giving such marvellous performances, they had no

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audience. I would gaze about me at the dim and dreary not see Nan King in me, I know it; and if I had an urge to place in which my gentleman and I leaned panting, and cross to her and reveal myself and ask for news of Kitty, it wish the cobbles were a stage, the bricks a curtain, the lasted for only a moment; and in that moment the driver scuttling rats a set of blazing footlights. I would long for shook his horses into life, and the carriage rumbled off. just one eye - just one! - to be fixed upon our couplings: a No, my only contact with the theatre now was a renter. I bold and knowing eye that saw how well I played my part, discovered that the music halls of Leicester Square - the how gulled and humbled was my foolish, trustful partner. very same halls which Kitty and I had gazed at, all Bat that - considering the circumstances - seemed quite hopefully, two years before - were rather famous in the impossible.

renter world as posing-grounds and pick-up spots. The All continued smoothly for, perhaps, six months or so: my Empire, in particular, was always thick with sods: they colourless life at Mrs Best's went on, and so did my trips to strolled side-by-side with the gay girls of the promenade, or the West End, and my renting. My little stash of money stood, in little knots, exchanging gossip, comparing dwindled, and finally disappeared; and now, since renting fortunes, greeting one another with flapping hands and was all I knew and cared for, I began to live entirely from high, extravagant voices. They never looked at the stage, what I earned upon the streets. I still had had no word of never cheered or applauded, only gazed at themselves in the Kitty - not a word! I concluded at last that she must have mirror-glass or at each other's powdered faces, or - more gone abroad, to try her luck with Walter - to America, covertly - at the gentlemen who, rapidly or rather perhaps, where we had planned to go. My months upon the lingeringly, passed them by.

music-hall stage seemed very distant to me now, and quite I loved to walk with them, and watch them, and be watched unreal. Once or twice on my trips around the city I saw by them in turn. I loved to stroll about the Empire - the someone I knew, from the old days - a fellow with whom handsomest hall in England, as Walter had described it, the we'd shared a bill at the Paragon, a wardrobe-mistress from hall to which Kitty had longed so ardently so uselessly! for the Bedford, Camden Town. One night I leaned against a an invitation - I loved to stroll about it with my back to its pillar in Great Windmill Street and watched as Dolly glorious golden stage, my costume bright beneath the Arnold -who had played Cinderella to Kitty's Prince, at the ungentle glare of its electric chandeliers, my hair gleaming, Britannia -made her exit from the door of the Pavilion and my trousers bulging, my lips pink, my figure and pose was helped into a carriage. She looked at me, and blinked - reeking, as the gay boys say, of lavender, their import bold then looked away again. Perhaps she thought she knew my and unmistakable - but false. The singers and comedians I face; perhaps she thought I was a boy that she had worked never looked at once. I had finished with that world, with; perhaps she only thought I was a miserable ningle, entirely.

haunting the shadows in search of a gent. Anyway, she did

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All, as I have said, went smoothly; then, in the first few just as I was about to turn and begin my descent, however, I warm weeks of 1891 - that is, a year and more after my heard the creaking of a door and saw the bobbing glow of a flight from Kitty - there came a bothersome interruption to candle.

my little routine.

'Miss Astley -' It was my landlady's voice, sounding thin I returned to the knocking-shop after an evening of rather and querulous in the darkness. 'Miss Astley, is that you?'

heavy renting to find the old proprietress missing, her chair I didn't stop to answer her, but hurled myself up the overturned, and the door to my chamber splintered and remaining stairs and ran into my room. With the door flung wide. What had happened I never found out for sure; closed behind me I tore the jacket from my shoulders and it seemed that the madam had been taken or chased away - the trousers from my legs, and stuffed them, with my shirt though whether by a policeman or a rival bawd, no one and drawers, into the little curtained alcove where I hung professed to know. Anyway, thieves had taken advantage of my clothes. I found myself a night-gown, and pulled it on; her absence to steal into the house, to frighten and threaten as I fastened the buttons at the throat, however, I heard the girls and their customers, and help themselves to what I had dreaded to hear: the sound of rapid, heavy anything that they could lift: the oozing mattresses and footsteps on the stairs, followed by a hammering at my door rugs, the broken looking-glasses, the few rickety bits of and Mrs Best's voice, loud and shrill.

furniture - also my frocks, shoes, bonnet and purse. The

'Miss Astley! Miss Astley! It would oblige me if you would loss was not a great one to me; but it meant that I must go open this door. I have found a peculiar item in the home in my masculine attire -I was wearing the old Oxford downstairs passage, and believe that you have someone in bags, and a boater - and attempt to reach my room at Mrs there as you should not!'

Best's without her catching me.

'Mrs Best,' I answered, 'what do you mean?'

It was quite late, and I walked very slowly to Smithfield, in

'You know what I mean, Miss Astley. I am warning you. I the hope that all the Bests might be abed and sleeping by have my son with me!' She caught hold of the door-knob, the time I got there - and, indeed, when I reached the house, and shook it. Above our heads there were more footsteps: the windows were dark and all seemed still. I let myself in the baby had been woken by the noise, and begun to cry. and stepped silently up the stairs - horribly mindful of the I turned the key, and opened the door. Mrs Best, clad in a last time I had crept, noiselessly, through a slumbering night-dress and a tartan wrap, pushed past me, into the house, and all that the creeping had led to. Perhaps it was room. Behind her, in a shirt and nightcap, stood her son. He the memory that made me blunder: for half-way up I put had a terrible complexion.

my hand to my head - and my hat went soaring over the I turned to the landlady. She was gazing about her in banister to land with a thud in the passageway below. I frustration. 'I know there is a gentleman in here came, cursing, to a halt. I knew I must go down to fetch it; somewhere!' she cried. She pulled the covers from the bed,

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then stopped to look beneath it. At last, of course, she I bowed my head; she turned on her heel. Behind her, her headed for the alcove. I darted to stop her, and she curled son at last gave me a sneer. Tart,' he said. Then he spat, and her lip in satisfaction. 'Now we'll have him!' she said. She followed his mother into the darkness.

reached past me and tweaked the curtain back, then stepped Being not exactly overburdened with articles to pack, I was away with a gasp. There were about four suits there, as well out of the house next morning just as soon as I had washed. as the one that I had just taken off. 'Why, you little Mrs Best curled her lip as I passed by her. Mary, however, strumpet!' she cried. 'I believe you was planning a regular gazed at me with a kind of admiration in her eyes, as if horgyl'

awed and impressed that I had proved myself so normal - so

'A horgy? A horgy?' I folded my arms. 'They're bits of spectacularly normal - at the last. I gave her a shilling, and mending, Mrs Best. It's not a crime, is it, to take in sewing, patted her hand. Then I took a final turn around Smithfield for gentlemen?'

Market. It was a warm morning, and the reek of the She picked up the pair of underthings that I had so recently carcases was terrible, the hum of flies about them as deep kicked off, and sniffed at them. These drawers are still and steady as the buzz of a motor; but for all that, I felt a warm!' she said. 'From the heat of your needle, I suppose kind of bleak fondness for the place, which I had gazed at, you'll be telling me? From the heat of his needle, more so often, in my weeks of madness.

like!' I opened my mouth - but could find no answer to I moved on at last, and left the flies to their breakfast. I had make her. While I hesitated she stepped to the window and only the vaguest ideas about where I should make for, but I looked out of it. This, I suppose, is where they made their had heard that the streets around King's Cross were full of escape. The villains! Well, they won't get far, that's for sure, rooming-houses, and thought perhaps that I might try my in their birthday suits!'

luck up there. In the end, however, I did not get even so far I looked again at her son. He was gazing at my ankles as that. In the window of a shop on the Gray's Inn Road I where they showed beneath my night-gown.

saw a little card: Respectible Lady Seeks Fe-Male Lodger,

'I'm sorry, Mrs Best,' I said. 'I won't do it again, I promise and an address. I gazed at it for a minute or so. The you!'

Respectible was off-putting: I couldn't face another Mrs

'You certainly shan't do it again, in my house! I want you Best. But there was something very appealing about that out of here, Miss Astley, in the morning. I've always found Fe-Male. I saw myself in it - in the hyphen.

you a very peculiar tenant, I don't mind admitting - and I memorised the address. It was for a road named Green now, to go and try and play the hussy on me like this! I Street, which turned out to be wonderfully near - a narrow won't have it; no, certainly I won't! I warned you when you little street off the Gray's Inn Road itself, with a well-kept moved in.'

terrace on one side, and a rather grim-looking tenement on the other. The number I sought was one of the houses, and

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looked very pleasant, with a pot of geraniums upon the step these opened on to a little iron balcony, that overlooked and, beside that, a three-legged cat, washing its face. The Green Street and faced the shabby tenement.

cat gave a hop as I approached, and lifted its head for me to

'It'll be eight shillings for the rent,' said Mrs Milne as I tickle.

gazed about me. I nodded. 'You're not the first girl that I've I pulled on the bell, and was greeted by a kind-faced, whiteseen,' she went on, 'but, to be honest, I was hoping for an haired lady in an apron and slippers; she let me in at once older lady - I thought perhaps a widow. My niece was here when I explained my visit, introduced herself as 'Mrs until very recently, but had to leave us to get married. You Milne', then spent a moment fussing over the cat. While she might be thinking of getting married yourself, rather soon?'

did so I looked about me, and blinked. The hallway was as

'Oh no,' I said.

crowded with pictures, almost, as Mrs Dendy's old front

'You've no young man?'

parlour. These pictures were not, however, theatrical in

'Not one.'

theme; indeed, so far as I could make out, they had nothing That seemed to please her. She said, 'I am glad. You see, it in common at all save the fact that each of them was very is just myself and my daughter here, and she is rather an brightly-hued. Most seemed rather cheap - some had unusual, trusting sort of girl. I wouldn't like to have young evidently been cut from books and papers, and pinned fellers, coming in and out..."

frameless to the wall - but there were one or two rather There's no young man,' I said firmly.

famous images. Above the umbrella-stand, for example, She smiled again; then seemed to hesitate. 'Might I ask hung a copy of that gaudy painting The Light of the World; might I - why you are leaving your present address?' At that beneath it was an Indian picture, of a slender blue god I hesitated - and her smile grew smaller.

wearing spit-black on the eyes, and holding a flute. I To be truthful,' I said, 'there was a little bit of wondered whether Mrs Milne was perhaps some form of unpleasantness with my landlady ..."

religious maniac - a theosophist, or a Hindoo convert.

'Ah.' She stiffened a little, and I realised that in telling the When she saw me looking at the walls, however, she smiled truth I had blundered.

in a most Christian-like way. 'My daughter's pictures,' she

'What I mean,' I began - but I could see her mind working. said, as if that explained it all. 'She does like the colours.' I What did she think? That my landlady had caught me nodded, then followed her up the stairs.

kissing her husband, probably.

She took me directly to the room that was for rent. It was a

'You see,' she began again, regretfully, 'my daughter . . .'

pleasant, ordinary kind of chamber, and everything in it was This daughter must be a beauty and a half, I thought - or clean. Its chief attraction was its window: this was long, else a complete erotomaniac - if the mother is so eager to and split down the middle to form a pair of glass doors; and keep her safe and close, away from young men's eyes. And yet, just as I had been drawn to that mispelt card in the

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shopkeeper's window, so, now, there was something about I had expected some extraordinary beauty. Grace Milne was the house and its owner that tugged at me, unaccountably. not beautiful - but she was, I saw at once, rather I took a chance.

extraordinary. Her age was hard to judge. She might, I

'Mrs Milne,' I said, 'the fact of it is I have a curious thought, have been anything between seventeen and thirty; occupation - a theatrical occupation, you could call it - that her hair, however, was as yellow and fine as flax, and hung obliges me sometimes to dress in gentlemen's suits. My loose about her shoulders like a girl's. She was clad in an landlady caught me at it, and took against me. I know for odd assemblage of clothes - a short blue dress, and a yellow certain that, if I live here, I shall never bring a chap over pinafore, and beneath that gaudy stockings with clocks your threshold. You may wonder how I know that, but I can upon them, and red velvet slippers. Her eyes were grey, her only say, I do. I shan't ever get behind with my rent; I shall cheeks very pale. Her features had a strange, smooth quality keep myself to myself and you won't hardly know that I am to them, as if her face was a drawing to which someone had here at all. If you and Miss Milne will only not object to the halfheartedly taken a piece of india-rubber. When she spoke sight of a girl in a pair of bags and a neck-tie now and again her voice was thick and slightly braying. I realised then,

- well, then I think I might be the lodger you are seeking.'

what I might have guessed before: that she was rather I had spoken in earnest — more or less — and now Mrs simple.

