories are silly,' I said at last. 'Nobody is fed me coffee, and warm rolls spread with butter and ever asked -'

honey. She herself only drank and, later, smoked. She

'Which would you choose? The comfort; or the pleasure?'

seemed to take pleasure from seeing me eat - as last night She put her hand to my cheek.

she had liked to watch me stand, undress, light cigarettes;

'I suppose then, the pleasure.'

but, still, there was that disconcerting thoughtfulness about She nodded: 'Of course; and so did the beggar. I should be her, that made me long for her honest, cruel kisses of the very sorry, if you had said the other thing.'

night before.

'Why?'

When we had drained the coffee-pot between us, and I had

'Can you not guess?' She smiled again. 'You say that there finished all the rolls, she spoke; and her voice was graver is no one you must answer to. Have you no - sweetheart, than I had yet heard it. She said: 'Last night, upon the street, even?' I shook my head, and perhaps looked bitter, for she I invited you to drive with me and you hesitated. Why was sighed with a kind of satisfaction. 'Tell me, then: will you that?'

stay with me, here? - and be pleasured, and pleasure me, in

'I was afraid,' I answered honestly.

your turn?'

She nodded. 'You are not afraid now?'

For a second I only gazed stupidly at her. 'Stay with you?' I

'No.'

said. 'Stay as what? Your guest, your servant -?'

'You are glad that I brought you here.'

'My tart.'

It was not a question, but as she said it she raised a hand to

'Your tart!' I blinked; then heard my voice grow a little my throat, and stoked me there until I reddened and hard. 'And how should I be paid for that? Rather swallowed; and I could not help but answer: 'Yes.'

handsomely, I should think . . .'

Then the hand was removed. She grew thoughtful again,

'My dear, I have said: you should have pleasure for your and smiled. She said: 'There is a Persian story I read as a wages! You should live with me here, and enjoy my girl, about a princess and a beggar, and a djinn. The beggar privileges. You should eat from my table, and ride in my sets the djinn free from a bottle, and is rewarded with a brougham, and wear the clothes I will pick out for you - and wish; but the wish - they always do, alas! - comes with remove them, too, when I should ask it. You should be conditions. The man may live in ordinary comfort for what the sensational novels call kept.'

281

282

I gazed at her, then looked away - at the silken counterpane For it was, it was! What she said was the truth: she had upon the bed, the japanned press, the bell-pull, the found out all my secrets; she had shown me to myself. Not rosewood trunk .... I pictured my room at Mrs Milne's, just with the fierce words of that moment, but with all - the where I had come so close of late to real happiness; but I kisses, the caresses, the fuck on the chair - that had made remembered too my growing obligations there, that had her say them; and I was glad! I had loved Kitty -I would made me, more than once, uneasy. How much freer would I always love Kitty. But I had lived with her a kind of queer paradoxically be, bound to this lady - bound to lust, bound half-life, hiding from my own true self. Since then I had to pleasure!

refused to love at all, had become - or so I thought - a And yet, it was a little sickening, too, that she made such creature beyond passion, driving others to their secret, promises, so easily. I said - and again, my voice was hard humiliating confessions of lust; but never offering my own.

'And have you no fear of sensation then? You seem rather Now, this lady had torn it from me -had laid me bare, as sure of me - but you know nothing about me! Don't you surely as if she had ripped the shrieking flesh from my worry I'll raise a row; that I'll tell the papers - the police - white bones. She pressed against me still; and even as her your secret?'

breath came warm against my cheek, I felt my lusts rise up

'And with it, your own? Oh no, Miss King. I have no fear of to meet her own, and knew myself in thrall.

sensation: on the contrary, I court it! I seek out sensation!

After all, there are moments in our lives that change us, that And so do you.' She leaned closer, and fingered a lock of discontent us with our pasts and offer us new futures. That my hair. 'You say I know nothing about you; but I have night at the Canterbury Palace, when Kitty had cast her rose watched you upon the streets, remember. How coolly you at me, and sent my admiration for her tumbling over into pose and wander and flirt! Did you think you could play at love -that had been one such moment. This was another; Ganymede, for ever? Did you think, if you wore a silken perhaps, indeed, it had already passed - perhaps it was the cock, it meant you never had a cunt at the seam of your second when I was guided into the dark heart of that drawers?' Her face was very close to my own; she would waiting carriage that was the real start of my new life. not let me turn my eyes from hers. She said: 'You're like Either way, I knew I could not go back to the old one, now. me: you have shown it, you are showing it now! It is your The djinn was out of the bottle at last; and I had settled on own sex for which you really hunger! You thought, pleasure.

perhaps, to stifle your own appetites: but you have only I never thought to ask what happened to the beggar in the made them swell the more! And that is why you won't raise tale, once the five hundred days came to an end. a row - why you still stay, and be my tart, as I desire.' She

gave my hair a cruel twist. 'Admit that it is as I say!'

Chapter 11

'It is!'

283

284

The lady's name, I learned in time, was Diana: Diana I didn't answer. Her words had made me understand anew Lethaby. She was a widow, and childless, and rich, and the enormity of the change that was come upon me; and I venturesome, and thus - though on a considerably grander thought, for the first time, of the visit I should have to scale - as accomplished in the habits of self-pleasure as make, to Mrs Milne and Gracie. I could hardly shirk my myself, and quite as hard of heart. In that summer of 1892 duty there by sending a boy, with a letter and a coin - could she would have been eight-and-thirty - younger, that is, I? I knew I could not.

than I am now, though she seemed terribly old to me then,

'I must go myself,' I said at last. 'I should like, you know, to at twenty-two. Her marriage had been, I think, a loveless say good-bye to my friends.'

one, for she wore neither wedding-ring nor mourning-ring, She raised an eyebrow: 'As you wish. I shall have Shilling nor was there any picture of Mr Lethaby in any room in that bring the carriage round, this afternoon.'

large, handsome house. I never asked after him, and she

'I could just as easily catch a tram ..." never questioned me about my past. She had created me

'I shall send for Shilling.' She came to me, and set my anew: the old dark days before were nothing to her. guardsman's cap upon my head, and brushed my scarlet And they must become nothing to me, of course, now that shoulders. 'I think it very naughty of you, to want to go we had settled our bargain. On that first, fierce morning of from me at all. I must be sure, at least, of having you come my time in her house, she had me kiss her again, then bathe, swiftly back!'

then re-don my old guardsman's uniform; and as I dressed, My visit to Green Street was every bit as dreary as I knew it she stood a little to one side and studied me. She said, 'We must be. I could not bear, somehow, for the brougham to shall have to buy you some new suits. This one - for all its draw up at Mrs Milne's front door, so I asked Mr Shilling - charms -will hardly do for very long. I shall ask Mrs Diana's taciturn driver - to drop me at Percy Circus and wait Hooper to send to an outfitters.'

for me there. When I let myself in with my house-key, I buttoned my trousers and drew the braces over my arms. 'I therefore, it was as if I had just returned from a shopping have other costumes," I said, 'at home.'

expedition or a stroll, as I did most days; there was nothing

'But you would rather have new ones.'

but the length of my absence from them to hint to Mrs I frowned. 'Of course, but -I must fetch my things. I cannot Milne and Gracie of my awful change of fortune. I closed leave them all unsorted.'

the door very softly; still, Grace's sharp ears must have

'I could send a boy for them.'

caught the sound, for I heard her - she was in the parlour - I pulled on my jacket. 'I owe my landlady a month in rent.'

give a cry of 'Nance!', and the next moment she had come

'I shall send her the money. How much shall I send? A lolloping down the stairs and had me in a fierce, neckPound? Two pounds?'

breaking embrace. Her mother soon followed her to the landing.

285

286

'My dear!' she called, 'you're home, and thank goodness!

milliner's, poor thing ..." We had reached the parlour. Mrs We've been wondering ourselves silly - haven't we, love? Milne turned to face me, and her eyes were troubled. about where you might've got to. Gracie was fretted near That is a shame,' she said feelingly. 'A good roomer is hard half to death, poor soul, but I said to her: "Don't you worry to find, these days, that I do know. That's why - and I've about Nancy, girl; Nancy will've found some friend to take told you so before, you know I have - that's why me and her in, or missed the last bus home, and passed the night in Gracie've been so glad to have you with us. Why, if you some rooming-house. Nancy will be back all right, was ever to leave us, Nance -' This seemed the worst tomorrow, you wait and see.'" As she spoke she came possible way for me to tell her, yet I had to speak. slowly down the stairs, until at last we were quite level. She

'Oh, don't say that, Mrs M!' I said lightly. 'For you see, I'm gazed at me with real affection; but there was a hint of sorry to say I shall be leaving you. This friend of mine has reproach, I thought, in her words. I felt even more guilty asked me and, well, I said I would take the other girl's place about what I must tell her - but also slightly resentful. I was

-just to help her out, you know . . .' My voice grew thin. not her daughter, nor was I Grade's sweetheart. I owed them Mrs Milne looked grey. She sank into a chair and put a nothing -I told myself - but my rent.

hand to her throat.

Now I drew carefully away from Grace, and nodded to her

'Oh, Nance . . .'

mother. I said, 'You're right, I did meet a friend. A very old

'Now don't,' I said, with an attempt at jollity, 'don't be like friend I hadn't seen in a long time. What a surprise it was, to that; now just don't! I'm not so special a boarder, heaven meet her! She has rooms over in Kilburn. It was too far to knows; and you'll soon find another nice girl to take my come back so late.' The story sounded hollow to me, but place.'

Mrs Milne seemed pleased enough with it.

'But it ain't me I'm thinking of so much,' she said, 'as There now, Gracie,' she said, 'what did I tell you? Now, just Gracie. You have been so good with her, Nance; there's not you run downstairs and put the kettle on. Nancy'll be many as would understand her like you do; not many who wanting a bit of tea, I don't doubt.' She smiled at me again, would take the trouble over her little ways, the way you while Gracie dutifully lumbered off; then she headed back have.'

up the stairs, and I followed.

'But I shall come back and visit,' I said reasonably. 'And

'The thing is, Mrs Milne,' I began, 'this friend of mine, she's Grace -' I swallowed as I said it, for I knew there would in a bit of a state. You see her room-mate up and moved out never be a welcome for Gracie in the stillness and richness last week' - Mrs Milne checked slightly, then stepped and elegance of Diana's villa - 'Grace can come and visit steadily on - 'and she can't replace her; and she can't afford me. It won't be so bad.'

all the rent herself, she has only a little part-time work in a

'Is it the money, Nance?' she said then. 'I know you ain't got much -'

287

288

'No, of course it ain't the money,' I said. 'Indeed -' I had was in my own room again, with the door closed hard remembered the coin in my pocket: a pound, placed there behind me.

by Diana's own fingers. It more than covered the rent I The little bits and pieces I owned, of course, could be owed, and the fortnight's warning I should have given. I bundled together in a second, in my sailor's bag, and a held it out to her; but when she only gazed bleakly at it and carpet-bag that Mrs Milne had once given me. My made no move to take it, I stepped awkwardly to the bedclothes I folded and placed neatly at the end of the mantelpiece and laid it softly there.

mattress, and the rug I shook out at the open window; the There was a silence, broken only by Mrs Milne's sighs. I few little pictures I had pinned to the wall I took down, and coughed. 'Well,' I said, 'I had better go and get my things burned in the grate. My toilet articles - a cake of cracked together. . .'

yellow soap, a half-used jar of tooth-powder, a tub of face'What! You ain't leaving us today! Not so soon?" cream scented with violet - I scooped into the bin. I kept

'I did promise my friend I would,' I said, trying to suggest only my toothbrush, and my hair-oil; these, together with an by my tone that my friend might have all the blame for it. unopened tin of cigarettes and a slab of chocolate, I added

'But you'll stay for a bit of tea, at least?'

to the carpet-bag - though, after a second's hesitation, I took The thought of the dreary tea-party we would make, with the chocolate out again, and left it on the mantel, where I Mrs Milne so ashen and disappointed, and Gracie in all hoped Grace would find it. In half an hour the room looked probability in tears, or worse, filled me with dismay. I bit quite as it had when I had first moved in. There was nothing my lip.

at all to mark my stay there save the cluster of pin-holes in

'I'd better not,' I said.

the wallpaper where my pictures had been tacked, and a Mrs Milne straightened, and her mouth grew small. She scorch-mark on the bedside cabinet where once, slumbering shook her head slowly. 'This will break my poor girl's over a magazine, I had let a candle fall. The thought seemed heart.'

a miserable one; but I would not grow sad. I didn't go to the There was a flintiness to her tone that was more frightening, window, for a last sentimental look at the view from it. I more shaming, than her sadness had been; but I found didn't check the drawers, or go poking under the bed, or myself, again, vaguely piqued. I had opened my mouth to pull the cushions from the chair. If I had left anything utter some dreadful pleasantry when there came a scuffling behind I knew that Diana would replace it with something at the door, and Grace herself appeared. Tea's hot!' she sang better.

out, all unsuspecting. I could not bear it. I gave her a smile, Downstairs all seemed ominously still, and when I arrived nodded blindly towards her mother, then made my escape. at the parlour it was to find its door shut fast against me. I Her voice - 'Oh, Ma, what's up?' - pursued me up the gave a knock, and turned the handle, my heart beating. Mrs stairwell, followed by Mrs Milne's murmurs. In a moment I Milne was seated before the table, where I had left her. She

289

290

was less ashen than before, but still looked grim. The teapot stood awkwardly before the Light of the World and the blue stood cooling on its tray, its contents unpoured; the cups lay effeminate idol, she with her arms folded over her bosom, huddled on their nest of saucers beside it. Gracie sat stiff me hung with bags, and still clad in my scarlet duds. and straight on the sofa, her face turned effortfully away,

'I'm sorry, Mrs M, that this has been so sudden,' I tried; but her gaze fixed unswervingly - but also, I thought, she hushed me.

unseeingly - on the view beyond the window. I had

'Never mind, dear. You must go your own way.' She was expected her to weep at my news; instead, it seemed to too kind to be stern for long. I said that I had left my room have enraged her. Her lips were clenched and quite drained in order; that I would send her my address (I never did, I of colour.

never did!); and lastly that she was the best landlady in the Mrs Milne, at lest, appeared to have reconciled herself a city, and that if her next girl did not appreciate her I would little to my departure, for she addressed me now with make it my business to find out why.

something like a smile. 'I'm afraid Gracie is not quite She smiled in earnest then, and we hugged. Yet, as we drew herself,' she said. 'Your tidings've quite upset her. I told her apart, I could sense that something was troubling her; and you'll be coming to see us, but - well - she's that stubborn.'

as I stood on the step for my final farewell, she spoke.

'Stubborn?' I said, as if amazed. 'Not our Gracie?' I took a

'Nance,' she said, 'don't mind me asking, but - this friend: it step towards her and reached out a hand. With something is a girl, ain't it?'

like a yelp she thrust me away, and shuffled to the furthest I snorted. 'Oh, Mrs Milne! Did you really think - ? Did you end of the sofa, her head all the time kept at its stiff, really think that I would - ?' That I would set up house with unnatural angle. She had never shown me such displeasure a man, was what she meant: me, with my trousers and my before; when I spoke to her next it was with real feeling. bar-bered hair! She blushed.

'Ah, now don't be like that, Gracie, please. Won't you give

'I just thought,' she said. 'A girl can get herself hooked up me a word, or a kiss, before I go? Won't you shake hands by a feller, these days, quicker'n that. And what with you with me, even? I shall miss you, so; and I should hate us to moving out so sudden, I was half convinced you'd let some part on bad terms, after all our fun together.' And I went on gentleman or other make you a pile of promises. I should've in this fashion, half entreating, half reproachful, until Mrs known better.'

Milne rose and touched my shoulder, and said quietly, 'Best My laughter rang a little hollowly then, as I thought of how leave her, Nance, and be on your way. You come back and near her thoughts ran to the truth, while yet remaining so see her another day; she'll've come round by then, I don't far from it.

doubt it.'

I took a firmer grip of my bags. I had told her I was heading So I had to leave, in the end, without Grace's good-bye kiss. for the cab rank on the King's Cross Road, since that was Her mother accompanied me to the front door, where we the direction in which I must walk in order to rejoin Diana's

291

292

driver. Her eyes, which had stayed dry through all her first remembered the appointment I had made, to meet my new shock at my news, now began to glisten. She kept her place friend Florence. It was for Friday: that, I realised, was on the doorstep as I made my slow, awkward way down today. I had said that I would see her at the entrance to the Green Street. 'Don't forget us, love!' she called out, and I public house at six o'clock, and it must, I thought, be past turned to wave. At the parlour window a figure had six now ... Even as I thought it, the carriage slowed in the appeared. Grace! She had unbent enough, then, to watch me traffic and I saw her standing there, a little way along the leave. I widened the arc of my wave, then caught up my cap street, waiting for me. The brougham crawled still slower; and flapped that at her. Two boys turning somersaults on a from behind the lace of its windows I could see her broken railing stopped their game to give me a playful perfectly, frowning to her left and right, then bending her salute: they took me for a soldier, I suppose, whose leave head to look at the watch at her bosom, then raising a hand had all run out, and Mrs Milne for my tearful, white-haired to tuck a curl in place. Her face, I thought, was so very old mother, and Gracie no doubt for my sister or my wife. plain and kind. I had a sudden urge to tug at the latch of the But for all that I waved and blew kisses, she made me no door, and race down the street to her side; I could at least, I sign, simply stood with her head and her hands upon the thought, call to the driver to stop his horse, so that I might window-pane, which pressed a whiter circle to the centre of shout some apology to her . . .

her pale brow, and to the end of each blunt finger. At last I But while I sat, anxious and undecided, the traffic grew let my arm slow, and fall.

swift, the carriage gave a jerk, and in a moment Judd Street

'She don't love yer much,' said one of the boys; and when I and plain, kind Florence were far behind me. I could not had looked from him back to the house, Mrs Milne had bear the thought, then, of asking the forbidding Mr Shilling gone. Gracie, however, still stood and watched. Her gaze - to turn the horse around, for all that I was his mistress for cold and hard as alabaster, piercing as a pin - pursued me to the afternoon. And besides, what would I say to her? I the corner of the King's Cross Road. Even up the steep would never, I supposed, be free to meet with her again; climb to Percy Circus, where the windows of Green Street and I could hardly expect to have her visit me at Diana's. are quite hidden from view, it seemed to prick and worry at She would be surprised, I thought, and cross, when I didn't the flesh upon my back. Only when I had seated myself in turn up: the third woman to be disappointed by me that day. the shadowy interior of Diana's carriage, and made fast the I was sorry, too - but, on reflection, not terribly sorry. Not latch of the door, did I feel quite free of it, and secure once terribly sorry at all.

again on the path of my new life.

When I returned to Felicity Place - for that, I saw now, was But even then there was another reminder of my unpaid the name of the square in which my mistress had her home debts to the old one. For on our drive along the Euston

-I was greeted with gifts. I found Diana in the upstairs Road we neared the corner of Judd Street, and all at once I parlour, bathed and dressed at last, and with her hair in

293

294

plaits and elaborately pinned. She looked handsome, in a drawers, marked links and neckties, collars and studs. gown of grey and crimson, with her waist very narrow and These were all full; and on a further rack of shelves, her back very straight. I recalled those laces and ties I had marked linen, there was fold after fold of white lawn shirts. rumbled over the night before: there was no sign of them I gazed at all this, then kissed Diana very hard indeed now beneath the smooth sheath of her bodice. The thought partly, I must confess, in the hope that she would close her of that invisible linen and corsetry, which a maid's steady eyes, and thus not see how much I was in awe of her. But fingers had fastened and concealed and my own trembling when she had gone, I fairly danced about the golden floor hands, I guessed, would later uncover and undo, was rather in pleasure. I took the suit, and a shirt, and a collar, and a thrilling. I went to her, and put my hands on her, and kissed necktie, and laid them all, in proper order, upon the bed. her hard upon the mouth, until she laughed. I had woken Then I danced again. The bags I had brought with me from tired and sore; I had had a dismal time at Green Street; but I Mrs Milne's I carried to the closet and cast, unopened, into did not feel dismal now - I felt limber and hot. If I had had the farthest corner.

a cock, it would have been twitching.

I wore my suit to supper; it looked, I knew, very well on We embraced for a minute or two; then she moved away me. Diana, however, said the cut was not quite right, and and took my hand. 'Come with me,' she said. 'I've had a that tomorrow she would have Mrs Hooper measure me room made ready for you.'

properly, and send my details to a tailor. I thought her faith I was at first a little dismayed to learn that I would not be in her housekeeper's discretion quite extraordinary; and sharing Diana's chamber; but I could not stay dismayed for when that lady had left us - for, as she had at lunch, she long. The room to which she led me - it was a little way filled our plates and glasses, then stood in grave and (I along the corridor - was hardly less imposing than her own, thought) unnerving attendance until dismissed -I said so. and quite as grand. Its walls were bare and creamy-white, Diana laughed.

its carpets gold, its screen and bedstead of bamboo; There's a secret to that,' she said; 'can't you guess it?'

its dressing-table, moreover, was crowded with goods - a

'You pay her a fortune in wages, I suppose.'

cigarette-case of tortoise-shell, a pair of brushes and a

'Well, perhaps. But didn't you catch Mrs Hooper, gazing comb, a button-hook of ivory, and various jars and bottles through her lashes at you as she served you your soup? of oils and perfumes. A door beside the bed led to a long, Why, she was practically drooling into your plate!'

low-ceilinged closet: here, draped on a pair of wooden

'You don't mean - you can't mean - that she is just - like us?'

shoulders, was a dressing-gown of crimson silk, to match She nodded: 'Of course. And as for little Blake - why, I Diana's green one; and here, too, was the suit I had been plucked her, poor child, from a reformatory cell. They had promised: a handsome costume of grey worsted, terribly sent her there for corrupting a house-maid . . .'

heavy and terribly smart. Besides this there was a set of

295

296

She laughed again, while I marvelled. Then she leaned with from my limbs. Yet I took my leave, uncomplaining, and her napkin to wipe a splash of gravy from my cheek. made my way to the pale room along the hall, where my We had been served cutlets and sweetbreads, all very fine. I own cold bed awaited. I liked her kisses, I liked her gifts ate steadily, as I had eaten at breakfast. Diana, however, did still more; and if, to keep them, I must obey her - well, so more drinking than eating, and more smoking than be it. I was used to servicing gents in Soho at a pound a drinking; and more watching, even, than smoking. After the suck; obedience - to such a lady, and in such a setting - exchange about the servants, we fell silent: I found that seemed at that moment a very trifling labour.

many of the things I said produced a kind of twitching at

her lips and brow, as if my words - sensible enough to my Chapter 12

ears - amused her; so at last I said no more, and neither did For all the strangeness of those first few days and nights at she, until the only sounds were the low hiss of the gas-jets, Felicity Place, it did not take me long to settle into my role the steady ticking of the clock upon the mantel, and the there and find myself a new routine. This was quite as clink of my knife and fork against my plate. I thought indolent as the one I had enjoyed at Mrs Milne's; the involuntarily of those merry dinners in the Green Street difference, of course, was that here my indolence had a parlour, with Grace and Mrs Milne. I thought of the supper patron, a lady who paid to keep me well-fed, well-dressed I might be having with Florence, in the Judd Street public. and rested, and demanded only that my vanity should have But then I finished my meal, and Diana threw me one of her herself, in return, as its larger target.

pink cigarettes; and when I had grown giddy on that, she At Green Street I was used to waking rather early. Often came to me and kissed me. And then I remembered that it Grace would bring me tea at half-past seven or so - often, was hardly for table-talk that I had been engaged. indeed, she would clamber into the warm bed beside me, That night our love-making was more leisurely than it had and we would lie and talk till Mrs Milne called us to been before - almost, indeed, tender. Yet she surprised me breakfast; later I would wash, at the great sink in the by seizing my shoulder as I lay on the edge of sleep - my downstairs kitchen, and Grace would sometimes come and body delightfully sated and my arms and legs entwined comb my hair. At Felicity Place, I had nothing to rise for. with hers - and rousing me to wakefulness. The day had Breakfast was brought to me, and I received it at Diana's been a day of lessons for me; now came the last of all. side - or in my own bed, if she had sent me from her the

'You may go, Nancy,' she said, in exactly the tone I had night before. While she was dressed I would drink my heard her use on her maid and Mrs Hooper. 'I wish to sleep coffee and smoke a cigarette, and yawn and rub my eyes; alone tonight.'

frequently I would fall into a thin kind of slumber, and only It was the first time she had spoken to me as a servant, and wake again when she returned, in a coat and a hat, to slip a her words drove the lingering warmth of slumber quite

297

298

gloved hand beneath the counterpane and rouse me with a when out of her company, were a kind of blank. I could not pinch, or a lewd caress.

talk to the servants - to strange Mrs Hooper, with her veiled

'Wake up, and kiss your mistress good-bye,' she'd say. 'I and slithering glances; or to Blake, who flustered me by shan't be home till supper-time. You must amuse yourself curtseying to me and calling me 'miss'; or to Cook, who until I return.'

sent me lunch and supper, but never showed her face Then I would frown, and grumble. 'Where are you going?'

outside her kitchen. I might hear their voices, raised in

'On a visit, to a friend.'

mirth or dispute, if I paused at the green baize door that led Take me with you!"

to the basement; but I knew myself apart from them, and

'Not today.'

had my own tight beat to keep to: the bedrooms, and

'I might sit in the brougham while you make your call..." Diana's parlour, and the drawing-room and library. My

'I would rather you were here, for me to return to.'

mistress had said she wouldn't care to have me leave the

'You are cruel!'

house, unchap-eroned - indeed, she had Mrs Hooper lock She would smile, then kiss me. And then she would go; and the great front door: I heard her turn the key each time she I would only sink, again, into stupidity.

stepped to close it.

When I rose at last, I would call for a bath. Diana's I did not much mind my lack of liberty; as I have said, the bathroom was a handsome one: I might spend an hour or warmth, the luxury, the kissing and the sleep made me more in there, soaking in the perfumed water, parting my grow stupid, and lazier than ever. I might drift from room to hair, applying the macassar, examining myself before the room, soundless and thoughtless, pausing perhaps to gaze at glass for marks of beauty or for blemishes. In my old life I the paintings on the walls; or at the quiet streets and had made do with soap, with cold-cream and lavender scent gardens of St John's Wood; or at myself, in Diana's various and the occasional swipe of spit-black. Now, from the looking-glasses. I was like a spectre - the ghost, I crown of my head to the curve of my toe-nails, there was an sometimes imagined, of a handsome youth, who had died in unguent for every part of me - oil for my eyebrows and that house and still walked its corridors and chambers, cream for my lashes; a jar of tooth-powder, a box of blancsearching, searching, for reminders of the life that he had de-perle; polish for my fingernails and a scarlet stick to lost there.

redden my mouth; tweezers for drawing the hairs from my

'What a scare you gave me, miss!' the maid might say, hand nipples, and a stone to take the hard flesh from my heels. at her heart, after she had come upon me, lingering at a It was quite like dressing for the halls again - except that bend in the stair or in the shadows of some curtain or then, of course, I had had to change at the side of the stage, alcove; but when I smiled and asked what work had she to while the band switched tempo; now, I had entire days to do there? or, did she know if the day were a fine or a dull prink in. For Diana was my only audience; and my hours,

299

300

one? she would only blush and look frightened: 'I'm sure, surgery or house of correction, appealed to her; only when miss, I couldn't say.'

really heated would she call the thing by its proper name - The climax of my day, the event to which my thoughts and even then she was as likely to ask for Monsieur Dildo, naturally tended, and which gave direction and meaning to or simply Moi7Sj'eur). Besides this there was an album of the hours before it, was Diana's return. There was drama to photographs of big-buttocked girls with hairless parts, be had in the choosing of the chamber, and the pose, in bearing feathers; also a collection of erotic pamphlets and which I would arrange myself for her. She might find me novels, all hymning the delights of what I would call smoking in the library, or dozing, with unfastened buttons, tommistry but what they, like Diana, called Sapphic in her parlour; I would feign surprise at her entry, or let her Passion. They were gross enough, I suppose, in their way; rouse me if I pretended sleep. My pleasure at her but I had never seen the like of them before, and would appearance, however, was real enough. I at once lost that gaze at them, squirming, till Diana laughed. Then there sense of ghostliness, that feeling of waiting in the wing, and were cords, and straps and switches - the kind of thing that grew warm and substantial again before the blaze of her might be found, I suppose, in a strict governess's closet, attention. I would light her a cigarette, pour her a drink. If certainly nothing heavier. Lastly, there were more of she was weary I would lead her to a chair and stroke her Diana's rose-tipped cigarettes. They contained, as I guessed temples; if she was footsore - she wore high black boots, very early on, some fragrant French tobacco that was mixed very tightly laced -I would bare her legs and rub the blood with hashish; and they were, I thought, the pleasantest back into her toes. If she was amorous - as she frequently things of all, since, when used in combination with the was - I would kiss her. She might have me caress her in the other items, they rendered their interesting effects more library or drawing-room, heedless of the servants who interesting still.

passed beyond the closed door, or who knocked and, at our I might be weary or stupid; I might be nauseous with drink; breathy answering silence, retired unbidden. Or she might I might be sore, at the hips, with the ache of my monthlies, send orders that she was not to be disturbed, and lead me to but the opening of this box, as I have said, never ceased to her parlour, to the secret drawer that held the key that stir me -I was like a dog twitching and slavering to hear his unlocked the rosewood trunk.

mistress call out Bone!

The opening of this still enthralled and excited me, though I And every jerk, every slaver, made Diana more complacent. had soon grown used to handling its contents. They were,

'How vain I am, of my little hoard!' she would say, as we perhaps, mild enough. There was, of course, the dildo that I lay smoking in the soiled sheets of her bed. She might be have described (though the device, or the instrument, was clad in nothing but a corset and a pair of purple gloves; I what I learned, following Diana, to call it: I think the would have the dildo about me, perhaps with a rope of unnecessary euphemism, with its particular odour of the pearls wound round it. She would reach to the foot of the

301

302

bed, and run her hand across the gaping box, and laugh. 'Of as the toe of my boot upon a London street in all that time - all the gifts I've given you,' she said once, 'this is the finest, when she declared one night at supper that I ought to be isn't it, isn't it? Where in London would you find its like?'

barbered. I looked up from my plate, thinking she meant to

'Nowhere!' I answered. 'You're the boldest bitch in the city!'

take me into Soho for it; in fact, she only rang for the

'l am!'

servants: I had to sit in a chair with a towel about me, while

'You're the boldest bitch, with the cleverest quim. If fucking Blake held the comb and the housekeeper plied the scissors. were a country - well, fuck me, you'd be its queen . . . !'

'Gently with her, gently!' called Diana, looking on. Mrs These were the words which, pricked on by my mistress, I Hooper came close to trim the hair above my brow, and I used now - lewd words which shocked and stirred me even felt her breath, quick and hot, upon my cheek. as I said them. I had never thought to use them with Kitty. I But the hair-cut turned out to be only the prelude to had not fucked her, we had not frigged; we had only ever something better. Next morning I woke in Diana's bed to kissed and trembled. It was not a quim or a cunt she had find her dressed, and gazing at me with her old enigmatic between her legs - indeed, in all our nights together, I don't smile. She said, 'You must get up. I have a treat for you believe we ever gave a name to it all...

today. Two treats, indeed. The first is in your bedroom.'

Only let her see me now, I thought, as I lay beside Diana,

'A treat?' I yawned; the word had lost its charge for me, making the necklace of pearls more secure about the dildo; rather. 'What is it, Diana?'

and Diana herself would reach to stroke her box again, and

'It's a suit.'

then lean and stroke me.

'What kind of suit?'

'Only see what I'm mistress of!' she would say with a sigh.

'A coming-out suit.'

'Only see - only see what I own!'

'Coming-out -?'

I would draw on the cigarette till the bed seemed to tilt; I went at once.

then I'd lie and laugh, while she clambered upon me. Once I Now, since my very first trouser-wearing days at Mrs let a fag fall on the silken counterpane, and smiled to see it Dendy's, I had sported a wonderful variety of gentlemen's smoulder as we fucked. Once I smoked so much I was sick. suits. From the plain to the pantomimic, from the military Diana rang for Blake and, when she came, cried: 'Look at to the effeminate, from the brown broad-cloth to the yellow my tart, Blake, resplendent even in her squalor! Did you velveteen - as soldier, sailor, valet, renter, errand-boy, ever see a brute so handsome? Did you?' Blake said that she dandy and comedy duke - I had worn them all, and worn had not; then dipped a cloth in water, and wiped my mouth. them wisely and rather well. But the costume that awaited It was Diana's vanity, at last, that broke the spell of my me in my bedroom that day in Diana's villa in Felicity Place confinement. I had passed a month with her - had left the was the richest and the loveliest I ever wore; and I can house only to stroll about the garden, had set not so much remember it still, in all its marvellous parts.

303

304

There was a jacket and trousers of bone-coloured linen, and myself as I stood smoking. I looked -I think I can say a waistcoat, slightly darker, with a silken back. These came without vanity - a treat. The suit, like all expensive clothes, wrapped together in a box lined with velvet; in a separate had a bearing and a lustre all of its own: it would have package I found three piqu6 shirts, each a shade lighter than made more or less anyone look handsome. But Diana had the one before it, and each so fine and closely woven it ordered wisely. The bleached linen complemented the dull shone like satin, or like the surface of a pearl. gold of my hair and the fading renter's tan at my cheek and Then there were collars, white as a new tooth; studs, of wrists. The flash of amber at my throat set off my blue eyes opal, and cuff-links of gold. There was a neck-tie and a and my darkened lashes. The trousers had a vertical crease, cravat of an amber-coloured, watered silk: they gleamed and made my legs seem longer and more slender than ever; and rippled as I drew them from their tissue, and slithered and they bulged at the buttons, where I had rolled one of the from my fingers to the floor like snakes. A flat wooden case scented doe-skin gloves. I was, I saw, almost unsettlingly held gloves - one pair of kid, with covered buttons, the attractive. Framed by the wooden surround of the mirror, other of doe-skin and fragrant as musk. In a velvet bag I my left leg slightly bent, one hand hanging loosely at my found socks and drawers and undershirts - not of flannel, as thigh and the other with its fag arrested half-way on its my linen had been till now, but of knitted silk. For my head journey to my faintly carmined lips, I looked not like there was a creamy homburg with a trim that matched the myself at all, but like some living picture, a blond lord or neckties; for my feet there was a pair of shoes - a pair of angel whom a jealous artist had captured and transfixed shoes of a chestnut leather so warm and rich I felt behind the glass. I felt quite awed.

compelled at once to apply my cheek to it, and then my There came a movement at the door. I turned, and found lips; and finally, my tongue.

Diana there: she had been watching me as I gazed at A last, flimsy package I almost overlooked: this held a set myself-I had been too taken with my own good looks to of handkerchiefs, each one as fine and fragile as the pique notice her. In her hand she held a spray of flowers, and now shirts and each embroidered with a tiny, flowing N.K. The she came to attach them to my coat. She said, 'It should be suit, in all its parts, with all its delicate, harmonising narcissi, I did not think of it': the flowers were violets. I textures and hues, enchanted me; but this last detail, and the bent my head to them as she worked at my lapel, and unmistakable stamp of permanence it conferred upon my breathed their perfume; a single bloom, come loose from relations with the passionate and generous mistress of my the stem, fluttered to the carpet and was crushed beneath curious new home - well, this last detail satisfied me most her heel.

of all.

When she had finished at my breast she took my cigarette I bathed then, and dressed before the glass; and then I threw to smoke, and stepped back to survey her handiwork - just back the window-shutters, lit a cigarette, and gazed upon as Walter had done, so long ago, at Mrs Dendy's. It seemed

305

306

my fate to be dressed and fashioned and admired by others. She said, 'Mrs Lethaby, ma'am, how pleasant! Mrs Jex is I didn't mind it. I only thought back to the blue serge suit of expecting you in the day-room, I believe.' Diana nodded, those innocent days, and gave a laugh.

and reached to sign her name upon a sheet. Miss Hawkins The laugh brought a hardness to my eyes, that made them glanced again at me. 'Shall the gentleman be waiting for sparkle. Diana saw, and nodded complacently.

you, here?' she said.

'We shall be a sensation,' she said. 'They will adore you, I Diana's pen moved smoothly on, and she did not raise her know it.'

eyes. She said: 'Don't be tiresome, Hawkins. This is Miss

'Who?' I asked then. 'Who have you dressed me for?'

King, my companion.' Miss Hawkins looked harder at me, Tm taking you out, to meet my friends. I'm taking you,' she then blushed.

put a hand to my cheek, 'to my club.'

'Well, I'm sure, Mrs Lethaby, I can't speak for the ladies; The Cavendish Ladies' Club it was called; and it was but some might consider this a little - irregular.'

situated in Sackville Street, just up from Piccadilly. I knew

'We are here,' answered Diana, screwing the pen together, the road well, I knew all those roads; yet I had never

'for the sake of the irregular.' Then she turned and looked noticed the building - the slender, grey-faced building - to me over, raising a hand to twitch at my necktie, licking the which Diana now had Shilling drive us. Its step, I suppose, tip of one glove-clad finger to smooth at my brow, and is rather shadowy, and its name-plate is small, and its door finally plucking the hat from my head and arranging my is narrow; having visited it once, however, I never missed it hair.

again.

The hat she left for Miss Hawkins to deal with. Then she Go to Sackville Street today, if you like, and try to spot it: put her arm securely through mine, and led me up a flight you shall walk the length of the pavement, quite three or of stairs into the day-room.

four times. But when you find the grey-faced building, rest This room, like the lobby below it, is grand. I cannot say a moment looking up at it; and if you see a lady cross its what colour they have it now; in those days it was panelled shadowy threshold, mark her well.

in golden damask, and its carpets were of cream, and its She will walk - as I walked with Diana that day - into a sofas blue ... It was decked, in short, in all the colours of lobby: the lobby is smart-looking, and in it sits a neat, plain, my own most handsome self - or, rather, I was decked to ageless woman behind a desk. When I first went there, this match it. This idea, I must confess, was disconcerting; for a woman was named Miss Hawkins. She was ticking entries second, Diana's generosity began to seem less of a in a ledger as we arrived, but looked up when she saw compliment than I had thought it, posed that morning Diana, and gave a smile. When she saw me, the smile grew before the glass.

smaller.

But all performers dress to suit their stages, I recalled. And what a stage was this - and what an audience!

307

308

There were about thirty of them, I think - all women; all Diana placed me before them all, and presented me - more seated at tables, bearing drinks and books and papers. You graciously than she had introduced me to Miss Hawkins, might have passed any one of them upon the street, and but again as her 'companion'; and the ladies laughed. The thought nothing; but the effect of their appearance all first of them, the one who had risen to greet us, now seized combined was rather queer. They were dressed, not my hand. Her fingers held a stubby cigar.

strangely, but somehow distinctly. They wore skirts - but

'This, Nancy dear,' said my mistress, 'is Mrs Jex. She is the kind of skirts a tailor might design if he were set, for a quite my oldest friend in London - and quite the most dare, to sew a bustle for a gent. Many seemed clad in disreputable. Everything she tells you will be designed to walking-suits or riding-habits. Many wore pince-nez, or corrupt.'

carried monocles on ribbons. There were one or two rather I bowed to her. I said, 'I hope so, indeed.' Mrs Jex gave a startling coiffures; and there were more neckties than I had roar.

ever before seen brought together at an exclusively female

'But it speaks!' she cried. 'All this' - she gestured to my face, ensemble.

my costume - 'and the creature even speaks!'

I did not notice all these details at once, of course; but the Diana smiled, and raised a brow. 'After a fashion,' she said. room was a large one and, since Diana took her time to lead I blinked, but Mrs Jex still held my hand, and now she me across it, I had leisure to gaze about me as she did so. squeezed it. 'Diana is brutal to you, Miss Nancy, but you We walked through a hush that was thick as bristling velvet must not mind it. Here at the Cavendish we have been

- for, at our appearance at the door the lady members had positively panting to see you and make you our particular turned their heads to stare, and then had goggled. Whether, friend. You must call me "Maria"' - she pronounced it the like Miss Hawkins, they took me for a gentleman; or old-fashioned way - 'and this is Evelyn, and Dickie. Dickie, whether - like Diana - they had seen through my disguise at you can see, likes to think of herself as the boy of the place.'

once, I cannot say. Either way, there was a cry - 'Good I bowed to the ladies in turn. The former showed me a gracious!' - and then another exclamation, more lingering: smile; the one named Dickie (this was the one with the

'My word..." I felt Diana stiffen at my side, with pure monocle: I am sure it was of plain glass) only gave a toss to complacency.

her head, and looked haughty.

Then came another shout, as a lady at a table in the farthest

'This is the new Callisto then, is it?' she said. corner rose to her feet. 'Diana, you old roue! You have done She wore a boiled shirt and a bow-tie, and her hair, though it at last!' She gave a clap. Beside her, two more ladies long and bound, was sleek with oil. She was about two-or looked on, pink-faced. One of them had a monocle, and three-and-thirty, and her waist was thick; but her upper lip, now she fixed it to her eye.

at least, was dark as a boy's. They would have called her terribly handsome, I guessed, in about 1880.

