Tipping the velvet Sarah Waters

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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,

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

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

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

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

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

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

'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

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

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.

'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?'

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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

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

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:

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

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

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

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.

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