Milne looked thoughtful. 'Gentlemen's suits, you say,' she I saw all this, of course, in less than a moment. Grace had said - not unkindly or incredulously, but with a rather put her arm through her mother's and, on being introduced interested air. I nodded, then pulled at the cord of my bag to me, had indeed hung back rather shyly. Now, however, and drew out a jacket - it happened to be the top half of the she gazed with obvious delight at the jacket that I held guardsman's uniform. I gave it a shake and held it up before me, and I could see that she was desperate to seize against myself, rather hopefully. 'My eyes,' she said, folding its coloured sleeve and stroke it.

her arms, 'he's a beauty, in' he? Now my little girl would And after all, it was a lovely jacket. I asked her, 'Would you like him.' She gestured to the door. 'If you'll permit me . . . like to try it on?'

?' She stepped out on to the landing and gave a shout: She nodded, then glanced at her mother: 'If I might.' Mrs

'Gracie!' I heard the sound of footsteps below. Mrs Milne Milne said she might. I raised the jacket for her to step into, tilted her head. 'Now, she's a mote shy,' she said in a low then moved around her to fasten the buttons. The scarlet voice, 'but don't you pay no mind to her if she starts being serge and the gold trim went bizarrely well with her hair, silly on you. It's just her way.' I smiled, uncertainly. In a her eyes, her dress and stockings.

second Gracie had begun her ascent; a few seconds more,

'You look like a lady in a circus,' I said, as her mother and I and she was in the room and at her mother's side. stood back to study her. 'A ring-master's daughter.' She

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smiled - then took a clumsy bow. Mrs Milne laughed and It was like rooming with angels. I could keep the hours I clapped.

liked, wear the costumes I chose, and Mrs Milne said

'May I keep it?' Gracie asked me then. I shook my head. nothing. I could come home in a jacket crusted, at the To be honest, Miss Milne, I don't believe that I can spare it. collar, with a man's rash spendings - and she would only Had I only two the same ..."

pluck it from my nervous hands, and wash it at the tap: 'I

'Now Gracie,' said her mother, 'of course you can't keep it. never saw a girl so careless with her soup!' I could wake Miss Astley needs the costume for her theatricals.' Grace wretched, plagued with memories, and she would pile my pulled a face, but did not seem very seriously dismayed. breakfast plate the higher, asking nothing. She was as Mrs Milne caught my eye. 'She might borrow it, though, simple, in her way, as her own simple daughter; she was mightn't she,' she whispered, 'from time to time . . . ?'

good to me for Grade's sake, because I liked her, and was

'She can borrow all my suits, all at once, so far as I care,' I kind to her.

said; and when Grace looked up I gave her a wink, and her I was patient, for example, over the issue of Grace's interest pale cheeks pinked a little, and her head went down. in the colourful. You could not have spent three minutes in Mrs Milne gave a mild tut-tut, and folded her arms that house without noticing it; but after three days there I complacently. 'I do believe that, after all, Miss Astley, you began to sense a kind of system to her mania which, if I had will suit us very well.'

had routines of my own, like an ordinary girl, might have I moved in at once. That first afternoon I passed in proved rather maddening. When, on my first Wednesday unpacking my few little things, with Gracie beside me there, I went down to breakfast in a yellow waistcoat, Mrs exclaiming over them all, and Mrs Milne bringing tea, and Milne flinched and said: 'Grade don't quite like to see then more tea, and cake. By supper-time I had become yellow in the house,' she said, 'on a Wednesday.' Three days

'Nancy' to them both; and supper itself-which was a pie later, however, we had a custard for tea: food on a and peas and gravy, and afterwards, blancmange in a mould Saturday, it seemed, must be yellow, or nothing . . .

- was the first that I had eaten, at a family table, since my Mrs Milne had grown so used to the fads, she had almost last dinner at Whitstable just over a year before. ceased to notice them; and in time, as I have said, I grew The next day, Gracie tried my suits, in every combination, used to them, too - calling, 'What colour today, Grace?' as I and her mother clapped. There were sausages for supper, dressed in the mornings. 'May I wear my blue serge suit, or and later cake. The cake being eaten, I changed for Soho; must it be the Oxfords?' 'Shall we have gooseberries for and when Mrs Milne saw me in my serge-and-velvet, she supper, or a Battenburg cake?' I didn't mind, it came to clapped again. She had had a key cut for me, so that when I seem a kind of game; and Grade's way was quite as valid a came home late I should not wake them . . .

philosophy, I thought, as many others. And her basic passion, for the vivid and the bright, I understood very well.

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For there were so many lovely colours in the city; and in a of my family. Davy, I supposed, would be married by now, sense she tutored me to look at them anew. As I strolled and possibly a father - that made me an aunt. Alice would about I would keep a watch for pictures and dresses that I be twenty-five. They would all be celebrating the turning of knew that she would like, then bring them home for her. the year, today, without me -wondering, perhaps, where I She had a number of huge albums, into which she pasted was, and how I did; and Kitty and Walter might be doing cuttings and scraps: I would find her magazines and little the same. I thought: Let them wonder. When Mrs Milne books, to worry at with her scissors; I would buy her raised her glass at the dinner-table, and wished the three of flowers from the flower-girls' stalls: violets, carnations, us all the luck of the Season and the New Year, I gave her a lavender statice and blue forget-me-nots. When I presented smile, and then a kiss upon the cheek.

them to her - producing them with a flourish, from under

'What a Christmas!' she said. 'Here I am, with my two best my coat, like a conjuror - she would flush with pleasure, girls beside me. What a lucky day it was for me and Grace, and perhaps dip me a playful little curtsey. Mrs Milne Nance, the day you knocked upon our door!' Her eyes would look on, pleased as anything, but shaking her head glistened a little; she had said this sort of thing before, but and pretending to chide.

never so feelingly. I knew what she was thinking. I knew

'Tut!' she would say to me. 'You will turn that girl's head she had begun to look upon me as a kind of daughter - as a right round, one of these days, I swear it!' And I would sister, anyway, to her real daughter: a kindly older sister think for a second how queer it was that she - who had been who might be relied upon, perhaps, to care for Grade when so careful to keep her daughter from the covetous glances she herself was dead and gone . . .

of fresh young men - should encourage Grace and me to The idea, at that moment, made me shiver - and yet I had no play at sweethearts, so blithely, and with such seeming other plans; no other family, now; no sister of my own; and unconcern.

certainly no sweetheart. So, 'What a lucky day it was for But it was impossible to think very hard about anything in me,' I answered. 'If only everything might stay just as it is, that household, where life was so even and idle and sweet. for ever!' Mrs Milne blinked her tears away and took my And because, since losing Kitty, thinking was the soft white hand in her old, hardened one. Grade gazed at us, occupation I cared for least, this suited me best of all. pleased, but distracted by the splendours of the day, her hair So the months slid by. My birthday arrived: I had not shining in the candle-light like gold.

marked its passing at all the year before; but now there That night I went as usual to Leicester Square. There are were gifts, and a cake with green candles. Christmas came, gents there, looking for renters, even at Christmas. bringing more presents, and a dinner. I remembered with The trade is poor, though, in the winter months. The fogs some small, insistent portion of my brain the two gay and the early darkness are kind to the furtive; but no one Christmases that I had spent with Kitty; and then I thought likes unbuttoning himself when there are icicles upon the

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wall - nor did I much care for kneeling on slippery cobbles, wearing, I remember, plain linen trousers and a shirt left or wandering around the West End in a short jacket merely open at the neck, and a little straw sailor-hat I had put on for the sake of showing off my lovely bum and the roll of against the strong late-afternoon sun, and forgotten to the hankie at the fork of my trousers. I was glad to have a remove. The room behind me I had let darken; I guessed home that was cosy: gay people go down like skittles in that, apart from the occasional dancing glow of my January, with fevers and influenza, or worse; Sweet Alice cigarette tip, I must be quite invisible against its shadows. coughed all through that winter - said he was afraid he My eyes were closed, I was thinking of nothing, when all at should do it while he knelt to a gent, a bite his cock off. once I heard music. Someone had begun to strum some As spring came again, however, the evenings warmed and kind of sweet, twangy instrument -not a banjo, not a guitar - my curious gaslit career grew easier; but I, if anything, and a lilting gypsy melody was playing upon the bare grew lazier. Now, more often than I ventured out into the evening breezes. Soon a woman's voice, high and streets, I kept at home in my room - not sleeping, only quavering, had risen to accompany it.

lying, open-eyed, half-clothed; or smoking, while the night I opened my eyes to find the source of the sound; it came grew thicker and still, and a candle burned low, and not, as I had expected, from the street below, but from the trembled, and died. I took to throwing wide my windows to building opposite - the old tenement that had used to be so let the voices of the city in: the clatter of cabs and vans grim and empty, and such a contrast to the pleasant little from the Gray's Inn Road; the hoots and the rattles and terrace in which my landlady had her house. Labourers had hisses of steam, from King's Cross; snatches of quarrels and been at work upon it for a month and more, and I had been confidences and greetings, from passers-by - 'Well now, dimly aware of them as they hammered and whistled and Jenny!'; Till Tuesday, till Tuesday ..." When the stifling leaned from ladders; now the building was spruce and heat of June arrived I got into the habit of placing a chair on mended, hi all my time at Green Street the windows my little balcony high above Green Street, and sitting there opposite mine had been dark. Tonight, however, they were long into the cooling night.

thrown open, and the curtains behind them were drawn I passed about fifty nights like this that summer, and quite wide. It was from here that the gay little melody was daresay I could not distinguish so many as five of them issuing: the parted drapes gave me a perfect view of the from all of their fellows. But one of those nights, I curious scene that was being enacted within.

remember very

The player of the instrument - it was, I now saw, a well.

mandolin - was a handsome young woman in a wellI had set my chair as usual upon my balcony, but had turned tailored jacket, a white blouse, a neck-tie, and spectacles; I its back to the street and sat lazily straddling it, with my put her down at once for a lady clerk or a college girl. As arms across each other and my chin upon my arms. I was she sang, she smiled; and when her voice fell short of the

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higher notes, she laughed. She had tied a bunch of ribbons behind the curtain ceased her intermittent fanning and rose. to the neck of her mandolin, and these shook and Stepping carefully around the group, she approached the shimmered as she strummed it.

window: it, like my own, opened on to a little balcony, The little group of people to whom she sang, however, were upon which she now stepped, and from which she surveyed, not quite so gay. A man, in a suit that was rather rough, sat with a mild glance and a yawn, the quiet street beneath. beside her, nodding with a fixed and hopeful smile; on his There were not more than twelve yards between us, and we knee he held a sweet little girl in a patched frock and apron, were almost level; but, as I had guessed , I was only another whose hands he made to clap in approximate time to the shadow against my own shadowy chamber, and she hadn't melody. At his shoulder leaned a boy, his hair shaved to a noticed me. I, for my part, had still not seen her face. The stubble around his narrow neck and his large, flushed ears. window and curtains framed her beautifully, but the light Behind him stood a tired-looking hard-faced woman - the was all from behind. It streamed through her hair, which man's wife, I guessed - and she held another infant listlessly seemed curly as a corkscrew, and lent her a kind of flaming at her breast. The final member of the party, a stocky girl in nimbus, such as a saint might have in the window of a a smartish jacket, was only partly visible beyond the edge church; her face, however, was left in darkness. I watched of the curtain. Her face was hidden, but I could see her her. When the music stopped, and there was a selfhands -which were slender and rather pale - with peculiar conscious smattering of applause and then a bit of desultory clarity: they held a card or a pamphlet, which they flapped chatter, still she kept her place on the balcony and didn't in the still, warm air like a fan.

look round.

All of these figures were gathered around a table, upon At last my cigarette burned down, almost to my fingers, and which stood a jar of flaccid little daisies and the remains of I cast it into the street below. She caught the gesture: gave a an economical supper: tea and cocoa, cold meat and pickle, start, then squinted at me, then grew stiff. Her confusion and a cake. Despite the long faces and forced smiles, there despite the darkness, I could see from the tips of her ears was something celebratory about the scene. It was, I that she flushed - disconcerted me, till I recollected my supposed, a sort of house-warming party - though I could gentleman's costume. She took me for some insolent not fathom the relationship between the lady mandolinist voyeur! The thought gave me an odd mixture of shame and and the poor, drab little family to whom she played. Nor embarrassment and also, I must confess, pleasure. I took was I sure about the other girl, with the pale hands; she, I hold of my boater and raised it, politely.

thought, could have belonged in either camp.