309

310

Maria pressed my fingers again, and rolled her eyes; then eyelashes, and toe-nail clippings - old sanitary wrappings, she tilted her head, and when I bent to her - for she was from what I could see of it; and she has hair -'

rather short - she said, 'Now, my dear, you must satisfy our

'Hair, Diana,' broke in Dickie meaningfully.

appetite. We want the whole sordid story of your encounter

'-hair, which she has had made up into rings and aigrettes. with Diana. She herself will tell us nothing - only that the Lord Myers saw a brooch, and asked her where she bought night was warm; that the streets were gaudy; that the moon it, and Susan told him it was from the tail of a fox, and said was reeling through the clouds like a drunken woman she would have one made for him, for his wife! Can you looking for lovers. Tell us, Miss Nancy, tell us, do! Was the imagine? Now Lady Myers is to be found at, all the moon really reeling through the clouds, like a drunken fashionable parties with a sprig of Susan Dacre's sister-inwoman looking for her lovers?' She took a puff of her cigar, law's quim-hair at her bosom!'

and studied me. Evelyn and Dickie leaned and waited. I Diana smiled. 'And Susan's husband knows it all, and does looked from them back to Maria; and then I swallowed. not mind it?'

'It was,' I said at last, 'if Diana said it was.'

'Mind it? It is he who pays her jewellers' bills! You may And at that, Maria gave a startling laugh, low and loud and hear him boasting - I have heard him myself - of how he rapid as the rattle of a road-drill; and Diana took my arm plans to rename the estate New Lesbos.'

and made a space for me upon the sofa, and called for a

'New Lesbos!' Diana said mildly. Then she yawned. 'With waitress to bring us drinks.

that tired old lesbian Susan Dacre in it, it might just as well At the rest of the tables the ladies still looked on - some of be the original ..." She turned to me, and her voice dropped them, I could not help but notice, rather fastidiously. There a tone. 'Light me a cigarette, would you, child?'

had come some murmurs, and some whispers; also a titter I took two fags from the tortoise-shell case in my breast or two and a gasp. No one in our party paid the slightest pocket, lit them both at my own lip, then passed one over. heed to any of it. Maria kept her eyes fixed upon myself, The ladies watched me - indeed, even while they laughed and when our drinks arrived, she leered at me over her and chattered, they studied all my movements, all my parts. glass: 'To both ends of the busk!' she said, and gave me a When I leaned to knock the ash from my cigarette, they wink. Diana had her face turned, to catch a story from the blinked. When I ran a hand over the stubble at my hairline, lady named Evelyn. She was saying, 'Such a scandal, they coloured. When I parted my trouser-clad legs and Diana, you never heard! She has vowed herself to seven showed the bulge there, Maria and Evelyn, as one, gave a women, and sees them all on different days; one of them is shift in their chairs; and Dickie reached for her brandy glass her sister-in-law! She has put together an album - my dear, and disposed of its contents with one savage swig. I nearly died at the sight of it! - full of bits and pieces of After a moment, Maria came close again. She said, 'Now, stuff that she has cut off them or pulled out of them: Miss Nancy, we are still waiting for your history. We want

311

312

to know all about you, and so far you have done nothing but

'Hell, if I haven't scorched a hole through these dam'

tease.'

trousers!'

I said, 'There's nothing to know. You must ask Diana.'

The words came out louder than I meant them to; and as

'Diana speaks for the sake of cleverness, not truth. Tell me they did, there was an answering cry from the room at my now' - she had grown confiding - 'where were you born? back: 'Really, Mrs Lethaby, this is intolerable!' A lady had Was it some hard place? Was it some rookery, where you risen, and was approaching our table.

must sleep ten to a bed with your sisters?'

'I must protest, Mrs Lethaby,' she said when she arrived at

'A wokery!’ I thought very suddenly, and more vividly than it, 'I really must protest, on behalf of all the ladies present, I had in months, of our old front parlour at home - of the and absent, at the very great damage you are inflicting upon cloth with the fringe that dangled, fluttering, above the our club!'

hearth. I said, 'I was born in Kent, in Whitstable.' Maria Diana raised languid eyes to her. 'Damage, Miss Bruce? only stared. I said again, 'Whitstable - where the oysters Are you referring to the presence of my companion, Miss come from.'

King?'

At that, she threw back her head. 'Why my dear, you're a

'I am, ma'am.'

mermaid! Diana, did you know it? A Whitstable mermaid! 'You don't care for her?'

though thankfully,' and here she placed her free hand upon

'I don't care for her language, ma'am, or for her clothes!'

my knee, and patted it, 'thankfully, without the tail. That She herself wore a silk shirt with a cummerbund and a would never do, now would it?"

cravat; in the cravat there was a pin, cast in silver, of the I could not answer. Hot into my head after the image of our head of a horse. Now she stood expectantly at Diana's side; parlour had come the memory of Kitty, at her dressingand after a moment, Diana sighed. room door. Miss Mermaid, she had called me; and she had

'Well,' she said. 'I see we must bow to the members'

said it again that time in Stamford Hill, when she had heard pleasure.' She rose, then drew me up beside her and leaned me weeping, come, and kissed my tears . . .

rather ostentatiously upon my arm. 'Nancy, dear, you I gave a gulp, and put my cigarette to my lips. It was costume has proved too bold for the Cavendish after all. It smoked right down and almost burned me; and as I fumbled seems that I must take you home and rid you of it. Now, with it, it fell. It struck the sofa, bounced, then rolled who will ride with us to Felicity Place, to catch the sport..." between my legs. I reached for it - that made the ladies stare There was a ripple around the room. Maria rose at once, again, and twitch -but it was caught, still smouldering, and reached for her walking-cane. 'Tantivy, tantivy!' she between my buttock and the chair. I leapt up, found the fag cried. Then: 'Ho, Satin!' I heard a yelp, and from beneath at last, then pulled at the linen that covered my bum. I said, her chair there came - what I had not seen before, as it lay

313

314

dozing behind the curtain of her skirts - a handsome little us, then overhear their murmurs - 'Diana's caprice,' they whippet, on a pig-skin leash.

called me, as if I were an enthusiasm for a wonderful food, Dickie and Evelyn rose too, then. Diana inclined her head that a sensitive palate would tire of. Diana herself, however, to Miss Bruce, and I made her a deeper bow. All eyes had once having found me, seemed only increasingly been upon us as we made our entrance; all eyes were on us disinclined to let me go. With that one brief visit to the still, as we headed for the exit. I heard Miss Bruce return to Cavendish Club she had launched me on my new career as her seat, and someone call, 'Quite right, Vanessa!' But her permanent companion. Now came more excursions, another lady held my gaze as I passed her, and winked; and more visits, more trips; and more suits for me to make them from a table near the door a woman rose to say to Diana in. I grew complacent. I had once sat drooping on her that she hoped that Miss King's trousers had not been too parlour chair, expecting her to send me home with a desperately singed .. .

sovereign. Now, when the ladies whispered of 'this freak of The trousers were rather spoiled; back at Felicity Place, Diana Lethaby's', I brushed the lint from the sleeve of my Diana had me walk and bend before Maria and Evelyn and coat, drew my monogrammed hankie from my pocket, and Dickie, in order to decide it. She said she would order me smiled. When the autumn of 1892 became the winter, and another pair, just the same.

then the spring of '93, and still I kept my favoured place at

'What a find, Diana!' said Maria, as Evelyn patted the cloth. Diana's side, the ladies' whispers faded. I became at last not She said it as she might say it about a statue or a clock that Diana's caprice; but simply, her boy.

Diana had picked up for a song in some grim market. She

'Come to supper, Diana.'

didn't care whether I overheard or not. Why should it matter

'Come for breakfast, Diana.'

that I did? She meant it, she meant it! There was admiration

'Come at nine, Diana; and bring the boy.'

in her eyes. And being admired, by tasteful ladies - well, I For it was always as a boy that I travelled with her now, knew it wasn't being loved. But it was something. And I even when we ventured into the public world, the ordinary was good at it.

world beyond the circle of Cavendish Sapphists, the world Who would ever have thought I should be so good at it!

of shops and supper-rooms and drives in the park. To

'Take off your shirt, Nancy,' said Diana then, 'and let the anyone who asked after me, she would boldly introduce me ladies see your linen.'

as 'My ward, Neville King'; she had several requests for I did so, and Maria cried again, 'What a find!'

introductions, I believe, from ladies with eligible daughters.

These she turned aside: 'He's an Anglo-Catholic, ma'am,'

Chapter 13

she'd whisper, 'and destined for the Church. This is his final Diana's wider circle of friends, I believe, thought our union Season, before taking Holy Orders ..."

a fantastic one. I would sometimes see them look between

315

316

It was with Diana that I returned to the theatre again did this very often, for she was known - I suppose I might flinching to find her lead me to a box beside the foot-lights, have guessed it, in a way - as a philanthropist, and ladies flinching again as the chandeliers were dimmed. But they courted her for schemes. She gave money to certain were terribly grand, the theatres she preferred. They were lit charities. She sent books to girls in prisons. She was with electricity rather than gas; and the crowd sat hushed. I involved in the producing of a magazine for the Suffrage, could not see the pleasure in it. The plays I liked well named Shafts. She attended to all this, with me at her side. enough; but I would more often turn my gaze to the If I leaned to pick up a paper or a list and idly read it, she audience - and there was always plenty of eyes and glasses, would take the sheet away, as if gazing too hard at too of course, that were lifted from the stage and fastened on many words might tire me. In the end, I would settle on the me. I saw several faces that I knew from my old renter cartoons in Punch.

days. One time I stood washing my hands in the lavatory of These, then, were my public appearances. There were not a theatre and felt a gent look me over - he didn't know that too many of them -I am describing here a period that lasted he had had my lips on him already, in an alley off Jermyn about a year. Diana kept me close, for the most part, and Street; later I saw him in the audience, with his Wife. One displayed me at home. She liked to limit the numbers who time, too, I saw Sweet Alice, the mary-anne who had been gazed at me, she said; she said she feared that like a so kind to me in Leicester Square. He also sat in a box; and photograph I might fade, from too much handling. when he recognised me, he blew a kiss. He was with two When I say display, of course, I mean it: it was part of gents: I raised my brows, he rolled his eyes. Then he saw Diana's mystery, to make real the words that other people who it was I sat with - It was Diana and Maria -and he said in metaphor or jest. I had posed for Maria and Dickie stared. I gave a shrug, he looked thoughtful - then rolled his and Evelyn in my trousers with the scorch-mark and my eyes again, as much as to say, What a business!

under-things of silk. When they came a second time, with To all these places, as I have said, I went clad as a boy —

another lady, Diana had me pose for them again in a indeed, the only time I ever dressed as a girl, now, was for different suit. After that, it became a kind of sport with her, our visits to the Cavendish. This was the single spot in the to put me in a new costume and have me walk before her city at which Diana might have put me in trousers and not guests, or among them, filling glasses, lighting cigarettes. cared who knew it; but after Miss Bruce's complaint they Once she dressed me as a footman, in breeches and a introduced a new rule, and ever after I was taken there in powdered wig. It was the costume I had worn for skirts - Diana having something made up for me, I forget Cinderella, more or less - though my breeches at the Brit the cut and colour of it now. At the club I would sit and had not been so snug, nor so large at the groin. drink and smoke, and be flirted with by Maria, and eyed by The freak with the breeches inspired her further. She grew other ladies, while Diana met friends or wrote letters. She tired of gentlemen's suits; she took to displaying me in

317

318

masquerade - had me set up, behind a little velvet curtain in Then Diana came, and put a pink cigarette between my lips, the drawing-room. This would happen about once a week. and led me amongst the ladies and had them stroke the Ladies would come for dinner and I would eat with them, in leather. I cannot say if it was Kitty I thought of then, or trousers; but while they lingered over their coffee and the even Diana herself. I believe I thought I was a renter again, trimming of their fags I would leave them, and slip up to in Piccadilly - or, not a renter, but a renter's gent. For when my room to change my gear. By the time they made their I twitched and cried out there were smiles in the shadows; way into the drawing-room I would be behind the curtain, and when I shuddered, and wept, there was laughter. striking some pose; and when she was ready, Diana would I could help none of it. It was all Diana's doing. She was so pull a tasselled cord and uncover me.

bold, she was so passionate, she was so devilishly clever. I might be Perseus, with a curved sword and a head of the She was like a queen, with her own queer court -I saw it, at Medusa, and sandals with straps that were buckled at the those parties. Women sought her out, and watched her. knee. I might be Cupid, with wings and a bow. I was once They brought presents, 'for your collection' - her collection St Sebastian, tied to a stump - I remember what a job it was was talked about, and envied! When she made a gesture, to fasten the arrows so they would not droop.

they raised their heads to catch it. When she spoke, they Then, another night I was an Amazon. I carried the Cupid's listened. It was her voice, I think, which snared them - bow, but this time had one breast uncovered; Diana rouged those low, musical tones, which had once lured me from the nipple. Next week - she said I had shown one, I might my random midnight wanderings into the heart of her own as well show both - I was the French Marianne, with a dark world. Again and again I heard arguments crumble at a Phyrgian cap and a flag. The week after that I was Salome: cry or a murmur from Diana's throat; again and again the I had the Medusa head again, but on a plate, and with a scattered conversations of a crowded room would falter and beard stuck on it; and while the ladies clapped I danced die, as one speaker after another surrendered the slender down to my drawers.

threads of some anecdote or fancy to catch at the more And the week after that - well, that week I was compelling cadences of hers.

Hermaphroditus. I wore a crown of laurel, a layer of silver Her boldness was contagious. Women came to her, and greasepaint - and nothing else save, strapped to my hips, grew giddy. She was like a singer, shivering glasses. She Diana's Monsieur Dildo. The ladies gasped to see him. was like a cancer, she was like a mould. She was like the That made him quiver.

hero of one of her own gross romances - you might set her And as the quiver did its usual work on me, I thought of in a chamber with a governess and a nun, and in an hour Kitty. I wondered if she was still wearing suits and a topper, they would have torn out their own hair, to fashion a whip. still singing songs like 'Sweethearts and Wives'. I sound weary of her. I was not weary of her then. How could I have been? We were a perfect kind of double act.

319

320

She was lewd, she was daring - but who made that daring But there was one anniversary from the old order of things visible? Who could testify to the passion of her; to the that, even in the enchanted atmosphere of Felicity Place, sympathetic power of her; to the rare, enchanted surrounded by so much narcotic luxury, I could not quite atmosphere of her house in Felicity Place, where ordinary forget. One day, when I had been Diana's lover for a little ways and rules seemed all suspended, and wanton riot less than a year, I was woken by the rustle of news-sheet. reigned? Who, but I?

My mistress was beside me with the morning paper, and I I was proof of all her pleasures. I was the stain left by her opened my eyes upon a headline. Home Rule Bill, it said; lust. She must keep me, or lose everything.

Irish to Demonstrate June 3rd. I gave a cry. It was not the And I must keep her, or have nothing. I could not imagine a words which arrested me - they meant nothing to me. The life beyond her shaping. She had awakened particular date, however, was as familiar as my own name. June the appetites in me; and where else, I thought, but with Diana, third was my birthday; in a week I should be twenty-three. in the company of Sapphists - where else would those queer

'Twenty-three!' said Diana when I told her, in a kind of hungers be assuaged?

delight. 'What a really glorious age that is! With your youth I have spoken of the peculiarly timeless quality of my new still hot upon you, like a lover in a pant; and time with his life, of my removal from the ordinary workings of the face around the curtain, peeping on.' She could talk like hours, the days and the weeks. Diana and I often made love this, even first thing in the morning; I only yawned. But until dawn, and ate breakfast at nightfall; or else, we woke then she said that we must celebrate - and at that, I looked at the regular time, but stayed abed with the drapes closelivelier. 'What shall we do,' she said, 'that we haven't done drawn, and took our lunch by candle-light. Once we rang before? Where shall I take you . . . ?'

for Blake, and she came in her night-gown: it was half-past Where she hit upon, in the end, was the Opera. three, we had woken her from her bed. Another time I was The idea sounded a terrible one to me, though I did not like roused by bird-song: I squinted at the lines of light around to show it - I had not yet grown sulky with her, as I was the shutters, and realised I had not seen the sun for a week. later to do. And I was still too much of a child, not to be In a house kept uniformly warm by the labour of servants, anything other than enchanted with my own birthday, when and with a carriage to collect us and deposit us where we it finally arrived; and of course, there were presents - and wished, even the seasons lost their meanings or gained new presents never lost their charm.

ones. I knew winter had arrived only when Diana's I was given them at breakfast, in two gold parcels. The first walking-dresses changed from silk to corduroy, her cloaks was large, and held a cloak - a proper opera-going cloak, it from grenadine to sable; and when my own closet rail was, and very grand; but then, I had expected that, and sagged with astrakhan, and camel's-hair, and tweed. hardly considered it a gift at all. The second parcel, however, proved more marvellous. It was small and light: I

321

322

knew at once it must be some piece of jewellery - perhaps, The watch was my finest gift; but there was a present, too, a pair of links; or a stud for my cravats; or a ring. Dickie from Maria herself: a walking-cane, of ebony, with a tassel wore a ring on the smallest finger of her left hand, and I had at the top and a silver tip. It went very well with my new often admired it - yes, I was sure it must be a ring, like opera gear; indeed, we made a very striking couple that Dickie's.

night, Diana and I, for her costume was of black and white But it was not a ring. It was a watch, of silver, on a slender and silver, to match my own. It came from Worth's: I strap of leather. It had two dark arms to show the minutes thought we must look just as if we had stepped out from the and the hours, and a faster, sweeping arm to count the pages of a fashion paper. I made sure, when walking, to seconds. Upon the face, there was glass: the arms were hold my left arm very straight, so the watch would show. moved by the winder. I turned it in my hands, Diana We dined in a room at the Solferino. We dined with Dickie smiling as I did so. 'It's for your wrist,' she said at last. and Maria - Maria brought Satin, her whippet, and fed him I gazed at her in wonder - people never wore wrist-watches dainties from a plate. The waiters had been told it was my then, it was marvellously exotic and new - then tried to birthday, and fussed around me, offering wine. 'How old is buckle the watch upon my arm. I could not manage it, of the young gentleman today?' they asked Diana; and the way course: like so many of the things in Felicity Place, you they asked it showed they thought me younger than I was. really needed a maid to do it properly. In the end, Diana They might, I suppose, have taken Diana for my mother; fastened it for me; and then we both sat gazing at the little for various reasons, the idea was not a nice one. Once, face, the sweeping hand, and listened to the ticking. though, I had stopped at a shoe-black while Diana and her I said, 'Diana, it's the most wonderful thing I ever saw!', and friends stood near to watch it, and the man - catching sight she pinked, and looked pleased: she was a bitch, but she of Dickie and reading tommishness, as many regular people was human, too.

do, as a kind of family likeness - asked me if she, Dickie, Later, when Maria came to call, I showed her the watch and were not my Auntie, taking me out for the day; and it had she nodded and smiled at it, stroking my wrist beneath the been worth being mistaken for a schoolboy, for the sake of leather of the strap. Then she laughed. 'My dear, the time is her expression. She once or twice tried to compete with me, wrong! You have it set at seven, and it's only a quarter-past on the question of suits. The night of my birthday, for four!'

example, she wore a shirt with cuff-links and, above her I looked at the face again, and gave a frown of surprise. I skirt, a short gent's cloak. At her throat, however, she had a had been wearing it as a kind of bracelet, only: it had not jabot - I should never have worn anything so effeminate. occurred to me to tell the time with it. Now I moved the She did not know it - she would have been horrified to arms to 4 and 3, for Maria's sake - but there was really no know it! - but she looked like nothing so much as a weary need, of course, for me ever to wind it at all. old mary-anne - one of the kind you see sometimes holding

323

324

court, with younger boys, on Piccadilly: they have rented so reached the desk at last and he tilted his face to the long they're known as queens.

garments I gave him, I saw that he was Billy-Boy, my old Our supper was a very fine one, and when it was over smoking-partner from the Brit.

Diana sent a waiter for a cab. As I have said, I had thought At first, I only stared; I think, actually, that I was her plan not much of a treat; but even I could not help being considering how I might best make my escape before he excited as our hansom joined the line of rocking carriages saw me. But then, when he tugged at the coats and I failed at the door of the Royal Opera, and we - Diana, Maria, to release them, he raised his eyes - and I knew that he Dickie and I - entered the crush of gentlemen and ladies in didn't recognise me at all, only wondered why I hesitated; the lobby. I had never been here before; had never, in a year and the thought made me terribly sorry. I said, 'Bill', and he of fitful chaperoning, been part of such a rich and looked harder. Then he said: 'Sir?'

handsome crowd - the gents, like me, all in cloaks and silk I swallowed. I said again, 'Bill. Don't you remember me?" hats and carrying glasses; the ladies in diamonds, and Then I leaned and lowered my voice. 'It's Nan,' I said, 'Nan wearing gloves so high and slender they might all have just King.' His face changed. He said, 'My God!'

left off dipping their arms, to the armpit, in tubs of milk. Behind me, the queue had grown longer; now there came a We stood jostling in the lobby for a moment or two, Diana cry: 'What's the delay there?' Bill took the coats from me at exchanging nods with certain ladies that she recognised, last, walked quickly to a hook with them, and gave me a Maria holding Satin at her bosom, out of the crush of heels ticket. Then he stepped a little to one side, leaving his and trains and sweeping cloaks. Dickie said she would fetch friend to struggle with the cloaks, for a minute, on his own. us a tray of drinks, and went off to do so. Diana said, 'Take I moved too, away from the jostling gents, and we stood our coats, Neville, will you?' nodding to a counter where facing each other across the desk, shaking our heads. His two men stood, in uniform, receiving cloaks. She turned to brow was shiny with sweat. His uniform was a white bumlet me draw the coat from her, Maria did the same, and I shaver jacket and a cheap bow-tie, of scarlet. picked my way across the lobby with them, then paused to He said, 'Lord, Nan, but you gave me a fright! I thought you unfasten my own cloak -thinking all the time, only, what a must be some gentleman I owed money to.' He looked at handsome gathering it was, and how well I looked in it! and my trousers, my jacket, my hair. 'What are you up to, making sure that the coats I carried weren't falling over my wandering about like that, here?’ He wiped his brow, then wrist and obscuring the watch. The counter had a queue at looked about him. 'Are you here with an agent? You're not it, and as I waited I looked idly at the men whose job it was in the show, Nan - are you?'

to collect the cloaks from the gents, and give them tickets. I shook my head; and then I said, very quietly, 'You mustn't One of them was slim, with a sallow face - he might have say "Nan" now, Bill. The fact is -' The fact was, I hadn't been Italian. The other man was a black man. When I

325

326

thought what I would tell him. I hesitated; but it was married to Flora, and Flora was still with Kitty; and Kitty impossible to lie to him: 'Bill, I'm living as a boy just now.'

had a spot at the Middlesex Music Hall. And that was about

'As a boy?’ He said it loudly; then put a hand before his three streets away from where I stood now.

mouth. Even so, one or two of the grumbling gents in the And Kitty, of course, was married to Walter.

queue turned their heads. I edged a little further away from Are they happy? I wanted to call to Bill then. Does she talk them. I said again: 'I'm living as a boy, with a lady who of me, ever? Does she think of me? Does she miss me? But takes care of me . . .' And at that, at last, he looked a little when he returned - looking even more flustered and damp more knowing, and nodded.

about the brow - I said only, 'How's - how's the act, Bill?'

Behind him, the Italian dropped a gentleman's hat, and the The act?' He sniffed. 'Not so good, I don't think. Not so gentleman tutted. Bill said, 'Can you wait?' and stepped to good as the old days ..."

help his friend by taking another couple of cloaks. Then he We gazed at one another. I looked harder at his face, and moved towards me again. The Italian looked sour. saw that he had gained a bit of weight beneath his chin, and I glanced over to Diana and Maria. The lobby had emptied that the flesh about his eyes was rather darker than I knew a bit; they stood waiting for me. Maria had placed Satin on it. Then the Italian called, 'Bill, will you come?' And Bill the floor and he was scratching at her skirt. Diana turned to said that he must go.

catch my eye. I looked at Bill.

I nodded, and held my hand out to him. As he shook it, he

'How are you, then?' I asked him.

seemed to hesitate again. Then he said, very quickly, 'You He looked rueful, and lifted his hand: there was a weddingknow, we was all really sorry, when you took off like that, ring on it. He said, 'Well, I am married now, for a start!'

from the Brit.' I shrugged. 'And Kitty,' he went on, 'well,

'Married! Oh, Bill, I am happy for you! Who's the girl? It's Kitty was sorriest of all of us. She put notices, with Walter, not Flora? Not Flora, our old dresser?' He nodded, and said in the Era and the Ref, week after week. Did you never see it was.

'em, Nan, those notices?'

'It is on account of Flora,' he added, 'that I am working here.

'No, Bill, I never did.'

She has a job on round the corner, a month at the Old Mo. He shook his head. 'And now, here you are, dressed up like She is still, you know' - he looked suddenly rather awkward a lord!' But he gave my suit a dubious glance, and added:

- 'she is still, you know, dressing Kitty ..."

'You're sure though, are you, that you're doing all right?'

I stared at him. There came more mutters from the queue of I didn't answer him. I only looked over to Diana again. She gents, and more sour looks from the Italian, and he stepped was tilting her head to gaze after me; beside her stood back again to help with the cloaks and hats and tickets. I Maria, and Satin, and Dickie. Dickie held our tray of lifted a hand to my head, and put my fingers through my drinks, and had placed her monocle at her eye. She said, hair, and tried to understand what he had told me. He was

327

328

'The wine will warm, Diana,' in a pettish sort of voice: the had made us late, however, and the stalls were almost full: lobby was thinned of people, I could hear her very clearly. we had to stumble over twenty pairs of legs to reach our Diana tilted her head again: 'What is the boy doing?'

seats. Dickie spilled her wine. Satin snapped at a lady with

'He is talking to the nigger,' answered Maria, 'at the cloaks!'

a fox-fur around her throat. Diana, when she sat at last, was I felt my cheeks flame red, and looked quickly back at Bill. thin-lipped and self-conscious: this was not the kind of His gaze had followed mine, but now had been caught by a entrance she had planned for us, at all.

gentleman offering a coat, and he was lifting the garment And I sat, numb to her, numb to all of it. I could think only over the counter, and already turning with it to the row of of Kitty. That she was still in the halls, in her act with hooks.

Walter. That Bill saw her daily - would see her later, after

'Good-bye, Bill,' I said, and he nodded over his shoulder, the show, when he fetched Flora. That even now, while the and gave me a sad little smile of farewell. I took a step actors in the opera we had come to see were putting on their away -but then, very quickly, I returned to the counter and grease-paint, she was sitting in a dressing-room three streets put my hand upon his arm. I said: 'What's Kitty's place, on away, putting on hers.

the bill at the Mo?'

As I thought all this, the conductor appeared, and was

'Her place?' He thought about it, folding another cloak. 'I'm clapped; the lights went down, and the crowd grew silent. not sure. Second half, near the start, half-past nine or so ..." When the music started and the curtain went up at last, I Then Maria's voice came calling: 'Is there trouble, Neville, gazed at the stage in a kind of stupor. And when the singing over the tip?'

began, I flinched. The opera was Figaro's Wedding. I knew then that if I lingered near him any longer some I can remember hardly any of it. I thought only of Kitty. terrible sort of scene would ensue. I didn't look at him again My seat seemed impossibly narrow and hard, and I shifted but went back to Diana at once, and said it was nothing, I and turned in it, till Diana leaned to whisper that I must be was sorry. But when she raised a hand to smooth back the still. I thought of all the times I had walked through the hair I had unsettled, I flinched, feeling Bill's eyes upon me; city, fearful of turning a corner and seeing Kitty there; I and when she pulled my arm through hers, and Maria thought of the disguise I had adopted, to avoid her. Indeed, stepped around me to take my other arm, the flesh upon my avoiding Kitty had become, in my renter days, a kind of back seemed to give a kind of shudder, as if there was a second nature to me, so that there were whole areas of pistol pointed at it.

London through which I automatically never passed, streets The hall itself, which was so grand and glorious, I only at which I didn't have to pause, for thought, before I turned gazed at rather dully. We did not have a box - there had not away to find another. I was like a man with a bruise or a been time to book a box - but our seats were very good broken limb, who learns to walk in a crowd so that the ones, in the centre of one of the front rows of the stalls. I wound might not be jostled. Now, knowing that Kitty was

329

330

so near, it was as if I was compelled to press the bruise, to Walter's old stage-name. They were, as Bill had said, twist the shrieking limb, myself. The music grew louder, placed near the start of the second half-fourteenth on the and my head began to ache; my seat seemed narrower than list, after a singer and a Chinese conjuror.

ever. I looked at my watch, but the lights were too low for In the booth inside sat a girl in a violet dress. I went to her me to read it; I had to tilt it so that its face caught the glow window, then nodded to the hall. 'Who's on stage?' I asked. from the stage, and in doing so, my elbow caught Diana and

'What number are they at?' She looked up; and when she made her sigh with pique, and glare at me. The watch saw my suit, she tittered.

showed five to nine - how glad I was that I had wound it,

'You've lost your way, dearie,' she said. 'You want the now! The opera was just at that ridiculous point where the Opera, round the corner.' I bit my lip, and said nothing, and countess and the maid have forced the principal boy into a her smile faded. 'All right, Lord Alfred,' she said then. 'It's frock and locked him in a closet, and the singing and the number twelve, Belle Baxter, Cockney Chanteuse.'

rushing about is at its worst. I turned to Diana. I said, I bought a sixpenny ticket - she pulled a face at that, of

'Diana, I can't bear it. I shall have to wait for you in the course: 'Thought we should have the red carpet brung up, at lobby.' She put a hand out to grip my arm, but I shook her the least.' The truth was, I dared not venture too close to the away, and rose and - saying 'Pardon me, oh! pardon me!' to stage. I imagined Billy-Boy having come to the theatre and every tutting lady and gent whose legs I stumbled over or told Kitty that he had met me, and how I was dressed. I feet I trampled, I made my halting way along the row, remembered how near the crowd could seem, from a stage towards the usher and the door.

in a small hall, when you stepped out of the limes; and in Outside, the lobby was wonderfully quiet after all the my coat and my bow-tie, of course, I would be

shrieking on the stage. At the coat-desk the Italian man sat conspicuous. How terrible it would be, to have Kitty see me with a paper. When I went over to him, he sniffed: 'He ain't as I watched her - to have her fix her eyes on mine, as she here,' he said, when I asked after Bill. 'He don't stay once sang to Walter!

the show starts. Did you want your cloak?'

So I went up to the gallery. The stairs were narrow: when I I said I didn't. I left the theatre, and headed for Drury Lane turned a corner and found a couple there, spooning, I had to very conscious of my suit, and the shine on my shoes, and step around them, very close. Like the girl in the booth, the flower at my lapel. When I reached the Middlesex I they gazed at my suit and, as she had done, they tittered. I found a group of boys outside it studying the programme could hear the thumping of the orchestra through the wall. and commenting on the acts. I went and peered over their As I climbed to the door at the top of the staircase and the shoulders, looking for the names I wanted, and a number. thumps grew louder, my own heart seemed to beat against Walter Waters and Kitty, I saw at last: it gave me a shock to my breast, in time to them. When I passed into the hall at know that Kitty had lost her Butler, and was working under

331

332

last - into the lurid half-light, and the heat and the smoke Palace, with my fluttering heart and my gloves with the and the reek of the calling crowd -I almost staggered. bows: it seemed a time immeasurably distant and quaint. On the stage was a girl in a flame-coloured frock, twitching But, as I had used to do then, I clutched the sticky velvet of her skirts so her stockings showed. She finished one song my seat, and gazed at where, with a hint of drooping rope while I stood there, clutching at a pillar to steady myself; and dusty floorboard, the stage gave way to the wings, and I and then she started on another. The crowd seemed to know thought of Kitty. She was there, somewhere, just beyond it. There were claps, and whistles; and before these had the edge of the curtain, perhaps straightening her costume - quite died down, I made my way along the aisle to an whatever that was; perhaps chatting with Walter or Flora; empty seat. It turned out to be at the end of a line of boys - perhaps staring, as Billy-Boy told her of me - perhaps a bad choice, for, of course, when they saw me there in my smiling, perhaps weeping, perhaps saying only, mildly, opera suit and my flower, they nudged each other, and

'Fancy that!' - and then forgetting me ...

sniggered. One coughed into his hand - only the cough I thought all this, and the magician performed his final came out as Toff! I turned my face from them, and looked trick. There was another flash, and more smoke: the smoke hard at the stage. Then, after a moment, I took out a drifted as far as the gallery, and left the entire crowd cigarette and lit it. As I struck the match, my hand coughing, but cheering through their coughs. The curtain trembled.

fell, there was another delay while the number was The Cockney Chanteuse finished her set at last. There were changed, and then a quiver of blue, white and amber, as the cheers, then a brief delay, marked by shouts and shuffling limes-man changed the filter across his beam. I had finished and rustling, before the orchestra struck up with its my cigarette, and now reached for another. This time, the introduction for the next act - a tinkling, Chinese melody, boys in my row all saw me do it, so I held the case to them, which made a boy in the line along from me stand up, and and they each took a fag: 'Very generous.' I thought of call out, 'Ninky-poo!' Then the curtain rose on a magician Diana. Suppose the opera had ended, and she was waiting and a girl, and a black japanned cabinet - a cabinet not for me, cursing, beating her programme against her thigh? unlike the one that sat in Diana's bedroom. When the Suppose she went back to Felicity Place, without me? magician snapped his fingers, there was a flash, and a But then there came music, and the creak of the curtain. I crack, and a puff of purple smoke; and at that the boys put looked at the stage - and Walter was on it.

their fingers to their lips, and whistled.

He seemed very large - much larger than I remembered. I had seen - or felt as if I had seen - a thousand such acts; Perhaps he had grown fatter; perhaps his costume was a and I watched this one now, with my cigarette gripped hard little padded. His whiskers he had teased with a comb, to between my lips, growing steadily more sick and more make them stand out rather comically. He wore tartan peguncertain. I remembered sitting in my box at the Canterbury top trousers and a green velvet jacket; and on his head was

333

334

a smok-ing-cap, in his pocket a pipe. Behind him, there was sailor-suit -a baggy white blouse with a blue sash, white a cloth with a scene on it representing a parlour. Beside him knickerbockers, stockings, and flat brown shoes; and she was an armchair that he leaned on as he sang. He was quite had a straw hat slung over her back, on a ribbon. Her hair alone. I had never seen him in costume and paint before. He was rather longer, and had been combed into a curl. Now was so unlike the figure I still saw, sometimes, in my the band struck up another tune, and she joined her voice dreams - the figure with the flapping shirt, the dampened with Walter's in a duet.

beard, the hand on Kitty - that I looked at him, and The crowd clapped her, and smiled. She skipped, and frowned: my heart had barely twitched, to see him standing Walter bent and wagged a finger at her, and they laughed. there.

They liked this turn. They liked seeing Kitty — my lovely, His voice was a mild baritone, and not at all unpleasant; saucy, swaggering Kitty - play the child, with her husband, there had been a burst of applause at his first appearance, in stockings to the knee. They could not see me, as I and there was another round of satisfied clapping now, and blushed and squirmed; they would not have known why I one or two cheers. His song, however, was a strange one: did it, if they had. I hardly knew it, myself; I only felt he sang of a son that he had lost, named 'Little Jacky'. There myself smart with a terrible shame. I could not have felt were a number of verses, each of them ending on the same worse if they had booed her, or pelted her with eggs. But refrain - it might have been, 'Where, oh where, is Little they liked her!

Jacky now?' I thought it queer he should be there, singing I looked at her a little harder. Then I remembered my opera such a song, alone. Where was Kitty? I drew hard on my glasses, and pulled them from my pocket and lifted them to cigarette. I couldn't imagine how she would fit into this my eyes, and saw her close before me, as close as in a routine, in a silk hat, a bow-tie and a flower . . . dream. Her hair, though longer, was still nut-brown. Her Suddenly a horrible idea began to form itself in my mind. lashes were still long, she was still as slender as a willow. Walter had taken a handkerchief from his pocket, and was She had painted out her own lovely freckles and replaced dabbing at his eye with it. His voice rose on the predictable them with a few comical smudges; but I — who had traced chorus, and was joined by not a few from the hall: 'But the pattern of them, so often, with my fingers - I thought I where, oh where, is Little Jacky now?' I shifted in my seat. I could catch the shape of them beneath the powder. Her lips thought, Let it not be that! Oh please, oh please, let the act were still full lips, and they gleamed as she sang. She lifted not be that!

her mouth and placed a kiss, between the verses, on But it was. As Walter called his plaintive question, there Walter's whiskers . . .

was a piping from the wing: 'Here's your Little Jacky, At that, I let the glasses drop. I saw the boys in the row Father! Here!' A figure ran on to the stage, and seized his looking enviously at them, so passed them along the line - I hand and kissed it. It was Kitty. She was dressed in a boy's think they got thrown, in the end, to a girl at the balcony.

335

336

When I looked at the stage again, Kitty and Walter seemed I pulled my arm free. 'Diana,' I said, 'I feel wretched. Let very small. He had lowered himself into the chair, and had me alone.'

drawn Kitty down to sit upon his knee; she had her hands She seized me again. 'You feel wretched,' she said, with clasped at her breast, and her feet, in their flat boy's shoes, scorn in her voice. 'Do you think it matters to me, how you were swinging. But I could bear to see no more of it. I feel about anything? Get in my bedroom at once, you little started up. The boys called something - their words were bitch, and take your clothes off.'

lost. I stumbled up the darkened aisle, and found the exit. I hesitated. Then: 'No, Diana,' I said.

Back at the Royal Opera I found the singers still shrieking She came closer. 'What?'

upon the stage, the horns still blaring. But I only heard this There is a way rich people have of saying What?: the word through the doors: I couldn't face picking my way across is honed, and has a point put on it; it comes out of their the stalls to Diana's side, and facing her displeasure. I gave mouths like a dagger coming out of a sheath. That is how my ticket to the Italian at the cloaks, then sat in the lobby Diana said it now, in that dim corridor. I felt it pierce me on a velvet chair, watching as the street filled up with through, and make me sag. I swallowed.

waiting hansoms, with women selling flowers, and with gay

'I said, "No, Diana.'" It was no more than a whisper. But girls, and renters.

when she heard it, she seized me by the shirt, so that I At last there came the cries of 'Bravo', and the shouts for stumbled. I said, 'Get off me, you are hurting me! Get off the soprano. The doors were thrown wide, the lobby filled me, get off me! Diana, you will spoil my shirt!'

with chattering people, and in time Diana, Maria, Dickie

'What, this shirt?' she answered. And with that, she put her and the dog emerged, and saw me waiting, and came up to fingers behind the buttons, and pulled it until it ripped, and yawn and scold and ask me what the trouble was. I said I my breasts showed bare beneath it. Then she caught hold of had been sick in the gentlemen's lavatory. Diana put a hand the jacket, and tore that from me too - all the time panting to my cheek.

as she did so, and with her limbs pressed close against my The excitements of the day have proved too much for you,'

own. I staggered, and reached for the wall, then placed my she said.

arm over my face -I thought she would strike me. But when But she said it rather coldly; and all through the long ride I looked at her at last I saw that her features were livid, not back to Felicity Place we sat in silence. When Mrs Hooper in fury, but in lust. She reached for my hand, and placed my had let us in and bolted the great front door behind us, I fingers at the collar of her gown; and, miserable as I was, walked with Diana to her bedroom, but then stepped past when I understood what it was that she wanted me to do, I her, towards my own. As I did so, she put a hand on my felt my own breath quicken, and my cunt gave a kick. I arm: 'Where are you going?'

pulled at the lace, heard a few stitches rip, and the sound worked on me like the tip of a whip, snapping against the

337

338

haunches of a horse. I tore it from her, her gown of black

'Her bag. Then, she might have been going to the and white and silver, that came from Worth's to match my Cavendish Club. Didn't she say, that she was going to her costume; and when it was wrecked and trampled on the rug, club? Didn't she say when she'd be back?'

she had me kneel upon it and fuck her, until she came and

'Please miss, she didn't say a thing. She never does say a came again.

thing like that, to me. You might ask Mrs Hooper ..." Then she sent me to my own room, anyway.

I might; but Mrs Hooper had a way about her, of gazing at I lay in the darkness and shook, and put my hands before me as I lay in bed, that I didn't quite care for. I said, 'No, it my mouth to keep from weeping. Upon the cabinet beside doesn't matter.' Then, as Blake bent to sweep my hearth and the bed, gleaming where the starlight struck it, lay my set a fire there, I sighed. I thought of Diana's rough kisses birthday gift, the wrist-watch. I reached for it, and felt it of the night before - of how they had stirred me, and cold between my fingers; but when I placed it to my ear, I sickened me, while my heart was still smarting after Kitty. I shuddered - for all that it would say was: Kitty, Kitty, Kitty. groaned; and when Blake looked up I said, in a half-hearted

. .

sort of way: 'Don't you get tired, Blake, of serving Mrs I cast it from me, then, and put my pillow over my ears to Lethaby?'

blot the sound out. I would not weep. I would not weep! I The question made her cheeks flush pink. She looked back would not even think. I would only surrender myself, for to the hearth, then said, 'I should get tired, miss, with any ever, to the heartless, seasonless routines of Felicity Place. mistress.'

So I thought then; but my days there were numbered. And I answered that I supposed she would. Then, because it was the arms of my handsome watch were slowly sweeping novel to talk to her - and because Diana had gone out them away.

without waking me, and I was peevish and bored - I said:

'So you don't think Mrs Lethaby a hard one, then?'

Chapter 14

She coloured again. 'They are all hard, miss. Else, how The morning after my birthday I slept late; and when I would they be mistresses?'

woke, and rang for Blake to bring me coffee, it was to find

'Well - but do you like it here? Do you like being a maid that Diana had gone out while I was slumbering. here?'

'Gone out?' I said. 'Gone where? Who with?' Blake gave a

'I have a room to myself, which is more than most maids curtsey, and said she didn't know. I sat back against my get. Besides,' she stood, and wiped her hands on her apron, pillow, and took the cup from her. 'What was she wearing?'

'Mrs Lethaby don't half pay a decent wage.'

I asked then.

I thought of how she came every morning with the coffee,

'She was wearing her green suit, miss, and had her bag with and every night with jugs of water for the bowls. I said, her.'

'Don't think me rude, but - whenever do you spent it?'

339

340

'I am saving it, miss!' she said. 'I aim to emigrate. My friend been to the Cavendish, but only to take a letter that must be says, in the colonies a girl with twenty pounds can set up as signed by another lady.

a landlady of a rooming-house, with girls of her own.'

'I didn't like to wake you,' she said, dipping her hand into

'Is that so?' She nodded. 'And you'd like to run a roomingthe water. house?'

I forgot about Blake, then, and how handsome she was.

'Oh yes! They will always need rooming-houses in the I forgot about Blake, indeed, for a month or more. Diana colonies, you see, for the people coming in.'

gave dinners, and I posed and wore costumes; we made

'Well, that's true. And, how much have you saved?'

visits to the club, and to Maria's house in Hampstead. All She flushed again. 'Seven pounds, miss.'

went on as usual. I was occasionally sulky, but, as on the I nodded. Then I thought and said: 'But the colonies, Blake!

night of our trip to the opera, she found ways of turning my Could you bear the journey? You should have to live in a sulkiness to her own lewd advantage - in the end, I hardly boat — suppose there were storms?'

knew if I were really cross or only feigning crossness for She picked up the scuttle of coal. 'Oh, I shouldn't mind that, the sake of her letches. Once or twice I hoped she would miss!'

make me cross - fucking her in a rage, I found, could at the I laughed; and so did she. We had never chatted so freely right moment be more thrilling than fucking her in before. I had grown used to calling her only 'Blake' as kindness.

Diana did; I had grown used to her curtseys; I had grown Anyway, we went on like this. Then one night there was used to having her see me as I was now: swollen-eyed and some quarrel over a suit. We were dressing for a supper at swollen-mouthed, naked in a bed with the sheet at my Maria's, and I would not wear the clothes she picked for bosom, and the marks of Diana's kisses at my throat. I had me. 'Very well,' she said, 'you may wear what you please!'

grown used to not looking at her, not seeing her at all. Now, And she took the carriage, and went off to Hampstead as she laughed, I found myself gazing at her at last, at her without me. I threw a cup against the wall - then sent for pinking cheeks and at her lashes, which were dark, and Blake to come and tidy it. And when she came, I thinking, Oh! - for she was really rather handsome. remembered how pleasant it had been to chat with her And, as I thought it, there came the old self-consciousness before; and I made her sit with me, and tell me more about between us. She hoisted her scuttle of coal a little higher, her plans.

then came to take my tray and ask me, 'Would there be And after that, she would come and spend a minute or two anything else?' I answered that she might run me a bath; with me whenever Diana was out; and she became easier and she curtseyed.

with me, and I grew freer with her. And at last I said to her: And when I lay soaking in the bathroom I heard the slam of

'Lord, Blake, you've been emptying my pot for me for more the front door. It was Diana. She came to find me. She had than a year, and I don't even know what your first name is!'

341

342

She smiled, and again looked handsome.

Is it true, what she said? Or is it only one of her stories? Is Her name was Zena.

it true that they had you in there, because you . . . kissed Her name was Zena, and her story was a sad one. I had it another girl?'

from her one morning in the autumn of that year, as I lay in She let her hands fall to her lap, then sat back upon her Diana's bed, and she came, as usual, to bring breakfast and heels and gazed into the unlit grate. Then she turned her to see to the fire. Diana herself had risen early, and gone face to me and gave a sigh.

out. I woke to find Zena kneeling at the hearth, working

'I was a year in the reformat'ry,' she said, 'when I was quietly with the coals so as not to disturb me. I shifted seventeen. It was a cruel enough place, I suppose, though beneath the sheets, feeling lazy as an eel. My quim - in the not so hard as other gaols I heard of; its mistress is a lady clever way of quims - was still quite slippery, from the Mrs Lethaby knows from her club, and that is how she got passion of the night before.

me. I was sent to reformat'ry on the word of a girl I was I lay watching her. She raised a hand to scratch her brow, friends with at a house in Kentish Town. We were maids and when she took the hand away she left a smudge of soot there, together.'

there. Her face, against the smudge, seemed very pale and

'You were a maid before you came here?'

rather pinched. I said, 'Zena', and she gave a jump: 'Yes,

'I was sent out as a skivvy when I was ten: Pa was rather miss?'

poor. That was at a house in Paddington. When I was I hesitated; then, 'Zena,' I said again, 'don't mind me asking fourteen I went to the place in Kentish Town. It was you something, but I can't help but think of it. Diana once altogether a better place. I was a housemaid, then; and I got told me - well, that she got you out of a prison. Is it true?'

very thick with another girl there, named Agnes. Agnes had She turned back to the hearth, and continued to pile coals a chap, and she threw the chap over, miss, for my sake. upon the fire; but I saw her ears turn crimson. She said. That's how thick we were ..."

'They call it a reformat'ry. It wasn't a gaol.'

She gazed very sadly at her hands in her lap, and the room

'A reformat'ry, then. But it's true you were in one.' She grew still, and I grew sorry. I said, 'And was it Agnes told didn't answer. 'I don't mind it,' I added quickly. the story that got you sent to the reformat'ry?'

She gave a jerk to her head, and said: 'No, I don't mind it, She shook her head. 'Oh, no! What happened was, Agnes now. . .'

lost her place, because the lady didn't care for her. She went Had she said such a thing, in such a tone, to Diana, I think to a house in Dulwich - which, as you will know, is very far Diana would have slapped her. Indeed, she looked at me from Kentish Town, but not so far that we couldn't meet of now a little fearfully; but when she did so, I grimaced. Tm a Sunday, and send each other little notes and parcels sorry,' I said. 'Do you think me very rude? It's only - well, it through the post. But then - well, then another girl came. is what Diana said, about why they had you in there at all. She was not so nice as Agnes, but she took to me like

343

344

anything. I think she was a bit soft, miss, in the head. She

'No, there is something,' I said, smiling. 'What are you would look through all my things - and, of course, she thinking?'

found my letters and all my bits. She would make me kiss She took another puff of her cigarette, smoking it as you her! And when at last I said that I wouldn't, for Agnes' sake see rough men on the street smoking, with her fingers

- well, she went to the lady and told her that I had made her cupped around the fag, the burning end of it nearly kiss me; and that I touched her, in a peculiar way. When all scorching her palm. Then she said: 'Well, you will think me the time, it was her, only her -! And when the lady wasn't forwarder than I ought to be.'

sure whether or not to believe her, she went and took her to

'Will I?'

my little box of letters, and showed her those.'

'Yes. But I have been just about busting to know it, ever

'Oh!'I said.'What a bitch!'

since I first got a proper look at you.' She took a breath. She nodded. 'A bitch is what she was, all right; only, I

'You used to work the halls, didn't you? You used to work didn't like to say it before.'

the halls, alonger Kitty Butler, and calling yourself plain

'And it was the lady, then, who got you sent to the Nan King. What a turn it give me, when I saw you here reformat'ry?'

first! I never maided for no one famous before.'

'It was, on a charge of tampering and corrupting. And she I studied the tip of my cigarette, and did not answer her. made sure Agnes lost her place, too; and they would have Her words had given me a kind of jolt: they were not what I sent her to prison along with me - except that she took up had been anticipating at all. Then I said, with a show of with another young man again, very sharp. And now she is laughter: 'Well, you know, I am hardly famous now. They married to him, and he I hear treats her shabbily.'

were all rather long ago, those days.'

She shook her head, and so did I. I said, 'Well, it seems like

'Not so long,' she said. 'I remember seeing you at Camden you were roundly done over by women, all right!'

Town, and another time at the Peckham Palace. That was

'Wasn't I, though!'

with Agnes - how we laughed!' Her voice sank a little. 'It I gave her a wink. 'Come over here, and let's have a fag.'

was just after that, that my troubles started ..." She stepped over to the bed, and I found us two cigarettes; I remembered the Peckham Palace very well, for Kitty and I and for a little while we sat smoking together in silence, had only played there once. It had been in the December occasionally sighing and tutting and still shaking our heads. before we opened at the Brit, so rather near to the start of At last I saw her gazing at me rather thoughtfully. When I my own troubles. I said, 'To think of you sitting there, with caught her eye, she blushed and looked away. I said, 'What Agnes beside you; and me upon the stage, with Kitty Butler is it?'

..."

'It's nothing, miss.'

She must have caught something in my tone, for she raised her eyes to mine and said: 'And you don't see Miss Butler at

345

346

all, these days . . . ?' And when I shook my head, she looked followed it, very well, for they were busy ones: it was as if knowing. 'Well,' she said then, 'it's something, ain't it, to my stay with Diana were acquiring a kind of hectic have been a star upon the stage!'

intensity, as some sick people are said to be, as it hurtled I sighed. 'I suppose it is. But -' I had thought of something towards its end. Maria, for example, gave a party at her else. 'You oughtn't to let Mrs Lethaby hear you say it. She, house. Dickie threw a party on a boat - hired it to sail with well, she don't quite care for the music hall.'

us from Charing Cross to Richmond, and we danced, till She nodded. 'I dare say.' Then the clock upon the mantel four in the morning, to an all-girl band. Christmas we spent struck the hour and, hearing it, she rose, and stubbed her at Kettner's, eating goose in a private room; New Year was fag out, and napped her hand before her mouth to wave celebrated at the Cavendish Club: our table grew so loud away the flavour of the smoke. 'Lord, look at me!' she cried. and ribald, Miss Bruce again approached us, to complain

'I shall have Mrs Hooper after me.' She reached for my about our manners.

empty coffee-cup, then picked up her tray and went to her And then, in January, came Diana's fortieth birthday; and scuttle of coal.

she was persuaded to celebrate it, at Felicity Place itself, Then she turned, and grew pink again. She said: 'Will there with a fancy-dress ball.

be anything else, miss?'

We called it a ball, but it was not really so grand as that. We gazed at one another for the space of a couple of For music there was only a woman with a piano; and what heartbeats. She still had the smudge of coal-dust at her dancing there was - in the dining-room with the carpet brow. I shifted beneath the sheets, and felt again that rolled back - was rather tame. No one, however, came for slippery spot between my things - only now, it was the sake of a waltz. They came for Diana's reputation, and slipperier than ever. I had been fucking Diana every night, for mine. They came for the wine and the food and the rosealmost, for a year and a half. Fucking had come to seem to tipped cigarettes. They came for the scandal.

me like shaking hands -you might do it, as a kind of They came, and marvelled.

courtesy, with anyone. But would Zena have come and let The house, for a start, we made wonderful. We hung velvet me kiss her, if I had called her to the bed?

from the walls and, from the ceiling, spangles; and we shut I cannot say. I did not call her. I only said: Thank you, off all the lamps, and lit the rooms entirely with candles. Zena; there's nothing else, just now.' And she picked up the The drawing-room we cleared of furniture, leaving only the scuttle, and went.

Turkey

I had some squeamishness upon me about such matters, yet. rug, on which we placed cushions. The marble floor of the And Diana, I knew, would have been furious.

hall we scattered with roses - we placed roses, too, to This, as I have said, was sometime in the autumn of that smoke upon the fires: by the end of the night you felt ill year. I remember that time, and the two or three months that with it. There was champagne to drink, and brandies, and

347

348

wine with spice in: Diana had this heated in a copper bowl Diana. On the other hand, the women who had been more above a spirit-lamp. All the food she had sent over from the daring in their choices risked going unrecognised by Solferino. They did her a cold roast after the manner of the anyone at all. 'I am Queen Anne!' I heard one lady say, very Romans, goose stuffed with turkey stuffed with chicken cross, when Maria failed to identify her — yet, when Maria stuffed with quail - the quail, I think, having a truffle in it. addressed another lady in a crown by the same title, she There were also oysters, which sat upon the table in a barrel was even crosser. She turned out to be Queen Christina, of marked Whitstable; however, one lady, unused to the trick Sweden.

of the shells, tried to open one with a cigar-knife. The blade Diana herself, that night, I never saw look more handsome. slipped, and cut her finger almost to the bone; and after she She came as her Greek namesake, in a robe, and with had bled into the ice, no one much cared for them. Diana sandals showing her long second toe, and her hair piled had them taken away.

high and with a crescent in it; and over her shoulder she Half of the Cavendish Club attended that party - and, wore a quiver full of arrows and a bow. She claimed the besides them, more women, women from France and from arrows were for shooting gentlemen, although later I heard Germany, and one, even, from Capri. It was as if Diana had her say they were for piercing young girls' hearts. sent a general invitation to all the wealthy circles of the My own costume I kept secret, and would not show to world - but marked the card, of course, Sapphists Only. anyone: it was my plan to reveal myself, when the guests That was her prime requirement; her second demand, as I were all arrived, and present a tribute to my mistress. It was have said, was that they come in fancy dress.

not a very saucy costume; but I thought it a terribly clever The result was rather mixed. Many ladies viewed the one, because it had a connection with the gift I had bought evening only as an opportunity at last to leave their ridingDiana, for her birthday. For that event the year before I had coats at home, and put on trousers. Dickie was one of these: begged the money from her to buy her a present, and had she came clad in a morning suit, with a sprig of lilac at her got her a brooch: I think she liked it well enough. This year, lapel, and calling herself 'Dorian Gray'. Other costumes, however, I felt I had surpassed myself. I had bought her, all however, were more splendid. Maria Jex stained her face by post and in secret, a marble bust of the Roman page and put whiskers on it, and came robed as a Turkish pasha. Antinous. I had taken his story out of a paper at the Diana's friend Evelyn arrived as Marie Antoinette - though, Cavendish, and had smiled to read it, because - apart of another Marie Antoinette came later and, after her, yet course from the detail of Antinous being so miserable, and another. That, indeed, was one of the predicaments of the finally throwing himself in the River Nile - it seemed to evening: I counted fully five separate Sapphos, all bearing resemble my own. I had given the bust to Diana at lyres; and there were six Ladies from Llangollen -I had not breakfast, and she had adored it at once, and had it set up on even heard of the Ladies from Llangollen before I met a pedestal in the drawing-room. 'Who would have thought

349

350

the boy had so much cleverness in him!' she had said a little looked knowing, and Diana-standing just where I could later. 'Maria, you must have chosen it for him - didn't you?'

have wished her, beside the bust of Antinous on its little Now, while the ladies all assembled at the party below, I pedestal - raised a brow. Now, at the sight of me in my toga stood in my bedroom, trembling before the glass, garbing and belt, the ladies sighed and murmured.

myself as Antinous himself. I had a skimpy little toga that I gave them a moment, then stepped over to Diana, lifted reached to my knee, with a Roman belt around it - what the extra garland from around my neck, and wound it about they called a zone. I had put powder on my cheeks to make hers. Then I knelt to her, took up her hand, and kissed it. them languorous, and spit-black on my eyes to make them She smiled; the ladies murmured again - and then began, in dark. My hair I had covered entirely in a sable wig that a delighted sort of way, to clap. Maria stepped up to me, curled to my shoulders. About my neck there was a garland and put a hand to the hem of my toga.

of lotus flowers - and I can tell you, the lotus flowers had

'What a little jewel you look tonight, Nancy - doesn't she, been harder to organise, in London, in January, than Diana? How my husband would admire you! You look like anything.

a picture from a buggers' compendium!'

I had another garland to hand to Diana: this I also placed Diana laughed and said that I did. Then she reached and put about my neck. Then I went to the door and listened and, her fingers to my chin and kissed me - so hard, I felt her since the moment seemed right, I ran to Diana's closet and teeth upon the soft flesh of my lips.

took out a cloak of hers and wrapped it tight about me, and And then the music started up in the room across the hall. raised the hood. And then I went downstairs.

Maria brought me a glass of the warm spiced wine and, to There, in the hall, I found Maria.

go with it, a cigarette from Diana's special case. One of the

'Nancy, dear boy!' she cried. Her lips looked very red and Marie Antoinettes weaved her way through the crowd to damp where they showed through the slit of her pasha's take my hand and kiss it. 'Enchantee.' she said - this one whiskers. 'Diana has sent me out to find you. The drawingreally was French. 'What a spectacle you have provided for roem is positively pullulating with women, all of them us! One would never see such a thing in the salons of Paris panting for a peek at your pose plastique?’

..."

I smiled - a pullulating audience was precisely what I The entire evening sounds charming; it might, indeed, have wanted - then let her lead me into the room, still with the been the very high point of my triumph as Diana's boy. And cloak about me, and hand me into the alcove behind the yet, for all my planning, for all the success of my costume velvet curtain. Then, when I had bared my costume and and my tableau, I got no pleasure from it. Diana herself - it struck my pose, I murmured to her and she pulled the was her birthday, after all - seemed distant from me, and tasselled cord, and the velvet twitched back and uncovered preoccupied with other things. Only a minute or two after I me. As I walked amongst them the guests all fell silent and had placed the garland of lotus flowers about her neck, she

351

352

took it off, saying it did not match her costume; she hung it Evelyn said: 'We are to hear Dickie Reynolds' history, from from a corner of the pedestal, where it soon fell off - later I a book written by a doctor.'

saw a lady with one of the flowers from it, at her own lapel.

'A doctor? Is she ill?'

I cannot say why -heaven knows, I had suffered graver

'It is her vie sexuelle!'

abuses at Diana's hand, and only smiled to suffer them! —

'Her vie sexuelle?’

but her carelessness over the garland made me peevish.

'My dear, I know it already, it is terribly dreary ...' This was Then again, the room was terribly hot and terribly from a woman who stood beside me in the shadows, garbed perfumed; and my wig made me hotter than anyone, and as a monk; as I turned to her she gave a yawn, then slipped itched - yet, I could not remove it, for fear of spoiling my quietly from the room in search of other sport. The rest of costume. After Marie Antoinette, more ladies sought me the guests, however, looked just as eager as Dickie could out to tell me how much they admired me; but each proved wish. She stood beside Diana; the book that Evelyn had drunker and more ribald than the last, and I began to find referred to was in Diana's hands - it was small and black then wearisome. I drank glass after glass of spiced wine and and densely printed, with not a single illustration: it was not champagne, in an effort to make myself as careless as they; at all the kind of thing that people usually gave Diana, for but the wine - or, more likely, the hashish I had smoked her box. And yet, she was turning its pages in fascination. seemed to make me cynical rather than gay. When one lady A lady dipped her head to read the title from the spine, then reached to stroke my thigh as she stepped past me, I pushed cried: 'But the book's in Latin! Dickie, whatever is the point her roughly away. 'What a little brute!' she cried, delighted. of a filthy story, if the damn thing's written in Latin?'

In the end I stood half-hidden in the shadows, looking on, Dickie now looked a little prim. 'It is only the title that is rubbing my temples. Mrs Hooper was at the table with the Latin,' she answered; 'and, besides, it is not a filthy book, it hot wine on it, ladling it out; I saw her glance my way, and is a very brave one. It has been written by a man, in an give a kind of smile. Zena had been sent to move amongst attempt to explain our sort so that the ordinary world will the ladies, bearing dainties on a tray; but when she seemed understand us.'

to want to catch my eye, I looked away. Even from her I A lady dressed as Sappho took the cigar from her mouth, felt distant, that night.

and studied Dickie in a kind of disbelief. She said: This So I was almost glad when, at about eleven o'clock, the book is to be passed among the public; and your story is in mood of the party was changed, by Dickie calling for more it? The story of your life, as a lover of women? But Dick, light to be brought, for the lady on the piano to cease her have you gone mad! This man sounds like a pornographer playing, and for all the women present to gather round and of the most mischievous variety!'

pay attention.

'She has taken a nom-de-guerre, of course,' said Evelyn.

'What's this?' cried one lady. 'Why has it grown bright?'

'Even so. Dickie, the folly of it!'

353

354

'You misunderstand,' said Dickie. 'This is a new thing

'It is not true of Indian girls,' said another lady then. 'But it entirely. This book will assist us. It will advertise us.'

is of the Turks. They are bred like it, that they might A kind of collective shudder ran right around the drawingpleasure themselves in the seraglio.'

room. The Sappho with the cigar shook her head. 'I have

'Is that so?' said Maria, stroking her beard.

never heard of such a thing,' she said.

'Yes, it is certainly so.'

'Well,' answered Dickie impressively, 'you will hear more

'But it is true also of our own poor girls!' said someone else. of it, believe me.'

'They are brought up twenty to a bed. The continual fretting

'Let us hear more of it now!' cried Maria; and someone else makes their clitorises grow. I know that for a fact.'

called: 'Yes, Diana, read it to us, do!'

'What rubbish!' said the Sappho with the cigar. And so more candles were brought, and placed at Diana's

'I can assure you it is not rubbish,' answered the first lady shoulder. The ladies settled themselves into comfortable hotly. 'And if we only had a girl from the slums amongst us poses, and the reading began.

now, I would pull her drawers down and show you the I cannot remember the words of it now. I know that, as proof!'

Dickie had promised, they were not at all filthy; indeed, There was laughter at her words, and then the room grew they were rather dry. And yet, her story was lent a kind of rather quiet. I looked at Diana; and as I did so, she slowly lewdness, too, by the very dullness of the prose in which it turned her head to gaze at me. 'I wonder . . .' she said was told. All the time Diana read, the ladies called out thoughtfully, and one or two other ladies began to study ribald comments. When Dickie's history was complete, they me, as she did. My stomach gave a subtle kind of lurch. I read another, which was rather lewder. Then they read a thought, She wouldn't! And as I thought it, a quite different very saucy one from the gentlemen's section. At last the air lady said: 'But Diana, you have just the creature we need!

was thicker and warmer than ever; even I, in my sulkiness, Your maid was a slum-girl, wasn't she? Didn't you have her began to feel myself stirred by the doctor's prim from a prison or a home? You know what the women get descriptions. The book was passed from lady to lady, while up to in prison, don't you? I should think they must frot Diana lit herself another cigarette. Then one lady said, 'You until their parts are the size of mushrooms!'

must ask Bo about that: she was seven years amongst the Diana turned her eyes from me, and drew on her pinkHindoos'; and Diana called, 'What? What must she ask?'

tipped fag; and then she smiled. 'Mrs Hooper!' she called.

'We are reading the story,' cried the woman in reply, 'of a

'Where is Blake?'

lady with a clitoris as big as a little boy's prick! She claims

'She is in the kitchen, ma'am,' answered the housekeeper she caught the malady from an Indian maid. I said, if only from her station at the bowl of wine. 'She is loading her Bo Holliday were here, she might confirm it for us, for she tray.'

was thick with the Hindoos in her years in Hindoostan.'

'Go and fetch her.'

355

356

'Yes ma'am.'

Diana stepped towards her. 'I think you do,' she said. She Mrs Hooper went. The ladies looked at one another, and had picked up the book that Dickie had given her, and now then at Diana. She stood very calm and steady beside the she opened it, and held it oppressively close to Zena's face, bust of cold Antinous; but when she raised her glass to her so that Zena flinched again. 'We have been reading a book lip, I saw that her hand was trembling slightly. I shifted full of stories of girls like you,' she said. 'And now, what from one foot to the other, my briefly flaring lust all faded. are you suggesting? That the doctor who wrote this book - In a moment, Mrs Hooper had returned, with Zena. When this book that Miss Reynolds gave me, for my birthday - is Diana called to her, Zena walked blinkingly into the centre a fool?'

of the room. The ladies parted to let her pass, then stepped

'No, m'm!'

together again at the back of her.

'Well then. The doctor says you have a cock. Come along, Diana said, 'We have been wondering about you, Blake.'

lift your skirts! Good gracious, girl, we only want to look at Zena blinked again. 'Ma'am?'

you-!'

'We have been wondering about your time at the She had put her hand upon Zena's skirt, and I could see the reformatory.' Now Zena coloured. 'We have been other ladies, all gripped, in their turn, by her wildness, wondering how you filled your hours. We thought there making ready to assist her. The sight made me sick. I must be some little occupation, to which you turned your stepped out of the shadows and said, 'Leave her, Diana! For idle fingers, in your solitary cell.'

God's sake, leave her alone!'

Zena hesitated. Then she said, 'Please, m'm, do you mean, The room fell silent at once. Zena gazed at me in fright, and sewing bags?'

Diana turned, and blinked. She said: 'You wish to raise the At that, the ladies gave a roar of laughter, which made Zena skirt yourself?'

flinch, and blush worse than ever, and put a hand to her

'I want you to leave Blake be! Go on, Blake,' I nodded to throat. Diana said, very slowly, 'No, child, I did not mean Zena. 'Go on back to the kitchen.'

sewing bags. I meant, that we thought you must have turned

'You stay where you are!' cried Diana to her. 'And as for frigstress, in your little cell. That you must have frigged you,' she said, fixing me with one narrow, black, glittering yourself until your cunt was sore. That you must have eye, 'do you think you are mistress here, to give orders to frigged yourself so long and so hard, you frigged yourself a my servants? Why, you are a servant! What is it to you, if I cock. We think you must have a cock, Blake, in your ask my girl to bare her backside for me? You have bared drawers. We want you to lift your skirt, and let us see it!'

yours for me, often enough! Get back behind your velvet Now the ladies laughed again. Zena looked at them, and curtain! Perhaps, when we have finished with little Blake, then at Diana. 'Please, m'm,' she said, beginning to shake, 'I we shall all take turns upon Antinous.'

don't know what you mean!'

357

358

Her words seemed to press upon my aching head - and again, but spoke, still, as if to her guests. 'She will go then, as if my head were made of glass, it seemed to shatter. upstairs,' she said levelly, 'until she is sorry. Then she will I put my hand to the garland of wilting flowers at my throat, apologise to the ladies she has upset. And then, I shall think and tore it from me. Then I did the same with the sable wig, of some little punishment for her.' Her gaze flicked over the and flung it to the floor. My hair was oiled flat to my head, remains of my costume. 'Something suitably Roman, my cheeks were flushed with wine and anger -I must have perhaps.'

looked terrible. But I didn't feel terrible: I felt filled with

'Roman?' I answered. 'Well, you should know about that. power and with light. I said, 'You shall not talk to me in How old are you today? You were there, weren't you, at such a way. How dare you talk to me like that!'

Hadrian's palace?'

Beside Diana, Dickie rolled her eyes. 'Really Diana,' she It was a mild enough insult, after all that I had said. But as I said, 'what a bore this is!'

said it, there came a titter from the crowd. It was only a

'What a bore!' I turned to her. 'Look at you, you old cow, small one; but if there was ever anyone who could not bear dressed up in a satin shirt like a boy of seventeen. Dorian to be tittered at, that person was Diana. I think she would Gray? You look more like the bleedin' portrait, after Dorian rather have been shot between the eyes. Now, hearing that has made a few trips down the docks!'

stifled laugh, she grew even paler. She took a step towards Dickie twitched, then grew pale. Several of the ladies me, and raised her hand; she did it so quickly, I had time laughed, and one of them was Maria. 'My dear boy - !' she only to catch the flash of something dark at the end of her

'Don't "dear boy" me, you ugly bitch!' I said to her then. arm - then there came what seemed to be a small explosion

'You're as bad as her, in your Turkish trousers. What are at my cheek.

you, looking for your harem? No wonder they are off She had still held Dickie's book, all this time; and now she fucking each other with their enormous parts, if they have had struck me with it.

you as their master. You have had your fingers all over me, I gave a cry, and staggered. When I put a hand to my face, I for a year and a half; but if a real girl was ever to uncover found blood upon it - from my nose, but also from a gash her tit and put it in your hand, you would have to ring for beneath my eye, where the edge of the leather-bound spine your maid, for her to show you what to do with it!'

had caught it. I reached for a shoulder or an arm, against

'That's enough!' This was Diana. She was gazing at me, which to steady myself; but now all the ladies shrank away white-faced and furious, but still terribly calm. Now she from me, and I almost stumbled. I looked once at Diana. turned and addressed the group of goggling ladies. She She also had reeled, after dealing me the blow; but Evelyn said: 'Nancy thinks it amusing, sometimes, to kick her little was beside her with her arm about her waist. She said heels; and sometimes, of course, it is. But not tonight. nothing to me; and I, at last, was quite incapable of speech. Tonight, I'm afraid, it is only tiresome.' She looked at me I think I coughed, or snorted. There came a splatter of blood

359

360

upon the Turkey rug, that made the ladies draw even further If only Zena had not forgiven me my harshness in the hall from me, and give little moues of surprise and disgust. had not come creeping to my door, to ask me, was I very Then I turned, and staggered from the room.

hurt, and was there anything that she could do, to comfort At the door stood Maria's whippet, Satin, and when he saw me.

me he barked. Maria had set him there, with a dog's head of When I heard her knock, I flinched: I was sure it must be papier mach6 fixed to each side of his collar, to represent Diana, seeking me out to torture me or-perhaps, who the hound that stood on guard at the gate of Hades. knew?-to caress me. When I saw that it was Zena, I stared. The marble floor of the hall, as I have said, we had

'Miss,' she said. She had a candle in her hand, and its flame scattered with roses: it was terribly hard to cross it, in bare dipped and fluttered, sending shadows dancing crazily feet, with my ringing head and my hand at my cheek. about the walls. 'I couldn't go up, knowing you was here all Before I had reached the staircase, I heard a step behind me, bruised and bleeding-and all, oh! all on my account!

and a bang. I turned to see Zena there: Diana had sent her I sighed. 'Come in," I said, 'and close the door.' And when from the room in my wake, then had the door shut on us. she had done that, and stepped nearer to me, I put my head She gazed at me, then came to put a hand upon my arm: in my hands and groaned. 'Oh Zena,' I said, 'what a night!

'Oh, miss . . .'

What a night!'

And I - who had saved her from Diana's wildness only, as it She set down her candle. 'I've got a cloth,' she said, 'with a seemed to me then, to have that wildness turned upon little bit of ice in it. If you'll just - permit me -' I lifted my myself - I shook her from me. 'Don't you touch me!' I cried. head, and she placed the cloth against my cheek, so that I Then I ran from her, to my own room, and closed the door. winced. 'What a corker of an eye you'll have!' she said. And sat there wretched, in the darkness, nursing my oozing Then, in a different tone: 'What a devil that woman is!' She cheek. Below me, after a few more minutes of silence, there began to wipe away the blood that was crusted about my came the sound of the piano; and then came laughter, and nostril - lowering herself upon the bed, at my side, and then shouts. They were carrying on their revelling, without placing her free hand upon my shoulder to brace herself me! I could not credit it. The sport with Zena, the insults, against me, as she did so.

the blow and the bleeding nose - these seemed only to have Gradually, however, I became aware that she was made the marvellous party more gay and marvellous still. trembling. 'It's the cold, miss,' she said. 'Only the cold and, If only Diana had sent her guests home. If only I had placed well, the bit of fright I had downstairs . . .' But as she said my head beneath my pillow, and forgotten them. If only I it, I felt her shudder harder than ever, and she began to had not grown miserable, and peevish, and vengeful, at the weep. 'The truth is,' she said through her tears, 'I could not sound of their fun.

bear the thought of lying up there in my own room, with

361

362

them wicked ladies roaming about the place. I thought, that

'Go on, you shan't be seen. They are all in the drawingthey might come and have another go at me . . .'

room, and you can go by the back stairs. And if anyone

'There now,' I said. I took the cloth from her and placed it does see you, and asks, you can say you are fetching it for on the floor. Then I drew the counterpane from the bed, and me. Which is true.'

set it about her shoulders. 'You shall stay here with me,

'Well

where the ladies cannot get you . . .' I put my arm around

'Go on! Take your candle!' I rose, then took hold of her her, and her head came against my ear. She still wore her hands and pulled her to her feet; and she - infected at last by servant's cap; now I took the pins from it and drew it from my new recklessness - gave another giggle, put her fingers her, and her hair fell to her shoulders. It was scented with to her lips, then tip-toed from the room. While she was burning roses, and with the spice from the wine, Smelling gone I lit a lamp, but kept it turned very low. She had left it, with Zena warm against my shoulder, I began suddenly her cap upon the bed: I picked it up and set it on my own to feel drunker than I had all night. Perhaps it was only that head, and when she returned five minutes later and saw me my head was reeling, from the force of Diana's blow. wearing it she laughed out loud.

I swallowed. Zena put a handkerchief to her nose, and grew She carried a dewy bottle and a glass. 'Did you see any a little stiller. There came, from the floors below, the sound ladies?' I asked her.

of running feet, a furious thundering upon the piano, and a I saw a couple, but they never saw me. They were at the scream of laughter.

scullery door and - oh! they was kissing the guts out of each

'Just listen to them!' I said, growing bitter again. 'Partying other!'

like anything! They have forgotten all about us, sitting I imagined her standing in the shadows, watching them. I miserable up here..."

went to her and took the bottle, then peeled away the lead

'Oh, I hope they have!'

wrapper from its neck. 'You've shaken it up,' I said. 'It'll go

'Of course they have. We might be doing anything, it off with a real bang!' She put her hands over her ears, and wouldn't matter to them! Why, we might be having a party shut her eyes. I felt the cork squirm in the glass for a of our own!' She blew her nose, then giggled. My head gave second; then it leapt from my fingers, and I gave a yell: a sort of tilt. I said: 'Zena! Why shouldn't we have a party,

'Quick! Quick! Bring a glass!' A creamy fountain of foam just the two of us! How many bottles of champagne are had risen from the neck of the bottle, and now drenched my there left, in the kitchen?'

fingers and soaked my legs -I was still, of course, clad in There are loads of 'em.'

the little white toga. Zena seized the glass from the tray and

'Well, then. Just you run down and fetch us one.'

held it, giggling again, beneath the spurting wine. She bit her lip. 'I don't know ..."

We went and sat upon the bed, Zena with the glass in her hands, me sipping from the frothing bottle. When she

363

364

drank, she coughed; but I filled her glass again and said: After that, I pulled the counterpane over us, and we drank

'Drink up! Just like those cows downstairs.' And she drank, more champagne, taking turns to sip from the bottle. I put and drank again, until her cheeks were red. I felt my own my hand upon her. I said: 'Did you used to frig yourself in head grow giddier with every sip I took, and the pulse at my the reformat'ry?' She gave me a slap, saying, 'Oh, you are as swollen face grow thicker. At last I said, 'Oh! How it bad as them downstairs! I nearly died!' She pushed the hurts!', and Zena set down her glass to put her fingers, very blanket back, and squinted at her quim. 'To think of me gently, upon my cheek. When she had held them there for a with a cock! What an idea!'

second or two, I took her hand in my own, and leaned and

'What an idea? Oh, Zena, I should love to see you with one!

kissed her.

I should love -' I sat up. 'Zena, I should love to see you in She didn't draw away until I made to lie upon the bed and Diana's dildo!'

pull her with me. Then she said: 'Oh, we cannot! What if That thing? She's made you filthy! I should die with shame, Mrs Lethaby should come?'

before I ever tried such a thing!' Her lashes fluttered.

'She won't. She is leaving me, as a kind of punishment.' I I said, 'You are blushing! You've fancied it, haven't you? touched her knee, and then her thigh, through the layers of You've fancied a bit of that kind of sport - don't tell me you her skirts.

haven't!'

'We cannot. . .' she said again; but this time, her voice was

'Really, a girl like me!' But she was redder than ever, and fainter. And when I tugged at her frock and said, 'Come on, would not gaze at me. I caught hold of her hand, and pulled take this off - or shall I tear the buttons?' she gave a her up.

drunken sort of laugh: 'You shall do no such thing! Help me

'Come on,' I said. 'You have got me all hot for it. Diana will nicely, now.'

never know.'

Naked she was very thin, and strangely coloured: flaming

'Oh!'

crimson at the cheeks, a coarser red from her elbows to her I pulled her to the door, then peered into the corridor fingertips, and palely white - almost bluish-white - on her outside. The music and laughter from downstairs was torso, upper arms, and thighs. The hair between her legs - fainter, but still loud and rather furious. Zena fell against you can never guess at that kind of thing in advance - was me, and put her arms around my waist; then we staggered quite ginger. When I dipped my lips to it, she gave a squeal: together, quite naked, and with our hands before our faces

'Oh! What a thing to do!' But then, after a moment, she held to stop ourselves from laughing, to Diana's little parlour. my head and pressed it. She didn't seem to be at all sorry Here, it was the work of a moment to open the bureau's about my swollen nose, then. She only said: 'Oh, turn secret drawer, then take the key to the rosewood trunk, and around, turn around quick, that I might do it to you!'

open that. Zena looked on, all the time casting fearful glances towards the door. When she saw the dildo,

365

366

however, she coloured again, but seemed unable to tear her shoulders and gripped them hard. She opened her eyes, saw eyes from it. I felt a drunken surge of power and pride. what I saw, and gave a squeal of fright. Instinctively, she

'Stand up,' I said - I sounded almost like Diana. 'Stand up, tried to rise, forgetful of the shaft which pinned her and fasten the buckles.'

sweating hips to mine. For a moment we floundered When she had done that, I led her to the looking-glass. I together inelegantly; she let out a burst of nervous laughter, winced, to see my face all red and swollen, and still with more jarring than her first thin shriek of fear. crumbs of blood caught in its creases; but the sight of Zena At last she gave a wriggle; there was - monstrously distinct

-gazing at herself with the dildo jutting from her, placing a in the sudden silence, and horribly incriminating - a kind of hand upon the shaft of it, and swallowing, to feel the sucking sound; then she was free. She stood at the side of motion of the leather - proved more distracting than the the bed, the dildo bobbing before her. One of the ladies at bruise. At last I turned her and placed my hands upon her Diana's side said, 'She has a prick, after all!' And Diana shoulders, and nudged the head of the dildo between my answered: 'That prick is mine. These little sluts have stolen thighs. If my quim had had a tongue, it could not have been it!'

more eloquent; and if Zena's quim had had one, it would Her voice was thick - with drunkenness, perhaps; but also, I now have licked its lips.

think, with shock. I looked again at the wide and spilling She gave a cry. We stumbled to the bed and fell, crosswise, box, that she was so vain and jealous of, and felt a worm of upon the satin. My head hung from it - the blood rushed to satisfaction wriggle within me.

my cheek and made it ache - but now Zena had the shaft And I remembered, too, another room, a room I thought inside me and, as she began to wriggle and thrust, I found that I had carefully forgotten - a room where it was I who myself compelled to lift my mouth and kiss her. stood speechless at the door, while my sweetheart shivered As I did so, I heard a noise, quite distinct, above the and blushed beside her lover. And the sight of Diana, in my shuddering of the bed-posts and the pounding of the pulse old place, made me smile.

inside my ears. I let my head fall, and opened my eyes. The It was the smile, I think, which deranged her at last. 'Maria,'

door of the room was open, and it was full of ladies' faces. she said - for Maria was with her, too, along with Dickie And the face, pale with fury, at the centre of them all, was and Evelyn: perhaps they had all come to the bedroom to Diana's.

retrieve a dirty book - 'Maria, get Mrs Hooper. I want For a second I lay quite frozen; I saw what she must see - Nancy's things brought here: she is leaving. And a dress for the open trunk, the tangle of limbs upon the bed, the Blake. They are both going back to the gutter, where I got pumping, leather-strapped arse (for Zena, alas, had her eyes them from.' Her voice was cold; as she took a step towards tight shut, and still thrust and panted even as her outraged me, however, it grew warmer. 'You little slut!' she said. mistress gazed on). Then I placed my hands on Zena's

'You little trollop! You whore, you harlot, you strumpet,

367

368

you bitch!' But they were words that she had used on me a Now Maria returned with Mrs Hooper. Mrs Hooper's eyes thousand times before, in lust or passion; and now, said in were bright. She held my old sailor's bag, that I had brought hate, they were curiously devoid of any sting. from Mrs Milne's and cast into the furthest corner of my Beside me, however, Zena had begun to shake. As she did closet, and a rusty black dress, and a pair of thick-soled so, the dildo bobbed; and when Diana caught the motion boots. While the ladies all looked on, Diana threw the dress she gave a roar: Take that thing from your hips!' At once, and boots at Zena; then she dipped her hand fastidiously Zena fumbled with the straps; her fingers jumped so that into the sailor's bag, and pulled out a crumpled frock, and she could barely grasp the buckles, and I stepped to help some shoes, which she cast at me. The frock was one I had her. All the time we worked, Diana hurled abuses at her - used to wear in my old life, and thought fine enough. Now she was a half-wit, a street-whore, a common little it was cold and slightly clammy to the touch, and its seams frigstress. The ladies at the door looked on, and laughed. were rimmed with moth-dust.