'G'night, sweetheart,' I said in a low, lazy tone. It was the The tune changed, and I could sense the family growing kind of thing rough fellows of the street - costers and roadrestless. I lit a cigarette and studied the scene: it was as menders - said to passing ladies all the time. I don't know good a thing to watch, I thought, as any. At length the girl why, just then, I thought to copy them.

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The girl gave another twitch, then opened her mouth as if to governesses airing babies, and shop-girls taking their make me some rusty reply; at that moment, however, her lunches on the grass. Any of these, I knew, might be led friend approached the window. She had a hat fixed to her into a little conversation by a girl with a smile and a head, and was pulling on her gloves. She said, 'We must go, handsome dress; and I had a fancy - a rather curious fancy - Florence' - the name sounded very romantic, in the halffor women's company that day. light. 'It is time for the children to be put to bed. Mr Mason It was in this mood, and with these plans, and in that says he will walk with us as far as King's Cross.'

costume, that I saw Florence.

The girl gave not a glance more my way then, but turned I recognised her at once, for all that I had seen so little of quickly into the room. Here she kissed the children, shook her before. I had just let myself out of the house, and the mother's hand, and politely took her leave; from my lingered for a moment on the lowest step, yawning and place on the balcony I saw her, and her friend, and their rubbing my eyes. She was emerging into the sunlight from rough chaperon Mr Mason, quit the building and make their a passageway on the other side of Green Street, a little way way up towards the Gray's Inn Road. I thought she might down on my left, and she was dressed in a jacket and skirt turn to see if I still watched but she did not; and why should the colour of mustard - it was this, struck by the sun and set I mind it? With the lamplight at last turned upon her face I glowing, that had caught my eye. Like me, she had paused: had seen that she was not at all handsome.

she had a sheet of paper in her hand, and seemed to be I might have forgotten all about her, indeed, except that a consulting it. The passageway led to the tenement flats, and fortnight or so after I had watched her in the darkness, I saw I guessed she had been visiting the family that had held the her again - but this time in daylight.

party. I wondered idly which way she would go. If she It was another warm day, and I had woken rather early. Mrs moved towards King's Cross again, I should miss her. Milne and Grace were out on a visit, and I had in At last she stowed the paper in a satchel that was slung, consequence nothing at all in the world to do, and no one to crosswise, over her chest, and turned - to her left, towards please but myself. Before my money had all run out I had me. I kept to my step and, as I had before, I watched her; bought myself a couple of decent frocks; and it was one of slowly she drew level with me until, once again, there was those that I had put on, today. I had my old plait of false no more than the width of the road between us. I saw her hair, too: it looked wonderfully natural under the shadow of eyes flick once towards mine, then away, and then, as she the stiff brim of a black straw hat. I had a mind to make my felt the persistence of my gaze, to mine again. I smiled; she way to one of the parks -Hyde Park, I thought, then on slowed her step and, with a show of uncertainty, smiled perhaps to Kensington Gardens. I knew men would pester back: but I could see that she had not the least idea who I me along the way; but parks, I have found, are full of might be. I couldn't let the moment pass. While my eyes women - full of nursemaids wheeling bassinets, and still held her questioning, amiable gaze, I lifted my hand to

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my head and raised my hat, and said in the same low tone End accent, more or less; but her voice was deep and that I had used on her before: 'G'mornin!’

slightly breathy. 'We have been trying for ages to get our As before, she started. Then she glanced up at the balcony hands on some of the flats in this block here, and that night above my head. And then she pinked. 'Oh! It was you then you saw me we had moved our first family in - a bit of a was it?'

success for us, we are only a small affair - and Miss Derby I smiled again, and gave a little bow. My stays creaked; it thought we should make a party of it.'

felt all wrong, being gallant in a skirt, and I had a sudden

'Oh yes? Well, she plays very nicely. You should tell her to fear that she might take me not for an impertinent voyeur, come and busk round here more often.'

but for a fool. But when I raised my eyes to hers again her

'You live there then, do you?' she asked, nodding towards flush was fading, and her face showed neither contempt, Mrs Milne's.

nor discomfiture, but a kind of amusement. She tilted her

'I do. I like to sit out on the balcony ..." head.

She raised her hand to tuck away a lock of hair beneath her A van passed between us, followed by a cart. In lifting my bonnet. 'And always in trousers?' she asked me then, so that hat to her this time I had thought only, and vaguely, to I blinked.

correct the earlier misunderstanding; perhaps, to make her

'Only sometimes in trousers.'

smile. But when the street was once again clear and she still

'But always, to gaze at the women and give them a start?'

stood there it seemed a kind of invitation. I crossed, and Now I blinked two or three times. 'I never thought to do it,'

stood before her. I said, 'I'm sorry if I frightened you the I answered, 'before I saw you.' It was the plain truth; but she other night.' She seemed embarassed at the memory, but laughed at it, as if to say, Oh yes. The laugh, and the laughed.

exchange which had provoked it, was unsettling. I studied

'You didn't frighten me,' she said, as if she were never her more closely. As I had seen on that first night, she was frightened. 'You just gave me a bit of a start. If I'd known not what you might term a beauty. She was thick at the you were a woman - well!' She blushed again - or it may waist and almost stout, and her face was broad, her chin a have been the same blush as before, I couldn't tell. Then she firm one. Her teeth were even, but not perfectly white; her glanced away; and we fell silent.

eyes were hazel, but the lashes not long; her hands,

'Where's your friend the musician?' I said at last. I held an however, seemed graceful. Her hair was the kind of hair we imaginary mandolin to my waist and gave it a couple of had all been thankful, as girls, that we did not have - for strums.

though she had bound it into a bun at her neck, the curls

'Miss Derby,' she said with a smile. 'She is back at our kept springing from it and twisting about her face. With the office. I do a bit of work with a charity, finding houses for lamp behind it, too, it had seemed auburn; but it would poor families that've lost their homes.' She had a plain East really be more truthful to say that it was brown.

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I believe I liked it better that she was not more handsome. I didn't care a button about the families; but I did care, And though there was something wonderfully intriguing suddenly at the thought that I might lose her. I said, 'Well, about her tranquillity at my strange behaviour - as if women then I shall have to see you when you come again to Green donned gents' trousers all the time; as if they made love to Street. When will that be?'

girls on balconies so often that she was used to it, and

'Ah well, you see,' she said, 'it won't. I shall be leaving this thought it merely naughty - I did not think I saw that trick post in a couple of days, and.I am to help with the running in her, that furtive something, that I had recognised in other of a hostel, at Stratford. It is better for me, since it's nearer girls. Certainly nobody, gazing at her, would ever think to where I live, and I know the local people; but it means I sneer and call out Torn] Again, though, I was glad of it. I shall be spending most of my days down East..." had quit the business of hearts and kisses; I was in quite

'Oh,' I said. 'And shall you never be coming into town, at another trade altogether, these days!

all, after that?'

And yet would it hurt me after all this time to have a She hesitated; then: 'Well, I do sometimes come in, in the friend?

evenings. I go to the theatre, or to the lectures at the I said, 'Look here, will you come to the park with me? I was Athenaeum Hall. You might come with me, to one of those just on my way there when I saw you.'

places .. .'

She smiled, but shook her head: 'I'm working, I couldn't.'

I only went to the theatre, now, as a renter; I wouldn't sit in

'It's too hot for working.'

a velvet seat before a stage again, even for her. I said, 'The The work must still be done, you know. I have a visit to Athenaeum Hall? I know that place. But lectures - what do make at Old Street - a lady Miss Derby knows might have you mean? Church stuff?'

some rooms for us. I should be there now, really.' And she

'Political stuff. You know, the Class Question, the Irish frowned down at a little watch that hung from a ribbon at Question ..."

her breast like a medal.

I felt my heart sink. The Woman Question.'

'Can't you send to Miss Derby and make her go? It seems

'Exactly. They have speakers, and readings, and afterwards awfully hard on you. I bet she's sitting in the office with her debates. Look here.' She reached into her satchel and drew feet upon her desk, playing a tune on the mandolin; and forth a slim blue pamphlet. The Athenaeum Hall Society here are you out in the sun doing all the tramping about. Lecture Series, it said; Women and Labour: An Address by You need a bit of ice-cream, at the least; there's an Italian Mr-and it gave a name I now forget, followed by a little lady in Kensington Gardens who sells the best ices in piece of explanatory text, and a date that was for four or London, and she lets me have them at half-price . . .'

five days ahead.

She smiled again. 'I cannot. Else, what would happen to all I said, 'Lord!' in an ambiguous sort of way. She lifted her our poor families?'

head, took the pamphlet back from me, and said: 'Well,

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perhaps, after all, you would prefer the ice-cream cart in I was amongst them. For two days almost I had kept Kensington Gardens ..." There was a hint of rustiness about indoors in a kind of hot stupor, drinking endless cups of the words, that I found I could not bear to hear. I said at lemonade with Mrs Milne and Gracie in their darkened once, 'Good heavens, no: this looks a treat!' But I added, parlour, or dozing naked on my bed with the windows that if they really didn't sell ices in the hall, then I thought thrown open and the curtains pulled. Now the promise of a we ought to take some refreshment first. There was, I had night of chilly liberty on the swarming, gaudy streets of the heard, a little public-house at the King's Cross corner of West End drew me like a magnet. My purse, too, was Judd Street with a ladies' room at the back of it, where they almost empty - and I was mindful of the supper I would did a very nice, very inexpensive supper. The lecture began have to take care of, with Florence, the following night. So at seven - would she meet me there beforehand? At, say, six I needed, I thought, to cut something of a dash. I washed, o'clock? I said -because I thought it would please her - that and combed my hair flat and brilliant with macassar; and I might need some instruction, in the ins and outs of the when I dressed I put on my favourite costume - the Woman Question.

guardsman's uniform, with its brass buttons and its piping, At that she snorted, and gave me another knowing look; its scarlet jacket and its neat little cap. I hardly ever wore though what it was she thought she knew, I wasn't sure. She this outfit. The military pips and buckles meant nothing to did, however, agree to meet me - with a warning that I must me, but I had a vague terror that some real soldier might not let her down. I said there was not a chance of it, held one day recognise them, and claim me for his regiment; or out my hand; and for a second felt her fingers, very firm else that some emergency might occur - the Queen be and warm in their grey linen glove, clasp my own. assaulted while I was strolling by Buckingham Palace, for It was only after we had parted that I realised we had not instance - and I would be called upon to play some exchanged names; but by then she had turned the corner of impossible role in its resolution. But the suit was a lucky Green Street, and was gone. But I had, as a piece of secret one, too. It had brought me the bold gentleman of the knowledge from our earlier, darker encounter, her own Burlington Arcade, whose kiss had proved such a fateful romantic Christian name, at least. And besides, I knew I one; and it had tipped the wavering balance at my first should be seeing her again within the week.

interview at Mrs Milne's. Tonight, I thought, I should be

content enough if it would only net me a sovereign. Chapter 10

And there was a curious quality to the city that night, that The days that week grew ever warmer, until at last even I seemed all of a piece with the costume I had chosen. The began to tire of the heat. All London longed for a break in air was cool and unnaturally clear, so that colours - the red the weather; and on Thursday evening, when it finally of a painted lip, the blue of a sandwich-man's boards, the came, crowds took to the streets of the city in sheer relief. violet and the green and the yellow of a flower-girl's tray -

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seemed to leap out of the gloom. It was just as if the city from my friends at Leicester Square, were demanding. were a monstrous carpet to which a giant hand had applied They paid well, but expected correspondingly large the beater, to make all glow again. Infected by the mood I favours: bum-work, bed-work - nights, sometimes, in had sensed even in my Green Street chamber, people had, hotels. Even so, it never hurt to show off a bit: the gent like me, put on their finest. Girls in gay dresses walked the inside might remember me on another, more pedestrian, pavements in long, intimidating lines, or spooned with their occasion. I had ambled up and down the edges of the bowler-hatted beaux on steps and benches. Boys stood Square for a good ten minutes, occasionally reaching down drinking at the doors of public-houses, their pomaded heads to give a twitch to my groin - for, in the rather flamboyant gleaming, in the gas-light, like silk. The moon hung low spirit in which I had dressed that night, I had padded my above the roofs of Soho, pink and bright and swollen as a drawers with a rolled silk cravat, instead of my usual Chinese lantern. One or two stars winked viciously kerchief or glove, and the material was slippery, and kept alongside it.