One of them - it might have been Evelyn - nodded to the Zena began at once to pull on the dreary black dress, and trunk, and called: 'Use the strap on her, Diana!' Diana the boots. I, however, kept my own frock in my hands, and curled her lip.

gazed at Diana, and swallowed.

'They will strap her well enough, at the reformatory,' she

'I'm not wearing this,' I said.

said; 'when she returns there.'

'You shall wear it,' she answered shortly, 'or be thrust naked At that, Zena fell to her knees and began to cry. Diana gave into Felicity Place.'

a sneer, and drew her foot away so that the tears should not

'Oh, thrust her naked, Diana!' said a woman at her back. It fall upon her sandal. Dickie - the necktie at her throat was a Lady from Llangollen, minus her topper.

pulled loose, the lilac at her lapel squashed flat, and

'I'm not putting it on,' I said again. Diana nodded. 'Very browning - said: 'Can't we see them fuck again? Diana, well,' she said, 'then I shall make you.' And while I was still make them do it, for our pleasure!'

too amazed to raise a hand in my defence, she had crossed But Diana shook her head; and the gaze that she turned on the room, torn the robe from my fingers, and lowered the me was as cold and as dead as the eye of a lantern, when hem of its skirts over my head. I writhed, then, and began to the flame inside has been quite put out. She said: 'They kick; she pushed me to the bed, held me fast upon it with have fucked their last in my house. They can fuck upon the one hand and, with the other, continued to tug the folds of streets, like dogs.'

cloth about me. I struggled more fiercely; soon there came Another lady, very drunk, said that, in that case, at least the rip of a broken hem.

they should have the thrill of watching us, from a window. Hearing it, Diana gave a shout: 'Help me with her, can't But I looked only at Diana; and, for the first time in all that you? Maria! Mrs Hooper! You girl -' she meant Zena. 'Do terrible evening, I began to feel afraid.

you want to go back to that damn reformatory?'

369

370

Instantly, there came upon me what felt like fifty hands, all cries. We reached the basement, and it grew colder; when pulling at the dress, all pinching me, all grasping at my Diana opened the door that led from the kitchen to the kicking legs. For an age, they seemed to be upon me. I grew garden at the rear of the house, the wind blew hard upon my hot and faint beneath the layers of wool. My swollen head weeping eyes, and made them sting. I said, 'You cannot, was knocked, and began to pulse and ache. Someone placed you cannot!' The cold was sobering me. I had had a vision, her thumb -I remember this very clearly - at the top of my of my chamber, my closet, my dressing-table, my linen; my thigh, in the slippery hollow of my groin. It might have cigarette case, my cuff-links, my walking-cane with the been Maria. It might have been Mrs Hooper, the silver tip; my suit of bone-coloured linen; my shoes, with housekeeper.

the leather so handsome and fine I had once put out my At last I lay panting upon the bed, the dress about me. The tongue and licked it. My watch, with the strap that secured shoes were placed upon my feet, and laced. 'Stand up!' said it to my wrist.

Diana; and when I had done so she caught me by the Diana pushed me forward, and I turned and grabbed her shoulder and propelled me from her bedroom, through the arm. 'Don't cast me from you, Diana!' I said. 'Let me stay!

parlour, and out into the darkened hall beyond. Behind me, I'll be good! Let me stay, and I'll pleasure you!' But as I the ladies followed, Mrs Hooper and Maria with Zena begged, she kept me marching, backwards; until at last we gripped between them. When I hesitated, Diana prodded me reached the high wooden gate, beside the carriage-house, at forwards, so that I almost stumbled and fell.

the far end of the garden. There was a smaller door set into Now, at last, I began to weep. I said, 'Diana, you cannot the gate, and now Diana stepped to pull it open; beyond mean this -!' But her gaze was cold. She seized me, and seemed perfect blackness. She took Zena from Mrs Hooper, pinched me, and made me walk faster. Down we went - all and held her by the neck. 'Show your face in Felicity Place flushed and panting and fantastically costumed as we were again,' she said, 'or remind me of your creeping, miserable down through the centre of that tall house, in a great jagged little existence by any word or deed, and I shall keep my spiral, like a tableau of the damned heading for hell. We promise, and return you to that gaol, and make sure you passed the drawing-room: there were some ladies there still, stay there, till you rot. Do you understand?' Zena nodded. lolling upon the cushions, and when they saw us they She was thrust into the square of darkness, and swallowed called, What were we doing? And a lady in our party by it. Then Diana turned for me.

answered, that Diana had caught her boy and her maid in She said: The same applies to you, you trollop.' She pushed her own bed, and was throwing them out - they must be me to the doorway, but here I held fast to the gate, and sure to come and watch it.

begged her. 'Please, Diana! Let me only collect my things!'

And so, the lower we went, the greater came the press of I looked past her, to Dickie, and Maria: the gazes they ladies at my back, and the louder the laughter and the ribald turned upon me were livid and blurred, with the wine and

371

372

with the chase, and held not one soft spark of sympathy. I PART THREE

looked at all the ogling ladies in their fluttering costumes. Chapter 15

'Help me, can't you?' I cried to them. 'Help me, for God's You might think that, having sunk so low already, I should sake! How many times have you not gazed at me and not have scrupled to have banged upon the door that had wanted me! How many times have you not come to say been closed on me, or even tried to scale the gate, to plead how handsome I am, how much you envy Diana the owning with my old mistress from the top of it. Perhaps I of me. Any one of you might have me now! Any one of considered such things, in the moments that I stood, you! Only, don't let her put me into the street, into the dark, stunned and snivelling, in that dark and lonely alley. But I without a coin on me! Oh! Dam' you all for a set of bitches, had seen the look that Diana had turned on me - a look that if you let her do such a thing, to me!'

was devoid of any fire, kind or lustful. Worse, I had seen So I cried out, weeping all the time I spoke, then turning to the expressions upon the faces of her friends. How could I wipe my running nose on the sleeve of my cheap frock. My go to them, and ever hope to walk before them again, cheek felt twice its ordinary size, and my hair was matted handsome and proud?

where I had lain upon it; and at last, the ladies turned their The thought made me weep still harder; I might have sat eyes from me in a kind of boredom - and I knew myself and wept before that gate, perhaps, till dawn. But after a done for. My hands slid from the gate, Diana pushed me, moment there came a movement at my side, and I looked and I stumbled into the alleyway beyond. Behind me came up to see Zena standing there, with her hands across her my sailor's bag, to land with a smack on the cobbles at my breast, her face very pale. In all my agony, I had forgotten feet.

her. Now I said, 'Oh, Zena! What an end to it all! What are I raised my eyes from it to look once more upon Diana's we to do?'

house. The windows of the drawing-room were rosy with

'What are we to do?' she answered: she sounded not at all light, and ladies were already picking their way across the like her old self. 'What are we to do? I know what I should grass towards them. I caught a glimpse of Mrs Hooper; of do. I should leave you here, and hope that woman comes Dickie, fixing her monocle to her watery eye; of Maria; and back for you, and takes you in and treats you nasty. It's all of Diana. A few strands of her dark hair had come loose you deserve!'

from their pins, and the wind was whipping them about her

'Oh, she won't come back for me - will she?'

cheeks. Her housekeeper said something to her, and she

'No, of course she won't; nor for me, either. See where all laughed. Then she closed the door, and turned the key in it; your soft talk has landed us! Out in the dark, on the coldest and the lights and the laughter of Felicity Place were lost to night in January, with not a hat nor even a pair of drawers; me, for ever.

nor even a handkerchief! I wish I was in gaol. You have

lost me my place, you have lost me my character. You have

373

374

lost me my seven pounds' wages, what I was keeping for She had bent to the bag, and was squinting into it. 'I mean the colonies - oh! What a fool I was, to let you kiss me!

for us to sell them.'

What a fool you was, to think the mistress wouldn't - oh! I

'Sell them?' Sell my guardsman's uniform, and my Oxford could hit you!'

bags? 'I don't know ..."

'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

376

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

378

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

380

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 fairThere 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

382

'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?'

sound of a mandolin, on that balmy June evening, in the I said it was. Then: 'And the charity? Do you remember week I met Diana. They had lost their home and been given them, and where their rooms are?'

a new one. They had been visited by that charity-visitor

'Where their rooms are, let me see ... I did go there wunst; with the romantic-sounding name.

but I don't know as I can quite recall the partic'lar number. I Florence! I did not know that I had remembered her. I had do know as it was a place rather close to the Angel, not thought of her at all, for a year and more. Islington.'

If only I might meet her, now! She found houses for the

'Near Sam Collins's?' I asked.

poor; she might find a house for me. She had been kind to

'Past Sam Collins's, on Upper Street. Not so far as the post me once - wouldn't she be kind, if I appealed to her, a office. A little doorway on the left-hand side, somewhere second time? I thought of her comely face, and her curling between a public-house and a tailor's ..." hair. I had lost Diana, I had lost Zena; and now I had lost This was all he could recall; I thought it might be enough. I Mrs Milne and Grace. In all of London she was the closest thanked him, and he smiled. 'What a lovely black eye,' he thing I had, at that moment, to a friend - and it was a friend said again, but to his daughter this time. 'Just like the song - just then that, above all else, I longed for.

ain't it, Betty?'

On the balcony above me, the man had turned away. Now I By now I felt as if I had been on my feet for a month. I called him back: 'Hey, mister!' I walked closer to the wall suspected that my boots had worn their way right through of the tenement, and gazed up at him: he and his daughter my stockings, and had started on the bare flesh of my toes leaned from the balcony rail - she looked like an angel on and heels and ankles. But I did not stop at another bench, the ceiling of a church. I said, 'You won't know me; but I and untie my laces, in order to find out. The wind had

383

384

picked up a little and, though it was only two o'clock or so, naked stairs. The banister was sticky, but I grasped it, and the sky was grey as lead. I wasn't sure what time the charity began to climb. Before I had reached the third or fourth offices might close; I wasn't sure how long it would take me step, a door at the top of the staircase had opened, a head to find them; I didn't know if Florence would even be there, had emerged in the gap, and a lady's voice called when I did. So I walked rather quickly up Pentonville Hill, pleasantly: 'Hallo down there! It's rather steep, but worth and let my feet be rubbed to puddings, and tried to plan the effort. Do you need a light?'

what I would say to her when I found her. This, however, I answered that I did not, and climbed faster. At the top, a proved difficult. After all, she was a girl I hardly knew; little out of breath, I was led by the lady into a tiny chamber worse - I could not help but recall this, now -I had once that held a desk, and a cabinet, and a set of mismatched arranged to meet her, then let her down. Would she, even, chairs. When she gestured, I sat; she herself perched upon remember me at all? In that gloomy Green Street the edge of the desk, and folded her arms. From a room passageway I had been certain that she would. But with nearby came the fitful crack-crack-crack of a typewriting every burning step, I grew less sure of it.

machine.

It did not, as it turned out, take me very long to find the

'Well,' she said, 'what can we do for you? I say, what an eye right office. The man's memory was a good one, and Upper you have!' I had removed my hat, as if I were a man, and, as Street itself seemed wonderfully unchanged since his last she studied my cheek - and then, more warily, my closevisit there: the public-house and the tailor's were quite as he clipped head -I fiddled with the ribbon on the hatband, had described them, close together on the left-hand side of rather awkwardly. She said, 'Have you an appointment with the street, just past the music hall. In between them were us?' and I answered that I hadn't come about a house, at all. three or four doors, leading to the rooms and offices above; I had come about a girl.

and upon one of these was screwed a little enamel plaque,

'A girl?'

which said: Ponsonby's Model Dwelling Houses. Directress

'A woman, I should say. Her name is Florence, and she Miss J. A. D. Derby - I remembered this very well now as works here, for the charity.'

the name of the lady with the mandolin. Beneath the plaque She gave a frown. 'Florence,' she said; then 'are you sure? was a handwritten, rain-spattered note with an arrow There's really only Miss Derby, myself, and another lady.'

pointing to a bell-pull at the side of the door. Please Ring, it

'Miss Derby,' I said quickly, 'knows who I mean. She said, and Enter. So, with some trepidation, I did both. definitely used to work here; for the last time I saw her she The passageway behind the door was very long and very said - she said -'

gloomy. It led to a window, which looked out at a view of

'She said . . . ?' prompted the lady, more warily than ever bricks and oozing drain-pipes; and from here there was only for my mouth had fallen open, and my hand had flown to one way to proceed, and that was upwards, via a set of

385

386

my swollen cheek; and now I cursed, in a hopeless kind of heard the murmur of voices, the prolonged rustling of miserable fury.

paper, and finally the slam of a cabinet drawer.

'She said that she was leaving this post,' I said, 'and moving The lady reappeared, bearing a white page - a letter, by the to another. What a fool I've been! I had forgotten it till now. look of it - in her hand. 'Success! Thanks to Miss Derby's That means that Florence hasn't worked here for a year and beautiful clerking system we have tracked your Florence - a half, or more!'

or, at least, a Florence - down; she left here just before both The lady nodded. 'Ah, well, you see, that was before my Miss Bennet and I began, in 1892. However' - she grew time. But, as you say, Miss Derby is sure to remember her.'

grave - 'we really do not think that we can give you her own That, at least, was still true. I lifted my head. 'Then, may I address; but she left here to work at a home for friendless see her?'

girls, and we can tell you where that is. It's a place called

'You may - but not today; nor even tomorrow, I'm afraid. Freemantle House, on the Stratford Road.'

She won't be in now until Friday -'

A home for friendless girls! The very idea of it made me

'Friday!' That was terrible. 'But I must see Florence today, I tremble and grow weak. 'That must be her,' I said. 'But really must! Surely you have a list, or a book, or something, Stratford? So far?' I shifted my feet beneath my chair, and that says where she has gone to. Surely somebody here felt the leather slide against my bleeding heels. The boots must know.'

themselves were thick with mud; my skirt had gained a frill The lady seemed surprised. 'Well,' she said slowly, 'perhaps of filth, six inches deep, at the hem. Against the window we do ... But I cannot really give that sort of detail out, you there came the spatter of rain. 'Stratford,' I said again, so know, to strangers.' She thought for a moment. 'Could you miserably that the woman drew near and put her hand upon not write her a letter, and let us forward it . . . ?' I shook my my arm.

head, and felt my eyes begin to prick. She must have seen,

'Have you not the fare?' she asked gently. I shook my head. and misunderstood, for she said then, rather gently: 'Ah -

'I have lost all my money. I have lost everything!' I placed a perhaps you're not very handy with a pen . . . ?'

hand over my eyes, and leaned in utter weariness against I would have admitted to anything, for the sake of a kind the desk. As I did so, I saw what lay upon it. It was the word. I shook my head again: 'Not very, no.'

letter. The lady had placed it there, face upwards, knowing - She was silent for a moment. Perhaps she thought, that thinking -that I could not read it. It was very brief; it was there could be nothing very sinister about my quest, if I signed by Florence herself-Florence Banner, I now saw her could not even read or write. At any rate, she rose at last full name to be - and was addressed to Miss Derby. Please and said, 'Wait here.' Then she left the room and entered accept notice of my resignation ... it ran. I didn't read that another, across the hall. The sound of the typewriter grew part. For at the top right-hand corner of the page there was a louder for a second, then ceased altogether; in its place I date, and an address - not that of Freemantle House but,

387

388

clearly, the home address that I was not allowed to know. A Having no intention at all, now, of travelling to Stratford, I number, followed by the name of a street: Quilter Street, did not, as the lady recommended, catch a bus. I did, Bethnal Green, London E. I memorised it at once. however, buy myself a cup of tea, from a stall with an Meanwhile, the woman talked kindly on. I had scarcely awning to it, on the High Street. And when I gave back my heard her, but now I raised my head and saw what she was cup to the girl, I nodded. 'Which way,' I asked, 'to Bethnal about. She had taken a little key from her pocket and Green?'

unlocked one of the drawers in the desk. She was saying,'. . I had never been much further east before - alone, and on

. not something we make a habit of doing, at all; but I can foot - than Clerkenwell. Now, limping down the City Road see that you are very weary. If you take a bus from here to towards Old Street, I felt the beginnings of a new kind of Aldgate, you can pick up another there, I believe, that will nervousness. It had grown darker during my time in the take you along the Mile End Road, to Stratford.' She held office, and wet and foggy. The street-lamps had all been lit, out her hand. There were three pennies in it. 'And perhaps and every carriage had a lantern swinging from it; City you might get yourself a cup of tea, along the way?'

Road was not, however, like Soho, where light streamed I took the coins, and mumbled some word of thanks. As I upon the pavements from a thousand flares and windows. did so a bell rang, close at hand, and we both gave a start. For every ten paces of my journey that were illuminated by She glanced at a clock upon the wall. 'My last clients of the a pool of gas-light, there were a further twenty that were day,' she said.

cast in gloom.

I took the hint, and rose and put on my hat. There were The gloom lifted a little at Old Street itself, for here there footsteps in the passageway below, now, and the sound of were offices, and crowded bus stops and shops. As I walked stumbling on the stairs. She ushered me to the door, and towards the Hackney Road, however, it seemed only to called to her visitors: 'Come up, that's right. It's rather steep, deepen, and my surroundings to grow shabbier. The I know, but worth the effort. . .' A young man, followed by crossings at the Angel had been decent enough; here the a woman, emerged from the gloom. They were both rather roads were so clogged with manure that, every time a swarthy -Italians, I guessed, or Greeks - and looked terribly vehicle rumbled by, I was showered with filth. My fellow pinched and poor. We all shuffled around in the doorway of pedestrians, too - who, so far, had all been honest workingthe office for a moment, smiling and awkward; then at last people, men and women in coats and hats as faded as my the lady and the young couple were inside the room, and I own - grew poorer. Their suits were not just dingy, but was alone at the head of the staircase.

ragged. They had boots, but no stockings. The men wore The lady raised her head, and caught my eye.

scarves instead of collars, and caps rather than bowlers; the

'Good luck!' she called, a little distractedly. 'I do so hope women wore shawls; the girls wore dirty aprons, or no you find your friend.'

apron at all. Everyone seemed to have some kind of burden

389

390

- a basket, or a bundle, or a child upon their hip. The rain either, for the glass in some of the street-lamps was fell harder.

cracked, or missing entirely, and the pavement was I had been told by the tea-girl at the Angel to head for blocked, here and there, by piles of broken furniture, and by Columbia Market; now, a little way along the Hackney heaps of what the novels politely term ashes. I looked at the Road, I found myself suddenly on the edge of its great, number of the nearest door: number 1. I started slowly shadowy courtyard. I shivered. The huge granite hall, its down the street. Number 5 ... number 9 ... number 11 ... I towers and tracery as elaborate as those on a gothic felt weaker than ever ... 15 ...

cathedral, was quite dark and still. A few rough-looking 17 ... 19 ...

fellows with cigarettes and bottles slouched in its arches, Here I stopped, for now I could see the house I sought quite blowing on their hands to keep the cold off.

clearly. Its drapes were drawn against the dark, and A sudden clamour in the clock tower made me start. Some luminous with lamplight; and seeing them, I felt suddenly complicated pealing of bells - as fussy and useless as the quite sick with apprehension. I placed a hand against the great abandoned market hall itself - was chiming out the wall, and tried to steady myself; a boy walked by me, hour: it was a quarter-past four. This was far too early to whistling, and gave me a wink -I suppose he thought I had visit Florence's house, if Florence herself was at work all been drinking. When he had passed I looked about me at day: so I stood for another hour in one of the arches of the the unfamiliar houses in a kind of panic: I could remember market where the wind was not so cutting and the rain was the sense of purpose that had visited me in Green Street, but not so hard. Only when the bells had rung half-past five did it seemed a piece of wildness, now, a piece of comedy - I I step again into the courtyard, and look about me: I was would tell it to Florence, and she would laugh in my face. now almost numb. There was a little girl nearby, carrying a But I had come so far; and there was nowhere to turn back great tray about her neck, filled with bundles of to. So I crept to the rosy window, and then to the door; and watercresses. I went up to her, and asked how far it was to then I knocked, and waited. I seemed to have presented Quilter Street; and then, because she looked so sad and cold myself at a thousand thresholds that day, and been cruelly and damp - and also because I had a confused idea that I disappointed or repulsed, at all of them. If there was no must not turn up on Florence's doorstep entirely emptyword of kindness for me here, I thought, I would die. handed -I bought the biggest of her cress bouquets. It cost a At last there came a murmur and a step, and the door was ha'penny.

opened; and it was Florence herself who stood there –

With this cradled awkwardly in the crook of my stiff arm I looking remarkably as she had when I had seen her first, began the short walk to the street I wanted; soon I found peering into the darkness, framed against the light and with myself at the end of a wide terrace of low, flat houses - not the same glorious halo of burning hair. I gave a sigh that a squalid terrace, by any means, but not a very smart one was also a shudder - then I saw a movement at her hip, and

391

392

saw what she carried there. It was a baby. I looked from the

'But who might she be?' I heard the man say.

baby to the room behind, and here there was another figure:

'I don't know.' This was Florence. There was a creak, a man, seated in his shirt-sleeves before a blazing fire, his followed by a silence, in which I felt her squinting at my eyes raised from the paper at his knee to gaze at me in mild features. 'And yet,' she went on, 'there is something a little enquiry.

bit familiar about her face ..."

I looked from him back to Florence.

'Look at her cheek,' said the man in a lower voice. 'Look at

'Yes?' she said. I saw that she didn't remember me at all. her poor dress and bonnet. Look at her hair! Do you think She didn't remember me and - worse - she had a husband, she might've been in prison? Could she be one of your gals, and a child.

just come from a reformat'ry?' There was another pause; I did not think that I could bear it. My head whirled, I perhaps Florence shrugged. 'I do think she must've been in closed my eyes - and sank upon her doorstep in a swoon. prison, though,' the man went on, 'judging by the state of

her poor hair ..." I felt slightly indignant at that; and Chapter 16

indignation made me twitch. 'Look out!' said the man then. When next I knew myself I was lying flat upon a rug with

'She is waking up.'

my feet apparently raised on a little cushion; there was the I opened my eyes again to see him stooping over me. He warmth and the crackling of a fire at my side, and the low was a very gentle-featured man, with short-cut hair of a murmur of voices somewhere near. I opened my eyes: the reddish-golden hue, and a full set of whiskers that made room turned horribly and the rug seemed to dip, so I closed him look a little like the sailor on the Players' packets. The them again at once, and kept them tight shut until the floor, thought made me long all at once for a cigarette, and I gave like a spinning coin, seemed slowly to cease its lurching a dry little cough. The man squatted, and patted my and grow still.

shoulder. 'Ho there, miss,' he said. 'Are you well, dear? Are After that it was rather wonderful simply to lie in the glow you well at last? You are quite, you know, amongst friends.'

of the fire, feeling the life creep back into my numbed and His voice and manner were so very kind that - still weak aching limbs; I forced myself, however, to consider my and slightly bewildered from my swoon -I felt the tears peculiar situation, and pay a little thoughtful heed to my rising to my eyes, and raised a hand to my brow to press surroundings. I was, I realised, in Florence's parlour: she them back. When I took the hand away, there seemed blood and her husband must have lifted me over their threshold upon it; I gave a cry, thinking I had set my nose off and made me comfortable before their hearth. It was their bleeding once again. But it was not blood. It was only that murmurs that I could hear: they stood a little way behind the rain had soaked into my cheap hat, and the dye had run me -they had evidently not caught the flash of my opening all down my brows in great wet streaks of crimson. eyes -and discussed me, in rather wondering tones.

393

394

What a guy Diana had made of me! The thought made me our heads and gazed at them. They had been placed on a weep at last in earnest, in terrible, shaming gulps. At that, table near the door and looked very sad, for I had fallen the man produced a handkerchief, and patted me once again upon them when I swooned. The leaves were crushed and upon the arm. 'I expect,' he said, 'that you would like a cup blackened, the stems broken, the paper damp and green. of something hot?' I nodded, and he rose and moved away. Florence said, 'That was kind of you.' I smiled a little In his place came Florence. She must have put her baby nervously. For a second there was a silence - then the baby down somewhere, for now she had her arms folded stiffly gave a kick and a yell, and she bent to pick it up and hold it across her chest.

against her breast, saying as she did so: 'Shall Mama take She asked me: 'Are you feeling better?' Her voice was not you? There, now.' Then the man reappeared, bearing a cup quite as kind as the man's had been, and her gaze seemed of tea and a plate of bread and butter which he set, with a rather sterner. I nodded to her, then with her help raised smile, on the arm of my chair. Florence placed her chin myself from the floor into an armchair near the fire. The upon the baby's head. 'Ralph,' she said, 'this lady is a friend baby, I saw, was lying on its back on another, clasping and of Miss Derby's - do you remember, Miss Derby that I used unclasping its little hands. From a room next door - the to work for?'

kitchen, I guessed - came the chink of crockery and a

'Good heavens,' said the man - Ralph. He was still in his tuneless whistle. I blew my nose, and wiped my head; then shirt-sleeves; now he picked up his jacket from the back of wept some more; then grew a little calmer.

a chair and put it on. I busied myself with my cup and plate. I looked again at Florence and said, 'I am sorry, to have The tea was very hot and sweet: the best tea, I thought, that turned up here in such a state.' She said nothing. 'You will I had ever tasted. The baby gave another cry, and Florence be wondering, I suppose, who I am ..." She gave a faint began to sway and jiggle, and to smooth the child's head, smile. 'We have been a little, yes.'

distractedly, with her cheek. Soon the cry became a gurgle,

'I'm,' I began - then stopped, and coughed, to mask my and then a sigh; and hearing it, I sighed too - but turned it hesitation. What could I say to her? I'm the girl who flirted into a breath for cooling my tea with, in case they thought I with you once eighteen months ago? I'm the girl who asked was about to start up weeping again.

you to supper, then left you standing, without a word, on There was another silence; then, 'I'm afraid I've forgotten Judd Street? 'I'm a friend of Miss Derby's,' I said at last. your name,' said Florence. To Ralph she explained: 'It Florence blinked. 'Miss Derby?' she said. 'Miss Derby, from seems we met once.'

the Ponsonby Trust?'

I cleared my throat. 'Miss Astley,' I said. 'Miss Nancy I nodded. 'Yes. I - I met you once, a long time ago. I was Astley.' Florence nodded; Ralph held out his hand for mine, passing through Bethnal Green, on a visit, and thought I and shook it warmly.

might call. I brought you some watercresses ..." We turned

395

396

'I'm very glad to meet you, Miss Astley,' he said. Then he discussed this for a moment, then admired the baby for a gestured to my cheek. 'That's a smart eye you have.'

little longer; then grew silent again.

I said, 'It is, rather, ain't it?'

'So,' said Ralph doggedly, 'you are a friend of Miss He looked kind. 'Perhaps it was the blow, as made you Derby's?' I looked quickly at Florence. She had faint. You gave us quite a scare.'

recommenced her jiggling, but was still rather thoughtful. I Tm sorry. I think you're right, it must have been the blow. I said, 'That's right.' 'And how is Miss Derby?' said Ralph

- I was struck by a man with a ladder, in the street.'

then. 'Oh, well, you know Miss Derby!' 'Just the same, then,

'A ladder!'

is she?' 'Exactly the same,' I said. 'Exactly.' 'Still with the

'Yes, he - he turned too sharp, not seeing me and -'

Ponsonby, then?'

'Well!' said Ralph. 'Now, you'd never believe such a thing

'Still with the Ponsonby. Still doing her good works. Still, could happen, would you, outside of a comedy in the you know, playing her mandolin.' I raised my hands, and theatre!'

gave a few half-hearted imaginary strums; but as I did so I gave him a wan sort of smile, then lowered my eyes and Florence ceased her swaying, and I felt her glance grow started on the bread and butter. Florence was studying me, I hard. I looked hurriedly back to Ralph. He had smiled at my thought, rather carefully.

words.

Then the baby sneezed and, as Florence took a

'Miss Derby's mandolin,' he said, as if the memory amused handkerchief to its nose, I said half-heartedly: 'What a him. 'How many homeless families must she not've cheered handsome child!' At once, his parents turned their eyes with it!' He winked. 'I had forgotten all about it. . .'

upon him and gave identical, foolish smiles of pleasure and

'So had I.' This was Florence, and she did not sound at all concern. Florence lifted him a little way away from her, the ironical. I chewed very hard and fast on a piece of crust. lamplight fell upon him; and I saw with surprise that he Ralph smiled again, then said, very kindly: 'And where was really was a pretty boy - not at all like his mother, but with it you met Flo?'

fine features and very dark hair and a tiny, jutting pink lip. I swallowed. 'Well -' I began.

Ralph leaned to stroke his son's jerking head. 'He is a

'I believe,' said Florence herself, 'I believe it was in Green beauty,' he said; 'but he is dozier, tonight, than he should Street, wasn't it, Miss Astley? In Green Street, just off the be. We leave him in the daytime with a gal across the street, Gray's Inn Road?' I put down my plate, and raised my eyes and we are sure that she puts laud'num in his milk, to stop to hers. I knew one second's pleasure, to find that she had his cries. Not,' he added quickly, 'as I am blaming her. She not after all quite forgotten the girl who had studied her, so must take in that many kids, to bring the money in, the saucily, on that warm June night so long ago; then I saw noise when they all start up is deafening. Still, I wish she how hard her expression was, and I trembled.

wouldn't. I hardly think it can be very healthful..." We

397

398

'Oh dear,' I said, closing my eyes and putting a hand to my

'You are certainly very changed,' she said after a moment, brow. 'I think I am not quite well after all.' I felt Ralph take

'since I saw you last.' I looked down at my crumpled frock, a step towards me, then grow still: Florence must have my terrible boots. Then I looked at her. She, I now saw, stopped him with some significant look.

was also changed. She seemed older and thinner, and the

'I think Cyril might go up, now, Ralph,' she said quietly. thinness didn't suit her. Her hair, which I remembered as so There was the sound of the baby being passed over, then of curly, she had pulled back into a tight little knot at the back a door opening and shutting, and finally of boots upon a of her head, and the dress she was wearing was plain and staircase, and the creaking of floorboards in the room above very dark. All in all, she looked as sober as Mrs Hooper, our heads. Then there was silence; Florence lowered herself back at Felicity Place.

into the other armchair, and sighed.

I took a breath to steady my voice. 'What can I do?' I said

'Would it really make you very ill, Miss Astley,' she said in simply. 'I've nowhere to go. I've no money, no home . . .'

a tired voice, 'to tell me just why it is you're here?' I looked

'I am sorry for you, Miss Astley,' she answered awkwardly. at her, but couldn't speak. 'I can't believe Miss Derby really

'But Bethnal Green is busting with badly-off girls. If I was recommended you to come.'

to let them all come and stay, I should have to live in a

'No,' I said. 'I only saw Miss Derby that once, in Green castle! Besides, I -I don't know you, or anything about you.'

Street.'

'Please,' I said. 'Just for one night. If you only knew how

'Then who was it told you where I live?'

many doors I have been turned away from. I really think

'Another lady at the Ponsonby office,' I said. 'At least, she that, if you send me out into the street, I shall keep walking didn't tell me, but she had your address on her desk and I until I reach a river or a canal; and then I shall drown saw it.'

myself.'

'You saw it.'

She frowned, then put a finger to her lips and bit at a nail;

'Yes.'

all her nails, I now noticed, were very short and chewed.

'And thought you would visit..."

'What kind of trouble are you in, exactly?' she said at last. I bit my lip. 'I'm in a spot of trouble,' I said. 'I remembered

'Mr Banner thought you might have come from - well, from you -' Remembered you, I almost added, as rather kinder gaol.'

than you are proving yourself to be. 'The lady at the office I shook my head, and then said wearily: 'The truth is, I've said you work at a home for friendless girls ..." been living with someone; and they have thrown me out.

'And so I do! But this ain't it. This is my home.'

They have kept my things - oh! I had such handsome

'But I am quite, quite friendless.' My voice shook. 'I am things! - and they have left me so miserable and poor and more friendless than you can possibly know.'

bewildered ..." My voice grew thick. Florence watched me

399

400

in silence for a moment. Then she said, rather carefully I She shook her head at that; then grew thoughtful again, and thought, 'And this person was .. . ?'

glanced quickly at my waist. 'You ain't - you ain't in But that made me hesitate. If I told her the truth, what trouble, are you?' she asked quietly.

would she make of it? I had thought her almost tommish,

'In trouble? I -' I couldn't help it: it was as if she was once; but now — well, maybe she had only ever been an handing me the play text, for me to read it back to her. 'I ordinary girl, asking me to a lecture for friendship's sake. was in trouble,' I said, with my eyes on my lap, 'but the gent Or perhaps she had liked girls once, then turned her back on fixed that when he beat me. It was on account of it, I think, them - like Kitty! That thought made me cautious: if a torn that I was so poorly, earlier on ..."

with a bruise turned up at Kitty's door, I knew very well At that, there came a very queer and kind expression to her what a welcome she would get. I put my head in my hands. face; and she nodded, and swallowed - and I saw I had

'It was a gent,' I said quietly, 'I've been living in the house convinced her.

of a gent, in St John's Wood, for a year and a half. I let him

'If you truly have nowhere, it will not hurt, I suppose, for make me a' -I remembered a phrase of Mrs Milne's - 'a pack you to stay a night - just one night - here with us. And of promises. He bought me all manner of stuff. And now . . tomorrow I shall give you the names of some places where

.' I raised my eyes to hers. 'You must think me very wicked. you might find a bed . ..'

He said he would marry me!'

'Oh!' I felt ready to swoon all over again, in sheer relief. She look terribly surprised; but she had also begun to look

'And Mr Banner,' I said, 'won't mind it?'

sorry, too. 'It was this bloke blacked your eye for you, I Mr Banner, it turned out, had no objection to my staying suppose,' she said, 'and not a ladder, at all.'

there at all; indeed, as before, he proved pleasanter than his I nodded, and raised a hand to the bruise at my cheek; then wife, and willing to go to all sorts of trouble for the sake of I put my fingers to my hair, remembering that. 'What a my comfort. When they ate - for I had interrupted them as devil he was!' I said then. 'He was rich as anything, could they were about to take their tea - it was he who set a plate do what he pleased. He saw me on my balcony, just as you before me and filled it with stew. He brought me a shawl did, in a pair of trousers. He -' I blushed. 'He used to like to when I shivered; and, when he saw me limping into the make me dress up, as a boy, hi a suit like a sailor ..." room after a visit to the privy, he made me pull off my

'Oh!' she cried, as if she had never heard anything more boots, and fetched a bowl of salty water for me to soak my awful. 'But the wealthy ones are the worst, I swear it! Have blistered feet in. Finally - and most wonderfully of all - he you no family to go to?"

took down a tin of tobacco from the shelf of a bookcase,

'They - they've all thrown me over, because of this rolled two neat cigarettes, and offered me one to smoke. business.'

Florence, meanwhile, sat all night a little apart from us, at the supper-table, working through a pile of papers - lists, I

401

402

fondly supposed them to be, of friendless girls; accountThere was an awkward silence. She looked so tired and sheets, perhaps, from Freemantle House. When we lit our ordinary I had a foolish urge to kiss her cheek good-night, cigarettes she looked up and sniffed, but made no as Ralph had. Of course, I did not; I only took a step complaint; occasionally she would sigh or yawn, or rub her towards her as she nodded to me and prepared to make her neck as if it ached, and then her husband would address her way upstairs, and said, 'I am more grateful to you, Mrs with some word of encouragement or affection. Once the Banner, than I can say. You have been very kind to me - baby cried: she tilted her head, but didn't stir; it was Ralph you, who hardly know me; and more especially your who, all ungrudgingly, rose to see to it. She simple worked husband, who doesn't know me at all.'

on: writing, reading, comparing pages, addressing As I spoke she turned to me, and blinked. Then she placed envelopes . . . She worked while Ralph yawned, and finally her hand on a chair-back, and smiled a curious smile. 'Did stood and stretched and touched his lips to her cheek and you think he was my husband?' she said. I hesitated, bade us both a polite good-night; she worked while I suddenly flustered.

yawned, and began to doze. At last, at around eleven

'Well, I -'

o'clock, she shuffled her papers together and passed her

'He ain't my husband! He's my brother.' Her brother! She hand over her face. When she saw me she gave a start: I continued to smile at my confusion, and then to laugh: for a really believe that, in her industry, she had forgotten me. moment she was the pert girl I had spoken with in Green Now, remembering, she first blushed, then frowned. 'I had Street, all those months before . . .

better go up, Miss Astley,' she said. 'You won't mind But then the baby, in the room above us, gave a cry, and we sleeping in here, I hope? I'm afraid there's nowhere else for both raised our eyes to the sound, and I felt myself blush. you.' I smiled. I did not mind - though I thought there must And when she saw that, her smile faded. 'Cyril ain't mine,'

be an empty room upstairs, and wondered, privately, why she said quickly, 'though I call him mine. His mother used she did not put me in it. She helped me push the two to lodge with us, and we took him on when she — left us. armchairs together, then went to fetch a pillow, a blanket He is very dear to us, now . . .'

and a sheet.

The awkward way she said it showed there was some story

'Do you have everything you need?' she asked then. 'The there - perhaps the mother was in prison; perhaps the baby privy is out the back, as you know. There's a jug of clean was really a cousin's, or a sister's, or a sweetheart's of water kept in the pantry, if you're thirsty. Ralph will be up Ralph's. Such things happened often enough in Whitstable at six or so, and I shall follow him at seven - or earlier, if families: I didn't think much of it. I only nodded; and then I Cyril wakes me. You'll have to leave at eight, of course, yawned. And seeing me, she yawned too.

when I do.' I nodded quickly. I wouldn't think about the morning, just yet.

403

404

'Good-night, Miss Astley,' she said from behind her hand. return -with Cyril, I supposed - to bed. And after that he She did not look like the Green Street girl now. She looked didn't stir again, and neither did I.

only weary again, and plainer than ever.

When I woke next morning it was at the slam of the back I waited a moment while she stepped upstairs -I heard her door: this was Ralph, I guessed, leaving for work, for the shuffling above me, and guessed of course that she must clock showed ten to seven. There was movement overhead share her chamber with the baby - then I took up a lamp, soon after that, as Florence rose and dressed, and much and made my way out to the privy. The yard was very activity in the street outside - amazingly close, it all small, and overlooked on every side by walls and darkened sounded to me, who was used to slumbering undisturbed by windows; I lingered for a second on the chilly flags, gazing early risers in Diana's quiet villa.

at the stars, sniffing at the unfamiliar, faintly riverish, I lay quite still, the contentment of the night all seeping faintly cabbagey, scents of East London. A rustling from from me. I didn't want to rise and face the day, to pull my the neighbouring yard disturbed me and I started, fearing pinching boots back on, bid Florence good-bye, and be a rats. It was not rats, however, but rabbits: four of them, in a friendless girl again. The parlour had grown very cold hutch, their eyes flashing like jewels in the light I turned on overnight, and my little makeshift bed seemed the only them.

warm place in it. I pulled the blankets over my head, and I slept in my petticoats, half-lying, half-sitting between the groaned; groaning, I found, was rather satisfying, so I two armchairs, with the blankets wrapped around me and groaned still louder ... I stopped only when I heard the click my dress laid flat upon them for extra warmth. It does not of the parlour door - then lifted the blankets from my face sound very comfortable; it was, in fact, extraordinarily to see Florence squinting at me, gravely, through the cosy, and for all that I had so much to keep me ill and gloom.

fretful, I found I could only yawn and smile to feel the

'You're not ill again?' she said. I shook my head. cushions so soft beneath my back, and the dying fire warm

'No. I was only - groaning.'

beside me. I was woken, in the night, twice: the first time

'Oh.' She looked away. 'Ralph has left some tea. Shall I by the sound of shouting in the street, and the slam of doors fetch you some?'

and the rattle of the poker in the grate, in the house next

'Yes, please.'

door; and the second time by the crying of the baby, in

'And then - then you must get up, I'm afraid.'