edging along my thigh. Still, I thought, such a gesture might And through it all sauntered I, in my suit of scarlet; and yet not prove unpleasing to the distant eye of an interested gent. by eleven o'clock, when the streets were thinning, I had had

. .

no luck at all. A couple of gents had seemed to like the look The carriage, however, with its taciturn driver and bashful of me, and one rough-looking man had set himself to follow occupant, had at last jerked into life and pulled away. me, right the way from Piccadilly to Seven Dials and back Since then my admirers had all, apparently, been as again. But the gents, at the last, had been lured by other cautious as that last one; I had sensed a few interested renters; and the rough man was not the type I cared for. I glances slither my way, but had managed to hook none of had given him the slip in a lavatory with two exits. them with my own more frankly searching one. By now it And then there had been yet another almost-encounter, had grown very dark, and almost chill. It was time, I later, while I was idling beside a lamp-post in St James's thought, to pick my slow way home. I felt disappointed. Square. A brougham had driven slowly by, then stopped; Not with my own performance, but with the evening itself, and then, like me, it had lingered. No one had got out of it, which had opened with such promise and had finished such no one had got in. The driver had had a high collar a flop. I had not earned so much as a threepenny-bit: I shadowing his face, and had never moved his gaze from his should now have to borrow a little cash from Mrs Milne, horse - but there had been a certain twitching of the lace at and spend longer, more resolute, less choosy hours on the the dark carriage windows, that let me know that I was streets over the following week, until my luck turned. The being observed, carefully, from within.

thought did not cheer me: renting, which had seemed such a I had strolled about a bit, and lit a cigarette. I didn't, for holiday at first, had come to seem, of late, a little tiresome. obvious reasons, do carriage jobs. Gents on wheels, I knew

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It was in these spirits that I began to make my way back to disappeared from my view completely. In the darkness the Green Street - avoiding, now, the busier routes that I had brougham seemed quite black, but where the light from a trod for fun before, and taking back roads: Old Compton guttering street-lamp spilled on it, it gleamed a deep Street; Arthur Street; Great Russell Street, which took me crimson, touched here and there with gold. The gent inside, by the pale, silent mass of the British Museum; and finally I thought, must be a very rich one.

Guilford Street, which would lead me by the Foundling Well, he would be disappointed; he had followed me for Hospital and on to the Gray's Inn Road.

nothing. I quickened my step, and made to move past, head Even on these quieter routes, however, the traffic seemed down. But as I drew level with the rear wheel I heard the unusually heavy - unusually, and puzzlingly, for though soft click of a latch undone: the door swung silently open, few carts and hansoms seemed actually to pass me, the low blocking my path. From the shadows beyond the doorframe clatter of wheels and hooves formed a continuous drifted a thread of blue tobacco smoke; I heard a breath, a accompaniment to my own slow footfalls. At last, at the rustle. Now I must either retrace my steps and cross behind entrance to a dim and silent mews, I understood why; for the vehicle, or squeeze between the swinging door and the here I paused to tie my lace and, as I stooped, looked wall on my left -and catch a glimpse, perhaps, of its casually behind me. There was a carriage moving slowly enigmatic occupant. I confess, I was intrigued. Any gent towards me out of the gloom, a private carriage with a who could bring such a sense of drama to the staging of an particular, well-greased rumble I now knew for the one that encounter which, in the ordinary course of things, might be had pursued me all the way from Soho, and a hunched and settled so unspectacularly - by a word, or a nod, or the muffled driver I thought I recognised. It was the brougham fluttering of one spit-blacked lash - was clearly someone that had waited near me in St James's Square. Its shy special. I was also, frankly, flattered; and having been master, who had watched while I had posed beneath a flattered, generous. Since he had had to make do so far with lamppost and strolled the pavement with my fingers at my admiring my bottom from a distance, I felt it only fair to crotch, evidently fancied another look.

give him the chance of a closer look *-though he must, of My lace tied, I straightened up, but cautiously kept my course, be content only to look.

place. The carriage slowed, then — in its dark interior still I advanced a little towards the open door. Within, all was hidden behind the heavy lace at its windows - it passed me dark; I saw only the vague outline of a shoulder, an arm, a by. Then, a little way on, it drew to a halt. I began, knee, against the lighter square of the far window. Then uncertainly, to walk towards it.

briefly the end of a cigarette glowed bright in the blackness, The driver, as before, was impassive and still: I could see and glimmered redly on a pale gloved hand, and a face. The only the curve of his shoulders and the rise of his hat; hand was slender, and had rings upon it. The face was indeed, as I approached the rear of the vehicle he powdered: a woman's face.

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I was too surprised even to laugh - too startled, for a I put my hand on the carriage-door and made to swing it to. moment, to do anything but stand at the rim of gloom that But again she spoke. 'If you won't,' she said, 'let me drive seemed to spill out from the carriage, and gape at her; and you home, then won't you, as a favour, ride with me a in that moment, she spoke.

while? As you see, I am quite alone; and I've rather a

'Can I offer you a ride?'

yearning for company, tonight.' Her voice seemed to Her voice was rich and rather haughty, and somehow tremble - though whether with melancholy, or anticipation, arresting. It made me stammer. I said: 'That, that's very kind or even laughter, I could not tell.

of you, madam' - I sounded like a mincing shop-boy

'Look missis,' I said then, into the gloom, 'you're on the refusing a tip -'but I'm not five minutes from home, and I wrong track. Let me pass, and get your driver to take you shall get there all the quicker if you'll let me say goodanother turn around Piccadilly.' Now I laughed: 'Believe night, and pass on my way.' I tilted my cap towards the dark me, I haven't got what you're after.'

place where the voice had come from, and, with a tight little The carriage creaked; the red end of the cigarette bobbed smile, I made to move on.

and brightened and illuminated, once again, a cheek, a But the lady spoke again.

brow, a lip. The lip curled.

'It's rather late,' she said, 'to be out on one's own, in streets

'On the contrary, my dear. You have exactly what I'm after.'

like these.' She drew on her cigarette, and the tip glowed Still I did not guess, but only thought, Blimey, she's keen! I bright again in the shadows. 'Won't you let me drop you glanced about me. A few carriages bowled along the Gray's somewhere? I have a very capable driver.'

Inn Road, and two or three late pedestrians passed quickly I thought, I am sure you do: her man was still hunched from sight, behind them. A hansom had pulled up at the end forward in his seat, his back to me, his thoughts his own. I of the mews, quite near us, and was letting its passengers felt suddenly weary. I had heard stories in Soho about dismount; they disappeared into a doorway, and the hansom ladies like this - ladies who rode the darkened streets with rolled by and away, and all was still again. I took a breath, well-paid servants, on the lookout for idle men or boys like and leaned into the dark interior of the coach. me who'd give them a thrill for the price of a supper. Rich

'Madam,' I hissed, 'I ain't a boy at all. I'm -' I hesitated. The ladies with no husbands, or absent husbands, or even (so end of the cigarette disappeared: she had thrown it out of Sweet Alice claimed) husbands at home, warming the bed, the window. I heard her give one impatient sigh - and all at with whom they shared their startled catches. I had never once I understood.

known quite whether to believe in such ladies; here,

'You little fool,' she said. 'Get in.'

however, was one before me, haughty and scented and hot Well, what should I have done? I had been weary, but I was for a lark.

not weary now. I had been disappointed, my expectations What a mistake she had made this time!

for the evening dashed; but with this one, unlooked-for

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invitation the glamour of the night seemed all restored.

'I thought - the uniform ..." She gestured towards my suit. True, it was very late, and I was alone, and this woman was It, too, seemed to have lost some of its bravado, seemed to clearly a stranger of some determination, and with odd and be bleeding its crimson into the shadows of the coach. I felt secret tastes ... But her voice and manner were, as I have I was letting her down. I said, with an effort at music-hall said, compelling ones. And she was rich. And my purse was sauce, 'Oh, the uniform is my disguise for the streets, not a empty. I hesitated for a moment; then she held out her hand party. I find that a girl in skirts, on her own in the city, gets and, where the lamplight fell upon her rings, I saw how looked at, rather, in a way not always nice.'

large the stones were. It was that - only that, just then - She nodded. 'I see. And you don't care for that? - being which decided me. I took her hand, and climbed into the looked at, I mean. I should never have guessed it.'

carriage.

'Well... It depends, of course, on who's doing the looking.'

We sat together in the gloom. The brougham lurched I was getting back into my stride at last; and she, I could forward with a muted creak, and started on its smooth, sense it, was also warming up. I felt for a second - what I quiet, expensive way. Through the heavy lace of its had not felt, it seemed, for a hundred years - the thrill of windows the streets seemed changed, quite insubstantial. performing with a partner at my side, someone who knew This, I realised, was how the rich saw the city all the time. the songs, the steps, the patter, the pose . . . The memory I glanced at the woman at my side. She wore a dress or brought with it an old, dull ache of grief; but it was cloak of some sombre, heavy material, indistinguishable overlaid, in this new setting, with a keen, expectant from the dark upholstery of the carriage's interior; her face pleasure. Here we were, this strange lady and I, on our way and gloved hands, illuminated by the regular gleam of to I knew not what, playing whore and trick so well we passing street-lamps, their surface fantastically marbled by might have been reciting a dialogue from some handbook the shadow of the drapes, seemed to float, pale as waterof tartery! It made me giddy. lilies, in a pool of gloom. She was, as far as I could tell, Now she raised her hand to finger the braided collar of my handsome, and quite young - perhaps ten years older than coat. 'What a little impostor you are!' she said mildly. Then: myself.

'But you have a brother in the Guards, I think. A brother - For a full half-minute neither of us spoke; then she tilted or, perhaps, a beau . . . ?' Her fingers trembled slightly, and back her head, and looked me over. She said, 'You are, I felt the chillest of whispers of sapphire and gold upon my perhaps, on your way home from a costume ball?' Her voice throat.

had a new, slightly arrogant drawl to it.

I said, 'I work in a laundry, and a soldier brought this in. I

'A ball?' I answered. To my own surprise I sounded reedy, thought he wouldn't notice if I borrowed it." I smoothed out rather trembly.

the creases around my crotch, where the slippery cravat still rudely bulged. 'I liked the cut,' I added, 'of the trousers.'

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After the briefest of pauses her hand - as I knew it must had you, dear, a dozen times: but oh! as I said, why spoil moved to my knee, then crept to the top of my thigh, where the chase! Tonight - what was it, decided me at last? she let it rest. Her palm felt extraordinarily hot. It was an Perhaps it was the uniform; perhaps the moon ..." And she age since anyone had touched me there; indeed, I had kept turned her face to the carriage window, where the moon such a close guard over my own lap lately, I had to fight showed - higher and smaller than before, but still quite back the urge to brush her fingers away.

pink, as if ashamed to look upon the wicked world to which Perhaps she felt me stiffen, for she removed the hand it was compelled to lend its light.

herself and said, 'I'm rather afraid that you are something of I, too, flushed at the lady's words. What she had said was a tease.'

strange, was shocking - and yet, I guessed, might easily be

'Oh,' I said, recovering, 'I can tease all right - if that's what true. In the bustle and swarm of the streets on which I plied you care for .. .'

my shadowy trade, a stationary or a lingering carriage

'Ah.'

would be unremarkable - especially to me, who attended to

'And besides,' I added pertly, 'it's you who's the tease: I saw the traffic of the pavements rather than the roads. It made you in St James's Square, watching me. Why didn't you me horribly uneasy to think she really had been observing stop me then, if you wanted - company-so badly?'

me, all those times . .. And yet, was it not just such an

'And spoil the fun with hastening it? Why, the wait was half audience that I had longed for? Had I not lamented, again the pleasure!' As she said it she raised the fingers of her and again, precisely the fact that my new nocturnal other hand - her left hand - to my cheek. The gloves, I performances must be staged in the dark, under cover, thought, were rather damp about the tips; and they were unguessed? I thought of all the parts I had handled, the scented with a scent that made me draw back in confusion gents I'd knelt to and the cocks I'd sucked. I had done it all, and surprise.

as cool as Christmas; now, the idea that she had watched She laughed. 'But how prim you have turned! You are never me went direct to the fork of my drawers and made me wet. so dainty, I'm sure, with the gentlemen of Soho.'

I said - I didn't know what else to say -I said, 'Am I then so There was a knowingness to the remark. I said, 'You have

- special?'

watched me before - before tonight!'

'We shall see,' she answered.