Florence's room. This sound, in the darkness, made me

'Of course,' I said. 'I shall get up now.' But when she had shiver, for it recalled to me all the awful nights that I had gone I found I could not get up, at all. I could only lie. I spent at Mrs Best's, in that grey chamber overlooking needed to visit the privy again, rather badly; I knew that it Smithfield Market. It did not, however, last for very long. I was dreadfully rude to lie abed like this, in a stranger's heard Florence rise and step across the floor, and then parlour. Yet I felt as if I had been visited in the night by a

405

406

surgeon, who had taken all my bones away and replaced from the back of the door, and pulled it on. Then she took them with bars of lead. I could no nothing at all - except lie up her satchel, reached into it, and brought out a piece of

...

paper and a coin. 'I've made you a list,' she said, 'of hostels Florence brought me my tea, and I drank it - then lay back and houses you might try to find a bed in. The money' - it again. I heard her moving about in the kitchen, washing the was a half-crown - 'is from my brother. He asked me to tell baby; then she returned and pulled the curtains open, you good-bye and good luck.'

meaningfully.

'He's a very kind man,' I said.

'It's a quarter to eight, Miss Astley,' she said. 'I have to take She shrugged, then buttoned up her coat, put her hat upon Cyril across the street. You will be up and dressed, now, her head, and thrust a pin through it. The coat and the hat won't you, when I come back? You really will?'

were the colour of mud. She said, There's a piece of bacon

'Oh, certainly,' I said; yet when she reappeared, five still warm in the kitchen, which you may as well have for minutes later, I had not budged an inch. She gazed at me, your breakfast. Then - oh! then you really must go.'

and shook her head. I gazed back at her.

'I promise I will!'

'You know, don't you, that you cannot stay here. I must go She nodded, and pulled at the door. There came a blast of to work, and I must go now. If you keep me any longer, I icy air from the street outside that made me shiver. Florence shall be late.' With that, she caught hold of the bottom of shivered, too. The wind blew the brim of her hat away from the blanket. But I caught hold of the top.

her brow, and she narrowed her hazel eyes against it, and

'I can't do it,' I said. 'I must be sick, after all.'

tightened her jaw.

'If you're sick, you must go to a place where they will care

for you properly!'

I said, 'Miss Banner! I - might I come back, sometime, on a

'I'm not that sick!' I cried then. 'But if I might only lie a visit? I should like - I should like to see your brother, and little and get my strength ... Go on to work, and I'll let thank him ...' I should like to see her, was what I meant. I myself out, and be long gone by the time you get home. had come to make a friend of her. But I didn't know how to You may trust me in your house, you know. I shan't take say it.

anything.'

She put a hand to her collar, and blinked into the wind.

'There's little enough to take!' she cried. Then she threw her

'You must do as you like,' she said. Then she pulled the end of the blanket at me, and put a hand to her brow. 'Oh,'

door shut, leaving the parlour chill behind her, and I saw she said, 'how my head aches!' I looked at her, saying her shadow on the lace at the window as she walked away. nothing. At last she seemed to force herself into a kind of After she had gone my leaden limbs seemed all at once, and calmness, and her voice grew stiff: 'You must do as you quite miraculously, to lighten. I rose, and braved again the said, I suppose, and let yourself out.' She caught up her coat chilly privy; then I found the slice of bacon that had been

407

408

put aside for me, and took a piece of bread and a bunch of suffering some disease of the eyes, might weave to while cress, and ate my breakfast standing at the kitchen window, away the endless gloomy hours of a Hebridean winter. The gazing sightlessly at the unfamiliar view beyond it. mantelpiece was draped with a fluttering shawl, just as my After that I rubbed my hands, and glanced about me, and mother's had been, and upon it were the kind of ornaments I began to wonder what to do.

had seen, as a child, in all my friends' and cousins' homes: a The kitchen, at least, was warm, for someone - Ralph, dusty china shepherdess, her crook broken and inexpertly presumably - had lit a small fire in the range, early on, and mended; a piece of coral, beneath a dome of soot-spotted the coals were only half consumed. It did seem a shame to glass; a glittering carriage-clock. Besides these, however, waste their lovely heat - and it could not hurt, I told myself, there were other less predictable items on display: a creased to boil up some water for a bit of a wash. I opened a postcard, with a picture of working-men on it and the words cupboard door, looking for a pan to set upon the hob, and Dockers' Tanner or Dockers' Strike!; an oriental idol, rather came across a flat-iron; and seeing this I thought: They tarnished; a colour print of a man and woman in workingwouldn't mind, surely, if I warmed that, too, and gave my gear, their right hands clasped, their left hands supporting a battered frock a little press ...

billowing banner: Strength Through Unity!

While I waited for these things to heat I wandered back into These things did not much interest me. I looked next at the the parlour, to separate the armchairs that had made my alcove beside the chimney-breast, where there was a set of bed, and set the blankets in a tidy pile. This done, I did home-made shelves, fairly bursting with books and what I had been at first too bewildered, and then too sleepy, magazines. This collection was also very mixed, and very to do the night before: I stood and had a proper look dusty. There was a good supply of shilling classics - around.

Longfellow, Dickens, that sort of thing - and one or two The room, as I have said, was a very small one - far cheap novels; but there were also a number of political smaller, certainly, than my old bedroom at Felicity Place - texts, and two or three volumes of what might be called and there were no gas-jets in it, only oil-lamps and interesting verse. At least one of these -Walt Whitman's candlesticks. The furniture and decorations were, I thought, Leaves of Grass -I had seen before on Diana's bookshelves a rather curious mixture. The walls were bare of paper, like at Felicity Place. I had tried to read it once in an idle Diana's, but had been stained a patchy blue, like a moment: I had thought it terribly dull.

workshop's; for decoration they had only a couple of These shelves and their contents claimed my attention for a almanacks - this year's and last year's - and two or three minute or so; it was seized after that by two pictures which dull-looking prints. There were two rugs upon the floor, one hung from the rail above. The first of these was a family ancient and threadbare, the other new and vivid and coarse portrait, and as stiff, as quaint and as marvellously and rather rustic: the kind of rug I thought a shepherd, intriguing as other families' portraits always are. I looked

409

410

for Florence first, and found her - aged, perhaps, fifteen or filth from my skirts and pressed them flat and put them on so, and very fresh and plump and earnest - seated between a again, I felt fit and warm and quite unreasonably gay. I white-haired lady and a younger, darker girl, who had the walked back into the parlour - it was a matter of some ten beginnings of a barmaid's flash good looks about her and steps or so - stood for a second there, then returned to the must, I thought, be a sister. Behind them stood three boys: kitchen. It was, I thought, a very pleasant house; as I had Ralph, minus his sailor's whiskers and wearing a very high already begun to notice, however, it was not a very clean collar; a rather older brother who looked very much like one. The rugs, I saw, all badly wanted beating. The him; and an older brother again. There was no father. skirting-boards were scuffed and streaked with mud. Every The second portrait was a picture-postcard photograph: it shelf and picture was as dusty as the sooty mantelpiece. If had been placed in the edge of the large picture's frame, but this was my house, I thought, I would keep it smart as a its corner curled a little, showing a loop of faded writing on new pin.

the back. The subject of the portrait was a woman - a Then I had a rather wonderful idea. I ran back into the heavy-browed woman with untidy dark hair: she seemed to parlour and looked at the clock. Less than an hour had be sitting very squarely, and her gaze was rather grave. I passed since Florence's departure, and neither she nor thought she might be the sister from the family group, Ralph, I guessed, would be home much before five. That grown up; or she might be a friend of Florence's, or a gave me about eight whole hours - slightly less, I supposed, cousin, or - well, anybody. I leaned over to try to read the if I wanted to be sure of finding myself a room in some handwriting that showed where the card curled over; but it lodging-house or hostel while it was still light. How much was hidden, and I didn't like to pluck it free - it wasn't that cleaning could you do in eight hours? I had no idea: it was intriguing. Then I caught the bubbling of the pan of water I generally Alice who had helped Mother out at home; I had had set upon the stove, and hurried out to see to it. hardly cleaned a thing before in my life; lately I had had I found a little tin bowl to wash in, and a block of green servants to do my cleaning for me. But I felt inspired, now, kitchen soap; and then - since there was no towel, and I to tidy this house - this house where I had been, albeit didn't think it really polite to use the dish-cloth - I danced briefly, so content. It would be a kind of parting gift, I about before the range until I was dry enough to climb back thought, for Ralph and Florence. I would be like a girl in a into my dirty petticoats. I thought, with a little sigh, of fairy story, sweeping out the dwarves' cottage, or the Diana's handsome bathroom - of that cabinet of unguents robbers' cave, while the dwarves or the robbers were at that I had liked to sample for hours at a time. Even so, it work.

was marvellous to be clean again, and when I had combed I believe I laboured, that day, harder than I had ever my hair and tended my face (I rubbed a bit of vinegar into laboured over anything before; and I have wondered since, the bruise, and then a bit of flour); when I had thumped the thinking back to the industry of those hours, whether the

411

412

thing that I was really washing was not my own tarnished

'A fine job you've taken on,' she said, 'cleaning the Banners'

soul. I began by lighting a bigger fire in the range, to heat place.' I smiled, glad of the rest, and wiped the sweat from more water with. Then I found that I had used up all the my brow and lip.

water in the house: I had to limp up and down Quilter Street

'Are they known for their dirt, then?'

with two great buckets, looking for a stand-pipe; and when

'They are,' she said, 'in this street. They do too much in I found one I also found a line of women at it, and had to other folks' houses, and not enough in their own. That's the wait amongst them for half-an-hour, until the tap - which trouble." She spoke good-humouredly, however: she didn't ran no faster than a trickle, and sometimes only spluttered seem to mean that Ralph and Florence were busy-bodies. I and choked - was free. The women looked me up and rubbed my aching shoulder. 'You'll be the new lodger, I down, rather - they looked at my eye, and more especially suppose?' she asked me then. I shook my head, and at my head, for I had placed a cap of Ralph's upon it in lieu repeated what I had told the other neighbours - that I was of my damp hat, and they could see where the hair was only passing through. She seemed as unimpressed by that shorn and razored beneath. But they were not at all as they had been. She watched me for a minute or two unfriendly. One or two, who had seen me leave the house, while I resumed my beating; then she went indoors, without asked me, 'Was I lodging with the Banners?' and I answered another word.

that I was only passing through. They seemed happy When the rugs were beaten I swept the fireplace in the enough with that, as if people passed through, in this parlour; then I found some blacklead in the pantry, and district, very frequently.

began to dab at it with that. I had not leaded a grate since I When I had staggered home with the water, set it warming left home -though I had seen Zena blacking Diana's on the stove, and wrapped myself in a great, crusty apron I fireplaces a hundred times, and remembered it as rather found hanging on the back of the pantry door, I began on easy labour. In fact, of course, it was tricky, filthy work, the parlour. First I wiped down all the dim and sooty things and kept me busy for an hour, and left me feeling not a half with a wet cloth; then I washed the window, and then the so blithe as I had been at first. Still, however, I didn't stop skirting-boards. The rugs I carried out into the yard: here I to rest. I swept the floors, and then I scrubbed them; then I hung them over the wash-line, and beat them until my arm washed the kitchen tiles, and then the range, and then the ached. As I did so, the back door of the neighbouring house kitchen window. I did not like to venture upstairs, but the was pulled open and a woman, her sleeves rolled up like parlour and the kitchen, and even the privy and the yard, I mine and her own cheeks flushed, emerged to stand upon worked upon until they fairly gleamed; until every surface the step. When she saw me she nodded, and I nodded back. that was meant to shine, shone; until every colour was vivid, rather than dulled and paled by dust.

413

414

My final triumph was the front doorstep: this I swept and thought, like a child, How pleased they will be! How washed, and finally scrubbed with a piece of hearthstone pleased ... I was not quite so gay, however, as I had been until it was as white as any doorstep in the street - and my six hours before. Like the darkening day beyond the parlour arms, which had been black with lead, were streaked with window, there was a gloomy knowledge pressing at the chalk from my fingernails to my elbows. I knelt for a few edges of my own pleasure -the knowledge that I must go, moments when I had finished it, admiring the effect and and find some shelter of my own. I picked up the list that stretching my aching back, too warmed with work to be Florence had made for me. Her handwriting was very neat bothered by the January breezes. Then I saw a figure but the ink had stained her fingers, and there was a smudge emerge from the house next door, and looked up to see a where she had lain her tired hand upon the sheet. little girl in a tattered frock and a pair of over-large boots I could not bear the idea of going just yet - of working my pigeon-stepping her way towards me with a spilling mug of way through the list of hostels, of being shown to a bed in tea.

another chamber like the one I had slept in with Zena. I

'Mother says you must be fairly fagged, and to give you would go in an hour; for now, I thought again, this,' she said. Then she ducked her head. 'But I'm to stay determinedly, of how enchanted Ralph and Florence would with you while you drink it, to make sure we get the cup be, to come home to a tidy house - and then, with more back.'

enthusiasm, I thought: And how much more pleased would The tea had been made murky with a bit of skim-milk, and they be, to come home to their tidy house, and find their was terribly sweet. I drank it quickly, while the girl supper bubbling on the stove! There was not much food in shivered and stamped her feet. 'No school for you today?' I the cupboards, so far as I could see; but there was, of asked her.

course, the half-crown that they had left for me ... I didn't

'Not today. It's wash-day, and Mother needs me at home to stop to think that I should keep it for my own needs. I keep the babies out from under her heels.' All the while she picked the coin up - it was just where Florence had placed talked to me she kept her eyes fixed on my shorn head. Her it, for I had lifted it only to wipe beneath it with a cloth, own hair was fair, and - much as mine had used to - then put it back again - and hobbled off down Quilter dribbled down between her jutting shoulder-blades in a Street, towards the stalls and barrows of the Hackney Road. long, untidy plait.

A half-hour later I was back. I had bought bread, meat and It was now about half-past three, and when I returned to vegetables and - purely on the grounds that it had looked so Florence's kitchen to wash my filthy hands and arms I handsome on the fruit-man's barrow - a pineapple. For a found the house had grown quite dark. I removed my apron, year and a half I had eaten nothing but cutlets and salmis, and lit a lamp; then I took a few minutes to wander between pates and crystallised fruits; but there was a dish that Mrs the rooms, gazing at the transformation I had effected. I Milne had used to make, consisting of mashed potato,

415

416

mashed cabbage, corned beef and onions - Gracie and I had She laughed, showing her teeth. 'Then you, I suppose, must used to smack our lips at the sight of it placed before us on be the fairy king himself. Or is it, the fairy queen? I cannot the table. I thought it couldn't be very hard to make; and I tell if your hair is at odds with your costume, or the other set about cooking it now, for Ralph and Florence. way around. If that' - she laughed again - 'means anything.'

I had set the potatoes and the cabbage on to boil, and got as I didn't know what it might mean. I said only, rather primly, far as browning the onions, when I heard a knock at the that I was waiting for my hair to grow; and she answered, door. This made me jump, then grow a little flustered. I had

'Ah', and her smile grew a little smaller. Then she said, in a made myself so comfortable that I felt, instinctively, that I puzzled sort of way: 'And you're staying with Florrie and should answer it; but should I, really? Was there not a point Ralph, are you?'

at which helpfulness, if persevered with, became

'They let me sleep last night in the parlour, as a favour; but impertinence? I looked down at the pan of onions, my today I have to move on. In fact - what time have you?' She rolled-up sleeves. Had I perhaps crossed over that point, showed me her watch: a quarter to five, and much later than already?'

I had expected. 'I really must go very soon.' I took the pan While I wondered, the knock came again; and this time I off the stove - the onions had burned a little browner than I didn't hesitate, but went straight to the door and opened it. wanted - and began to look about me for a bowl. Beyond it was a girl - a rather handsome girl, with dark hair

'Oh,' she said, waving her hand at my haste, 'have a cup of showing beneath a velvet tam-o'-shanter. When she saw me tea with me, at least.' She put some water on to boil, and I she said, 'Oh! Is Florrie not at home, then?' and looked began jabbing at the potatoes with a fork. The dish, as I quickly at my arms, my dress, my eye, and then my hair. assembled it, did not look quite like the meal that Mrs I said, 'Miss Banner isn't here, no. I'm on my own.' I Milne had used to make; and when I tasted it, it was not so sniffed, and thought I caught the smell of burning onions. savoury. I set it on the side, and frowned at it. The girl

'Look here,' I went on, 'I'm doing a bit of frying. Do you handed me a cup. Then she leaned against a cupboard, quite mind . . . ?' I ran back to the kitchen to rescue my dish. To at her ease, and sipped at her own tea, and then yawned. 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.'

417

418

'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.'

419

420

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

422

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 - cracking his head against the furniture - or, more usually,

423

424

shrieking out, from his crib upstairs, for milk and breadThen 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, diningraising 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

426

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.'

treatment that would ease the bruising at my cheek ... When the house wasn't being shivered to its foundations by All of Ralph and Florence's circle, in fact, were quite sickthe thud of Janet's footsteps on the stairs, it was trembling eningly kind and earnest and conscientious over matters to the arguments and the laughter of Florence's girl-friends, like this. As I could not help but find out very early on, the who came by regularly to bring books and pamphlets and Banners were big in the local labour movement - they bits of| gossip, and to take tea. I thought them a very quaint always had some desperate project on hand, some plan to breed,; these girls. They all worked; but, like Annie Page, get a parliamentary act passed or opposed; the parlour, as a the sanitary! inspector, not one of them had a dull, consequence, was always full of people holding emergency straightforward kind r* job - making felt hats, or dressing meetings or dreary debates. Ralph was a cutter in a silk feathers, or serving in shop. Instead they all worked for factory, and secretary of the silk workers' union. Florence - charities or in homes: they a had lists of cripples, or as well as working at the Stratford girls' home, Freemantle immigrants, or orphaned girls, whom was their continual House - volunteered for a thing called the Women's ambition to set up in jobs, houses, ani friendly societies. Cooperative Guild: it was Guild work (not lists, as I had Every story they told began the same: 'I had a girl come imagined, of friendless girls) which had kept her up so late into the office today ..."

on the night of my arrival at her home - and which, indeed,

'I had a girl come into the office today, fresh from gaol, and kept her up late on many subsequent nights, balancing her mother has taken her baby and disappeared with it..." budgets and writing letters. In those early days, I would

'I had a poor woman come into the office today: she was occasionally glance at the pages she worked on; but brought over from India as a maid, and now the family whatever I saw, made me frown. 'What does it mean, won't pay her passage back ..."

cooperative!' I asked her once. It was not a word I had ever

'There was a woman come in today: she has been ruined by heard used at Felicity

a gent, and the gent has given her such a thump she -' This Place.

particular story, however, never got finished: the girl who And yet, there were moments at Quilter Street, when I was telling it caught sight of me, perched on an armchair at found myself handing out cups of tea, rolling cigarettes, Florence's elbow; then she flushed pink, and put her cup to nursing babies while other people argued and laughed, her lips, and turned the subject. They had all had my history when I thought I might as well still be in Diana's drawing-my pretend history - from Florence herself. When they room, dressed in a tunic. There, no one had ever asked me

427

428

anything, because they never thought I might have had an coins to some man who had lost his job. I thought them opinion worth soliciting; but at least they had liked to look mad to do it. We had been kind enough to our neighbours, at me. At Florence's house, no one looked at me at all - and back in Whitstable; but the kindness had had limits to it - what was worse, they all supposed I must be quite as good Mother had never had time for feckless wives, or idlers, or and energetic as themselves. I lived in a continual panic, drunkards. Florence and Ralph, however, helped therefore, that I would accidentally disenchant them - that everybody, even - or, it seemed to me, especially - those someone would ask me my opinion on the SDF or the ILP, layabout fathers, those slatternly mothers, whom all the rest and my reply would make it clear that, not only had I of Bethnal Green had taken against. Now, hearing confused the SDF with the WLF, the ILP with the WTUL, Florence's plans to visit the family that had the bailiffs but I had absolutely no idea, and never had had, what the coming, I grew sour. 'You're a regular pair of saints, you initials stood for anyway. When I shyly confessed one time, two,' I said, filling a bowl with soapy water. 'You never about six weeks after I moved in there, that I scarcely knew have a minute for yourselves. You have a pretty house - the difference between a Tory and a Liberal, they took it as now that I am here to make it so - and not one moment to a kind of clever joke. 'You are so right, Miss Astley!' a man enjoy it. You earn a decent wage, between you, and yet you had answered. 'There is no difference at all, and if only give it all away!'

everyone were as clear-sighted as yourself, our task would

'If I wanted to close my doors to my neighbours and gaze be an easier one.' I smiled, and said no more. Then I all night at my pretty walls,' she replied, still passing a hand collected the cups, and took Cyril into the kitchen with me; across her bleary features, 'I would move to Hampstead! I and while I waited for the kettle to boil I sang him an old have lived in this house all my life; there's not a family in song from the music hall, which made him kick his legs and this street who didn't help Mother out, at one time or gurgle. Then Florence appeared. 'What a pretty song,' she another, when we were kids and things were rather hard. said absently. She was rubbing her eyes. 'Ralph and I are You're right: we do draw a fair wage between us, Ralph and going out - you won't mind watching Cyril, will you? There me; but do you think I could enjoy my thirty shillings, is a family up the road - they are having the bailiffs in. I knowing that Mrs Monks next door must live, with all her said we would go, in case the men get rough . . .' There was girls, on ten? That Mrs Kenny across the street, whose always something like this - always some neighbour in husband is sick, must make do with the three shillings she trouble, and needing money, or help, or a letter writing or a gets making paper flowers, sitting up all night and squinting visit to the police; and it was always Ralph and Florence at the wretched things until she is gone half-blind that they came to -I had not been with them a week before I

'All right,' I said. She made speeches like this often - saw Ralph leave his supper and run along the street in his sounding always, I thought, like a Daughter of the People in shirt-sleeves, to give some word of comfort and a couple of some sentimental novel of East End life: Maria Jex had

429

430

liked to read such novels, and Diana had liked to laugh at I should not have been myself, if her indifference had not her. I didn't say this to Florence, however. I didn't say rather piqued me. I had spent eighteen months at Felicity anything at all. But when she and Ralph and their union Place, shaping my behaviour to the desires of lustful ladies friends had gone, I sat down in an armchair in the parlour, until I was as skilled and as subtle at it as a glove-maker: I rather heavily. The truth was, I hated their charity; I hated could not throw those skills over now, just because I also their good works, their missions, their orphan proteges. I learned the blacking of a grate. On Florence, however, the hated them, because I knew that I was one of them. I had skills proved useless. 'She really can't be a torn,' I would thought that Florence had let me into her house through say to myself - for, if she never flirted with me, then there some extraordinary favour to myself; but what kind of a were plenty of other girls who passed through our parlour, compliment was it, when she and her brother would and I never saw her flirt with a single one of them, not regularly take in any old josser that happened to be once. But then, I never saw her flirting with a fellow, either. staggering about the street, down on his luck, and give him At last, I supposed she was too good to fall in love with supper? It was not that they were careless with me. Ralph, anyone.

for example, I knew to be the gentlest man that I should And, after all, I had not come to Quilter Street to flirt; I had ever meet: no one, not even the most hardened Sapphist in come to be ordinary. And knowing there was no one's eye the city, could have lived with Ralph without loving him a to charm or set smarting only made me more ordinary still. little; and I - who liked to think of myself as no very soft My hair - which had lost its military sharpness after a week torn - learned early on to love him a great deal. Florence, or two, anyway -I let grow; I even began to curl it at the too, was pleasant enough to me, in her own tired, distracted ends. My pinching boots became less stiff, the more I sort of way. But though she ate the suppers I cooked; walked in them; but I traded them in, at a second-hand though she handed me Cyril to wash and dress and cradle; clothes stall, for a pair of shoes with bows on. I did the and though, when a month had passed, she had agreed that I same with my bonnet and my rusty frock - exchanged them, might stay if I still cared to, and sent Ralph into the attic to for a hat with a wired flower and a dress with ribbon at the bring me down a little truckle-bed, which she said would be neck. 'Now, there's a pretty frock!' said Ralph to me, when I cosier, in the parlour, than the two armchairs -though she put it on for the first time; but Ralph would have told me I did all these things, she never did them as if she really did looked handsome wrapped in a piece of brown paper, if he them for me. She did them because the suppers and the thought it would make me smile. The truth was, I had baby-minding gave her more hours to devote to her other looked awful ever since leaving St John's Wood; and now, causes. She had given me work, as a lady might give work in a flowery frock, I only looked extraordinarily awful. The to a shiftless girl, come fresh from prison.

clothes I had bought, they were the kind I'd used to wear in Whitstable and with Kitty; and I seemed to remember that I

431

432

had been known then as a handsome enough girl. But it was she had worn skirts as bright as mustard, she had laughed as if wearing gentlemen's suits had magically unfitted me and shown her teeth. Florence Banner of Bethnal Green, for girlishness, for ever - as if my jaw had grown firmer, however, was only grave, and weary. Her hair was limp, my brows heavier, my hips slimmer and my hands extra and her dresses were dark, or the colour of rust or dust or large, to match the clothes Diana had put me in. The bruise ashes; and when she smiled, you found you were surprised at my eye faded quickly enough, but the brawl with Dickie's by it, and flinched.

book had left me with a scar at my cheek - I have it there For her temper, I discovered, was fickle. She was kind as an still; and this, combined with the new firmness at my angel to the undeserving poor of Bethnal Green; but at shoulders and thighs, got from carrying buckets and home she was sometimes depressed, and very often cross - I whitening steps, gave me something of the air of a rough. would see her brother and her friends tiptoeing about her When I washed in the mornings in a bowl in the kitchen, chair, so as not to rouse her: I thought their patience quite and caught sight of myself, from a certain angle, reflected astonishing. She might be gay as you like, for days at a in the darkened window, I looked like a youth in the backtime; but then she would come home from a walk, or wake room of some boys' club, rinsing himself down after a one morning, as if from troubled dreams, dispirited. boxing match. How Diana would have admired me! At Strangest of all, to my mind, was her behaviour towards Quilter Street, however, as I have said, there was no one to Cyril: for though I knew she loved him as her own, she gasp. By the time Ralph and Florence came down for their would sometimes seem to turn her eyes from him, or push breakfasts, I would have my frock upon me and my hair in his grasping hands away, as if she hated him; then at other a curl; and then, more often than not, Florence would only times she would seize him and cover him with kisses until gulp at her tea and say she had no time to eat, she was he squealed. I had been at Quilter Street for several months calling at the Guild on her way to work. Ralph would help when the talk, one evening, turned to birthdays; and I himself to the red herrings left on her plate - 'My word, realised with a little start of surprise that Cyril's must have Cyril, but don't these look good!' - and she would leave, passed and gone uncelebrated. When I asked Ralph about it without a glance at me, wrapping a muffler about her throat he answered that, just as I'd thought, it had passed in July, like a woman of ninety.

but they had not thought it worthwhile to mark it. I said, However much I thought about her - and I spent many laughing, 'Oh, do socialists not keep birthdays, then?' and hours at it: for there is not much to occupy the brain in he had smiled; Florence, however, had risen without a housework, and I might as well puzzle over her, as over word, and left the room. I wondered again about what story anything -I could not figure her out, at all. The Florence I there might be behind the baby; but Florence offered no had met first, the Green Street Florence, had been gay; she clue to it, and I did not pry. I thought, if I did, that it might had had hair that twisted from her head like bed-springs, prompt her to ask me again about the gent who had

433

434

supposedly kept me in luxury, then blacked my eye: she it mine to fatten up Florence, with breakfasts and lunches, had never referred to him after that first night. I was glad with sandwich teas, with dinners and suppers and biscuits she hadn't. She was so good and honest, after all -I should and milk. I had not much success with this, to start with - have hated to have had to lie to her.

for, though I took to haunting the meat stalls of the Indeed, I should have hated to have had to abuse her, in any Whitechapel Market, buying faggots and sausages, rabbits way. When she worked so hard and grew so weary, it made and tripe, and bagfuls of those scraps of flesh we had used me pace about the room and wring my hands, and want to to call, in Whitstable, 'bits and ears', I was really rather an shake her. It was not her job at the girls' home that so indifferent cook, and was as liable to burn the meat, or exhausted her, it was the endless guild and union work - the leave it bloody, as make it savoury; Florence and Ralph did piles of lists and ledgers she would place upon the suppernot notice, I think, because they were used to nothing table, when the supper-things had been cleared off it, and better. But then, one day at the end of August, I saw that the squint at, all night long, until her eyes were red, and creased oyster season had started up, and I bought a barrel of as currants. Sometimes, since I had nothing better to do, I natives and an oyster-knife; and as I put the blade to the would take a chair and sit beside her, and make her share hinge, it was as if I turned a key which unlocked all my the chores with me: she gave me envelopes to address, or mother's oyster-parlour recipes, and sent them flooding to other little harmless tasks I could not muddle. When, in my finger-ends. I dished up an oyster-pie - and Florence put spring, the Guild set up a local seamstresses' union, and aside the paper she was writing on, to eat it, then picked at Florence began visiting the home-workers of Bethnal Green the crust that was left in the bowl, with her fork. The next

- all the poor women who worked long hours, alone, in night I served oyster-fritters, the next night oyster-soup. I squalid rooms, for wretched pay -I went with her. The made grilled oysters, and pickled oysters; and oysters rolled scenes we saw were very miserable, and the women were in four and stewed in cream.

pleased to be visited, and the Guild was grateful; but it was When I passed a plate of this last dish to Florence, she for Florence's sake I really went. I couldn't bear for her to smiled; and when she had tasted it, she sighed. She took a do the dreary task, and walk the East End streets, at night, piece of bread-and-butter, and folded it to mop the sauce alone.

with; and the bread left cream upon her lips, that she licked And then — as I have said, a housekeeper will look for any at with her tongue, then wiped with her fingers. I little thing to liven her day — I began to labour for her, in remembered another time, in another parlour, when I had the kitchen. She was thin, and the thinness looked wrong on served another girl an oyster-supper, and accidentally her: the sight of the shadows at her cheeks made me feel wooed her; and as I was thinking of this, Florence lifted a sad. So, while the Women's Cooperative Guild made it their spoonful offish, and sighed again.

cause to unionise the home-workers of East London, I made

435

436

'Oh,' she said, 'I really think, that if there were one dish, and as lilies at Felicity Place, but now they were red at the one dish only, that had to be served in paradise, that dish knuckles and split at the nails, and scented with soda; and would be oysters - don't you think so, Nance?'

the cuffs above them had frills, that had got spotted with She had never called me 'Nance' before; and I had never, in grease - I hadn't learned the trick of pushing ladies' sleeves all the months that I had lived with her then, known her say back, there seemed never enough material to roll. Now I anything so fanciful. I laughed to hear it; and then so did twitched at one of these cuffs, and bit my lip. The fact was I her brother, and so did she.

didn't know who would be beside me in my paradise. The

'I think it might be oysters," I said.

fact was, there was no one who would want to have me in

'It would be marzipan, in my paradise,' said Ralph: he had a theirs . . .

very sweet tooth.

I looked again at Florence. 'Well, you and Ralph,' I said at

'And there would have,' I said then, 'to be a cigarette beside last, 'I imagine will be in everybody's paradise, instructing the dish, otherwise it would be hardly worth eating.'

them in how to run it.'

'That's true. And my supper-table would be set upon a hill, Ralph laughed. Florence tilted her head, and smiled a sad but overlooking a town - there would not be a chimney in smile of her own. Then, after a moment, she blinked and it; every house would be lit and warmed by electricity.'

caught my gaze. 'And you, of course,' she said, 'will have to

'Oh, Ralph!' I said; 'but only think how dull it would be, to be in mine . . .'

be able to see into all the corners! There wouldn't be

'Really, Florence?'

electric lights, or even houses, in my paradise. There would

'Of course - else, who will stew my oysters?'

be -' Pigmy ponies and fairies on a wire, was what I wanted I had had better compliments paid me - but not recently. I to say, thinking back to my nights at the Brit; but I was not found myself pinking at her words, and dipped my head. up to explaining it.

When I looked at her again, she was gazing over into the And while I hesitated, Florence said: 'So, are we all to have corner of the room. I turned, to see what it was she was a separate paradise?'

looking at: it was the family portrait, and I guessed she Ralph shook his head. 'Well, you, of course, would be in must be thinking of her mother. But in the corner of the mine,' he said. 'And Cyril.'

frame, of course, there was the smaller picture, of the

'And Mrs Besant, I suppose.' She took another spoonful of grave-looking woman with the very heavy brows. I had her supper, then turned to me: 'And who would be in yours never learned who she was, after all. Now I said to Ralph: then, Nancy?'

'Who is that girl, in the little photo? She don't half need a She smiled, and I had been smiling; but even as she asked hairbrush.'

her question, I felt my smile begin to waver. I gazed at my hands where they lay upon the table: they had grown white

437

438

He looked at me, but did not answer. It was Florence who home of a seamstress at Mile End. It was a terribly poor spoke. 'That's Eleanor Marx,' she said, with a kind of quiver home: there was no furniture, hardly, in the woman's to her voice.

rooms, only a couple of mattresses, a threadbare rug, and

'Eleanor Marks? Have I met her? Is she that cousin of one rickety table and chair. In the chamber that passed for a yours, who works at the poulterers?'

parlour, a tea-chest was upturned and had the remains of a She gazed at me then as if I had not asked the question, but sad little supper on it: a crust of bread, a bit of dripping in a barked it. Ralph put down his fork. 'Eleanor Marx,' he said, jar, and a cup half-full of bluish milk. The dinner-table was

'is a writer and a speaker and a very great socialist. . .'

all covered with the paraphernalia of the woman's trade - I blushed: this was worse than asking what cooperative with folded garments and tissue wrappers, with pins and meant. But when Ralph saw my cheeks, he looked kind: cotton reels and needles. The needles, she said, were always

'You mustn't mind it. Why should you know? I'm sure, you dropping on the floor, and the children were always might mention a dozen writers you have read, and Flo and I stepping on them; her baby had recently put a pin in his would not know one of them.'

mouth, and the pin had stuck in his palate and almost That true,' I said, very grateful to him; but though I had read choked him.

proper books at Diana's, I could think, at that moment, only I listened to her story, and then watched while Florence of the improper ones - and they all had the same author: spoke to her about the Women's Guild, and about the Anonymous.

seamstresses' union it had established. Would she come to a So I said nothing, and we finished our supper in silence. meeting? Florence asked. The woman shook her head, and And when I looked at Florence again, her eyes were turned said she didn't have the time; that she had no one to mind away from me and seemed rather dark. I thought then that, the children; that she was frightened that the masters at the after all, she would never really want a girl like me in outfitters for whom she worked would hear about it, and paradise with her, not even to stew the oysters for her tea; stop her shillings.

and the thought, just then, seemed a dreary one.

'Besides that, miss,' she said at last, 'my husband wouldn't But I was quite wrong about her. Whether I were in her care for me to go. Not but what he ain't a union man paradise or not, she wouldn't have noticed; and it was not himself; but he don't think much of women having a say in her mother she hoped to see there, nor even Eleanor Marx, all that stuff. He says there ain't the need for it.'

nor even Karl Marx. It was another person altogether that

'But what do you think, Mrs Fryer? Don't you think the she had in mind - but it was not until a few weeks later, one women's union a good thing? Wouldn't you like to see evening in the autumn of that year, that I found out who. things changed - see the masters made to pay you more, and I had begun, as I have said, to accompany Florence on her work you kinder?' Mrs Fryer rubbed her eyes.

visits for the Guild, and on this night I found myself in the

439

440

They would drop me, miss, that's all, and find a gal to do it pick up her youngest child, who had begun to cry. I reached cheaper. There are plenty of 'em - plenty gals what envy me into the pocket of my coat. There was a shilling there, and a even my poor few shillings . . .'

penny, left over from a marketing trip: I took them out and The discussion went on, until at last the woman grew placed them on the table amongst the fancy shirts and fidgety, and said she thanked us, but couldn't spare the time hankies, slyly as a thief.

to hear us any longer. Florence shrugged. Think on it a bit, Mrs Fryer, however, saw, and shook her head.

won't you? I've told you when the meeting is. Bring your

'Oh, now, miss . . .' she said.

babies if you like - we'll find someone to take care of 'em

'For the baby.' I felt more self-conscious and ill than ever. for an hour or two.' We rose; I looked again at the table, at

'Just for the little one. Please.' The woman ducked her head, the pile of reels and garments. There was a waistcoat, a set and murmured her thanks; and I did not look at her, or of handkerchiefs, some gentlemen's linen -I found myself Florence, until we were both of us out on the street again, drifting towards it all, with fingers that itched to pick the and the dismal room was far behind.

garments up and stroke them. I caught the woman's eye,

'That was kind of you,' said Florence at last. It wasn't kind and nodded at the table-top.

at all; I felt as if I had slapped the woman, not given her a I said, 'What is it you do exactly, Mrs Fryer? Some of these gift. But I didn't know how to tell any of this to Florence. look very fine.'

'You shouldn't have done it, of course,' she was saying.

'I'm an embroid'rer, miss,' she answered. 'I does the fancy

'Now she will think the Guild is made of women who are letters.' She lifted a shirt, and showed me its pocket: there better than her, not women just like herself, trying to help was a flowery monogram upon it, sewn very neatly in ivory themselves.'

silk. 'It looks a bit queer, don't it,' she went on sadly, 'seeing

'You're not much like her,' I said - a little stung, despite all these scraps of handsomeness in this poor room . . .'

myself, by her remark. 'You think you are, but you're not,

'It does,' I said - but I could hardly get the words out. The not really.'

pretty monogram had reminded me suddenly of Felicity She sniffed. 'You're right, I suppose. I'm more like her, Place, and all the lovely suits that I had worn there. I saw however, than I might be. I'm more like her than some of again those tailored jackets and waistcoats and shirts, those the ladies you see working for the poor and the homeless tiny, extravagant N.K.s that I had thought so thrilling. I had and the out-of-work -'

not known then that they were sewn in rooms like this, by

'Ladies like Miss Derby,' I said.

women as sad as Mrs Fryer; but if I had, would I have She smiled. 'Yes, ladies like that. Miss Derby, your great cared? I knew that I would not, and felt now horribly friend.' She gave me a wink and took my arm; and because uncomfortable and ashamed. Florence had stepped to the it was pleasant to see her so light-hearted I began to forget door, and stood there, waiting for me; Mrs Fryer had bent to the little shock that I had had in the seamstress's parlour,

441

442

and to grow gay again. Arm-in-arm we made our slow way, I gazed at all this in a complacent sort of way, then yawned, through the sinking autumn night, to Quilter Street, and and rose to fetch the kettle. 'Stop all that now,' I said to Florence yawned. 'Poor Mrs Fryer,' she said. 'She is quite Florence, nodding at her books. 'Come and sit with me and right: the women will never fight for shorter hours and talk.' It was not a strange request - we had got rather into minimum wages, while there are so many girls so poorly the habit of sitting up when Ralph had gone to bed, chatting off that they'll take any work, however miserable . . .'

over the day's events - and now she looked at me and I was not listening. I was watching the lamplight where, at smiled, and set down her pen.

the edges of her hat, it struck her hair and made it glow; and I swung the kettle over the fire, and Florence rose and wondering if a moth might ever come and settle amongst stretched - then cocked her head.

the curls, mistaking them for candle-flames.

'Cyril,' she said. I listened too, and after a second caught his We reached our home at last, and Florence hung her coat up thin, irregular cry. She moved to the stairs. Til shush him, and began to busy herself, as usual, with her pile of papers before he wakes Ralph.'

and books. I went quietly upstairs, to gaze at Cyril as he She was gone for a full five minutes or so, and when she slumbered in his crib; then I went and sat with Ralph, while returned it was with Cyril himself, his lashes gleaming in Florence worked on. It grew chilly, and I set a little fire in the lamplight and his hair damp and darkened with the the grate: 'The first of autumn,' as Ralph pointed out; and sweat of fretful slumber.

his words - and the idea that I had been at Quilter Street for

'He won't settle," she said. Til let him stay with us a while.'

the turning of three whole seasons - were strangely moving She sat back in the armchair by the fire and the child lay ones. I lifted my eyes to him, and smiled. His whiskers had heavily against her. I passed her her tea, and she took a grown, and he looked more than ever like the sailor on the sideways sip at it, and yawned. Then she gazed at me, and Players' packets. He looked more than ever like his sister, rubbed her eyes.

too, and the likeness made me like him all the more, and

'What a help you've been to me, Nance, these past few wonder how I had ever mistaken him for her husband. months!' she said.

The fire flamed, then grew hot and ashy, and at half-past

'I only help,' I answered truthfully, 'to stop you wearing ten or so Ralph yawned, and slapped his chair and rose yourself out. You do too much.'

from it and wished us both good-night. It was all just as it

'There's so much to do!'

had been on my first evening there - except that he had a

'I can't believe that all of it should fall to you, though. Do kiss for me, too, these days, as well as for Florence; and you never weary of it?'

there was my little truckle-bed, propped in the corner, and

'I get tired,' she said, yawning again, 'as you can see! But my shoes beside the fire, and my coat upon the hook behind never of it.'

the door.

'But Flo, if it's such an endless task, why labour at all?'

443

444

'Why, because I must! Because how could I rest, when the to see with her across the years to the queer new world that world is so cruel and hard, and yet might be so sweet. . . would have Cyril in it, as a man . . .

The kind of work I do is its own kind of fulfilment, whether As I looked, she shifted in her seat, reached a hand out to it's successful or not.' She drank her tea. 'It's like love.'

the bookcase at her side, and drew a volume from the Love! I sniffed. 'You think love is its own reward, then?'

bulging shelves. It was Leaves of Grass: she turned its

'Don't you?'

pages, and found a passage that she seemed to know. I gazed into my cup. 'I did once, I think,' I said. 'But..." I

'Listen to this' she said. She began to read aloud. Her tone had never told her about those days. Cyril wriggled, and she was low, and rather self-conscious; but it quivered with kissed his head and murmured in his ear, and for a moment passion -I had never heard such passion in her voice, all was very still - perhaps she thought me wondering about before.

the gent I said I had lived with in St John's Wood. But then

'O mater! Ofils!' she read. 'O brood continental! O flowers she spoke again, more briskly.

of the prairies! O space boundless! O hum of mighty

'Besides, I don't believe it is an endless task. Things are products! O you teeming cities! O so invincible, turbulent, changing. There are unions everywhere — and women's proud! O race of the future! O women! O fathers! Oyou unions, as well as men's. Women do things today their men of passion and storm! O beauty! O yourself! O you mothers would have laughed to think of seeing their bearded roughs! O bards! O all those slumberers! O arouse!

daughters doing, twenty years ago; soon they will even the dawn-bird's throat sounds shrill! Do you not hear the have the vote! If people like me don't work, it's because cock crowing?'

they look at the world, at all the injustice and the muck, and She sat still for a moment, gazing down at the page; then all they see is a nation falling in upon itself, and taking she raised her eyes to mine, and I saw with surprise that them with it. But the muck has new things growing out of it they were gleaming with unspilled tears. She said, 'Don't

- wonderful things! - new habits of working, new kinds of you think that marvellous, Nancy? Don't you think that a people, new ways of being alive and in love ..." Love again. marvellous, marvellous poem?'

I put a finger to the scar upon my cheek, where Dickie's

'Frankly, no,' I said: the tears had unnerved me. 'Frankly, doctor's book had caught it. Florence bent her head to gaze I've seen better verses on some lavatory walls' -I really had. at the baby, as he lay sighing upon her chest.

'If it's a poem, why doesn't it rhyme? What it needs is a few

'In another twenty years,' she went on quietly, 'imagine how good rhymes and a nice, jaunty melody.' I reached to take the world will be! It will be a new century. Cyril will be a the book from her, and studied the passage she had read - it young man - nearly, but not quite, as old as I am now. had been underlined, at some earlier date, in pencil - then Imagine the things he'll see, the things he'll do . ..' I looked sang it out, to the approximate tune and rhythm of some at her, and then at him; and for a moment I felt almost able

445

446

music-hall song of the moment. Florence laughed, and, with

'I never said, did I,' she went on, 'what I did that night?' I one hand upon Cyril, tried to snatch the book from me. shook my head. I remembered very well what I had done

'You're a beast!' she cried. 'You're a shocking philistine.'

that night - I had supped with Diana, and then fucked her in

'I'm a purist,' I said primly. 'I know a nice bit of verse when her handsome bedroom, and then been sent from it, chilled I see it, and this ain't it.' I flipped through the book, and chastened, to my own. But I had never stopped to think abandoning my attempt to try to force the staggering lines what Florence might have done; and she, indeed, had never into some sort of melody, but reading all the ludicrous told me.

passages that I could find - there were many of them - and

'What did you do?' I asked now. 'Did you go to that - that all in the silly American drawl of a stage Yankee. At last I lecture, on your own?'

found another underlined section, and started on that. 'O my

'I did,' she said. She took a breath. 'I - met a girl there.'

comrade!' I began. 'Oyou and me at last -and us two only; O

'A girl?'

power, liberty, eternity at last! O to be relieved of

'Yes. Her name was Lilian. I saw her at once, and couldn't distinctions! to make as much of vices as virtues! O to level take my eyes from her. She was so very - interesting occupations and the sexes! O to bring all to common looking. You know how it is, with a girl, sometimes? - well, ground! O adhesiveness! O the pensive aching to be no, perhaps you don't..." But I did, I did! And now I gazed together - you know not why, and I know not why at her, and felt myself grow warm; and then rather chill. My voice trailed away; I had lost my Yankee drawl, and She coughed, and put a hand to her mouth. Then she said, spoken the last few words in a self-conscious murmur. still gazing at the coals: 'When the lecture was finished Florence had ceased her laughter, and begun to gaze, Lilian asked a question -it was a very clever question, and apparently quite gravely, into the fire: I saw the orange the speaker was quite thrown by it. I looked at her then, and flames of the coals reflected in each of her hazel eyes. I knew I must know her. I went over to her, and we began to closed the book, and returned it to the shelf. There was a talk. We talked - we talked, Nance, for an hour, quite silence, a rather long one.

without stopping! She had the most unusual views. She'd At last she took a breath; and when she spoke she sounded read, it seemed to me, everything, and had opinions on it quite unlike herself, and rather strange.

all.'

'Nance,' she began, 'do you remember that day in Green The story went on. They had become friends; Lilian had Street, when we talked? Do you remember how we said that come calling ...

we would meet, and how you didn't come . . . ?'

'You loved her!' I said.

'Of course,' I said, a little sheepishly. She smiled - a Florence blushed, and then nodded. 'You couldn't have curiously vague and inward-seeming kind of smile. known her, and not loved her a little.'

447

448

'But Flo, you loved her! You loved her - like a torn!' She made that rug.' She nodded to the gaudy rug before the fire blinked, and put a finger to her lip, and blushed harder than

- the one I had thought woven, in a blither moment, by ever. 'I thought,' she said, 'you might have guessed it...'

some sightless Scottish shepherd - and I quickly took my

'Guessed it! I - I am not sure. I never thought you might feet from it. 'It didn't matter that we weren't lovers; we were have - well, I cannot say what I thought..." so close - closer than sisters. We slept upstairs, together. She turned her head away. 'She loved me, too,' she said, We read together. She taught me things. That picture, of after a moment. 'She loved me, like anything! But, not in Eleanor Marx' - she nodded to the little photograph - 'that the same way. I knew it never would be, I didn't mind. The was hers. Eleanor Marx was her great heroine, I used to say fact is, she had a man-friend, who wished to marry her. But she favoured her; I don't have a photograph of Lily. That she wouldn't do it, she believed in the free union. Nance, book, of Whitman's, that was hers too. The passage you she was the strongest-minded woman I ever knew!'

read out, it always makes me think of me and her. She said She sounded, I thought, insufferable; but I had not missed that we were comrades - if women may be comrades.' Her that was. I swallowed, and Florence gazed once at me, then lips had grown dry, and she passed her tongue across them. looked again at the fire.

'If women may be comrades,' she said again, 'I was hers . . .'

'A few months after I first met her,' she went on, 'I began to She grew silent. I looked at her, and at Cyril - at his flushed see that she was not - quite well. One day she turned up and sleeping face, with its delicate lashes and its jutting here with a suitcase. She was to have a baby, had lost her pink lip. I said, with a kind of creeping dread: 'And then . . . rooms because of it, and the man - who turned out hopeless,

?'

after all - was too ashamed to take her. She had nowhere ... She blinked. 'And then - well, then she died. She was too Of course, we took her in. Ralph didn't mind, he loved her slight, the confinement was a hard one; and she died. We almost as much as I did. We planned to live together, and couldn't even find a midwife who would see to her, because raise the baby as our own. I was glad - I was glad! - that the she was unmarried - in the end we had to bring a woman in man had thrown her over, that the landlady had cast her from Islington, someone who didn't know us, and say that out..."

she was Ralph's wife. The woman called her "Mrs Banner" She gave a grimace, then scraped with a nail at a piece of

- imagine that! She was good enough, I suppose, but rather ash that had come floating from the fire and had fallen on strict. She wouldn't let us in the room with her; we had to her skirt. 'Those were, I think, the happiest months of all sit down here and listen to the cries, Ralph wringing his my life. Having Lilian here, it was like - I cannot say what hands and weeping all the while. I thought, "Let the baby it was like. It was dazzling; I was dazzled with happiness. die, oh, let the baby die, so long as she is safe . . . !" She changed the house - really changed it, I mean, not just

'But Cyril did not die, as you see, and Lilian herself seemed its spirit. She had us strip the walls, and paint them. She well enough, only tired, and the midwife said to let her

449

450

sleep. We did so - and, when I went to her a little later, I

'It has been hard; I have been strange; sometimes I've found that she'd begun to bleed. By then, of course, the wished that I might die, myself. I have, I know, been very midwife had gone. Ralph ran for a doctor - but she couldn't poor company for you and Ralph! And I was not very kind be saved. Her dear, good, generous heart bled quite away -'

when you first came, I think. She had been gone a little Her voice failed. I moved to her and squatted beside her, under six months then, and the idea of having another girl and touched my knuckles to her sleeve; and she about the place - especially you, who I had met the very acknowledged me kindly, with a slight, distracted smile. week I had found her - well! And then, your story was like

'I wish I'd known,' I said quietly; inwardly, however, it was hers, you had been with a gent who had thrown you out, as if I had myself by the throat, and was banging my own after he'd got you in trouble - it seemed too queer. But there head against the parlour wall. How could I have been so was a moment, when you picked up Cyril -I daresay you foolish as not to have guessed it all? There had been the don't even remember doing it - but you held Cyril in your business of the birthday - the anniversary, I realised now, of arms, and I thought of her, who had never cradled him at Lilian's death. There had been Florence's strange all... I didn't know whether I could stand to see you do it; or depressions; her tiredness, her crossness, her brother's whether I could bear to see you stop. And then you spoke - gentle forbearance, her friends' concern. There had been her and you were not like Lily then, of course. And, oh! I've odd ambivalence towards the baby - Lilian's son, yet also, never been gladder of anything, in all my life!'

of course, her murderer, whom Florence had once wished She laughed; I made some sort of sound that seemed to pass dead, so that the mother might be saved . . .

for laughter, some kind of face that could be mistaken, in I gazed at her again, and wished I knew some way to that dim light, for a smile. Then she gave a terrific yawn, comfort her. She was so bleak, yet also somehow so and rose, and shifted Cyril a little higher against her neck, remote; I had never embraced her, and felt squeamish about and brushed her cheek across his head; and then, after a putting a hand upon her, even now. So I only stayed beside moment, she smiled and stepped wearily to the door. her, stroking gently at her sleeve . . . and at last she roused But before she could reach it, I called her name. herself, and gave a kind of smile; and then I moved away. I said, 'Flo, there never was a gent who threw me out. It was

'How I have talked,' she said. 'I don't know, I'm sure, what a lady I was living with; but I lied, so you'd let me stay. I'm made me speak of all this, tonight.'

-I'm a torn, like you.'

'I'm glad you did,' I said. 'You must - you must miss her,

'You ore!' She gaped at me. 'Annie said it all along; but I terribly.' She gazed blankly at me for a moment - as if never thought much about it, after that first night.' She missing was rather a paltry emotion, terrible too mild a began to frown. 'And so, if there never was a man, your term, for her great sadness - and then she nodded and story wasn't like Lilian's, at all ..." I shook my head. 'And looked away.

you were never in trouble ..."

451

452

'Not that kind of trouble.'

Eleanor Marx - except it was not Eleanor Marx I saw, of

'And all this time, you have been here, and I've been course; it was her, with Eleanor Marx's features. I turned it thinking you one thing, and . . .' She looked at me, then, in my hands, and read the back of it: F.B., my comrade, it with a strange expression - I didn't know if she felt angry, said, in large, looped letters, my comrade for ever. L.V. or sad, or bewildered, or betrayed, or what.

I groaned still louder. I wanted to chuck the damn picture I said, 'I'm sorry.' But she only shook her head, and put a into the grate along with my half-smoked fag - I had to hand across her eyes for a second; and when she took the return it quickly to its frame in case I did so. I was jealous, hand away, her gaze seemed perfectly clear, and almost of Lilian! I was more jealous than I had ever been, of amused.

anyone! Not because of the house; not because of Cyril, or

'Annie always said it,' she said again. 'Won't she be pleased, even Ralph -who had been kind to me, but who had wept now! Will you mind it, if I tell her?'

for her, and wrung his hands in grief when she lay dying;

'No, Flo,' I said. 'You may tell who you like.'

but because of Florence. Because it was Florence, above Then she went, still shaking her head; and I sat, and listened all, whom Lilian's story seemed both to have given me, and to her climb the stairs and creak about in the room above to have robbed me of for ever. I thought of my labours of my head. Then I took some tobacco and a paper, and rolled the past few months. I had not made Florence fat and myself a cigarette from a tin upon the mantel, and lit it; then happy, as I had supposed: it had only been time, making her I ground it upon the hearth, and threw it into the fire, and grief less keen, her memories duller. Do you remember how put my head against my arm, and groaned.

we said that we would meet, she had asked me tonight, and What a fool I'd been! I had blundered into Florence's life, how you didn't come . . . ? Her eyes had shone as she had too full of my own petty bitternesses to notice her great asked it, for I had done her some sort of wonderful favour grief. I had thrust myself upon her and her brother, and by not turning up that night, two years before. thought myself so sly and charming; I had thought that I I had done her a wonderful favour - and done myself, it was putting my mark upon their house, and making it mine. seemed to me now, the worst kind of disservice. I thought I had believed myself playing in one kind of story, when all again of how I had spent that night, and the nights the time, the plot had been a different one - when all the following it; I thought of all the lickerish pleasures of time, I was only clumsily rehearsing what the fascinating Felicity Place - all the suits, the dinners, the wine, the poses Lilian had done so well and cleverly before me! I gazed plastiques. I would have traded them all in, at that moment, about the room - at the washed blue walls, the hideous rug, for the chance to have been in Lilian's place at that dull the portraits: I saw them suddenly for what they were - lecture, and had Florence's hazel eyes upon me, fascinated!

details in a shrine to Lilian's memory, that I, all unwittingly,

had been tending. I caught hold of the little picture of Chapter 18

453

454

In the days and weeks following Florence's sad disclosure I feelings -which had been stirred, on the night of her became aware that things at Quilter Street were rather confession, into such a curious mixture — only seemed to changed. Florence herself seemed gayer, lighter - as if, in grow queerer and more contradictory as the weeks went by. telling me her history, she had rid herself of some huge I had been sorry for her, and was as glad as her brother to burden, and was now flexing limbs that had been cramped see her rather lighter-hearted now; I was also pleased and and numbed, straightening a back that had been bowed. She touched that she had confided in me at last, and told me all. was still gloomy, sometimes, and she still went off for But oh, how I wished her story had been different! I could walks, alone, and came back wistful. But she did not try to never learn to like the tragic Lilian, and had to bite back my hide her melancholy now, or to disguise its cause - letting crossness when she was spoken of so reverently. Perhaps I me know, for example, that her trips were (as I might have pictured her as Kitty - it was certainly Walter's face I saw, guessed) to Lilian's grave. In time she even began to speak whenever I thought of her cowardly man-friend; but it made of her dead friend, quite routinely. 'How Lilian would have me hot and giddy to think of her, commanding Florence's laughed to hear of that!' she would say; or, 'Now, if Lily passion, sleeping beside her night after night - and never so were only here, we might ask her, and she'd be sure to much as turning he face to her friend, to kiss her mouth. know.'

Why had Florence cared for her so much? I would gaze at Her new, sweeter mood had an effect upon us all. The the photograph of Eleanor Marx -I could never shake off atmosphere of our little house - which I had always thought the confused conviction that it was really Lilian's features easy enough, before, but which I now saw to have been printed there - until the face began to swim before my eyes. quite choked with the memory of Lilian, and with Ralph She was so different from me — hadn't Florence herself and Florence's sorrow - seemed to clear and brighten: it was told me that? She said she had never been gladder of as if we were passing not into the fogs and frosts of winter, anything, than that I was so different from Lilian! She but into springtime, with all its mildnesses and balms. I meant, I suppose, that Lilian was clever, and good; that she would see Ralph gazing at his sister as she smiled or knew the meaning of words like cooperative, and so never hummed or caught at Cyril and tickled him, and his gaze had to ask. But I - what was I? I was only tidy, and clean. would be soft, and he would sometimes lean to kiss her Well, I think I was never quite so tidy, after that night. I cheek, in pleasure. Even Cyril himself seemed to feel the certainly never beat the dirt from Lilian's gaudy rug again - change, and to grow bonnier and more content." but smiled when people stepped on it, and took a dreadful And I, in contrast, became ever more pinched and secretive pleasure in watching its colours grow dim.

and fretful.

But then I would imagine Lilian in paradise, weaving more I could not help it. It was as if, in casting off her own old carpets so that Florence might one day come and sit on load, Florence had burdened me with a new one; my them and rest her head against her knee. I imagined her

455

456

stocking up the bookshelves with essays and poems, so that auburn; but it was not auburn, there were a thousand tints of she and Florence might walk, side by side, reading together. gold and brown and copper in it. It rose and curled, and I saw her preparing a stove in some small back kitchen in grew ever more rich and lustrous, as it dried. heaven, so that I should have somewhere to stew the oysters I looked from her hair to her face - to her lashes, to her while she and Flo held hands.

wide pink mouth, to the line of her jaw, and the subtle I began to look at Florence's hands -I had never done such a weight of flesh beneath it. I looked at her hands - I thing before - and imagine all the occupations I would have remembered seeing them at Green Street, beating the hot set them to, had I been in Lilian's place ...

June air; I remembered taking her hand in mine, a little later Again, I couldn't help it. I had persuaded myself that

-I remembered the exact pressure of her fingers, in their Florence was a kind of saint, with a saint's dimmed, warm linen glove, against my own. Her hands were pink, unguessable limbs and warmths and warnings; but now, in tonight, and still a little puckered from her bath. Her nails - telling me the story of her own great love, it was as if she which she had used, I remembered now, to chew - were had suddenly shown herself to me, robeless. And I could neat and quite unbitten.

not tear my eyes from what I saw.

I looked at her throat. It was smooth, and very white; One night, for example - one dark night, quite late, when beneath it - just visible in the spreading V at the neck of her Ralph was out with his union friends and Cyril was quiet dressing-gown - was the hint of the beginnings of the swell upstairs - she bathed and washed her hair, then sat in the of a breast.

parlour with her dressing-gown about her, and fell asleep. I I looked - and looked - and felt a curious movement in my had helped her tip her tub of soapy water down the privy, own breast, a kind of squirming or turning, or flexing, that I then gone to warm some milk for us to drink; and when I seemed not to have felt there for a thousand years. It was returned with the mugs, I found her slumbering there, followed almost immediately by a similar sensation, rather before the fire. She was sitting, slightly twisted, and her lower down . . . The mugs of milk began to quiver, until I head had fallen back, and her arms were slack and heavy, feared they would spill. I turned, and placed them carefully and her hands were loose and vaguely folded in her lap. Her upon the supper-table; and then I crept, very quietly, from breaths were deep, and almost snores.

the room.

I stood before her, holding the steaming mugs. She had With every step I took away from her, the movement at my taken the towel from her head, and her hair was spread out heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a over the bit of lace on the back of her chair, like the halo on ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls into a trunk. a Flemish madonna. I did not think that I had ever seen her When I reached the kitchen I stood and leaned against a hair so full and loose before, and I studied it now for a long wall - I was still trembling, worse than ever. I did not return time. I remembered when I had thought it was a dreary to the parlour until I heard Florence wake and exclaim, a

457

458

half-hour later, over the mugs of milk that I had left upon my scalp and a tickling at the inside of my thighs that the table to grow cool and scummy; and even then I was so remained insistent, and I fingered my drab little curls and flushed and shaken that she looked at me and said, 'What's my flowery frock in a kind of disgust. I went, that day, to wrong with you?', and I had to answer, 'Nothing, nothing . . the Whitechapel Market; and on the way home I found

.' - all the time averting my gaze from that white V of myself lingering at the window of a gentlemen's outfitters, curving flesh beneath her throat, because I knew that, if I with my forehead and my fingertips pressing smears of looked at it again, I would be compelled to step to her and sweat and longing against the glass . . .

kiss it.

And then I thought, Why not? I went in - perhaps the tailor I had come to Quilter Street to be ordinary; now I was more thought me shopping for my brother - and bought a pair of of a torn than ever. Indeed, once I had made my own moleskin trousers, and a set of drawers and a shirt, and a confession on the matter and begun to look about me, I saw pair of braces and some lace-up boots; then, back at Quilter that I was quite surrounded by toms, and couldn't believe I Street, I knocked on the door of a girl who was known for had not noticed them before. Two of Florence's charitydoing haircuts for a penny and said: 'Cut it off, cut it all off, worker friends, it seemed, were sweethearts: I suppose she quick, before I change my mind!' She scissored the curls must have tipped them off about me, for the next time they away, and - toms, grow easily sentimental over their came calling, I thought they gazed at me in quite a different haircuts, but I remember this sensation very vividly - it was sort of way. As for Annie Page: when next I saw her she not like she was cutting hair, it was as if I had a pair of put her arm about my shoulder and said, 'Nancy! Florrie wings beneath my shoulder-blades, that the flesh had all tells me you're a cousin! My dear, I never was less grown over, and she was slicing free . . .

surprised by anything, nor more delighted ..." Florence came home distracted that night, and hardly And, for all that my bewildering new interest in Flo was seemed to notice whether I had hair upon my head or not —

such a troublesome one, it was rather marvellous to feel my though Ralph said, in a hopeful way, 'Now, there's a lusts all on the rise again - to have my tommish parts all handsome hair-cut!' She didn't see me in my moleskins, greased and purring, like an engine with a flame set to the either: for I had promised myself that, for the sake of the coals. I dreamed one night that I was walking in Leicester neighbours, I would only wear them to do the housework Square in my old guardsman's uniform, with my hair in; and by the time she came home from Stratford each clipped military-style and a glove behind the buttons of my night, I had changed back into my frock and put an apron trousers (in fact, one of Florence's gloves: I could never on. But then, one day, she came home early. She came look at it again, without blushing]. I had had such dreams home the back way, through the yard behind the kitchen; before, at Quilter Street - minus the detail of the glove, of and I was at the window, cleaning the glass. It was a large course; but this time, when I woke, there was a prickling at window, divided into panes: I had covered the panes with

459

460

polish, and was wiping them clear, one by one. I was would she ever care for me, while she still grieved for dressed in the moleskin bags and the shirt -I had left the somebody like Lilian?

collar off - my sleeves were rolled above my elbows, and And so we went on, and the year grew colder. When my arms were dusty and my fingernails black. My throat Christmas came I spent it not at Quilter Street, but at was damp at the hollow, and my top lip wet - I paused to Freemantle House, where Florence had organised a dinner wipe it. My hair I had combed flat, but it had shaken itself for her girls and needed extra hands to baste the goose and loose: there was a long front lock which kept tumbling into wash the dishes. At New Year we drank a toast to 1895, my eyes, so that I had to push out my lip to blow it back, or and another to 'absent friends' - she meant Lilian, of course; swipe at it with my wrist. I had cleaned all the panes except I'd never told her about all the friends that I had lost. In the one before my face; and when I wiped at this I jumped, January there was Ralph's birthday to celebrate. It fell, in for Florence was standing on the other side of it, very still. the most uncanny fashion, on the same day as Diana's; and She was clad in her coat and hat, and had her satchel over as I smiled to see him opening his gifts, I remembered the her arm; but she was gazing at me as if - well, I had had too bust of Antinous, and wondered if it was still casting its many admiring glances come my way, in the years since I frigid glances over the warm transactions at Felicity Place, had first walked before Kitty Butler in a party-gown and and whether Diana ever looked at it and remembered me. not known why it was she flushed to look at me, not to But by now I had grown so at home in Bethnal Green that I know why it was that Florence, studying me in my could barely believe I had ever lived anywhere else, or moleskins and my crop, flushed now.

imagine a time when Quilter Street routines were not my But, like Kitty, her desire seemed almost as painful to her own. I had become used to the neighbours' racket, and to as it was pleasant. When she caught my eye, she lowered the clamour of the street. I bathed once a week, like her head and walked into the house; and all that she would Florence and Ralph, and the rest of the time was content to say was: 'Why, what a shine you have put upon the glass!'

wash in a bowl: Diana's bathroom had become a strange And while it was glorious to know that - at last, and all and distant memory to me - as of paradise, after the fall. I unwittingly! - I had made her look at me and want me; kept my hair short. I wore my trousers, as I had planned, to while I had felt, for the second that her gaze had met mine, do the housework in -at least, for a month or so I did: after the leaping of my own new passion, and an answering that, the neighbours had

passion in her; and while that passion had left me giddy, all caught glimpses of me in them, and since I had become and aching, and hot, it was as much with nervousness as known in the district as something of a trouser-wearer, it with lust that I trembled and grew weak.

seemed rather a fuss to take the trousers off at night and put Anyway, when I met her later her eyes were dim and she a frock on. No one appeared to mind it; in some houses in kept them turned from me; and I thought, again, Why Bethnal Green, after all, it was a luxury to have any sort of

461

462

clothes at all, and you regularly saw women in their the house quite noiselessly. As I put my parcels down upon husbands' jackets, and sometimes a man in a shawl. Mrs the kitchen floor I heard voices in the parlour - Florence's, Monks' daughters, next door, would run squealing when and Annie's. The doors between were all ajar, and I could they saw me. Ralph's union colleagues tended to look me hear them perfectly: 'She works at a printer's,' Annie was over, as they debated, and then lose the thread of their text. saying. 'The handsomest woman you ever saw in your life.'

Ralph himself, however, would sometimes wander

'Oh Annie, you always say that.'

downstairs with a shirt or a flannel waistcoat in his hand,

'No, really. She was sitting at a desk at a page of text, and saying vaguely: 'I found this, Nance, in the bottom of my the sun was on her and making her shine. When she raised cupboard, and wondered, would the thing be any use to you her eyes to me I held my hand out to her. I said, "Are you

. . . ?'

Sue Bridehead? My name's Jude . . .'"

As for Florence - well, increasingly I seemed to catch her Florence laughed: they had all just been reading the latest gazing at me as she had gazed at me that day through the chapter of that novel, in a magazine; I daresay Annie would glass of the window; but always - always - she would look not have made the joke, had she known how the story away again, and her eyes would grow dark. I longed to keep would turn out. Now Florence said: 'And what did she say them fixed upon me, but didn't know how. I had made to that? That she wasn't sure, but thought Sue Bridehead myself saucy, for Diana's sake; I had flirted heartlessly with might work at the other office . . . ?'

Zena; but with Florence I might as well have been eighteen

'Not at all. What she said was: Allelujah! Then she took my again, sweating and anxious - afraid, of trespassing upon hand and — oh, then I knew I was in love, for sure!'

her fading sorrow. If only, I would think, we were maryFlo laughed again - but in a thoughtful kind of way. After a annes. If only I were a renter again, and she some nervous second she murmured something that I did not catch, but Soho gent, and I could simply lead her to some shabby which made her friend laugh. Then Annie said, still with a shady place and there unbutton her . . .

smile to her voice: 'And how is that handsome uncle of But we were not mary-annes; we were only a couple of yours?'

blushing toms, hesitating between desire and the deed, Uncle? I thought, moving to warm my hands against the while the winter slid by, and the year grew slowly older - stove. What uncle is that? I didn't feel like an eavesdropper. and Eleanor Marx stayed fixed to the wall, grave and untidy I heard Florence give a tut. 'She's not my uncle,' she said - and ageless.

she said it very clearly. 'She's not my uncle, as you well The change came in February, on quite an ordinary day. I know.'

went to Whitechapel, to the market - a very regular thing to

'Not your uncle?' cried Annie then. 'A girl like that - with do, I did it often. When I came home, I came through the hair like that - growling about in your parlour in a pair of yard; I found the back door slightly open, and so entered chamois trousers like a regular little bricksetter ..."

463

464

At that, I didn't care if I were eavesdropping or not: I took a

'Bur Florence - you might just let the cage door open, just a swift silent step into the passageway, and listened rather little . . . There is a new canary in your own front room, harder. Florence laughed again.

banging its handsome head against the bars.'

'I promise you,' she said, 'she's not my uncle.'

'Suppose I let the new one in,' said Flo then, 'then find I

'Why not? Why ever not? Florrie, I despair of you. It's don't care for it, as much as I did the old one? Suppose - unnatural, what you're doing. It's like - like having a roast Oh!' I heard a thump. 'I can't believe that you have got me in the pantry, and eating nothing but bits of crusts and cups here, comparing her to a budgie!' I knew she meant Lilian, of water. What I say is, if you're not going to make an uncle not me; and I turned my head away, and wished I hadn't of her, then, really, consider your friends, and pass her on to listened after all. The parlour remained quiet for a second or somebody who will.'

two, and I heard Florence dip her spoon into her cup, and

'You ain't having her!'

stir it. Then, before I had quite tiptoed back into the

'I don't want anyone, now I've found Sue Bridehead. But kitchen, her voice came again, but rather quietly. there, you see, you do care for her!'

'Do you think it's true, though, what you said, about the new

'Of course I care for her,' said Florence quietly. Now I was canary and the bars . . . ?'

listening so hard I felt I could hear her blinking, pursing her My foot caught a broom, then, and sent it falling; and I had lips.

to give a shout and slap my hands, as if I had just that

'Well then! Bring her to the boy tomorrow night' - I was moment come home. Annie called me in and said that tea sure that's what she said. 'Bring her to the boy. You can was brewed. Florence seemed to raise her eyes to mine, a meet my Miss Raymond ..."

little thoughtfully.

'I don't know,' answered Florence. The words were Annie left soon after, and Florence busied herself, all night, followed by a silence. And when Annie spoke next, it was with paper-work: she had lately got herself a pair of in a slightly different tone.

spectacles, and with them flashing firelight all night, I could

'You cannot grieve for her for ever,' she said. 'She would not even see which way her glances tended - to me, or to never have wanted that. . .'

her books. We said good-night in our usual way, but then Florence tutted. 'Being in love, you know,' she said, 'it's not we both lay wakeful. I could hear her creaking about in her like having a canary, in a cage. When you lose one bed upstairs, and once she went out to the privy. I thought sweetheart, you can't just go out and get another to replace she might have paused on her way, outside my door, to her.

listen for my snores. I didn't call out to her.

'I thought that's exactly what you were supposed to do!'

Next morning I was too tired to study her terribly hard; but That's what you do, Annie.'

as I set the pan of bacon on the stove, she came to me. She came very close, and then she said, quite low - perhaps so

465

466

that her brother, who was in the room across the

'I rather thought I might..."

passageway, might not hear: 'Nance, will you come out Then I'll certainly come,' I said - and had to look quickly to with me tonight?'

the pan of smoking bacon, and so didn't see whether she Tonight?' I said, yawning, and frowning at the bacon, which looked pleased, or satisfied, or indifferent.

I had put too wet into a too-hot pan, so that it hissed and I passed a fretful day, picking through my few dull frocks steamed. 'Where to? Not collecting subscriptions again, and skirts in the hope of finding some forgotten tommish surely?'

gem amongst them. Of course, there was nothing except my

'Not subscriptions, no. Not work at all, in fact, but work-stained moleskins; and these - while they might have pleasure.'

caused something of a sensation at the Cavendish Club - I

'Pleasure!' I had never heard her say the word before, and it thought must be rather too bold for an East End audience, seemed, all of a sudden, a terribly lewd one. Perhaps she so I cast them regretfully aside in favour of a skirt, and a thought the same, for now she blushed a little, and took up gentleman's shirt and collar, and a tie. The shirt and collar I a spoon and began to fiddle with it.

cleaned and starched myself, and rinsed in washing-blue to

'There's a public-house near Cable Street,' she went on, make them shine; the neck-tie was of silk - a very fine silk,

'with a ladies' room in it. The girls call it "The Boy in the with only a slight imperfection to the weave, which Ralph Boat. . .'"

had brought me from his workshop, and which I had had

'Oh yes?'

made up at a Jewish tailor's. The silk was of blue, and She looked once at me, and then away again. 'Yes. Annie showed off my eyes.

will be there, she says, with a new friend of hers; and I didn't change, of course, until after we had cleared the perhaps Ruth and Nora.'

supper things; and when I did - banishing poor Ralph and

'Ruth and Nora too!' I said lightly: they were the two Cyril to the kitchen while I washed and dressed before the girlfriends who had turned out sweethearts. 'Is it to be all parlour fire - it was with a kind of anxious thrill, an almost toms, then?'

queasy gaiety. For all that it was skirts and stays and To my surprise she nodded, quite seriously: 'Yes.'

petticoats that I pulled on, I felt as I thought a young man All toms! The thought sent me into a fever. It was twelve must feel, when dressing for his sweetheart; and all the time months since I had last passed an evening in a room full of I buttoned my costume, and fumbled blindly with my woman-lovers: I was not sure I still possessed the knack. collar-stud and necktie, there came a creaking of the boards What would I wear? What attitude would I strike? All above my head, and a swishing of material, until at last I toms! What would they make of me? And what would they could hardly believe that it was not my sweetheart up there, make of Florence?

dressing for me.

'Will you still go,' I asked, 'if I don't?'

467

468

When she pushed at the parlour door and stepped into the them over my head until the hair felt heavy, and the little, room at last, I stood blinking at her for a moment, quite at a overheated room was thick with scent. And all the time, loss. She had changed out of her work-dress into a shirtFlorence leaned against the frame of the parlour door and waist, and a waistcoat, and a skirt. The skirt was of some watched me; and when I had finished, she laughed. heavy winter stuff, but damson-coloured, and very warm

'My word, what a pair of beauties!' This was Ralph, come upon the eye. The waistcoat was a lighter shade, the shirtthat moment along the passageway, with Cyril at his feet. waist almost red; at her throat was pinned a brooch: a few

'We didn't recognise them, did we, son?' Cyril held up his chips of garnet, in a golden surround. It was the first time in arms to Florence, and she lifted him with a grunt. Ralph put a year that I had seen her out of her sober suits of black and his hand upon her shoulder and said, in an altogether softer brown, and she seemed quite transformed. The reds and tone, 'How fair you look, Flo. I haven't seen you look so damsons brought out the blush of her lip, the gold shine of fair, for a year and more.' She tilted her head, graciously; her curling hair, the whiteness of her throat and hands, the they might for a moment have been a knight and his lady, in pinkness and the pale half-moons at her thumb-nails. some medieval portrait. Then Ralph looked my way, and

'You look," I said awkwardly, 'very handsome.' She smiled; and I didn't know who it was that I loved more, then flushed.

- his sister, or him.

'I have grown too stout,' she said, 'for all my newer clothes .

'Now, you will manage with Cyril, won't you?' said

. .' Then she gazed at my own gear. 'You look very smart. Florence anxiously, when she had handed the baby back to How well that neck-tie becomes you - doesn't it? Except, Ralph and begun to button her coat.

you have tied it crooked. Here.' She came towards me, and

'I should think I will!' said her brother.

took hold of the knot to straighten it; the pulse at my throat

'We won't be late.'

began at once to knock against her fingers, and I started a

'You must be as late as you like; we shall not wonder. Only fruitless fumbling at my hips for a pair of pockets in which mind you are careful. They are rather rough streets, that you to thrust my hands. 'What a fidget you are,' she said mildly, must cross ..."

quite as if she were addressing Cyril; but her cheeks, I The trip from Bethnal Green to Cable Street did indeed take noticed, had not paled - nor was her voice, I thought, quite us through some of the roughest, poorest, squalidest steady.

districts in the city, and could never, ordinarily, be very She finished at my throat at last, then stepped away again. cheerful. I knew the route, for I had walked it often with

'There is just my hair,' I said. I took two brushes and Florence: I knew which courts were grimmest, which dampened them in my water-jug, and combed the hair away factories sweated their workers hardest, which tenements from my face till it was flat and sleek; then I greased my housed the saddest and most hopeless families. But we palms with macassar — I had macassar, now — and ran were out that night together -as Florence herself had

469

470

admitted - for pleasure's sake; and though it might seem Frigate - that reminded me how near our walk had brought strange to say it, our journey was indeed a pleasant one, and us to the Thames.

seemed to take us over a rather different landscape to the

'It's this way,' said Florence self-consciously. She led me one we normally trod. We passed gin-palaces and pennypast the door and around the building to a smaller, darker gaffs, coffee-shops and public-houses: they were not the entrance at the back. Here a set of rather steep and grim and dreary places that they sometimes were, tonight, treacherous-looking steps took us downwards, to what must but luminous with warmth and light and colour, thick with once have been a cellar; at the bottom there was a door of laughter and shouts, and with the reeking odours of beer frosted glass, and behind this was the room - the Boy in the and soup and gravy. We saw spooning couples; and girls Boat, I remembered to call it - that we had come for. with cherries on their hats, and lips to match them; and It was not a large room, but it was very shady, and it took children bent over hot, steaming packets of tripe, and me a time to gauge its breadth and height, to see beyond its trotters, and baked potatoes. Who knew to what sad homes spots of brightness - its crackling fire, its gas-lamps, the they might be returning, in <an hour or two? For now, gleam of brass and glass and mirror and pewter at its bar - however, there was a queer kind of glamour to them, and to into the pools of gloom that lay between them. There were, the very streets - Diss Street, Sclater Street, Hare Street, I guessed, about twenty persons in it: they were seated in a Fashion Street, Plumbers Row, Coke Street, Pinckin Street, row of little stalls, or standing propped against the counter, Little Pearl Street - in which they walked.

or gathered in the furthest, brightest corner, about what

'How gay the city seems tonight!' said Florence seemed to be a billiard table. I didn't like to gaze at them for wonderingly.

long, for at our appearance they all, of course, looked up, It is for you, I wanted to reply: for you and your new and I felt strangely shy of them and their opinion. costume. But I only smiled at her and took her arm; then, Instead I kept my head down, and followed Florence to the

'Look at that coat!' I said, as we passed a boy in a yellow bar. There was a square-chinned woman standing behind it, felt jacket that was bright, in the Brick Lane shadows, as a wiping at a beer-glass with a cloth; when she saw us lantern. 'I knew a girl once, oh! she would have loved that coming she put both glass and towel down, and smiled. coat. ..'

'Why, Florence! How grand to see you here again! And It did not take us long, after that, to reach Cable Street. how bonny you are looking!' She held out her hand and Here we turned left, then right; and at the end of this road I took Florence's fingers in her own, and looked her over saw the public-house that was, I guessed, our destination: a with pleasure. Then she turned to me.

squat, flat-roofed little building with a gas-jet in a plumThis is my friend, Nancy Astley,' said Flo, rather shyly. coloured shade above the door, and a garish sign - The

'This is Mrs Swindles, who keeps bar here.' Mrs Swindles and I exchanged nods and smiles. I took off my coat and

471

472

hat, and ran my fingers through my hair; and when she saw I looked at Florence, and she smiled. 'Gay girls,' she said. me do that her brow lifted a little and I hoped that she was

'Half the girls who come in here are gay. Do you mind it?'

thinking, as Annie Page had: Well, Florence has a fancy How could I mind it, when I had been a gay girl - well, a new uncle, all right!

gay boy - once, myself? I shook my head.

'What will you have, Nance?' Florence asked me then. I

'Do you mind it?' I asked her.

said I would have whatever she cared for, and she hesitated,

'No. I'm only sorry that they must do it..." then asked for two rum hots. 'Let's take them to a stall.' We I didn't listen: I was too taken with the gay girl's story. She stepped across the room - there was sand upon the was saying now: 'We flat fucked for a half-an-hour; then floorboards, and our boots crunched upon it as we walked - tipped the velvet while the gent looked on. Then Susie took to a table, set between two benches. We sat, across from a pair of vampers, and -'

one another, and stirred sugar into our glasses. I looked again at Florence, and frowned. 'Are they French,

'You were a regular here once, then?' I asked Flo. or what?' I asked. 'I can't understand a thing they're saying.'

She nodded. 'I haven't been here for an age ..." And indeed, I could not; for I had never heard such words

'No?'

before, in all my time upon the streets. I said, 'Tipped the

'Not since Lily died. It's a bit of a monkey-parade, to tell the velvet: what does that mean? It sounds like something you truth. I haven't had the heart for it, . .'

might do in a theatre ..."

I gazed into my rum. All at once there came a burst of Florence blushed. 'You might try it,' she said; 'but I think laughter from the stall at my back that made me jump. the chairman would chuck you out ..." Then, while I still

'I said,' came a girl's voice, '"I only does that sort of thing, frowned, she parted her lips and showed me the tip of her sir, with my friends." "Emily Pettinger," he said, "said you tongue; and glanced, very quickly, at my lap. I had never let her flat fuck you for an hour and a half" - which is a lie, known her do such a thing before, and I found myself but anyway, "Flat fucking is one thing, sir," I said, 'and this terribly startled by it, and terribly stirred. It might just as quite another. If you want me to —her'" - here she must well have been her lips that she had dipped to me: I felt my have made a gesture - '"you shall have to pay me for it, drawers grow damp, and my cheeks flush scarlet; and had rather dear.'"

to look away from her own warm gaze, to hide my

'And did he, then?' came another voice. The first speaker confusion.

paused, perhaps to take a sip from her glass; then, 'Swipe I looked at Mrs Swindles at the bar, and at the pewter mugs me!' she said, 'if the bastard didn't put his hand in his pocket that hung, in one long gleaming row, above her; and then I and pull out a sov, and lay it on the table-top, all cool as looked at the group of figures at the billiard table. And then, you like . . .'

after a moment or two, I studied them a little harder. I said

473

474

to Florence, 'I thought you said it was to be all toms here? lurch. Then I sniffed, and gazed again at the trousered toms There are blokes over there.'

beside the billiard-table.