She answered: 'Well, it is rather marvellous what one may After that, we spoke no more.

catch, from one's carriage, if one is quick and keen and She took me to her home, in St John's Wood; and the house, patient. One may follow one's quarry like a hound with a as I guessed it must be, was grand - a high, pale villa in a fox - and all the time the fox not know itself pursued - well-swept square, with a wide front door and tall casement might think itself only about its little private business: windows with many panes of glass. In one of these a single lifting its tail, arching its eye, wiping its lips ... I might have lamp sat gleaming; the neighbouring houses, however,

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presented only black, shuttered windows, and the clatter of her gesture was not lost on me. This was the third and most our carriage sounded atrocious, to me, in the stillness -I was alarming threshold I had crossed for her tonight. I felt a not then used to that total, unnatural hush which fills the prick, now, not of desire, but of fear: her face, lit from streets and houses of the rich, when they are sleeping. beneath by the smoking lamp, seemed all at once macabre, She led me to her door, saying nothing. Her knock was grotesque. I wondered at this lady's tastes, and how they answered by a grim-faced servant, who received her might have decked the room that lay behind this unspeaking mistress's cloak, looked once at me from beneath her lashes, door, in this silent house, with its curious, incurious but after that kept her eyes quite lowered. The lady paused servants. There might be ropes, there might be knives. to read the cards upon her table; and I, self-conscious, There might be a heap of girls in suits — their pomaded looked about me. We were in a spacious hall, at the bottom heads neat, their necks all bloody. The lady smiled, and of a wide staircase winding up to darker, higher floors. turned. The door swung open. She led me in.

There were doors - closed - to the left and the right of us. It was, after all, a kind of parlour; nothing more. A small The floor was paved with marble, in squares of black and fire had burned itself ashy in the grate, and a bowl of pink. The walls, to match it, were painted a deep, deep rose; browning petals upon the mantel above it made the thick air and this darkened further, where the staircase curved and thicker with a heady perfume. The window was tall, and lifted, like the interior whorls of a shell. I heard my hostess close-drawn with velvet drapes; against the wall which say, 'That will do, Mrs Hooper', and the servant, with a faced it were two armless, ladder-backed chairs. A door bow, took her leave. The lady lifted the lamp from the table beside the fireplace led into a further room; it was ajar, but I at my side and, still with no word for me, began to ascend could not see beyond it.

the stairs. I followed. We climbed to one floor, and then Between the chairs there was a bureau, and now the lady another. At each step the house grew darker, until at last crossed to it. She poured a glass of wine, and took up a there was only the narrow pool of light from my chaperon's rose-tipped cigarette and lit it.

hand to guide my uncertain footsteps through the gloom. Wlin me lamp umu m. n.<^+ uu&». -— __.. „ „

She led me down a short passage to a closed door, then

•

turned and stood before it, one hand raised upon the panels, invitation or perhaps with challenge. She looked, to tell the the other with the lamp held at her thigh. Her dark eyes 1

gleamed, with

•'--'Ti-U*. «t i\,n Wm-lrl' tViat

I

-.1 _u-ii———— C^o l™Vorl tn tfill the I had seen already that she was older, less handsome, but inVlUHlUU Ul JJCiliapo .viui ^.^———-o--more striking than I'd thought at first. Her forehead was truth, like nothing so much as the 'Light of the World' that broad and pale - all the paler for being framed by the hung above the umbrella-stand in Mrs Milne's hallway; but rippled blackness of her hair and her heavy dark brows. Her

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nose was very straight; her mouth was a full mouth that had aside with my corset and chemise - seemed at her touch to once, I guessed, been fuller. Her eyes were a deep hazel rise and swell and strain against their wrappings. I felt like and, in the dim light of the low-turned gas-jets, seemed all a man being transformed into a woman at the hand of a pupil. When she narrowed them - which she did now, the sorceress. My cigarette smouldered at my lip, forgotten. better to study me through the blue haze of tobacco smoke - Her hands moved lower, and stopped at my lap, which now, one noticed the network of wrinkles, fine and not so fine, in as before, began to pulse and heat. The silken cravat lay which they were set.

rolled there; and as she fingered it, I blushed. She said, The room was terribly warm. I unfastened the button at my

'Now you are prim again!' and began to unfasten my throat, then lifted my cap and raked my fingers through my buttons. In a moment she had her hand through the slit of hair - afterwards rubbing my palm against the wool of my my drawers, had seized a corner of the cravat, and began to thigh, to wipe the oil from it. And all the time she watched tug at it. The silk uncurled, and squirmed and susurrated its me. Then she said, 'You must think me rather rude.'

way out of my trousers, like

'Rude?'

an eel.

To have brought you so far, without enquiring after your She looked absurdly like a stage magician, producing a name.'

handkerchief or a string of flags from a fist, or an ear, or a I said, without hesitation, 'It's Miss Nancy King, and you lady's purse - and, of course, she was too clever not to know might at least offer me a cigarette, I think.'

it: one dark eyebrow lifted, and her lip gave its ironical curl, She smiled, and came to me, and placed her own fag, halfand she whispered 'Presto!' when the cravat was free. But smoked and damp at the end, between my lips. I caught the then her looked changed. She held the silk to her lips, and reek of it on her breath, together with the faint spice of the gazed at me above it. 'All your promise has come to wine that she had swallowed.

nothing, after all,' she said. Then she laughed, and stepped

'If you were King of Pleasure,' she said, 'and I were Queen away, and nodded to my trousers - now gaping whitely, of of Pain ..." Then, in a different tone: 'You're very course, at the buttons. 'Take them off.' I did so at once, handsome, Miss King.'

fumbling with my shoes and stockings in my haste. My fag I took a long pull on the cigarette: it made me giddy as a showered me with ash, and I cast it into the grate. 'And the glass of cham. I said: 'I know.' At that, she raised her hands underthings,' she went on,' -but leave the jacket. That's to the front of my jacket - she was still wearing gloves, with good.'

the rings on top - and ran them over me, delicately and Now I had a heap of discarded clothes at my feet. My jacket lingeringly, and sighing as she did so. Beneath the wool of ended at my hips; beneath it, in the dim light, my legs my uniform my nipples sprang up stiff as little sergeants; looked very white, the triangle of hair between them very my breasts - which had grown used to being as it were put dark. The lady watched me all the while, making no move

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to touch me further. But when I was finished, she went to a all. For on the top of the jumble, on a square of velvet, lay drawer in the bureau; and when she turned back to me she the queerest, lewdest thing I ever saw.

held something in her hand. It was a key.

It was a kind of harness, made of leather: belt-like, and yet

'In my bedroom,' she said, nodding towards the second not quite a belt, for though it had one wide strap with door, 'you'll find a trunk, which this will open.' She handed buckles on it, two narrower, shorter bands were fastened to it to me. It felt very chill upon my overheated palm, and for this and they, too, were buckled. For one alarming moment a moment I merely gazed stupidly at it. Then she clapped I thought it might be a horse's bridle; then I saw what the her hands: 'Presto!' she said again; and this time, she did not straps and the buckles supported. It was a cylinder of smile, and her voice was rather thick.

leather, rather longer than the length of my hand and about The room next door was smaller than the parlour, but quite as fat, in width, as I could grip. One end was rounded and as rich, and just as dim and hot. On one side there was a slightly enlarged, the other fixed firm to a flattened base; to screen, with a commode behind it; on the other stood a this, by hoops of brass, the belt and the narrower bands japanned press, its surface hard and black and glossy, like a were all also fastened.

beetle's back. At the bottom of the bed there was, as she had It was, in short, a dildo. I had never seen one before; I did promised, a trunk: a handsome, antique chest made of some not, at that time, know that such things existed and had desiccated, perfumed wood - rosewood, I think — with four names.

claw feet and corners of brass, and elaborate carvings on its For all I knew of it, this might be an original, that the lady sides and lid which the dull glow of the fire threw into had had fashioned to a pattern of her own.

exaggerated relief. I knelt before it, placed the key in the Perhaps Eve thought the same, when she saw her first lock; and felt the shifting, as I turned it, of some deep apple.

interior spring.

Even so, it didn't stop her knowing what the apple was for A movement in the corner of the room made me turn my

...

head. There was a cheval-glass there, big as a door, and I But in case I still wondered, the lady now spoke. 'Put it on,'

saw myself reflected in it: pale and wide-eyed, breathless she called - she must have caught the opening of the trunk - and curious, but for all that an unlikely Pandora, with my

'put it on, and come to me.'

scarlet jacket and my saucy cap, my crop and my bare bare I struggled for a moment or two over the placing of the bum. In the room next door all was hushed and still. I straps, and the tightening of the buckles. The brass bit into turned to the trunk again, and lifted its lid. Inside was a the white flesh of my hips, but the leather was wonderfully jumble of bottles and scarves, of cords and packets and supple and warm. I glanced again towards the lookingyellow-bound books. I didn't pause to gaze upon these glass. The base of the phallus was a darker wedge upon my objects then, however; indeed, I hardly registered them at own triangular shield of hair, and its lowest tip nudged me

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in a most insinuating way. From this base the dildo itself

'Not yet,' she said. 'Not yet, not yet!'

obscenely sprang -not straight out, but at a cunning angle, With my hands still clasped in hers she led me to one of the so that when I looked down at it I saw first its bulbous straight-backed chairs and sat me on it, the dildo all the head, gleaming in the red glow of the fire and split by a while straining from my lap, rude and rigid as a skittle. I near-invisible seam of tiny, ivory stitches.

guessed her purpose. With her hands close-pressed about When I took a step, the head gave a nod.

my head and her legs straddling mine, she gently lowered

'Come here,' said the lady when she saw me in the doorway; herself upon me; then proceeded to rise and sink, rise and and as I walked to her, the dildo bobbed still harder. I lifted sink, with an ever speedier motion. At first I held her hips, my hand to still it; and when she saw me do that she placed to guide them; then I returned a hand to her drawers, and let her own fingers over mine, and made them grasp the shaft the fingers of the other creep round her thigh to her and stroke it. Now the base's insinuating nudges grew more buttocks. My mouth I fastened now on one nipple, now on insinuating still: it was not long before my legs began to the other, sometimes finding the salt of her flesh, tremble and she, sensing my rising pleasure, began to sometimes the dampening cotton of her chemise. breathe more harshly. She took her hands away, and turned Soon her breaths became moans, then cries; soon my own and lifted her hair from the nape of her neck, and gestured voice joined hers, for the dildo that serviced her also for me to undress her.

pleasured me - her motions bring it with an ever faster, ever I found the hooks of her gown, and then the laces of her harder pressure against just that part of me that cared for corset: beneath this, I saw, she was mottled scarlet from the pressure best. I had one brief moment of selfhundred tiny creases of her chemise. She stooped to remove consciousness, when I saw myself as from a distance, her petticoats, but retained her drawers, her stockings and straddled by a stranger in an unknown house, buckled her boots and, still, her gloves. Very daring - for I had not inside that monstrous instrument, panting with pleasure and touched her at all, yet - I slid a hand into the slit of her sweating with lust. Then in another moment I could think drawers; and with the other I caught hold of one of her nothing, only shudder; and the pleasure - mine and hers - nipples, and pressed it.

found its aching, arching crisis, and was spent. At that, she put her mouth to mine. Our kisses were After a second she eased herself from my lap, then imperfect ones, as all new lovers' kisses are, and tasted of straddled my thigh and rocked gently there, occasionally tobacco; but - again, like all new lovers' kisses - their very jerking, and at last growing still. Her hair, which had come strangeness made them thrilling. The more I fingered her loose, was hot against my jaw.

the harder she kissed me, and the hotter I grew between my At length she laughed, and moved again against my hip. legs, behind my sheath of leather. Finally she pulled away,

'Oh, you exquisite little tart!' she said.

and seized my wrists.

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And thus we clasped one another, sated and spent, our legs was a handkerchief on the little table before the fire, and inelegantly straddling that elegant, high-backed chair; and with this I wiped first it, and then myself. I lit two as the minutes passed I thought with something like dismay cigarettes, and left one smouldering. Then I poured myself of how the night would now proceed. I thought, She's had a glass of wine and, in between gulps, began to retrieve my me fuck her; now she'll send me home. If I'm in luck I stockings, my trousers and my boots from the pile of might get a pound, for my trouble. It was the prospect of clothes that lay strewn across the carpet.

the sovereign, after all, which had lured me to her parlour in The lady reappeared, and seized her fag. She had changed the first place. And yet, now, there was something into a dressing-gown of heavy green silk, and her feet were inexpressibly dreary to me at the idea of quitting her bare; she had that long second toe that you sometimes see company - of surrendering the toy to which I was strapped, on the statues done by the Greeks. Her hair had been and quieting the tommish urges it and its mistress had all properly unfastened, combed out, and rebound into a long, unexpectedly revived.

loose plait, and she had at last removed her white kid She raised her head and saw, I suppose, my downcast look. gloves. The flesh of her hands was almost as pale.

'Poor child,' she said. 'And do you always grow sorry, when

'Do leave all that,' she said, nodding towards the trousers your business is complete?' She put a hand to my chin and over my arm. 'The maid will deal with it in the morning.'

tilted my face to the lamplight, and I caught her wrist and Then she saw the dildo, and caught it up by one of its shook my head free. My cap - which had remained on my straps. 'I should, however, remove this.'

head through all our violent kisses - now fell off. She at I was not sure that I had heard her properly. 'The morning?'

once returned her hands to my face, and fingered my I said. 'Do you mean that I should stay?'

pomade-stiffened hair; then she laughed, and rose, and

'Why, of course.' She looked genuinely surprised. 'Are you walked into her bedroom. Tour yourself some wine,' she not able? Will you be missed?' I felt light-headed suddenly. called. 'And light me a cigarette, will you?' I heard the hiss I told her that I lodged with a lady who, though she would of water against china, and guessed that she was using the wonder at my absence, wouldn't worry over it. Then she commode.

asked if I had an employer - perhaps at the laundry I had I moved to the glass, and examined myself. My face was as mentioned? - who would expect me on the morrow. I scarlet, almost, as my jacket, my hair was ruffled, my lips laughed at that, and shook my head: 'There is no one at all looked bruised and swollen. I remembered the dildo at my to miss me. I've only myself to think of and please.'

hip, and stooped to unfasten it. Its lustre was cloudy now, As I said it, the toy at her thigh began to swing. and its nether straps were sodden and limp from my own She said, 'You did, before tonight. Now, however, you have lavish spendings; yet it was as indecently rigid and ready as me . . .'

before -that never happened with the gents in Soho. There

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Her words, her expression, made a mockery of my efforts The lady was still gazing at me. She said, 'I have waited for with the handkerchief: I was wet for her anew. I reunited you to wake, before ringing for breakfast.' There was a bellmy trousers with her discarded petticoats, and added my pull set into the wall beside the fireplace: I had not seen that jacket to the pile. Next door, the silken counterpane had the night before, either. 'I hope you are hungry?'

been turned back, and the sheets beneath looked very white I was, I realised, very hungry indeed; but also slightly and cool. The chest kept its still, enigmatic place at the foot nauseous. My mouth, moreover, tasted abominable: I hoped of the bed. The clock on the mantel showed half-past two. she wouldn't try to kiss me again. She didn't, but kept her It was four, or thereabouts, before we slumbered; and distance. Soon, piqued by her new, queer, self-conscious perhaps eleven when I woke. I remembered stumbling to air, I began to think that she might, at least, come and put the commode some time in the early morning, and recalled her lips to my hand.

the brief renewal of passion which had followed my return There was a low, respectful knock on the outer door of the to her arms; but my sleep since then had been a heavy, adjoining room. At her call the door was opened; I heard dreamless one, and when next I knew the bed I was alone in footsteps, and the rattle of china. To my amazement the it: she had donned her dressing-gown and stood at the halfrattle grew louder, the footsteps approached: the servant - opened window, smoking, and gazing thoughtfully at the who I thought would deposit her burden in the room next view beyond. I stirred, and she turned and smiled. door, and discreetly take her leave - appeared in the

'You sleep like a child,' she said. 'I have been up this halfdoorway of ours, I pulled the sheet to my throat and lay hour, making a fearful row, and still you've slumbered on.'

quite still; neither the mistress nor the maid, however,

'I was so very weary.' I yawned - then I recalled all that had appeared in any way discomfited by my presence there. The wearied me. A slight awkwardness seemed to fall between latter - not the pale-faced woman I had seen the night us. The room last night had been as unreal as a stage-set: a before, but a girl a little younger than myself - gave a bob place of lamplight and shadows, and colours and scents of and, with her eyes lowered, made space for a tray on the impossible brilliance, in which we had been given a licence dressing-table. When she had finished with the china she to be not ourselves, or more than ourselves, as actors are. paused with her head bent and her hands folded over her Now, in the late morning light that flowed between the apron.

partly-drawn drapes, I saw that there was nothing fantastic

'Very good, Blake, that will be all for now,' said the lady. about the chamber at all; I saw that it was really elegant,

'But have a bath ready for Miss King by half-past twelve. and rather austere. I felt, all at once, quite horribly out of And tell Mrs Hooper I shall speak to her about luncheon, place. How does a tart take leave of her customer? I did not later.' Her tone was quite polite, yet colourless; I had heard know; I had never had to do it.

ladies and gentlemen use that tone on cabmen and shopgirls and porters a thousand times.

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The girl gave another little duck to her head - 'Yes m'm' seventy years; or he may live in pleasure - with a princess and withdrew. She had not looked towards the bed, at all. for a wife, and servants to bathe him, and robes of gold - he With the breakfast things to busy ourselves over, the next may live in pleasure, for five hundred days.' She paused; few minutes passed easily. I raised myself into a sitting then said: 'Which would you choose, if you were that position - wincing all the time, for my body ached as if it beggar?'

had been pummelled, or stretched on a rack - and the lady I hesitated. Those stories are silly,' I said at last. 'Nobody is fed me coffee, and warm rolls spread with butter and ever asked -'

honey. She herself only drank and, later, smoked. She

'Which would you choose? The comfort; or the pleasure?'

seemed to take pleasure from seeing me eat - as last night She put her hand to my cheek.

she had liked to watch me stand, undress, light cigarettes;

'I suppose then, the pleasure.'

but, still, there was that disconcerting thoughtfulness about She nodded: 'Of course; and so did the beggar. I should be her, that made me long for her honest, cruel kisses of the very sorry, if you had said the other thing.'

night before.

'Why?'

When we had drained the coffee-pot between us, and I had

'Can you not guess?' She smiled again. 'You say that there finished all the rolls, she spoke; and her voice was graver is no one you must answer to. Have you no - sweetheart, than I had yet heard it. She said: 'Last night, upon the street, even?' I shook my head, and perhaps looked bitter, for she I invited you to drive with me and you hesitated. Why was sighed with a kind of satisfaction. 'Tell me, then: will you that?'

stay with me, here? - and be pleasured, and pleasure me, in

'I was afraid,' I answered honestly.

your turn?'

She nodded. 'You are not afraid now?'

For a second I only gazed stupidly at her. 'Stay with you?' I

'No.'

said. 'Stay as what? Your guest, your servant -?'

'You are glad that I brought you here.'

'My tart.'

It was not a question, but as she said it she raised a hand to

'Your tart!' I blinked; then heard my voice grow a little my throat, and stoked me there until I reddened and hard. 'And how should I be paid for that? Rather swallowed; and I could not help but answer: 'Yes.'

handsomely, I should think . . .'

Then the hand was removed. She grew thoughtful again,

'My dear, I have said: you should have pleasure for your and smiled. She said: 'There is a Persian story I read as a wages! You should live with me here, and enjoy my girl, about a princess and a beggar, and a djinn. The beggar privileges. You should eat from my table, and ride in my sets the djinn free from a bottle, and is rewarded with a brougham, and wear the clothes I will pick out for you - and wish; but the wish - they always do, alas! - comes with remove them, too, when I should ask it. You should be conditions. The man may live in ordinary comfort for what the sensational novels call kept.'

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I gazed at her, then looked away - at the silken counterpane For it was, it was! What she said was the truth: she had upon the bed, the japanned press, the bell-pull, the found out all my secrets; she had shown me to myself. Not rosewood trunk .... I pictured my room at Mrs Milne's, just with the fierce words of that moment, but with all - the where I had come so close of late to real happiness; but I kisses, the caresses, the fuck on the chair - that had made remembered too my growing obligations there, that had her say them; and I was glad! I had loved Kitty -I would made me, more than once, uneasy. How much freer would I always love Kitty. But I had lived with her a kind of queer paradoxically be, bound to this lady - bound to lust, bound half-life, hiding from my own true self. Since then I had to pleasure!

refused to love at all, had become - or so I thought - a And yet, it was a little sickening, too, that she made such creature beyond passion, driving others to their secret, promises, so easily. I said - and again, my voice was hard humiliating confessions of lust; but never offering my own.

'And have you no fear of sensation then? You seem rather Now, this lady had torn it from me -had laid me bare, as sure of me - but you know nothing about me! Don't you surely as if she had ripped the shrieking flesh from my worry I'll raise a row; that I'll tell the papers - the police - white bones. She pressed against me still; and even as her your secret?'

breath came warm against my cheek, I felt my lusts rise up

'And with it, your own? Oh no, Miss King. I have no fear of to meet her own, and knew myself in thrall.

sensation: on the contrary, I court it! I seek out sensation!

After all, there are moments in our lives that change us, that And so do you.' She leaned closer, and fingered a lock of discontent us with our pasts and offer us new futures. That my hair. 'You say I know nothing about you; but I have night at the Canterbury Palace, when Kitty had cast her rose watched you upon the streets, remember. How coolly you at me, and sent my admiration for her tumbling over into pose and wander and flirt! Did you think you could play at love -that had been one such moment. This was another; Ganymede, for ever? Did you think, if you wore a silken perhaps, indeed, it had already passed - perhaps it was the cock, it meant you never had a cunt at the seam of your second when I was guided into the dark heart of that drawers?' Her face was very close to my own; she would waiting carriage that was the real start of my new life. not let me turn my eyes from hers. She said: 'You're like Either way, I knew I could not go back to the old one, now. me: you have shown it, you are showing it now! It is your The djinn was out of the bottle at last; and I had settled on own sex for which you really hunger! You thought, pleasure.

perhaps, to stifle your own appetites: but you have only I never thought to ask what happened to the beggar in the made them swell the more! And that is why you won't raise tale, once the five hundred days came to an end. a row - why you still stay, and be my tart, as I desire.' She

gave my hair a cruel twist. 'Admit that it is as I say!'

Chapter 11

'It is!'

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The lady's name, I learned in time, was Diana: Diana I didn't answer. Her words had made me understand anew Lethaby. She was a widow, and childless, and rich, and the enormity of the change that was come upon me; and I venturesome, and thus - though on a considerably grander thought, for the first time, of the visit I should have to scale - as accomplished in the habits of self-pleasure as make, to Mrs Milne and Gracie. I could hardly shirk my myself, and quite as hard of heart. In that summer of 1892 duty there by sending a boy, with a letter and a coin - could she would have been eight-and-thirty - younger, that is, I? I knew I could not.

than I am now, though she seemed terribly old to me then,

'I must go myself,' I said at last. 'I should like, you know, to at twenty-two. Her marriage had been, I think, a loveless say good-bye to my friends.'

one, for she wore neither wedding-ring nor mourning-ring, She raised an eyebrow: 'As you wish. I shall have Shilling nor was there any picture of Mr Lethaby in any room in that bring the carriage round, this afternoon.'

large, handsome house. I never asked after him, and she

'I could just as easily catch a tram ..." never questioned me about my past. She had created me

'I shall send for Shilling.' She came to me, and set my anew: the old dark days before were nothing to her. guardsman's cap upon my head, and brushed my scarlet And they must become nothing to me, of course, now that shoulders. 'I think it very naughty of you, to want to go we had settled our bargain. On that first, fierce morning of from me at all. I must be sure, at least, of having you come my time in her house, she had me kiss her again, then bathe, swiftly back!'

then re-don my old guardsman's uniform; and as I dressed, My visit to Green Street was every bit as dreary as I knew it she stood a little to one side and studied me. She said, 'We must be. I could not bear, somehow, for the brougham to shall have to buy you some new suits. This one - for all its draw up at Mrs Milne's front door, so I asked Mr Shilling - charms -will hardly do for very long. I shall ask Mrs Diana's taciturn driver - to drop me at Percy Circus and wait Hooper to send to an outfitters.'

for me there. When I let myself in with my house-key, I buttoned my trousers and drew the braces over my arms. 'I therefore, it was as if I had just returned from a shopping have other costumes," I said, 'at home.'

expedition or a stroll, as I did most days; there was nothing

'But you would rather have new ones.'

but the length of my absence from them to hint to Mrs I frowned. 'Of course, but -I must fetch my things. I cannot Milne and Gracie of my awful change of fortune. I closed leave them all unsorted.'

the door very softly; still, Grace's sharp ears must have

'I could send a boy for them.'

caught the sound, for I heard her - she was in the parlour - I pulled on my jacket. 'I owe my landlady a month in rent.'

give a cry of 'Nance!', and the next moment she had come

'I shall send her the money. How much shall I send? A lolloping down the stairs and had me in a fierce, neckPound? Two pounds?'

breaking embrace. Her mother soon followed her to the landing.