'Blokes? Are you sure?' She turned to where I pointed, and

'To think,' I said after a second, 'that I might have worn my gazed with me at the billiard players. They were rather moleskins, after all . . .' Florence laughed.

rowdy, and half of them were clad in trousers and We sat sipping at our rums a little longer; more women waistcoats, and sported prison crops. But as Florence arrived, and the room became hotter and noisier and thick studied them, she laughed. 'Blokes? she said again. 'Those with smoke. I went to the bar to have our glasses re-filled, are not blokes! Nancy, how could you think it?'

and when I walked with them back to our stall I found I blinked, and looked again. I began to see ... They were not Annie there, with Ruth and Nora and another girl, a fairmen, but girls; they were girls - and they were rather like haired, pretty girl, who was introduced to me as Miss myself. . .

Raymond. 'Miss Raymond works in a print-shop,' said I swallowed. I said, 'Do they live as men, those girls?'

Annie, and I had to pretend surprise to hear it. When, after Florence shrugged, not noticing the thickness in my voice. half-an-hour or so, she went off to find the lavatory, Annie

'Some do, I believe. Most dress as they please, and live as made us rearrange our places so that she might sit next to others care to find them.' She caught my gaze. 'I had rather her.

thought, you know, that you must've done the same sort of

'Quick, quick!' she cried. 'She'll be back in a moment!

thing, yourself..."

Nancy, over there!' I found myself placed between Florence

'Would you think me very foolish,' I answered, 'if I said that and the wall; and for lovely long moments at a time I let the I had thought I was the only one . . . ?'

other women talk, and savoured the press of her damson Her gaze grew gentle, then. 'How queer you are!' she said thigh against my own more sober, more slender one. Every mildly. 'You have never tipped the velvet -'

time she turned to me I felt her breath upon my cheek, hot

'I didn't say that I had never done it, you know; only that I and sugary and scented with rum.

never called it that.'

The evening passed: I began to think that I had never spent

'Well. You use all sorts of peculiar phrases, then. You seem a pleasanter one. I gazed at Ruth and Nora, and saw them never to have seen a torn in a pair of trousers. Really, lean together and laugh. I looked at Annie: she had her Nance, sometimes - sometimes I think you must've been hand upon Miss Raymond's shoulder, her eyes upon her born quite grown - like Venus in the sea-shell, in the face. I looked at Florence, and she smiled. 'All right, painting

Venus?' she said. Her hair had sprung right out of its pins, She put a finger to the side of her glass, to catch a trickle of and was curling about her collar.

sugary rum; then put the finger to her lip. I felt my throat Then Nora began one of those earnest stories - This girl grow even thicker, and my heart give a strange kind of came into the office today, listen to this ..." - and I yawned,

475

476

and looked away from her, towards the billiard players; and impostor - as if I had just said, 'I am Lord Rosebery'. I did was very surprised to find the knot of women there all not look at Florence -though out of the corner of my eye I turned away from their table, and gazing at me. They saw her mouth fly open. I looked at the tattooed woman, seemed to be debating me - one nodded, another shook her and gave her a modest little shrug. She, for her part, had head, yet another squinted at me, and thumped her billiard stepped back; now she slapped our stall until it shook, and cue upon the floor emphatically. I began to grow a little called, laughing, to her friend.

uncomfortable: perhaps — who knew? -I had breached

'Jenny, you have won your coin! The gal says she is Nan some tommish etiquette, coming here in short hair and a King, all right!'

skirt. I looked away; and when I looked again, one of the At her words the group at the billiard-table let up a cry, and women had disentangled herself from her neighbours, and half the room fell silent. The gay girls in the neighbouring was stepping purposefully towards our stall. She was a stall got up, to peer over at me; I heard 'Nan King, it is Nan large woman, and she had her sleeves rolled up to her King there!' whispered at every table. The tattooed tom's elbows. On her arm there was a rough tattoo, so green and friend -Jenny - came stepping over, and held her hand out smudged it might have been a bruise. She reached out to me.

booth, placed the tattooed arm across the back of it, and

'Miss King,' she said, 'I knew it was you the moment you leaned to catch my eye.

come in. What happy times I used to have, watching you

'Excuse me, sweetheart,' she said, rather loudly. 'But my pal and Miss Butler at the Paragon!'

Jenny will have it that you're that Nan King gal, what used

'You're very kind,' I said, taking her hand. As I did so, I to work the halls with Kitty Butler. I've a shilling on it that caught Florence's eye.

you ain't her. Now, will you settle it?'

'Nance,' she asked, 'what is all this? Did you really work the I looked quickly around the table. Florence and Annie had halls? Why did you never say?'

looked up in mild surprise. Nora had broken off her story

'It was all rather long ago . . .' She shook her head, and and now smiled and said, 'I should make the most of this looked me over.

Nance. There might be a free drink in it.' Miss Raymond

'You don't mean you didn't know your friend was such a laughed. No one believed that I really might be Nan King; star?' asked Jenny now, overhearing.

and I, of course, had spent five years in hiding from that

'We didn't know that she was any kind of star,' said Annie. history, denying I had ever been her, myself.

'Her and Kitty Butler - what a team! There never was a pair But the rum, the warmth, my new, unspoken passion o' mashers like "em . . .'

seemed to work in me like oil in a rusted lock. I turned back

'Mashers!' said Florence.

to the woman. 'I'm afraid,' I said, 'that you must lose your

'Why yes,' continued Jenny. Then: 'Why, just a minute - I bet. I am Nan King.' It was the truth, and yet I felt like an believe there is the very thing to show it, here ..." She

477

478

pushed her way through the crowd of gaping women to the

'What a treat, Miss King,' cried someone else then, 'to find bar, and here I saw her catch the barmaid's eye, then gesture you here ..." There was a general murmuring as the towards the wall behind the rows of upturned bottles. There implications of this comment were digested; 'I cannot say I was a faded piece of baize there, with a hundred old notes never wondered,' I heard someone say. Then Jenny leaned and picture-postcards fastened to it; I saw Mrs Swindles near to me again, and cocked her head.

reach into the layers of curling paper for a second, then

'What about Miss Butler, if you don't mind my asking? I draw out something small and bent. This she handed to heard she was a bit of a torn, herself.'

Jenny; in a moment it had been placed before me, and I That's right,' said another girl, 'I heard that too.'

found myself gazing at a photograph: Kitty and I, faint but I hesitated. Then: 'You heard wrong,' I said. 'She wasn't.'

unmistakable, in Oxford bags and boaters. I had my hand

'Not just a bit. . . ?'

upon her shoulder, and a cigarette, unlit, between the

'Not at all.'

fingers.

Jenny shrugged. 'Well, that's too bad.'

I looked and looked at the picture. I remembered very I looked at my lap, suddenly upset; worse, however, was to clearly the weight and scent of that suit, the feel of Kitty's follow, for at that moment one of the gay girls thrust her shoulder beneath my hand. Even so, it was like gazing into way between Ruth and Nora to call, 'Oh, Miss King, won't someone else's past, and it made me shiver.

you give us a song?' Her cry was taken up by a dozen The postcard was seized from me, then, first by Florence throats - 'Oh yes, Miss King, do!' - and, as in a terrible who bent her head to it and studied it almost as intently as I dream, a broken-down old piano was suddenly produced, it had - then by Ruth and Nora, and Annie and Miss seemed, from nowhere, and wheeled over the gritty Raymond, and finally by Jenny, who passed it on to her floorboards. At once, a woman sat down before it, cracked friends.

her knuckles, and played a staggering scale.

'Fancy us still having that pinned up,' she said. 'I remember

'Really,' I said, 'I can't!' I looked wildly at Florence - she the gal what put it there: she was rather keen on you - was studying me as if she had never seen my face before. indeed, you was always something of a favourite, at the Jenny cried carelessly: 'Oh, go on, Nan, be a sport, for the Boy. She got it from a lady in the Burlington Arcade. Did gals at the Boy. What was that one you used to sing - about you know there was a lady there, selling pictures such as winking at the pretty ladies, with your hand hanging on to yours, to interested gals?' I shook my head - in wonder, to your sovereign . . . ?'

think of all the times that I had trolled up and down the One voice, and then another and another, picked it up. Burlington Arcade for interested gents, and never noticed Annie had taken a swig of her beer, and now almost choked that particular lady.

on it. 'Lord! she said, wiping her mouth. 'Did you sing that? I saw you once at the Holborn Empire! You threw a

479

480

chocolate coin at me - it was half-melted from the heat of

'You were really famous?' she asked me, as I found a your pocket -I ate it, and thought I should die! Oh, Nancyl'

cigarette and lit it. 'And you really sang?'

I gazed at her and bit my lip. The billiard players had all set

'Sang, and danced. And acted, once, in a pantomime at the down their cues and moved to stand about the piano; the Britannia.' I slapped my thigh. '"My lords, where is the pianist was picking out the chords of the song, and about Prince, our master.'" She laughed, though I did not. twenty women were singing it. It was a silly song, but I

'How I wish I'd seen you! When was all this?'

remembered Kitty's voice lilting upwards at the chorus, and I thought for a moment; then, 'Eighteen eighty-nine,' I said. giving the tune a kind of sweet liquidity, as if the foolish She stuck her lip out. 'Ah. Strikes all that year: no time for phrases turned to honey on her tongue. It sounded very the music hall. I think, one night, I might have stood different here, in this rough cellar - and yet, it had a certain outside the Britannia, collecting money for the dockers ..." trueness, too, and a new sweetness all of its own. I listened She smiled. 'I should have liked a chocolate sovereign, to the boisterous girls, and found myself beginning to hum though.'

... In a moment I had knelt upon my seat and joined my

'Well, I should have made sure to throw you one She lifted voice with theirs; and afterwards they cheered and clapped her glass to her lips, then thought of something else. 'What me, and I found I had to put my head upon my arm, and happened,' she asked, 'to make you leave the theatre? If you bite my lip, to stop the tears from coming.

were doing so well, why did you stop? What did you do?'

They started on another song, then - not one of mine and I had admitted to some things; but I wasn't ready to admit to Kitty's, but a new one that I didn't know, and so could not them all. I pushed my plate towards her. 'Eat this pie for join in with. I sat down, and let my head fall back against me,' I said. Then I leaned past her and called down the the panels of the stall. A girl arrived at the end of our table table. 'I say, Annie. Give me a cigarette, will you? This with a pork pie on a plate, sent over from Mrs Swindles and one's a dud.'

'on the house'. I picked at the pastry of this for a while, and

'Well, since you're a celebrity. . .'

grew a little calmer. Ruth and Nora now had their elbows Florence ate the pie, helped out by Ruth. The singers at the on the table, their heads on their chins, and were gazing at piano grew weary and hoarse, and went back to their me, their story forgotten. Annie, I could hear in the pauses billiards. The gay girls in the stall next door got up, and of the new song, was explaining to an incredulous Miss pinned on their hats: they were off, I suppose, to start work, Raymond: 'No, I swear, we had no idea. Arrived on in the more ordinary publics of Wapping and Limehouse. Florrie's doorstep with a black eye and a bunch of cresses, Nora yawned and, seeing her, we all yawned, and Florence and has never left it. Quite a dark horse ..." gave a sigh.

Florence herself had her face turned my way, and her eyes

'Shall we go?' she asked. 'I think it must be very late.'

in shadow.

481

482

'It is almost midnight,' said Miss Raymond. We stood, to

'I hope it won't, indeed,' she answered kindly. Then she button our coats on.

looked past me, to Florence and the others. 'Your girl is a'I must just have a word with Mrs Swindles,' I said, 'to waiting for you,' she said with a smile. I put the picture in thank her for my pie'; and when I had done that - and been the pocket of my coat.

seized and saluted by half-a-dozen women on the way -I

'So she is,' I said absently. 'So she is.'

wandered over to the billiard corner, and nodded to Jenny. I joined my friends; we picked our way across the crowded

'Good-night to you,' I said. 'I'm glad you won your shilling.'

room, and hauled ourselves up the treacherous staircase into She took my hand and shook it. 'Good-night to you, Miss the aching cold of the February night. Outside The Frigate King! The shilling was nothing compared to the pleasure of the road was dark and quiet; from Cable Street, however, having you here among us all.'

came a distant row. Like us, the customers of all the other

'Shall we see you here again, Nan?' her friend with the publics and gin palaces of the East End were beginning to tattoo called then. I nodded: 'I hope so.'

make their tipsy journeys home.

'But you must sing us a proper song next time, on your

'Is there never trouble,' I said as we started to walk, own, in all your gentleman's toggery.'

'between women at the Boy and local people, or roughs?'

'Oh yes, you must!'

Annie turned her collar up against the cold, then took Miss I made no answer, only smiled, and took a step away from Raymond's arm. 'Sometimes,' she said. 'Sometimes. Once them; then I thought of something, and beckoned to Jenny some boys dressed a pig in a bonnet, and tipped it down the again.

cellar stairs . . .'

'That picture,' I said quietly when she was close. 'Do you

'No!'

think - would Mrs Swindles mind - do you think that I

'Yes,' said Nora. 'And once a woman got her head broken, might have it, for myself?' She put her hand to her pocket at in a fight.'

once, and drew out the creased and faded photograph, and

'But this was over a girl,' said Florence, yawning, 'and it passed it to me.

was the girl's husband who hit her ..."

'You take it,' she said; then she could not help but ask, a

'The truth is,' Annie went on, 'there is such a mix round little wonderingly, 'But have you none of your own? I these parts, what with Jews and Lascars, Germans and should've thought

Poles, socialists, anarchists, Salvationists . . . The people

'Between you and me,' I said, 'I left the business rather fast. are surprised at nothing.'

I lost a lot of stuff, and never cared to think of it till now. Even as she spoke, however, two fellows came out of a This, however -' I gazed down at the photo. 'Well, it won't house at the end of the street and, seeing us - seeing Annie hurt me, will it, to have this little reminder?'

and Miss Raymond arm-in-arm, and Ruth with her hand in Nora's pocket, and Florence and I bumping shoulders - gave

483

484

a mutter, and a sneer. One of them hawked as we passed by was: it was as thick and brown as gravy, but we drank it him, and spat; the other cupped his hand at the fork of his anyway - carrying our mugs back into the parlour, where trousers, and shouted and laughed.

the air was warmest, and holding our hands before the last Annie looked round at me and gave a shrug. Miss few glowing coals in the ashy hearth.

Raymond, to make us all smile, said, 'I wonder if any The chairs had been pushed back to make room for my bed, woman will ever get her head broken on my account..." so now, rather shyly, we sat upon it, side by side: as we did

'Only her heart, Miss Raymond,' I called gallantly and had so, it moved a little on its castors, and Florence laughed. the satisfaction of seeing both Annie and Florence look my There was a lamp turned low upon the table but, apart from way and frown.

that, the room was very dim. We sat, and sipped our tea, Our group got smaller as we journeyed, for at Whitechapel and gazed at the coals: now and then the ash would shift a Ruth and Nora left us to pick up a cab to take them to their little in the grate, and the coal give a pop. 'How still it flat in the City, and at Shoreditch, where Miss Raymond seems,' said Florence quietly, 'after the Boy!'

lived, Annie looked at the toe of her boot and said, 'Well, I I had drawn my knees to my chin - the bed was very low think I shall just walk Miss Raymond to her door, since it's upon the rug - and now turned my cheek upon them, and so late; but you be sure to go on without me, and I'll catch smiled at her.

you up ..."

'I'm glad you took me there,' I said. 'I don't believe I've had So then it was only Florence and me. We walked quickly, such a pleasant night since - well, I cannot say.'

because it was so cold, and Florence linked her hands

'Can't you?'

around my arm and held me very close. When we reached

'I can't. For half my pleasure, you know, was seeing you so the end of Quilter Street we stopped, as I had done on my gay. . .'

first journey there, to gaze for a moment at the dark and She smiled, then yawned. 'Didn't you think Miss Raymond eerie towers of Columbia Market, and to peer up at the very handsome?' she asked me.

starless, moonless, fog-and smoke-choked London sky.

'Pretty handsome.' Not as handsome as you, I wanted to

'I don't believe Annie will catch us up, after all,' murmured say, looking again at all the features I had once thought Florence, looking back towards Shoreditch.

plain. Oh Flo, there's no one as handsome as you!

'No,' I said. 'I don't believe she will. . .'

But I didn't say it. And meanwhile, she had smiled. 'I The house, when we entered it, seemed hot and stuffy remember another girl Annie courted once. We let them enough; we soon grew chilled, however, once we had taken stay with us, because Annie was sharing with her sister our coats off and visited the privy. Ralph had left my then. They slept in here, and Lilian and I were upstairs; and truckle-bed made up for me, and fixed a note to the mantel they were so noisy, Mrs Monks came round to ask, "Was to say there was a pot of tea for us inside the oven. There someone poorly?" We had to say that Lily had the

485

486

toothache - when in fact, she had slept through it all, with She drew in her breath. A coal in the hearth fell with a me beside her ..."

rattle, but she did not turn to it, and neither did I. We only Her voice grew quiet. I put a hand to my necktie, to loosen stared: it was as if her words, that were so warm, had it: the idea of Flo lying at Lilian's side, stirred to a useless melted our gazes the one into the other, and we could not passion, made me bitter; but, as usual, it also made me tear them free. I said, almost laughing: 'Jim! Jim!' She rather warm. I said, 'Wasn't it hard, sharing a bed with blinked, and seemed to shiver; and then I shivered, too. And someone you loved like that?'

then I said, simply, 'Oh, Flo . . .'

'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

488

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

490

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.'

491

492

'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 seawoke 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.

493

494

'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.'

from gazing at Eleanor Marx. Sensible girls used to put

'We can pretend it's otherwise, if you like,' I said. 'We can pictures of me on their bedroom walls, five years ago.'

bring the truckle-bed back, and pretend -'

'Stop boasting,' she answered. 'All this talk about the music She leaned away from me as if I had sworn at her. 'Pretend? hall. I've never heard you sing a song to me.'

Pretend, and in my own house? If Frank doesn't like my She had taken my place in the armchair, and now I went habits, he can stop visiting. Him, and anyone else with a and nudged at her knees with my own. 'Tommy,' I sang - it similar idea. Would you have people think we were was an old song of W. B. Fair's - 'Tommy, make room for ashamed?'

your uncle.'

'No, no. It was only that Kitty -'

She laughed. 'Is that a song you used to sing with Kitty?'

'Oh, Kitty! Kitty! The more you tell me about that woman,

'I should say not! Kitty would have been too afraid, in case the less I care for her. To think she kept you cramped and there was a real tom in the crowd who got the joke and guilty for so long, when you might have been off, having thought we meant it.'

your bit of fun as a real gay torn ..."

'Sing me one of the ones you sang with Kitty, then.'

495

496

'Well..." I was not sure I liked the idea; but I sang her a few when she said a similar thing another night, I touched her lines of our song about the sovereigns - strolling about the through the folds of her skirt until her voice grew weak - parlour as I did so, and kicking my moleskinned legs. When and then she led me into the pantry, and put a broom across I finished, she shook her head.

the door, and we caressed amongst the packets of flour and

'How proud she should have been of you! I she said softly. tins of treacle while the kettle whistled and the kitchen

'If I'd been her -' She didn't finish. She only rose, and came grew woolly with steam, and Annie called out from the to me, and drew back the shirt where it flapped beneath my parlour, What were we doing? The fact was, we had both throat, and kissed the flesh that showed there, until I gone kissless for so long that, having once begun to kiss trembled.

again, we could not stop. Our boldness made us marvel. She had seemed chaste as a plaster saint to me, once; she

'I had you down for one of those terrible grudging girls,' she had seemed plain. But she was not chaste now - she was said to me one night, a week or two after our visit to the marvellously bold and frank and ready; and the boldness Boy. 'One of those dry-rub-it-on-the-hip-don't-touch-me made her bonny, made her gleam, like a kind of polish. I sorts . . .' 'Are there such girls?' I asked her. She coloured. could not look at her and not want to touch her. I could not

'Well, I have lain with one or two ..." The thought that she see the shine upon her pink lips, without wanting to step to had lain with different girls - with so many girls that she her and press my mouth to it; I couldn't look at her hand as could put them into categories, like breeds of fish - was it lay limp upon some table-top, or held a pen, or carried a wonderfully astonishing and stirring. I put my hand upon cup, or did any kind of ordinary business, without longing her - we were lying together, naked despite the cold, to take it in my own and kiss the knuckles or put my tongue because we had bathed in a steaming tub and were still to the palm, or press it to the fork at my trousers. I would warm and prickling from it - and stroked her, from the stand beside her in a crowded room and feel the hairs lift on hollow at her throat to the hollow of her groin; then I my arms - and see her own flesh pimple, and her cheeks stroked her again, and felt her shiver.

grow warm, and know she ached for me, to match my

'Who would ever have thought that I should touch you so, aching; but she would take a dreadful satisfaction, too, in and talk to you so!' I asked her - whispering, because Cyril lengthening the visits of her Mends - in handing out a lay beside us, asleep in his crib. 'I was sure you would second cup of tea, and then a third -and all while I looked prove prim and awkward. I was sure you would be shy. on, tortured and damp.

Indeed, I didn't see how you could fail to be, being so

'You made me wait, for two years and a half,' she said to political and good as you are!'

me once; I had followed her into the kitchen, and put my She laughed. 'It ain't the Salvation Army, you know,' she shaking arms about her as she lifted a kettle to the stove. 'It answered, 'socialism.'

won't hurt you, to wait an hour till the parlour clears ..." But

'Well, maybe ..."

497

498

We said nothing more, then; only kissed and murmured. I wriggled lower. 'And this, too?'

But the next night she produced a book, and had me read it.

'Oh, certainly!'

It was Towards Democracy, the poem by Edward

I slid beneath the sheet. 'And how about this?'

Carpenter; and as I turned the pages, with Florence warm

'Oh!'

beside me, I found myself growing damp.

'Lord,' I said a little later. 'To think I have been part of the

'Did you used to look at this with Lilian?' I asked her. socialist conspiracy all these years, and never knew it till She nodded. 'She used to like to have me read it to her, as now . . .'

we lay in bed. She couldn't have known, I suppose, that it We kept Towards Democracy beside the bed permanently, was sometimes hard to do it..."

after that; and just as Florence would sometimes say to me, Perhaps she did know, I thought - and the idea made me when the house was quiet, 'Sing me a song, in your damper. I handed the book to her. 'Read it to me, now,' I moleskins, Uncle . . .', so I would occasionally lean to said.

whisper to her, over supper or as we walked side by side:

'You have already read it.'

'Shall we be democratic tonight, Flo . . . ?' Of course, there

'Read me the bits you used to read to her . . .'

were certain songs - 'Sweethearts and Wives' was one of She hesitated, then did so; and as she murmured, I put my them - I would never have sung for her. And Leaves of hand between her legs and touched her, and her voice grew Grass, I noticed, stayed downstairs, on the shelf beneath the less steady, the more firmly I stroked.

photographs of Eleanor Marx and Kitty. I didn't mind it. There are books written especially for this sort of thing,' I How could I mind it? We had struck a kind of bargain. We said to her, thinking back to the many times I had lain doing had fixed to kiss for ever. We had never once said, I love something similar with Diana - on the very same nights, you.

probably, that Florence had lain squirming next to Lilian.

'Isn't it marvellous to be in love, in spring-time?' Annie

'Wouldn't you rather I bought you a book like that? I can't asked us one evening in April: she and Miss Raymond were believe Mr Carpenter really intended his poem to be sweethearts now, and spent long hours in our parlour, enjoyed in such a way.'

sighing over one another's charms. 'I went visiting a factory She put her lips against my throat. 'Oh, I think Mr today, and it was the grimmest, most broken-down old Carpenter would approve all right.'

place you ever saw. But I came out into its yard and there She had let the book fall on to her breast. Now I pushed it was a piece of pussywillow growing there - just a piece of aside, and rolled upon her.

common old pussy-willow, but with a bit of yellow sun on

'And this,' I said, moving my hips, 'is really contributing to it, and it looked so exactly like my dear Emma I thought for the social revolution?'

a moment I would fall down and kiss it, and weep.'

'Oh, yes!'

499

500

Florence snorted. They should never have let women into

'And now you have said you will help to run it. Which the civil service, I said it all along. Weeping over pussy means,' I said bitterly to Miss Raymond, 'that she will have willow? I never heard such rubbish in my life; I really taken far more duties upon herself than she should have, wonder, sometimes, how Emma can bear you. If I heard and so, as usual, I shall be obliged to help her - to sit up late Nancy likening me to a sprig of catkins, I should be sick.'

at night writing letters to the president of the Hoxton Fur

'Oh, for shame! Nancy, have you never seen Florrie's face and Feather Dressers' Union, or the Wapping Small Metal in a chrysanthemum, or a rose?'

Workers' Society. And all at a time -' All at a time, I wanted

'Never,' I said. 'Though there was a flounder for sale on a to say, when I longed only to tip her satchel of papers into fishmonger's barrow, in Whitechapel yesterday, and the the fire, and lie kissing her before its blaze. likeness was quite uncanny. I very nearly brought it home I thought Florence looked at me a little sadly then. She said,

..."

'You needn't help, if you don't care to.'

Annie took Miss Raymond's hand in hers, and gazed at us

'Needn't help?' I cried. 'In this house?'

in wonder. 'I swear,' she said, 'you two are the most And it was just as I had supposed. Florence had committed unsentimental sweethearts I've ever known.'

herself to a thousand duties, and I, to stop her working

'We are too sensible for sentiment, aren't we, Nance?'

herself into a fit, took on half of them - wrote letters and

'Too busy, more like,' I said, with a yawn.

figured sums at her direction, and delivered bags of posters Florence grew sheepish. 'And, well, we shall be even busier and pamphlets to grubby union offices, and visited before long, I'm afraid. For, you know, I promised Mrs carpenters' shops, and sat sewing tablecloths and flags, and Macey at the Guild that I would help with the organising of costumes for the workers' pageant. Our house in Quilter the Workers' Rally -'

Street grew quite dusty again; our suppers became ever

'Oh, Florence!' I cried, 'you didn't!'

more hasty and under-prepared — I had no time for stewing

'What's this?' asked Miss Raymond.

oysters now, but served them raw, and we swallowed them

'Some wretched scheme,' I said, 'dreamed up by all the as we worked. Half of the flags I sewed, half of the letters guilds and unions of East London, to fill Victoria Park with Florence wrote, were stained at the edges with liquor, and socialists -'

spotted with grease.

'A demonstration,' interrupted Florence. 'A wonderful thing, Even Ralph was involved in it. He had been asked, as if it works. It is to be at the end of May. There will be tents, secretary of his union, to write a little address for the day and speeches and stalls, and a pageant; we hope to get itself, and deliver it - in between the grander speeches - visitors and speakers from all over Britain - and some, before the crowd. The title of the address was to be 'Why even, from Germany and France.'

Socialism?', and the composing and rehearsing of this threw Ralph - who was no very keen public speaker - into a fever.

501

502

He would sit at the supper-table for hours at a time, writing

'You will thank me for it, in the end. Now, straighten your until his arm grew sore — or more often gazing bleakly at back and lift up your head, and start again. And talk from the empty page before him, then dashing to the bookcase to here' -I touched the buckle on his trousers, and he twitched check a reference in some political tract, and cursing to find

-'not from your throat. Go on.'

it lent out or lost: 'What has happened to The White Slaves

'"Why Socialism?" he read again, in a deep, unnatural of England!? Who has borrowed my Sidney Webb? And voice. 'That is the question I have been invited to discuss where the blazes is Towards Democracy?'

with you this afternoon. "Why Socialism?" I shall keep my Florence and I would gaze at him and shake our heads. answer rather brief.'

'Give the thing up,' we would say, 'if you don't want to do I sucked at my lip. 'Some joker is sure to shout "Hurrah" at it, or feel you can't. No one will mind,' But Ralph would that point, you know.'

always stiffen and answer, 'No, no. It is for the sake of the

'Not really, Nance?'

union. I almost have it.' Then he would frown at his page

'You may count on it. But you mustn't let it unsettle you, or again, and chew on his beard; and I would see him you'll be done for. Go on, now, let's hear the rest.'

imagining himself standing before a crowd of staring faces, He read the speech - it was a matter of two or three pages, and he would sweat and start to tremble.

no more - and I listened, and frowned.

But here, at least, I felt I could help. 'Let me hear you read a

'You will talk into the paper,' I said at the end. 'No one will bit of your speech,' I said to him one night when Florence be able to hear. They will get bored, and start talking was out. 'Don't forget I was an actress of sorts, once. It's all amongst themselves. I have seen it happen a hundred times.'

the same, you know, whether it's a stage or a platform.'

'But I must read the words,' he said. I shook my head. That's true,' he said, struck by the idea. Then he flapped his

'You shall have to learn them, there's nothing else for it. sheets. 'But I am rather shy of reading it out before you.'

You shall have to get the piece by heart.'

'Ralph! If you are shy with me, in our parlour, what will

'What? All this?' He gazed miserably at the pages. you be like before five hundred people, in Victoria Park?'

'A day or two's work,' I said. Then I put my hand upon his The thought set him biting at his beard again; but he held arm. 'It is either that, Ralph, or we shall have to put you in a his speech before him as requested, stood before the funny suit...'

curtained window, and cleared his throat.

And so through the whole of April and half of May - for of

'"Why Socialism?'" he began. I jumped to my feet. course it took considerably longer than one or two days for

'Well, that is hopeless, for a start. You can't mumble into him to learn even so much as a quarter of the words - Ralph your hands like that, and expect the folk in the gallery - I and I laboured together over his little speech, forcing the mean, at the back of the tent - to be able to hear you.'

phrases into his head and finding all sorts of tricks to make

'You are rather harsh, Nancy,' he said.

them stay there. I would sit like a prompter, the papers in

503

504

my hand, Ralph declaiming before me in an effortful

'It won't rain,' I said. 'Stop fussing.' But she continued to monotone; I would have him recite to me over breakfast, or frown at the sky; and at length I joined her at the window, as we washed the dishes, or sat together beside the fire; I and gazed at the clouds myself.

would stand outside the kitchen door and have him shout

'If only it doesn't rain,' she said again; and to distract her I the words out to me as he lay in his bath.

breathed upon the glass and wrote our initials in the mist,

'How many times have you heard economists say that with a fingernail: N.A., F.B., 1895 & Always. I put a heart England is the richest nation in the world? If you were to around them and, piercing the heart, an arrow. ask them what they meant by that, they would answer . . . It did not rain that Sunday; indeed, the skies above Bethnal they would answer

Green were so blue and clear you might have been forgiven

'Ralph! They would answer: Look about you -

for thinking God Himself a socialist, the brilliant sun a kind They would answer: Look about you, at our great palaces of heavenly blessing. At Quilter Street we all rose early, and public buildings, our country houses and our . . .'

and bathed and washed our hair and dressed - it was like

'Our factories -'

getting ready for a wedding. I very gallantly decided not to

'Our factories and our ..."

risk my trousers on the crowd - socialists having such a

'Our Empire, Ralph!'

poor name already; instead, I wore a suit of navy-blue, with In time, of course, I learned the whole wretched speech scarlet frog-ging on the coat, and a matching necktie, and a myself, and could leave the sheets aside; but in time, too, billycock hat. As ladies' outfits went, it was a smart one; Ralph managed more or less to con it, and was able to even so, I found myself twitching irritably at my skirts as I stumble through from start to finish, without any prompts at paced the parlour waiting for Flo - and was soon joined by all, and sounding almost sensible.

Ralph, who was dressed up stiff as a clerk, and kept pulling Meanwhile, the day of the rally drew nearer, our hours at his collar where it chafed against his throat. grew ever fuller and our tasks more rushed; and I - despite Florence herself wore the damson-coloured suit I so my grumbles - could not help but grow a little eager to see admired: I bought a flower for her, on the walk from the thing take place at last, and was as excited and as Bethnal Green, and pinned it to her jacket. It was a daisy, fretful, almost, as Florence herself.

big as a fist, and shone when the sun struck it, like a lamp. If only it does not rain!' she said, gazing bleakly at the sky

'You shall certainly,' she said to me, 'not lose me in that.'

from our bedroom window, the night before the appointed Victoria Park itself we found transformed. Workmen had Sunday. 'If it rains, we shall have to have the pageant in a been busy raising tents and platforms and stalls all through tent; and nobody has rehearsed that. Or suppose it the weekend, and there were strings of flags and banners at thunders? Then no one will hear the speakers.'

every tree, and stall-holders already setting up their tables and displays. Florence had about a dozen lists of duties

505

506

upon her, and now produced them, then went off to find brilliant and all the colours more gay, I found myself gazing Mrs Macey of the Guild. Ralph and I picked our way about me in a kind of wonder. 'If five thousand people through all the drooping bunting, to find the tent he was to come,' Florence had said the night before, 'we shall be speak in. It turned out to be the biggest of the lot: There'll happy . . .': but I thought, as I walked about, then moved to be room for seven hundred people in here, at the least!' the a rise of ground to lift Cyril to my shoulders and put my workmen told us cheerfully, as they filled it with chairs. hand to my brow and survey the field, that there must be ten That made it greater than some of the halls I had used to times that number there - all the ordinary people of East play at; and when Ralph heard it, he turned very pale, and London, it seemed to be, all jumbled together in Victoria retired to a bench for another reading of his speech. Park, good-natured and careless and dressed in their best. After that, I took Cyril and wandered about, gazing at They came, I suppose, as much for the sun as for the whatever caught my eye and stopping to chat with girls I socialism. They spread blankets between the stalls and recognised, lending a hand with fluttering tablecloths, tents, and ate their lunches there, and lay with their splitting boxes, awkward rosettes. There were speakers and sweethearts and babies, and threw sticks for their dogs. But exhibitions there, it seemed to me, for every queer or I saw them listening, too, to the speakers at the stalls - philanthropic society and cause you could imagine - trade sometimes nodding, sometimes arguing, sometimes unionists and suffragists, Christian Scientists, Christian frowning over a pamphlet, or placing their name upon a list, Socialists, Jewish Socialists, Irish Socialists, anarchists, or fishing pennies from their pockets, to give to some vegetarians . . . 'Ain't this marvellous?' I heard as I walked, cause.

from friends and strangers alike. 'Did you ever see a sight As I stood and looked, I saw a woman pass by with children like this?' One woman gave me a sash of satin to pin about at her skirts - it was Mrs Fryer, the poor needlewoman my hat; I fastened it to Cyril's frock instead, and when whom Florence and I had visited in the autumn. When I people saw him in the colours of the SDF, they smiled and called to her, she came smiling up to me. 'I got my place in shook his hand: 'Hallo, comrade!'

the union, after all,' she said. 'Your pal persuaded me to it. .

'Won't he remember this day, when he's grown!' said a man,

.' We stood chatting for a moment - her children had toffeeas he touched Cyril's head and gave him a penny. Then he apples, and held one up for Cyril to lick. Then there came a straightened, and studied the scene about him with shining blast of music, and people shuffled and murmured and eyes. 'We'll all remember this day, all right..." craned their necks, and we stood together, lifting the I knew he was right. I had grumbled about it to Annie and children high, and watched the Workers' Pageant - a Miss Raymond, and I had sat sewing flags and banners, not procession of men and women dressed in all the costumes caring if the stitches were crooked or the satin got stained; of all the trades, carrying union banners and flags and but as the park began to fill, and the sun grew ever more flowers. It took quite half-an-hour for the pageant to pass;

507

508

and when it had done so the people put their fingers to their

'Not at all! I remember how frightened I was on my first lips, and whistled and cheered and clapped. Mrs Fryer night; I thought I would be sick.'

wept, because her neighbour's eldest daughter was walking

'I thought I would be sick, a moment ago.'

in the line, dressed as a match-girl.

'Everybody thinks it, and no one is' This wasn't quite true: I I wished that Florence were with me, and kept looking for had often seen nervous artistes bent over bowls and fireher damson-coloured suit and her daisy, but - though I saw buckets at the side of the stage; but I did not, of course, tell just about every other unionist who had ever passed through Ralph this.

our parlour -I did not see her once. When I found her at last,

'Did you ever play before a crowd that was rather rough, she was in the speakers' tent: she had spent all afternoon Nance?' he asked me now.

there, listening to the lectures. 'Have you heard?' she said

'What?' I said. 'At one hall - Deacon's, in Islington - there when she saw me. 'There's a rumour that Eleanor Marx is was a poor comedian on before us and some fellows coming: I daren't leave the tent, for fear of missing her jumped on to the stage and held him upside-down over the address!' It turned out she had eaten nothing since footlights, trying to set his hair on fire.' Ralph blinked two breakfast: I went off to buy her a packet of whelks from a or three times on hearing that, then looked hastily back into stall, and a cup of ginger ale. When I returned I found the tent, as if to make sure there were no naked flames Ralph beside her, sweating, still pulling at his collar, and about, over which an unfriendly audience might take it into paler than ever. Every seat in the tent was taken, and there their heads to try and tip him. Then he looked queasily at were people standing, besides. It was stiflingly hot, and the his cigarette, and threw it down.

heat was making everyone restless and cross. One speaker

'I think, if it's all the same to you,' he said, 'I shall just go had recently made an unpopular point, and been booed off and have another run through my address.' And before I from the platform.

could open my mouth to persuade him otherwise he had

'They won't boo you, Ralph,' I said; but when I saw that he slipped away, and left me smoking on my own.

was really miserable, I took his arm, left the baby with I did not mind: it was still pleasanter outside the tent than in Florence, and led him from his seat into the cooler air it. I put the cigarette between my lips and folded my arms, outside. 'Come on, come and have a fag with me. You and leaned back a little against the canvas. Then I closed mustn't let the crowd see you are nervous.'

my eyes, and let the sun fall full upon my face; then I took We stood just beyond a flap of the tent - a couple of men the fag away, and gave a yawn.

from Ralph's factory went by, and raised their hands to us And as I did so, there came a woman's voice at my and I lit us two cigarettes. Ralph's fingers shook as he held shoulder, that made me jump.

his, and he almost dropped it, then smiled apologetically:

'What a fool you must think me.'

509

510

'Well! Of all the gals to see at a working people's rally, I wives. I changed my mind about it after that. I'm happy should've said that Nancy King would be about the last of enough, after all, in Stepney.'

'em.'

'You're in Stepney now? But then we're almost neighbours!

I opened my eyes, let my cigarette fall, and turned to the I live in Bethnal Green. With my sweetheart. Look, she's woman and gave a cry.

over there.' I put my hand on her shoulder and pointed into

'Zena! Oh! And is it really you?'

the crowded tent. 'The one near the stage, with the baby on It was indeed Zena: she stood beside me plumper and even her arm.

handsomer than when I had seen her last, and clad in a

'What,' she said, 'not Flo Banner, that works at the gals'

scarlet coat and a bracelet with charms on. 'Zena!' I said home!'

again. 'Oh! How good it is to see you.' I took her hand and

'You don't mean, you know her?'

pressed it, and she laughed.

'I have a couple of pals what've lived at Freemantle House,

'I've met just about every gal I ever knew here, today,' she and they are always talking about how marvellous Flo said. 'And then I saw this other one, standing up against a Banner is! You know, I suppose, that half the gals there are tent flap with a fag at her lip and I thought, Lord, but don't mad in love with her . ..'

she look like old Nan King? What a lark, if it should be her,

'With Florence? Are you sure?"

after all this time - and here, of all places! And I stepped up

'I'll say!' We looked into the tent together again. Florence a bit closer, and then I saw that your hair was all clipped, was on her feet now, and waving a paper at the speaker at and I knew it was you, for sure.'

the stage. Zena laughed. 'Fancy you and Flo Banner!' she

'Oh, Zena! I was certain I should never hear from you said. 'I'm sure, she don't take no nonsense from you.'

again.' She looked a little sheepish at that; and then,

'You're right,' I answered, still gazing at Florence, still remembering, I pressed her hand even harder and said in marvelling at what Zena had told me. 'She don't.'

quite a different tone: 'What a nerve you've got, though!

We moved into the sunshine again. 'And how about you?' I After leaving me in such a state, that time in Kilburn! I asked her then. 'I bet you have a girl, don't you?'

thought I should die.'

'I do,' she said shyly. The fact is, indeed, I have a couple of Now she made a show of tossing her head. 'Well! You done

'em, and can't quite decide between the two ..." me very brown, you know, over that money.'

'Two! My God!' I imagined having two sweethearts like

'I do know it. What a little beast I was! I suppose, you never Florence: the thought made me ache and start yawning. did get to the colonies . . .'