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'My dear!' she called, 'you're home, and thank goodness!

milliner's, poor thing ..." We had reached the parlour. Mrs We've been wondering ourselves silly - haven't we, love? Milne turned to face me, and her eyes were troubled. about where you might've got to. Gracie was fretted near That is a shame,' she said feelingly. 'A good roomer is hard half to death, poor soul, but I said to her: "Don't you worry to find, these days, that I do know. That's why - and I've about Nancy, girl; Nancy will've found some friend to take told you so before, you know I have - that's why me and her in, or missed the last bus home, and passed the night in Gracie've been so glad to have you with us. Why, if you some rooming-house. Nancy will be back all right, was ever to leave us, Nance -' This seemed the worst tomorrow, you wait and see.'" As she spoke she came possible way for me to tell her, yet I had to speak. slowly down the stairs, until at last we were quite level. She

'Oh, don't say that, Mrs M!' I said lightly. 'For you see, I'm gazed at me with real affection; but there was a hint of sorry to say I shall be leaving you. This friend of mine has reproach, I thought, in her words. I felt even more guilty asked me and, well, I said I would take the other girl's place about what I must tell her - but also slightly resentful. I was

-just to help her out, you know . . .' My voice grew thin. not her daughter, nor was I Grade's sweetheart. I owed them Mrs Milne looked grey. She sank into a chair and put a nothing -I told myself - but my rent.

hand to her throat.

Now I drew carefully away from Grace, and nodded to her

'Oh, Nance . . .'

mother. I said, 'You're right, I did meet a friend. A very old

'Now don't,' I said, with an attempt at jollity, 'don't be like friend I hadn't seen in a long time. What a surprise it was, to that; now just don't! I'm not so special a boarder, heaven meet her! She has rooms over in Kilburn. It was too far to knows; and you'll soon find another nice girl to take my come back so late.' The story sounded hollow to me, but place.'

Mrs Milne seemed pleased enough with it.

'But it ain't me I'm thinking of so much,' she said, 'as There now, Gracie,' she said, 'what did I tell you? Now, just Gracie. You have been so good with her, Nance; there's not you run downstairs and put the kettle on. Nancy'll be many as would understand her like you do; not many who wanting a bit of tea, I don't doubt.' She smiled at me again, would take the trouble over her little ways, the way you while Gracie dutifully lumbered off; then she headed back have.'

up the stairs, and I followed.

'But I shall come back and visit,' I said reasonably. 'And

'The thing is, Mrs Milne,' I began, 'this friend of mine, she's Grace -' I swallowed as I said it, for I knew there would in a bit of a state. You see her room-mate up and moved out never be a welcome for Gracie in the stillness and richness last week' - Mrs Milne checked slightly, then stepped and elegance of Diana's villa - 'Grace can come and visit steadily on - 'and she can't replace her; and she can't afford me. It won't be so bad.'

all the rent herself, she has only a little part-time work in a

'Is it the money, Nance?' she said then. 'I know you ain't got much -'

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'No, of course it ain't the money,' I said. 'Indeed -' I had was in my own room again, with the door closed hard remembered the coin in my pocket: a pound, placed there behind me.

by Diana's own fingers. It more than covered the rent I The little bits and pieces I owned, of course, could be owed, and the fortnight's warning I should have given. I bundled together in a second, in my sailor's bag, and a held it out to her; but when she only gazed bleakly at it and carpet-bag that Mrs Milne had once given me. My made no move to take it, I stepped awkwardly to the bedclothes I folded and placed neatly at the end of the mantelpiece and laid it softly there.

mattress, and the rug I shook out at the open window; the There was a silence, broken only by Mrs Milne's sighs. I few little pictures I had pinned to the wall I took down, and coughed. 'Well,' I said, 'I had better go and get my things burned in the grate. My toilet articles - a cake of cracked together. . .'

yellow soap, a half-used jar of tooth-powder, a tub of face'What! You ain't leaving us today! Not so soon?" cream scented with violet - I scooped into the bin. I kept

'I did promise my friend I would,' I said, trying to suggest only my toothbrush, and my hair-oil; these, together with an by my tone that my friend might have all the blame for it. unopened tin of cigarettes and a slab of chocolate, I added

'But you'll stay for a bit of tea, at least?'

to the carpet-bag - though, after a second's hesitation, I took The thought of the dreary tea-party we would make, with the chocolate out again, and left it on the mantel, where I Mrs Milne so ashen and disappointed, and Gracie in all hoped Grace would find it. In half an hour the room looked probability in tears, or worse, filled me with dismay. I bit quite as it had when I had first moved in. There was nothing my lip.

at all to mark my stay there save the cluster of pin-holes in

'I'd better not,' I said.

the wallpaper where my pictures had been tacked, and a Mrs Milne straightened, and her mouth grew small. She scorch-mark on the bedside cabinet where once, slumbering shook her head slowly. 'This will break my poor girl's over a magazine, I had let a candle fall. The thought seemed heart.'

a miserable one; but I would not grow sad. I didn't go to the There was a flintiness to her tone that was more frightening, window, for a last sentimental look at the view from it. I more shaming, than her sadness had been; but I found didn't check the drawers, or go poking under the bed, or myself, again, vaguely piqued. I had opened my mouth to pull the cushions from the chair. If I had left anything utter some dreadful pleasantry when there came a scuffling behind I knew that Diana would replace it with something at the door, and Grace herself appeared. Tea's hot!' she sang better.

out, all unsuspecting. I could not bear it. I gave her a smile, Downstairs all seemed ominously still, and when I arrived nodded blindly towards her mother, then made my escape. at the parlour it was to find its door shut fast against me. I Her voice - 'Oh, Ma, what's up?' - pursued me up the gave a knock, and turned the handle, my heart beating. Mrs stairwell, followed by Mrs Milne's murmurs. In a moment I Milne was seated before the table, where I had left her. She

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was less ashen than before, but still looked grim. The teapot stood awkwardly before the Light of the World and the blue stood cooling on its tray, its contents unpoured; the cups lay effeminate idol, she with her arms folded over her bosom, huddled on their nest of saucers beside it. Gracie sat stiff me hung with bags, and still clad in my scarlet duds. and straight on the sofa, her face turned effortfully away,

'I'm sorry, Mrs M, that this has been so sudden,' I tried; but her gaze fixed unswervingly - but also, I thought, she hushed me.

unseeingly - on the view beyond the window. I had

'Never mind, dear. You must go your own way.' She was expected her to weep at my news; instead, it seemed to too kind to be stern for long. I said that I had left my room have enraged her. Her lips were clenched and quite drained in order; that I would send her my address (I never did, I of colour.

never did!); and lastly that she was the best landlady in the Mrs Milne, at lest, appeared to have reconciled herself a city, and that if her next girl did not appreciate her I would little to my departure, for she addressed me now with make it my business to find out why.

something like a smile. 'I'm afraid Gracie is not quite She smiled in earnest then, and we hugged. Yet, as we drew herself,' she said. 'Your tidings've quite upset her. I told her apart, I could sense that something was troubling her; and you'll be coming to see us, but - well - she's that stubborn.'

as I stood on the step for my final farewell, she spoke.

'Stubborn?' I said, as if amazed. 'Not our Gracie?' I took a

'Nance,' she said, 'don't mind me asking, but - this friend: it step towards her and reached out a hand. With something is a girl, ain't it?'

like a yelp she thrust me away, and shuffled to the furthest I snorted. 'Oh, Mrs Milne! Did you really think - ? Did you end of the sofa, her head all the time kept at its stiff, really think that I would - ?' That I would set up house with unnatural angle. She had never shown me such displeasure a man, was what she meant: me, with my trousers and my before; when I spoke to her next it was with real feeling. bar-bered hair! She blushed.

'Ah, now don't be like that, Gracie, please. Won't you give

'I just thought,' she said. 'A girl can get herself hooked up me a word, or a kiss, before I go? Won't you shake hands by a feller, these days, quicker'n that. And what with you with me, even? I shall miss you, so; and I should hate us to moving out so sudden, I was half convinced you'd let some part on bad terms, after all our fun together.' And I went on gentleman or other make you a pile of promises. I should've in this fashion, half entreating, half reproachful, until Mrs known better.'

Milne rose and touched my shoulder, and said quietly, 'Best My laughter rang a little hollowly then, as I thought of how leave her, Nance, and be on your way. You come back and near her thoughts ran to the truth, while yet remaining so see her another day; she'll've come round by then, I don't far from it.

doubt it.'

I took a firmer grip of my bags. I had told her I was heading So I had to leave, in the end, without Grace's good-bye kiss. for the cab rank on the King's Cross Road, since that was Her mother accompanied me to the front door, where we the direction in which I must walk in order to rejoin Diana's

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driver. Her eyes, which had stayed dry through all her first remembered the appointment I had made, to meet my new shock at my news, now began to glisten. She kept her place friend Florence. It was for Friday: that, I realised, was on the doorstep as I made my slow, awkward way down today. I had said that I would see her at the entrance to the Green Street. 'Don't forget us, love!' she called out, and I public house at six o'clock, and it must, I thought, be past turned to wave. At the parlour window a figure had six now ... Even as I thought it, the carriage slowed in the appeared. Grace! She had unbent enough, then, to watch me traffic and I saw her standing there, a little way along the leave. I widened the arc of my wave, then caught up my cap street, waiting for me. The brougham crawled still slower; and flapped that at her. Two boys turning somersaults on a from behind the lace of its windows I could see her broken railing stopped their game to give me a playful perfectly, frowning to her left and right, then bending her salute: they took me for a soldier, I suppose, whose leave head to look at the watch at her bosom, then raising a hand had all run out, and Mrs Milne for my tearful, white-haired to tuck a curl in place. Her face, I thought, was so very old mother, and Gracie no doubt for my sister or my wife. plain and kind. I had a sudden urge to tug at the latch of the But for all that I waved and blew kisses, she made me no door, and race down the street to her side; I could at least, I sign, simply stood with her head and her hands upon the thought, call to the driver to stop his horse, so that I might window-pane, which pressed a whiter circle to the centre of shout some apology to her . . .

her pale brow, and to the end of each blunt finger. At last I But while I sat, anxious and undecided, the traffic grew let my arm slow, and fall.

swift, the carriage gave a jerk, and in a moment Judd Street

'She don't love yer much,' said one of the boys; and when I and plain, kind Florence were far behind me. I could not had looked from him back to the house, Mrs Milne had bear the thought, then, of asking the forbidding Mr Shilling gone. Gracie, however, still stood and watched. Her gaze - to turn the horse around, for all that I was his mistress for cold and hard as alabaster, piercing as a pin - pursued me to the afternoon. And besides, what would I say to her? I the corner of the King's Cross Road. Even up the steep would never, I supposed, be free to meet with her again; climb to Percy Circus, where the windows of Green Street and I could hardly expect to have her visit me at Diana's. are quite hidden from view, it seemed to prick and worry at She would be surprised, I thought, and cross, when I didn't the flesh upon my back. Only when I had seated myself in turn up: the third woman to be disappointed by me that day. the shadowy interior of Diana's carriage, and made fast the I was sorry, too - but, on reflection, not terribly sorry. Not latch of the door, did I feel quite free of it, and secure once terribly sorry at all.

again on the path of my new life.

When I returned to Felicity Place - for that, I saw now, was But even then there was another reminder of my unpaid the name of the square in which my mistress had her home debts to the old one. For on our drive along the Euston

-I was greeted with gifts. I found Diana in the upstairs Road we neared the corner of Judd Street, and all at once I parlour, bathed and dressed at last, and with her hair in

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plaits and elaborately pinned. She looked handsome, in a drawers, marked links and neckties, collars and studs. gown of grey and crimson, with her waist very narrow and These were all full; and on a further rack of shelves, her back very straight. I recalled those laces and ties I had marked linen, there was fold after fold of white lawn shirts. rumbled over the night before: there was no sign of them I gazed at all this, then kissed Diana very hard indeed now beneath the smooth sheath of her bodice. The thought partly, I must confess, in the hope that she would close her of that invisible linen and corsetry, which a maid's steady eyes, and thus not see how much I was in awe of her. But fingers had fastened and concealed and my own trembling when she had gone, I fairly danced about the golden floor hands, I guessed, would later uncover and undo, was rather in pleasure. I took the suit, and a shirt, and a collar, and a thrilling. I went to her, and put my hands on her, and kissed necktie, and laid them all, in proper order, upon the bed. her hard upon the mouth, until she laughed. I had woken Then I danced again. The bags I had brought with me from tired and sore; I had had a dismal time at Green Street; but I Mrs Milne's I carried to the closet and cast, unopened, into did not feel dismal now - I felt limber and hot. If I had had the farthest corner.

a cock, it would have been twitching.

I wore my suit to supper; it looked, I knew, very well on We embraced for a minute or two; then she moved away me. Diana, however, said the cut was not quite right, and and took my hand. 'Come with me,' she said. 'I've had a that tomorrow she would have Mrs Hooper measure me room made ready for you.'

properly, and send my details to a tailor. I thought her faith I was at first a little dismayed to learn that I would not be in her housekeeper's discretion quite extraordinary; and sharing Diana's chamber; but I could not stay dismayed for when that lady had left us - for, as she had at lunch, she long. The room to which she led me - it was a little way filled our plates and glasses, then stood in grave and (I along the corridor - was hardly less imposing than her own, thought) unnerving attendance until dismissed -I said so. and quite as grand. Its walls were bare and creamy-white, Diana laughed.

its carpets gold, its screen and bedstead of bamboo; There's a secret to that,' she said; 'can't you guess it?'

its dressing-table, moreover, was crowded with goods - a

'You pay her a fortune in wages, I suppose.'

cigarette-case of tortoise-shell, a pair of brushes and a

'Well, perhaps. But didn't you catch Mrs Hooper, gazing comb, a button-hook of ivory, and various jars and bottles through her lashes at you as she served you your soup? of oils and perfumes. A door beside the bed led to a long, Why, she was practically drooling into your plate!'

low-ceilinged closet: here, draped on a pair of wooden

'You don't mean - you can't mean - that she is just - like us?'

shoulders, was a dressing-gown of crimson silk, to match She nodded: 'Of course. And as for little Blake - why, I Diana's green one; and here, too, was the suit I had been plucked her, poor child, from a reformatory cell. They had promised: a handsome costume of grey worsted, terribly sent her there for corrupting a house-maid . . .'

heavy and terribly smart. Besides this there was a set of

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She laughed again, while I marvelled. Then she leaned with from my limbs. Yet I took my leave, uncomplaining, and her napkin to wipe a splash of gravy from my cheek. made my way to the pale room along the hall, where my We had been served cutlets and sweetbreads, all very fine. I own cold bed awaited. I liked her kisses, I liked her gifts ate steadily, as I had eaten at breakfast. Diana, however, did still more; and if, to keep them, I must obey her - well, so more drinking than eating, and more smoking than be it. I was used to servicing gents in Soho at a pound a drinking; and more watching, even, than smoking. After the suck; obedience - to such a lady, and in such a setting - exchange about the servants, we fell silent: I found that seemed at that moment a very trifling labour.

many of the things I said produced a kind of twitching at

her lips and brow, as if my words - sensible enough to my Chapter 12

ears - amused her; so at last I said no more, and neither did For all the strangeness of those first few days and nights at she, until the only sounds were the low hiss of the gas-jets, Felicity Place, it did not take me long to settle into my role the steady ticking of the clock upon the mantel, and the there and find myself a new routine. This was quite as clink of my knife and fork against my plate. I thought indolent as the one I had enjoyed at Mrs Milne's; the involuntarily of those merry dinners in the Green Street difference, of course, was that here my indolence had a parlour, with Grace and Mrs Milne. I thought of the supper patron, a lady who paid to keep me well-fed, well-dressed I might be having with Florence, in the Judd Street public. and rested, and demanded only that my vanity should have But then I finished my meal, and Diana threw me one of her herself, in return, as its larger target.

pink cigarettes; and when I had grown giddy on that, she At Green Street I was used to waking rather early. Often came to me and kissed me. And then I remembered that it Grace would bring me tea at half-past seven or so - often, was hardly for table-talk that I had been engaged. indeed, she would clamber into the warm bed beside me, That night our love-making was more leisurely than it had and we would lie and talk till Mrs Milne called us to been before - almost, indeed, tender. Yet she surprised me breakfast; later I would wash, at the great sink in the by seizing my shoulder as I lay on the edge of sleep - my downstairs kitchen, and Grace would sometimes come and body delightfully sated and my arms and legs entwined comb my hair. At Felicity Place, I had nothing to rise for. with hers - and rousing me to wakefulness. The day had Breakfast was brought to me, and I received it at Diana's been a day of lessons for me; now came the last of all. side - or in my own bed, if she had sent me from her the

'You may go, Nancy,' she said, in exactly the tone I had night before. While she was dressed I would drink my heard her use on her maid and Mrs Hooper. 'I wish to sleep coffee and smoke a cigarette, and yawn and rub my eyes; alone tonight.'

frequently I would fall into a thin kind of slumber, and only It was the first time she had spoken to me as a servant, and wake again when she returned, in a coat and a hat, to slip a her words drove the lingering warmth of slumber quite

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gloved hand beneath the counterpane and rouse me with a when out of her company, were a kind of blank. I could not pinch, or a lewd caress.

talk to the servants - to strange Mrs Hooper, with her veiled

'Wake up, and kiss your mistress good-bye,' she'd say. 'I and slithering glances; or to Blake, who flustered me by shan't be home till supper-time. You must amuse yourself curtseying to me and calling me 'miss'; or to Cook, who until I return.'

sent me lunch and supper, but never showed her face Then I would frown, and grumble. 'Where are you going?'

outside her kitchen. I might hear their voices, raised in

'On a visit, to a friend.'

mirth or dispute, if I paused at the green baize door that led Take me with you!"

to the basement; but I knew myself apart from them, and

'Not today.'

had my own tight beat to keep to: the bedrooms, and

'I might sit in the brougham while you make your call..." Diana's parlour, and the drawing-room and library. My

'I would rather you were here, for me to return to.'

mistress had said she wouldn't care to have me leave the

'You are cruel!'

house, unchap-eroned - indeed, she had Mrs Hooper lock She would smile, then kiss me. And then she would go; and the great front door: I heard her turn the key each time she I would only sink, again, into stupidity.

stepped to close it.

When I rose at last, I would call for a bath. Diana's I did not much mind my lack of liberty; as I have said, the bathroom was a handsome one: I might spend an hour or warmth, the luxury, the kissing and the sleep made me more in there, soaking in the perfumed water, parting my grow stupid, and lazier than ever. I might drift from room to hair, applying the macassar, examining myself before the room, soundless and thoughtless, pausing perhaps to gaze at glass for marks of beauty or for blemishes. In my old life I the paintings on the walls; or at the quiet streets and had made do with soap, with cold-cream and lavender scent gardens of St John's Wood; or at myself, in Diana's various and the occasional swipe of spit-black. Now, from the looking-glasses. I was like a spectre - the ghost, I crown of my head to the curve of my toe-nails, there was an sometimes imagined, of a handsome youth, who had died in unguent for every part of me - oil for my eyebrows and that house and still walked its corridors and chambers, cream for my lashes; a jar of tooth-powder, a box of blancsearching, searching, for reminders of the life that he had de-perle; polish for my fingernails and a scarlet stick to lost there.

redden my mouth; tweezers for drawing the hairs from my

'What a scare you gave me, miss!' the maid might say, hand nipples, and a stone to take the hard flesh from my heels. at her heart, after she had come upon me, lingering at a It was quite like dressing for the halls again - except that bend in the stair or in the shadows of some curtain or then, of course, I had had to change at the side of the stage, alcove; but when I smiled and asked what work had she to while the band switched tempo; now, I had entire days to do there? or, did she know if the day were a fine or a dull prink in. For Diana was my only audience; and my hours,

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one? she would only blush and look frightened: 'I'm sure, surgery or house of correction, appealed to her; only when miss, I couldn't say.'

really heated would she call the thing by its proper name - The climax of my day, the event to which my thoughts and even then she was as likely to ask for Monsieur Dildo, naturally tended, and which gave direction and meaning to or simply Moi7Sj'eur). Besides this there was an album of the hours before it, was Diana's return. There was drama to photographs of big-buttocked girls with hairless parts, be had in the choosing of the chamber, and the pose, in bearing feathers; also a collection of erotic pamphlets and which I would arrange myself for her. She might find me novels, all hymning the delights of what I would call smoking in the library, or dozing, with unfastened buttons, tommistry but what they, like Diana, called Sapphic in her parlour; I would feign surprise at her entry, or let her Passion. They were gross enough, I suppose, in their way; rouse me if I pretended sleep. My pleasure at her but I had never seen the like of them before, and would appearance, however, was real enough. I at once lost that gaze at them, squirming, till Diana laughed. Then there sense of ghostliness, that feeling of waiting in the wing, and were cords, and straps and switches - the kind of thing that grew warm and substantial again before the blaze of her might be found, I suppose, in a strict governess's closet, attention. I would light her a cigarette, pour her a drink. If certainly nothing heavier. Lastly, there were more of she was weary I would lead her to a chair and stroke her Diana's rose-tipped cigarettes. They contained, as I guessed temples; if she was footsore - she wore high black boots, very early on, some fragrant French tobacco that was mixed very tightly laced -I would bare her legs and rub the blood with hashish; and they were, I thought, the pleasantest back into her toes. If she was amorous - as she frequently things of all, since, when used in combination with the was - I would kiss her. She might have me caress her in the other items, they rendered their interesting effects more library or drawing-room, heedless of the servants who interesting still.

passed beyond the closed door, or who knocked and, at our I might be weary or stupid; I might be nauseous with drink; breathy answering silence, retired unbidden. Or she might I might be sore, at the hips, with the ache of my monthlies, send orders that she was not to be disturbed, and lead me to but the opening of this box, as I have said, never ceased to her parlour, to the secret drawer that held the key that stir me -I was like a dog twitching and slavering to hear his unlocked the rosewood trunk.

mistress call out Bone!

The opening of this still enthralled and excited me, though I And every jerk, every slaver, made Diana more complacent. had soon grown used to handling its contents. They were,

'How vain I am, of my little hoard!' she would say, as we perhaps, mild enough. There was, of course, the dildo that I lay smoking in the soiled sheets of her bed. She might be have described (though the device, or the instrument, was clad in nothing but a corset and a pair of purple gloves; I what I learned, following Diana, to call it: I think the would have the dildo about me, perhaps with a rope of unnecessary euphemism, with its particular odour of the pearls wound round it. She would reach to the foot of the

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bed, and run her hand across the gaping box, and laugh. 'Of as the toe of my boot upon a London street in all that time - all the gifts I've given you,' she said once, 'this is the finest, when she declared one night at supper that I ought to be isn't it, isn't it? Where in London would you find its like?'

barbered. I looked up from my plate, thinking she meant to

'Nowhere!' I answered. 'You're the boldest bitch in the city!'

take me into Soho for it; in fact, she only rang for the

'l am!'

servants: I had to sit in a chair with a towel about me, while

'You're the boldest bitch, with the cleverest quim. If fucking Blake held the comb and the housekeeper plied the scissors. were a country - well, fuck me, you'd be its queen . . . !'

'Gently with her, gently!' called Diana, looking on. Mrs These were the words which, pricked on by my mistress, I Hooper came close to trim the hair above my brow, and I used now - lewd words which shocked and stirred me even felt her breath, quick and hot, upon my cheek. as I said them. I had never thought to use them with Kitty. I But the hair-cut turned out to be only the prelude to had not fucked her, we had not frigged; we had only ever something better. Next morning I woke in Diana's bed to kissed and trembled. It was not a quim or a cunt she had find her dressed, and gazing at me with her old enigmatic between her legs - indeed, in all our nights together, I don't smile. She said, 'You must get up. I have a treat for you believe we ever gave a name to it all...

today. Two treats, indeed. The first is in your bedroom.'

Only let her see me now, I thought, as I lay beside Diana,

'A treat?' I yawned; the word had lost its charge for me, making the necklace of pearls more secure about the dildo; rather. 'What is it, Diana?'

and Diana herself would reach to stroke her box again, and

'It's a suit.'

then lean and stroke me.

'What kind of suit?'

'Only see what I'm mistress of!' she would say with a sigh.

'A coming-out suit.'

'Only see - only see what I own!'

'Coming-out -?'