'One of them is about here, somewhere,' Zena was saying. She wrinkled her nose. 'My friend who went to Australia

'She is part of a union and - There she is! Maud!' At her cry, came back. She said the place was full of great rough a girl in a blue-and-brown checked coat looked round, and fellows, and they don't want landladies; what they want is, wandered over. Zena took her arm, and the girl smiled.

511

512

This is Miss Skinner," said Zena to me; then, to her I pulled a face. 'I hate to think of those days, Zena. I'm all sweetheart: 'Maud, this is Nan King, the singer from the changed now.'

halls.' Miss Skinner - who was about nineteen or so, and

'I dare say. That Diana Lethaby, though - well! You've seen would still have been in short skirts on the night I took my her, of course?'

last bow at the Brit - gazed politely at me, and offered me

'Diana?' I shook my head. 'Not likely! Did you think I'd go her hand. Zena went on then, 'Miss King lives with Flo back to Felicity Place, after that dam' party . . . ?'

Banner -' and at once, Miss Skinner's grip tightened, and Zena stared at me. 'But, don't tell me you didn't know it? her eyes grew wide.

Diana is here-!'

'Flo Banner?' she said, in just the tone that Zena had. 'Flo

'Here? She can't be!'

Banner, of the Guild? Oh! I wonder - I've got the

'She is! I tell you, all the world is here this afternoon - and programme of the day about me somewhere - do you think, her amongst 'em. She is over at the table of some paper or Miss King, you might get her to sign it for me?'

magazine. I saw her, and nearly fainted dead away!'

'Sign it!' I said. She had produced a paper giving the

'My God.' Diana, here! The thought was awful - and yet... running-order of the speeches and the layout of the stalls, Well, they do say that old dogs never forget the tricks their and held it to me, trembling. Florence's name, I now saw, mistresses beat into them: I had felt myself stir, faintly, at was printed, along with one or two others, amongst the list the first mention of her hateful name. I looked once into the of organisers. 'Well,' I said. 'Well. You might ask her tent, and saw Florence, on her feet again and still shaking yourself, you know: she's only over there -'

her arm at the platform; then I turned to Zena. 'Will you

'Oh, I couldn't!' answered Miss Skinner. 'I should be too shy show me,' I asked, 'where?'

. . .'

She gave me one swift warning sort of look; then she took In the end I took the paper, and said I would do what I my arm and led me through the crowd, towards the bathing could; and Miss Skinner looked desperately grateful, then lake, and came to a halt behind a bush.

went off to tell her friends that she had met me.

'Look, there,' she said in a low voice. 'Near that table. D'you

'She's a bit romantic, ain't she? said Zena, wrinkling her see her?' I nodded. She was standing beside a display - it nose again. 'I might throw her over for the other one, yet..." was for the women's journal Shafts, that she sometimes I shook my head, looked at the paper another time, then helped with the running of - and was talking with another placed it in the pocket of my skirt.

lady, a lady I thought might be one of the ones who had We chatted for another few moments; and then Zena said, come dressed as Sappho to the fancy-dress ball. The lady

'And so, you're quite happy, are you, in Bethnal Green? It had a Suffrage sash across her bosom. Diana was clad in ain't quite what you was used to in the old days ..." grey, and her hat had a veil to it - though this was, at the moment, turned up. She was as haughty and as handsome

513

514

as ever. I gazed at her and had a very vivid memory - of handsome, and bulged at the fork. The boy himself was tall myself, sprawled beside her with pearls about my hips; of and slight; his hair was dark, and cut very short. His face the bed seeming to tilt; of the chafing of the leather as she was a pretty one, his lips pink as a girl's . . . straddled me and rocked . . .

When he reached Diana she leaned and drew the

'What do you think she would do,' I said to Zena, 'if I went handkerchief from his pocket, and began to dap with it at over?'

his thigh - it seemed, he had spilt his ice-cream after all.

'You ain't going to try it!'

The other lady at the stall looked on, and smiled; then

'Why not? I'm quite, you know, out of her power now.' But murmured something that made the pretty boy blush. even as I said it, I looked at her and felt that doggishness I had stood and watched all this, in a kind of astonishment; come over me again - or doggishness, perhaps, is not the but now I took a slow step backwards, and then another. term for it. It was like she was some music-hall mesmerist, Diana may have raised her face again, I cannot say: I didn't and I a blinking girl, all ready to make a mockery of stop to see it. Reggie had lifted his hand to lick at his ice, myself, before the crowd, at her request. . .

his cuff had moved back, and I had caught the flash of a Zena said, 'Well I ain't going nowhere near her . . .'; but I wrist-watch beneath it... I blinked my eyes, and shook my didn't listen. I glanced quickly again at the speakers' tent, head, and ran back to the bush where Zena still stood then I stepped out from behind the bush and made my way peeping, and put my face against her shoulder. towards the stall - straightening the knot in my necktie, as I When I looked again at Diana, through the leaves, she had did so. I was within about twenty yards of her, and had her arm in Reggie's and their heads were close, and they lifted a hand to remove my hat, when she turned, and were laughing. I turned to Zena, and she bit her lip. seemed to raise her eyes to mine. Her gaze grew hard,

'It is only the devils what prosper in this world, I swear,' she sardonic and lustful all at once, just as I remembered it; and said. But then she bit her lip again; and then she tittered. my heart twitched in my breast - in fright, I think! - as if a I laughed, too, for a moment. Then I cast another bitter look hook had caught it.

towards the stall, and said: 'Well, I hope she gets all she But then she opened her mouth to speak; and what she said deserves!'

was: 'Reggie! Reggie, here!'

Zena cocked her head. 'Who?' she asked. 'Diana, or -?'

That made me stumble. From somewhere close behind me I pulled a face, and would not answer her.

came a gruffer answering cry - 'All right' - and I turned, and We wandered back to the speakers' tent, then, and Zena said saw a boy picking his way across the grass, his eyes in a she had better try to find her Maud.

scowl and fixed on Diana's, his hand bearing a sugared ice,

'We'll be friends, won't we?' I said as we shook hands. which he held before him and sucked at very gingerly, for She nodded. 'You must be sure to introduce me to Miss fear it would drip and spoil his trousers. The trousers were Banner, anyway; I should like that.'

515

516

'Yes, well - you must at least come round some time and intent on causing a stir. Poor Ralph is to speak next: he is so tell her you've forgiven me: she thinks me a regular brute, feverish you could fry an egg on him.'

over you.'

I bounced Cyril upon my knee. 'Flo,' I said, 'you will never She smiled - then something caught her eye, and she turned believe who I have just seen!'

her head. There's my other sweetheart,' she said quickly 'Who? she asked. Then her eyes grew wide. 'Not Eleanor she gestured to a wide-shouldered, tommish-looking Marx?'

woman, who was studying us as we chatted, and frowning.

'No, no - nobody like that! It was Zena, that girl I knew at Zena pulled a face. 'She likes to come the uncle, that one Diana Lethaby's. And not only her, but Diana herself! The

..."

both of them here at once, can you imagine? My heart,

'She does look a bit fierce. You'd better go to her: I don't when I saw Diana again - I thought I should die!' I jiggled want to end up with another blacked eye.'

Cyril until he began to squeal. Florence's face, however, She smiled, and pressed my hand; and I saw her step over had hardened.

to the woman and kiss her cheek, then disappear with her

'My God!' she said; and her tone made me flinch. 'Can we into the crush of people between the stalls. I ducked back not enjoy even a socialist rally without your wretched past into the tent. It was fuller and hotter than ever in there, the turning up to haunt us? You have not sat and listened to one air thick with smoke, the people's faces sweating and speech here today; I suppose you have not so much as jaundiced-looking where they were struck, through the glanced at one of the stalls. All you have eyes and thoughts canvas, by the afternoon sun. On the platform a woman was for is yourself; yourself, and the women you have - the stumbling hoarsely through some speech or other, and a women you have -'

dozen people in the audience were on their feet, arguing The women I have fucked, I suppose you mean,' I said in a with her. Florence was back in her chair before the dais, low voice. I leaned away from her, really shocked and hurt; with Cyril kicking in her lap. Annie and Miss Raymond then I grew angry. 'Well, at least I got a fuck out of my old were beside her, with a pretty fair-haired girl I did not sweethearts. Which is more than you got out of Lilian.'

know. Ralph was nearby, his forehead gleaming and his At that, her mouth fell open, and her eyes began to gleam face stiff with fright.

with tears.

There was an empty seat next to Florence, and when I had

'You little cat,' she said. 'How can you say such things to made my way across the grass I sat in it and took the baby me?'

from her.

'Because I am sick to death of hearing about Lilian, and

'Where have you been?' she asked above the shouting. 'It how bloody marvellous she was!'

has been terrible in here. A load of boys have come in,

517

518

'She was marvellous,' she said. 'She was. She should have

'She tells the truth,' I said miserably. 'Which is sharper than been here to see all this, not you! She would have anything.' I sighed; then, to change the subject, I asked: understood it all, whereas you -'

'Have you had a good day, Annie?'

'You wish she was here, I suppose,' I spat out rashly,

'I have,' she said. 'It has all been rather wonderful.'

'instead of me?'

'And who is that girl with your Emma?' I nodded to the fairShe gazed at me, the tears upon her lashes. I felt my own haired woman at Miss Raymond's side.

eyes prickle, and my throat grow thick. 'Nance,' she said, in That's Mrs Costello,' she said, 'Emma's widowed sister." a gentler tone - but I raised my hand, and turned my face

'Oh!' I had heard of her before, but never expected her to be away.

so young and pretty. 'How handsome she is. What a shame

'We agreed it, didn't we?' I said, trying to keep the she ain't - like us. Is there no hope of it?'

bitterness from my voice. And then, when she wouldn't

'None at all, I'm afraid. But she is a lovely girl. Her husband answer: 'God knows, there are places I'd sooner be, than was the kindest man, and Emma says she is just about here!'

despairing that she will ever find another to match him. The I said it to spite her; but when she rose and moved away only men who want to court her turn out to be boxers ..." from me with her fingers before her eyes, I felt desperately I smiled dully; I was not much bothered about Mrs sorry. I put my hand to my pocket for a handkerchief: what Costello, really. While Annie talked I kept glancing over to I drew out was the programme that Miss Skinner had given Florence. She now stood at the far side of the tent, a me, for Flo to sign; I found myself gazing at it, quite handkerchief gripped between her fingers but her cheeks bewildered by the sudden turns the afternoon had taken. dry and white. However long and hard I looked at her, she And all the time, the woman on the platform talked would not meet my gaze.

hoarsely on, arguing with the hecklers in the audience - the I had almost decided to make my way over to her, when air seemed clotted with shouts and smoke and bad feeling. there came a sudden clamour: the lady on the platform had I looked up. Florence was standing near the wall of canvas, finished her speech, and the crowd was reluctantly beside Annie and Miss Raymond: she was shaking her clapping. This meant, of course, that it was time for Ralph's head, as they leaned to put their hands upon her arm. When address; Annie and I turned to see him hover uncertainly at Annie drew back I caught her eye, and she walked over and the side of the little stage, then stumble up the steps as his gave me a wary smile.

name was announced, and take up his place at the front of

'You should have learned better than to argue with Florrie,'

the platform.

she said, taking the seat beside me. 'She is about as sharpI looked at Annie and grimaced, and she bit her lip. The tongued as anyone I know.'

tent had quietened a little, but not much. Most of the afternoon's serious listeners seemed to have grown tired and

519

520

left: their seats had been taken by idlers, by yawning mind to step over to him and tell him to speak up or to stop; women and by more rowdy boys.

I saw Florence, pale and agitated to see her brother so Before this careless crowd Ralph now stood and cleared his awkward - her own griefs, for the moment, quite forgotten. throat. He had his speech, I saw, in his hand - to refer to, I Ralph started on a passage of statistics: 'Two hundred years guessed, if he forgot his lines. His forehead was streaming ago,' he read, 'Britain's land and capital was worth five with sweat; his neck was stiff. I knew he would never be hundred million pounds; today it is worth - it is worth -' He able to project his voice to the back of the tent, with his tilted the paper again; but while he did so, a fellow stood up throat so stiff and tense.

to shout: 'What are you, man? A socialist, or a With another cough, he began.

schoolmaster?' And at that, Ralph sagged as if he had been

'"Why Socialism?" That is the question I have been invited winded. Annie whispered: 'Oh, no! Poor Ralph! I can't bear to discuss with you this afternoon.' Annie and I were sitting it!'

in the third row from the front, and even we could hardly

'Neither can I,' I said. I jumped to my feet, thrust Cyril at hear him; from the mass of men and women behind us there her, then hurried to the steps at the side of the platform and came a cry - 'Speak up!' - and a ripple of laughter. Ralph ran up them, two at a time. The chairman saw me and halfcoughed yet again, and when he next spoke his voice was rose to block my path, but I waved him back and stepped louder, but also rather hoarse.

purposefully over to the sweating, sagging Ralph.

'"Why Socialism?" I shall keep my answer rather brief.'

'Oh, Nance,' he said, as close to tears as I had ever seen Thank God for something, then!' called a man at that - as I him. I took his arm and gripped it tight, and held him in his knew somebody would - and Ralph gazed wildly around the place before the crowd. They had grown momentarily silent tent for a second, quite distracted. I saw with dismay that he

-through sheer delight, I think, at seeing me leap, so had lost his place, and was forced to glance at the sheets in dramatically, to Ralph's side. Now I took advantage of their his hand. There was a horrible silence while he found the hush to send my voice across their heads in a kind of roar. spot; when he next spoke, of course, it was into the paper,

'So you don't care for mathematics?' I cried, picking up the just as he had used to do in our Quilter Street parlour. speech where Ralph had let it falter. 'Perhaps it's hard to

'How many times,' he was saying, 'have you heard think in millions; well, then, let us think in thousands. Let economists say that England is the richest nation in the us think of three hundred thousand. What do you think I am world . . . ?' I found myself reciting it with him, urging him referring to? The Lord Mayor's salary?' There were titters at on; but he stumbled, and muttered, and once or twice was that: there had been a bit of a scandal, a couple of years forced to tilt his paper to the light, to read it. By now the before, about the Lord Mayor's wages. Now I gratefully crowd had begun to groan and sigh and shuffle. I saw the singled out the titterers and addressed myself to them. 'No chairman, seated at the back of the platform, making up his missis,' I said, 'I'm not talking of pounds, nor even of

521

522

shillings. I am talking of persons. I am talking of the strong as my own. 'Because for every one person that dies amount of men, women, and children who are living in the in the smart parts of the city, four will die in the East End. workhouses of London - of London! the richest city, in the They will die, many of 'em, of diseases which their smart richest country, in the richest empire, in all the world! - at neighbours know perfectly well how to treat or prevent. Or this very moment, as I speak now . . .'

they will be killed by machines, in their workshops. Or I went on like this; and the titters grew less. I spoke of all perhaps they will simply die of hunger. Indeed, one or two the paupers in the nation; and of all the people who would people will die in London this very night, of pure starvation die in Bethnal Green, that year, in a workhouse bed. 'Shall

. . .

it be you that dies in the poorhouse, sir?' I cried -I found

'And all this, after two hundred years in which - as all the myself adding a few little rhetorical flourishes to the economists will tell you - Great Britain's wealth has speech, as I went along. 'Shall it be you, miss? Or your old increased twenty times over! All this in the richest city on mother? Or this little boy?' The little boy began to cry. earth!'

Then: 'How old are we likely to be, when we die?' I asked. I There were some shouts at that, but I waited for them to die turned to Ralph - he was gazing at me in undisguised before taking up the speech where he had left it; and when I wonder - and called, loudly enough for the crowd to hear, did speak at last, I did it quietly, so that people had to lean,

'What is the average age of death, Mr Banner, amongst the and frown, to hear me. 'Why is this so?' I said. 'Is it because men and women of Bethnal Green?'

working people are spendthrifts? Because we would rather He stared at me dumbfounded for a second, then, when I use our money to buy gin and porter, and trips to the music pinched the flesh of his arm, sang out: 'Twenty-nine!' I did hall, and tobacco, and on betting, than on meat for our not think it was loud enough. 'How old?' I cried - for all the children and bread for ourselves? You will see all these world as if I were a pantomime dame, and Ralph my crossthings written, and hear them said, by rich men. Does that chat partner - and he called the figure out again, louder than make them true? Truth is a queer thing, when it comes to before: 'Twenty-nine!'

rich men talking about the poor. Only think: if we broke

'Nine-and-twenty' I said to the audience. 'What if I were a into a rich man's house, he would call us thieves, and send lady, Mr Banner? What if I lived in Hampstead or - or St us to prison. If we set a foot on his estate, we would be John's Wood; lived very comfortably, on my shares in trespassers - he would set his dogs upon us! If we took Bryant and May? What is the average age of death amongst some of his gold, we would be pickpockets; if we made him such ladies?'

pay us money to get the gold back, we would be swindlers

'It is fifty-five,' he said at once. 'Fifty-five! Almost twice as and con-men!

long.' He had remembered the speech and now, at my silent

'But what is the rich man's wealth but robbery, called by urging, kept on with it, in a voice that was soon almost as another title? The rich man steals from his competitors; he

523

524

steals the land, and puts a wall about it; he steals our health, own, to help you!' 'Go home tonight,' I went on, moving our liberty; he steals the fruits of our labour, and obliges us forward again, 'and ask yourselves the question that Mr to buy them back from him! Does he call these things Banner has asked you today: Why Socialism? And you will robbery, and slave-holding, and swindling? No: they are find yourselves obliged to answer it as we have. "Because termed enterprise; and business skill; and capitalism. They Britain's people," you will say, "have laboured under the are termed nature.

capitalist and the landlord system and grown only poorer

'But is it natural, that babies should die for want of milk? Is and sicker and more miserable and afraid. Because it is not it natural, that women should sew skirts and coats long into by charity and paltry reforms that we shall improve the night, in cramped and suffocating workshops? That men conditions for the weakest classes - not by taxes, not by and boys should be killed or crippled to provide the coal electing one capitalist government over another, not even upon your fires? That bakers should be choked, baking your by abolishing the House of Lords! - but by turning over the bread?' My voice had risen as I spoke; and now I bellowed. land, and industry, to the people who work it. Because

'Do you think that's natural? Do you think that's just?' 'No!'

socialism is the only system for a fair society: a society in came a hundred voices at once. 'No! No!' 'Neither do which the good things of the world are shared, not amongst socialists!' cried Ralph: he had crushed his speech between the idlers of the world, but amongst the workers" - amongst his fingers, and now shook it at the crowd. 'We are sick of yourselves: you, who have made the rich man rich, and seeing wealth and property going straight into the pockets been kept, for your labours, only ill and half-starved!'

of the idle and the rich! We don't want a portion of that There was a second's silence, then a burst of thunderous wealth - the bit that the rich man cares, from time to time, applause. I looked at Ralph - his cheeks were red, now, and to chuck at us. We want to see society quite transformed!

his lashes wet with tears - then seized his hand, and raised We want to see money put to use, not kept for profit! We it. And then, as the cheers at last died down, I looked at want to see working women's babies thriving - and Florence, who had moved to join Annie and Cyril, and was workhouses pulled to the ground, 'cause no one needs 'em!'

watching me with her fingers at her lips.

There were cheers at that, and he raised his hands. 'You are Behind us, the chairman approached to shake our hands; cheering now,' he said; 'it is rather easy to cheer, perhaps, and when this was done we made our way off the platform, when the weather is so gay. But you must do more than and were surrounded at once by smiles and congratulations cheer. You must act. Those of you that work - men and and more applause.

women alike - join unions! Those of you that have votes -

'What a triumph!' Annie called, stepping forward to greet us use 'em! Use 'em to put your own people into parliament. first. 'Ralph, you were magnificent!'

And campaign for your womenfolk - for your sisters and Ralph blushed. 'It was all Nancy's doing,' he said daughters and wives - that they might have votes of their selfconsciously. Annie smirked, and turned to me. 'Bravo!'

525

526

she said. 'What a performance! If I had had a flower, I Costello, Miss Raymond's widowed sister. She very much would have thrown it!' She could not say any more, enjoyed your address.'

however, for behind her had come an elderly lady, who

'I did,' said Mrs Costello. She held out her hand, and Ralph now pushed forward to catch my eye. It was Mrs Macey, of took it, then gazed blinking into her face. 'I have always the Women's Cooperative Guild.

found the world to be so terribly unjust,' she went on, 'but

'My dear,' she said, 'I must congratulate you! What a really felt only powerless, before today, to change it. . .'

splendid address! They tell me you were an actress, once ... They still held hands, but had not noticed. I left them to it,

?' 'Do they?' I said. 'Yes, I was.'

and rejoined Annie and Miss Raymond, and Florence.

'Well, we cannot afford to have such talents in our ranks, Annie put her hand upon my shoulder.

you know, and let them lie unused. Do say that you will

'A lecture tour, eh?' she said. 'My word!' Then she turned to speak for us another time. One really charismatic speaker Flo: 'And how should you like that?'

can work wonders with an indecisive crowd.'

Florence had not smiled at me since I had stepped from the

'I'll gladly speak for you,' I said. 'But you, you know, must stage; and she did not smile now. When she spoke at last, write the speech .. .'

her expression was sad and grave and almost bewildered -

'Of course! Of course!' She clasped her hands together and as if astonished at her own bitterness.

raised her eyes. 'Oh! I foresee rallies and debates, even -

'I should like it very much,' she said, 'if I thought that who knows? - a lecture tour!' At that, I gazed at her for a Nancy really meant her speeches, and wasn't just repeating second in real alarm; then I felt my attention sought by a them like a - like a dam' parrot!'

figure at my side, and turned to find Emma Raymond's Annie looked uneasily at Miss Raymond, then said, 'Oh sister, Mrs Costello, looking flushed and excited. Florrie, for shame ..." I did not say anything, but gazed hard

'What a wonderful address!' she said shyly. 'I felt moved at Florence for a second, then looked away - my pleasure at almost to tears by it.' Her lovely face was indeed pale and the speech, at the shouts of the crowd, all dimmed, and my grave, her eyes large and blue and lustrous. I thought again heart all heavy.

what I had thought before - what a shame it was that she The tent, now, was quiet: there was no speaker on the was not a torn . . . But then I remembered what Annie had platform, and people had taken advantage of the break to said about her: how she had lost her gentle husband, and drift outside into the sunlight and the bustle of the field. sought another.

Miss Raymond said brightly, 'Let us all sit down, shall we?'

'How kind you are,' I said earnestly. 'But, you know, it's As we moved to occupy a row of empty seats, however, a really Mr Banner who deserves your praises, for he little girl came trotting up, and caught my eye. composed the entire speech himself.' As I said it I reached for Ralph, and pulled him over. 'Ralph,' I said, 'this is Mrs

527

528

'Excuse me, miss,' she said. 'Are you the gal what give the or, rather, the first of them: my original love; my one true lecture?' I nodded. There is a lady just outside the tent, then, love -my real love, my best love - the love who had so says will you please step up and have a word?'

broken my heart, it seemed never to have fired quite Annie laughed, and raised her eyebrows. 'Another lecture properly again . . .

tour offer, perhaps?' she said.

I went to her, without another glance at Florence, and stood I looked at the girl, and hesitated.

before her and rubbed my eyes against the sun - so that,

'A lady, you say?'

when I looked at her again, she seemed surrounded by a

'Yes miss,' she said firmly. 'A lady. Dressed real smart, with thousand dancing points of light.

her eyes all hid behind a hat with a veil on it.'

'Nan,' she said, and she smiled, rather nervously. 'You have I gave a start, and looked quickly at Florence. A lady in a not forgotten me, I hope?' Her voice shook a little, as it had veil: there was only one person that could be. Diana must used to do, sometimes, in passion. Her accent was rather have seen me after all, and watched me give my speech, purer, with slightly less colour to it, than I remembered. and now sought me out for - who knew what queer

'Forgotten you?' I said then, finding my own voice at last. purpose? The idea made me tremble. When the girl stepped

'No. I'm only so very surprised, to see you.' I gazed at her, away I turned to gaze after her, and Florence shifted in her and swallowed. Her eyes were as brown as ever, her lashes seat, and stared with me. In the corner of the tent there was as dark, her lip as pink . . . But she had changed, I had seen a square of sunlight, where the canvas had been tied back to it at once. There were one or two creases beside her mouth form a doorway - it was so bright I had to narrow my eyes and at her brow, that told of the years that had passed since to look at it, and blink. At one edge of the square of light we were sweethearts; and she had let her hair grow, so that stood a woman, her face concealed, as the girl had said, by it curved above her ears in a great, glossy pompadour. With a broad hat and a width of net. As I studied her, she lifted the creases and the hair she did not look, any more, like the her arms to her veil, and raised it. And then I saw her face. prettiest of boys: she looked, as the girl she had sent to me

'Why don't you go to her?' I heard Florence say coldly. 'I had said, like a lady.

daresay she has come to ask you back to St John's Wood. As I studied her, so she gazed at me. At last she said, 'You You shall never have to think of socialism again, there ..." seem very different, to when I saw you last..." I turned to her; and when she saw how pale my cheeks I shrugged. 'Of course. I was nineteen then. I'm twenty-five, were, her expression changed.

now.'

'It's not Diana,' I whispered. 'Oh, Flo! It's not Diana -'

Twenty-five in two weeks' time,' she answered; and her lip It was Kitty.

trembled a little. 'I remembered that, you see.'

I stood for a moment quite dumbfounded. I had seen two I felt myself blush, and could not answer her. She gazed old lovers already today; and here was the third of them - past me, into the tent. 'You can imagine my surprise,' she

529

530

said then, 'when I looked in there just now, and saw you She shrugged. 'Walter was disappointed. We have quite lecturing from the stage. I never thought you'd end up on a forgotten it now, however. It only means that I am not quite platform in a tent, speaking on workers' rights!'

so strong as I once was . . .'

'Neither did I,' I said. Then I smiled, and so did she. 'Why We fell silent. I looked for a second into the crowd, then are you here, at all?' I asked her then.

back at Kitty. She had coloured. Now she said: 'Nan, Bill

'I'm in rooms at Bow. Everyone has been saying all week, told me, when he met you that time, that you were dressed - that I must come to the park on Sunday, since there was to well, as a boy.'

be such a marvellous thing in it.'

That's right. I was. Quite as a boy.' She laughed and

'Have they?'

frowned at once, not understanding.

'Oh, yes!'

'He said, too, that you were living with a - with a -' 'With a

'And - are you here quite alone, then?'

lady. I was.'

She glanced quickly away. 'Yes. Walter's in Liverpool just She blushed still harder. 'And - are you with her still?' 'No, I now. He has gone back to managing: he has shares in a hall

-I live with a girl now, in Bethnal Green.' 'Oh!'

up there, and has rented a house for us. I'm to join him I hesitated - but then I did what I had done with Zena, two when the house is ready.'

hours before. I moved slightly into the shadow of the tent,

'And you're still working the halls?'

and Kitty followed. That's her over there,' I said, nodding

'Not so much. We ... we had an act together -'

towards the seats before the platform. The girl with the little

'I know,' I said. 'I saw you. At the Middlesex.' Her eyes boy.'

widened. The time that you met Billy-Boy? Oh, Nan, if I Annie and Miss Raymond had moved away, and Florence had only known that you were watching! When Bill came sat alone now. As I gestured to her she looked over at me, back and said he'd seen you -' 'I couldn't look at you for then gazed gravely at Kitty. Kitty herself gave another little long,' I said. 'Were we so bad as that, then?' She smiled, but

'Oh,' and then a nervous smile. 'It's Flo,' I said, 'who's the I shook my head: 'It wasn't that..." Her smile grew fainter. socialist, and who has got me into all this ..." As I spoke, I said, after a moment: 'So you don't work so much? How's Florence took off her hat: immediately, Cyril began pulling that?'

at the pins that fixed her hair, and twisting the curls about

'Well, Walter is kept busy with the managing now. And his fingers. His tugs made her redden. I watched her for a then - well, we kept it quiet, but I was rather ill.' She little longer, then saw her look again at Kitty; and when I hesitated. 'I was to have a child ..."

turned to Kitty herself I found that her eyes were upon me The thought was horrible to me, in every way. 'I'm sorry,' I and her expression was rather strange.

said.

'I cannot stop myself from gazing at you,' she said, with an uncertain smile. 'When you ran off, I was sure, at first, that

531

532

you'd be back. Where did you go? What did you do? We that I would be a star. Because, of course, I did not ever tried so hard to find you. And then, when there was no think that I would really, really lose you . . .' She hesitated. word of you, I was sure that I would never see you again. I Outside the tent the bustle of the day went on: children ran thought - oh Nan, I thought that you had harmed yourself.'

shrieking; stall-holders called and argued; flags and I swallowed. 'You harmed me, Kitty. It was you that pamphlets fluttered in the May breezes. She took a breath. harmed me.'

She said: 'Nan, come back to me.'

'I know it, now. Do you think I don't know it? I feel Come back to me ... One part of me reached out to her at ashamed to even talk to you. I am so sorry, for what once, leapt to her like a pin to a magnet; I believe the very happened.'

same part of me would leap to her again - would go on

'You needn't be sorry now,' I said awkwardly. But she went leaping to her, if she went on asking me, for ever. on as if she had not heard me: that she was so very sorry; Then another part of me remembered, and remembers still. that what she had done had been so very wrong. That she

'Come back to you?' I said. 'With you, still Walter's wife?'

was sorry, so sorry . . .

'All that means nothing,' she said quickly. 'There's nothing - At last, I shook my head. 'Oh!' I said. 'What does all that like that - between him and me now. If we were only a little matter now? It matters nothing!'

careful..."

'Doesn't it?' she said. I felt my heart begin to hammer.

'Careful!' I said: the word had made me flinch. 'Careful!

When I did not answer, only continued to stare at her, she Careful! That's all I ever had from you. We were so careful, took a step towards me and began to talk, very fast and low. we might as well have been dead!' I shook myself free of

'Oh Nan, so many times I thought about finding you, and her. 'I have a new girl now, who's not ashamed to be my planned what I would say When I did. I cannot leave you sweetheart.' But Kitty came close, and seized my arm again. now without saying it!'

That girl with the baby?' she said, nodding back into the

'I don't want to hear it,' I said in sudden terror; I believe I tent. 'You don't love her, I can see it in your face. Not as even put my hands to my ears, to try to block out the sound you loved me. Don't you remember how it was? You were of her murmurs. But she caught at my arm and talked on, mine, before anyone's; you belong with me. You don't into my face.

belong with her and her sort, talking all this foolish political

'You must hear it! You must know. You mustn't think that I stuff. Look at your clothes, how plain and cheap they are!

did what I did easily, or thoughtlessly. You mustn't think it Look at these people all about us: you left Whitstable to get did not - break my heart.'

away from people such as this!'

'Why did you do it, then?'

I gazed at her for a second in a kind of stupor; then I did as

'Because I was a fool! Because I thought my life upon the she urged me, and glanced about the tent - at Annie and stage was dearer to me than anything. Because I thought Miss Raymond; at Ralph, who was still blinking and

533

534

blushing into Mrs Costello's face; at Nora and Ruth, who She swallowed, then stepped towards me again and said in stood beside the platform with some other girls I recognised a lower, chastened tone: 'Nancy, then. Listen to me: I still from the Boy in the Boat, hi a chair at the far side of the have all your things. All the things you left at Stamford tent -I had not noticed her before – sat Zena, her arm looped Hill.'

through that of her broad-shouldered sweetheart; close to

'I don't want them,' I said at once. 'Keep them, or throw 'em them stood a couple of Ralph's union friends - they nodded away: I don't care.'

when they saw me looking, and raised a glass. And in the

'There are letters, from your family! Your father came to midst of them all, sat Florence. Her head was still bent to London, looking for you. Even now, they send me letters, where Cyril clutched at it: he had tugged her hair down to asking if I have heard ..."

her shoulder, and she had raised her hands to pull his My father! I had had a vision, on seeing Diana, of myself fingers free. She was flushed and smiling; but even as she upon a silken bed. Now, more vividly, I saw my father, in smiled, she lifted her eyes to mine, and I saw tears in them - the apron that fell to his boots; I saw my mother, and my perhaps, only from Cyril's grasping - and, behind the tears, brother, and Alice. I saw the sea. My eyes began to smart, a kind of bleakness, that I did not think I'd ever seen in as if there was salt in them.

them before.

'You can send me the letters,' I said thickly: I thought, I'll I could not meet her smile with one of my own. But when I write, and tell them of Florence. And if they don't care for it turned again to Kitty, my gaze was level; and my voice,

-well, at least they'll know that I'm safe, and happy . . . when I spoke, was perfectly steady.

Now Kitty came nearer, and lowered her voice still further.

'You're wrong,' I said. 'I belong here, now: these are my There's the money, too,' she said. 'We have kept it all. Nan, people. And as for Florence, my sweetheart, I love her more there's almost seven hundred pounds of yours!'

than I can say; and I never realised it, until this moment.'

I shook my head: I had forgotten about the money. 'I have She let go of my arm and stepped away as if she had been nothing to spend it on,' I said simply. But even as I said it, I struck. 'You are saying these things to spite me,' she said remembered Zena, whom I had robbed; and I thought again breathlessly, 'because you are still hurt -'

of Florence - I imagined her dropping seven hundred I shook my head. 'I'm saying these things because they're pounds into the charity boxes of East London, coin by coin. true. Good-bye, Kitty.'

Would that make her love me, more than Lilian?

'Nan!' she cried, as I made to move away from her. I turned

'You can send me the money, too,' I said to Kitty at last; back.

and I told her my address, and she nodded, and said she'd

'Don't call me that,' I said pettishly. 'No one calls me that remember.

now. It ain't my name, and never was.'

We gazed at one another then. Her lips were damp and slightly parted; and she had paled, so that her freckles

535

536

showed. Involuntarily I thought back to that night at the before her in her clasped, gloved ringers, her veiled head Canterbury Palace, when I had met her first and learned I weaving a little as she tried to pick me out. I don't believe loved her, and she had kissed my hand, and called me she saw me, but she must have guessed that I was watching,

'Mermaid', and thought of me as she should not have. for after a minute she gave a kind of nod in my direction - Perhaps the same memory had occurred to her, for now she the slightest, saddest, ghostliest of footlight bows. Then she said, 'Is this how it's to end up, then? Won't you let me see turned; and soon I lost her to the crowd.

you again; you might come and visit -'

I turned then, too, and headed back into the tent. I saw Zena I shook my head. 'Look at me,' I said. 'Look at my hair. first, making her way out into the sunshine, and then Ralph What would your neighbours say, if I came visiting you? and Mrs Costello, walking very slowly side by side. I didn't You'd be too afraid to walk upon the street with me, in case stop to speak to them; I only smiled, and stepped some feller called out!'

purposefully towards the row of chairs in which I had left She blushed, and her lashes fluttered. 'You have changed,'

Florence.

she said again; and I answered, simply: 'Yes, Kitty, I have.'

But when I reached it, Florence was not there. And when I She raised her hands to lower her veil. 'Good-bye,' she said. looked around, I could not see her anywhere.

I nodded. She turned away; and as I stood and watched her,

'Annie,' I called - for she and Miss Raymond had drifted I found that I was aching slightly, as from a thousand over to join the group of toms beside the platform - 'Annie, fading bruises . . .

where's Flo?'

I cannot let you go, I thought, so easily as that! While she Annie gazed about the tent, then shrugged. 'She was here a was still quite near I took a step into the sunshine, and minute ago,' she said. 'I didn't see her leave.' There was looked about me. Upon the grass beside the tent there was a only one exit from the tent; she must have passed me while kind of wreath or bower — part of some display that had I was gazing after Kitty, too preoccupied to notice her . . . come loose and been discarded. There were roses on it: I I felt my heart give a lurch: it seemed to me suddenly that if bent and plucked one, and called to a boy who was standing I didn't find Florence at once, I would lose her for ever. I idly by, handed the flower to him and gave him a penny, ran from the tent into the field, and gazed wildly about me. and told him what I wanted. Then I moved back into the I recognised Mrs Macey in the crowd, and stepped up to shadows of the tent, behind the wall of sloping canvas, and her. Had she seen Florence? She had not. I saw Mrs Fryer watched. The boy ran up to Kitty; I saw her turn at his cry, again: had she seen Florence? She thought perhaps she had then stoop to hear his message. He held the rose to her, and spotted her a moment before, heading off, with the little pointed back to where I stood, concealed. She turned her boy, towards Bethnal Green . . .

face towards me, then took the flower; he raced off at once I didn't stop to thank her, but hurried away - shouldering to spend his coin, but she stood quite still, the rose held my way through the crush of people, stumbling and cursing

537

538

and sweating with panic and haste. I passed the Shafts stall I nodded. Then, 'Would you care,' I asked quietly, 'if I again - did not turn my head, this time, to see whether went?'

Diana was still at it, with her new boy - but only walked

'If you went?' She swallowed. 'I thought you'd gone already. steadily onwards, searching for a glimpse of Florence's I saw a look upon your face

jacket or glittering hair, or Cyril's sash.

'And did you care?' I said again. She gazed at the flower At last I left the thickest crowd behind, and found myself in between her fingers.

the western half of the park, near the boating-lake. Here,

'I made up my mind to leave the park and go home. There heedless of the speeches and the debates that were taking seemed nothing to stay for - not even Eleanor Marx! Then I place within the tents and around the stalls, boys and girls got as far as here and thought, "What would I do at home, sat in boats, or swam, shrieking and splashing and larking with you not there .. . ?"' She gave the daisy another twist, about. Here, too, there were a number of benches; and on and two or three of its petals fell and clung to the wool of one of them -I almost cried out to see it! - sat Florence, with her skirt. I looked once about the field, then turned to face Cyril a little way before her, dipping his hands and the frill her again, and began to speak^ to her, low and earnestly, as of his skirt into the water of the lake. I stood for a moment if I were arguing for my life.

to get my breath back, to pull off my hat and wipe at my

'Flo,' I said, 'you were right, what you said before, about damp brow and temples; then I walked slowly over. that address I gave with Ralph. It wasn't mine, I didn't mean Cyril saw me first, and waved and shouted. At his cry the words - at least, not then, when I said them.' I came to a Florence looked up and met my gaze, and gave a gulp. She halt, then put a hand to my head. 'Oh! I feel like I've been had taken the daisy from her lapel, and was turning it repeating other people's speeches all my life. Now, when I between her fingers. I sat beside her, and placed my arm want to make a speech of my own, I find I hardly know along the back of the bench so that my hand just brushed how.'

her shoulder. 'I thought,' I said breathlessly, 'that I had lost

'If you are fretting over how to tell me you are leaving -'

you She gazed at Cyril. 'I watched you talking with Kitty.'

'I am fretting,' I said, 'over how to tell you that I love you;

'Yes.'

over how to say that you are all the world to me; that you

'You said - you said she would never come back.' She and Ralph and Cyril are my family, that I could never leave looked desperately sad.

- even though I was so careless with my own kin.' My voice

'I'm sorry, Flo. I'm so sorry! I know it ain't fair, that she did, grew thick; she gazed at me but didn't answer, so I and Lilian will never . . .'

stumbled on. 'Kitty broke my heart -I used to think she'd She turned her head. 'She really came to - ask you back to killed it! I used to think that only she could mend it; and so, her?'

for five years I've been wishing she'd come back. For five years I have scarcely let myself think of her, for fear that

539

540

the thought would drive me mad with grief. Now she has

Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a Ph.D. turned up, saying all the things I dreamed she'd say; and I

in English literature and has published articles on lesbian find my heart is mended already, by you. She made me

and gay writing and cultural history. She has worked in know it. That was the look you saw on my face.' I raised a

bookshops and libraries and now teaches for the Open hand to stop a tickling at my cheek, and found tears there.

University, though she has given up full-time academic

'Oh, Flo!' I said then. 'Only say - only say you'll let me love

work in order to concentrate on writing fiction. She is you, and be with you; that you'll let me be your sweetheart,

currently working on her second novel. and your comrade. I know I'm not Lily -'

'No, you're not Lily,' she said. 'I thought I knew what that meant - but I never did, till I saw you gazing at Kitty and thought I should lose you. I've been missing Lily for so long, it's come to seem that wanting anything must be only another way of wanting her; but oh! how different wanting seemed, when I knew it was you I wanted, only you, only you ..."

I shifted closer towards her: the paper in my pocket gave a rustle, and I remembered romantic Miss Skinner, and all the friendless girls who Zena had said were mad in love with Flo, at Freemantle House. I opened my mouth to tell her; then thought I wouldn't, just yet - in case she hadn't noticed. Instead, I gazed again about the park, at the crush of gayfaced people, at the tents and stalls, the ribbons and flags and banners: it seemed to me then that it was Florence's passion, and hers alone, that had set the whole park fluttering. I turned back to her, took her hand in mind, crushed the daisy between our fingers and - careless of whether anybody watched or not -I leaned and kissed her. Cyril still squatted with his frills in the lake. The afternoon sun cast long shadows over the bruised and trampled grass. From the speakers' tent there came a muffled cheer, and a rising ripple of applause.

541

542

Document Outline

��