I would draw on the cigarette till the bed seemed to tilt; I went at once.

then I'd lie and laugh, while she clambered upon me. Once I Now, since my very first trouser-wearing days at Mrs let a fag fall on the silken counterpane, and smiled to see it Dendy's, I had sported a wonderful variety of gentlemen's smoulder as we fucked. Once I smoked so much I was sick. suits. From the plain to the pantomimic, from the military Diana rang for Blake and, when she came, cried: 'Look at to the effeminate, from the brown broad-cloth to the yellow my tart, Blake, resplendent even in her squalor! Did you velveteen - as soldier, sailor, valet, renter, errand-boy, ever see a brute so handsome? Did you?' Blake said that she dandy and comedy duke - I had worn them all, and worn had not; then dipped a cloth in water, and wiped my mouth. them wisely and rather well. But the costume that awaited It was Diana's vanity, at last, that broke the spell of my me in my bedroom that day in Diana's villa in Felicity Place confinement. I had passed a month with her - had left the was the richest and the loveliest I ever wore; and I can house only to stroll about the garden, had set not so much remember it still, in all its marvellous parts.

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There was a jacket and trousers of bone-coloured linen, and myself as I stood smoking. I looked -I think I can say a waistcoat, slightly darker, with a silken back. These came without vanity - a treat. The suit, like all expensive clothes, wrapped together in a box lined with velvet; in a separate had a bearing and a lustre all of its own: it would have package I found three piqu6 shirts, each a shade lighter than made more or less anyone look handsome. But Diana had the one before it, and each so fine and closely woven it ordered wisely. The bleached linen complemented the dull shone like satin, or like the surface of a pearl. gold of my hair and the fading renter's tan at my cheek and Then there were collars, white as a new tooth; studs, of wrists. The flash of amber at my throat set off my blue eyes opal, and cuff-links of gold. There was a neck-tie and a and my darkened lashes. The trousers had a vertical crease, cravat of an amber-coloured, watered silk: they gleamed and made my legs seem longer and more slender than ever; and rippled as I drew them from their tissue, and slithered and they bulged at the buttons, where I had rolled one of the from my fingers to the floor like snakes. A flat wooden case scented doe-skin gloves. I was, I saw, almost unsettlingly held gloves - one pair of kid, with covered buttons, the attractive. Framed by the wooden surround of the mirror, other of doe-skin and fragrant as musk. In a velvet bag I my left leg slightly bent, one hand hanging loosely at my found socks and drawers and undershirts - not of flannel, as thigh and the other with its fag arrested half-way on its my linen had been till now, but of knitted silk. For my head journey to my faintly carmined lips, I looked not like there was a creamy homburg with a trim that matched the myself at all, but like some living picture, a blond lord or neckties; for my feet there was a pair of shoes - a pair of angel whom a jealous artist had captured and transfixed shoes of a chestnut leather so warm and rich I felt behind the glass. I felt quite awed.

compelled at once to apply my cheek to it, and then my There came a movement at the door. I turned, and found lips; and finally, my tongue.

Diana there: she had been watching me as I gazed at A last, flimsy package I almost overlooked: this held a set myself-I had been too taken with my own good looks to of handkerchiefs, each one as fine and fragile as the pique notice her. In her hand she held a spray of flowers, and now shirts and each embroidered with a tiny, flowing N.K. The she came to attach them to my coat. She said, 'It should be suit, in all its parts, with all its delicate, harmonising narcissi, I did not think of it': the flowers were violets. I textures and hues, enchanted me; but this last detail, and the bent my head to them as she worked at my lapel, and unmistakable stamp of permanence it conferred upon my breathed their perfume; a single bloom, come loose from relations with the passionate and generous mistress of my the stem, fluttered to the carpet and was crushed beneath curious new home - well, this last detail satisfied me most her heel.

of all.

When she had finished at my breast she took my cigarette I bathed then, and dressed before the glass; and then I threw to smoke, and stepped back to survey her handiwork - just back the window-shutters, lit a cigarette, and gazed upon as Walter had done, so long ago, at Mrs Dendy's. It seemed

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my fate to be dressed and fashioned and admired by others. She said, 'Mrs Lethaby, ma'am, how pleasant! Mrs Jex is I didn't mind it. I only thought back to the blue serge suit of expecting you in the day-room, I believe.' Diana nodded, those innocent days, and gave a laugh.

and reached to sign her name upon a sheet. Miss Hawkins The laugh brought a hardness to my eyes, that made them glanced again at me. 'Shall the gentleman be waiting for sparkle. Diana saw, and nodded complacently.

you, here?' she said.

'We shall be a sensation,' she said. 'They will adore you, I Diana's pen moved smoothly on, and she did not raise her know it.'

eyes. She said: 'Don't be tiresome, Hawkins. This is Miss

'Who?' I asked then. 'Who have you dressed me for?'

King, my companion.' Miss Hawkins looked harder at me, Tm taking you out, to meet my friends. I'm taking you,' she then blushed.

put a hand to my cheek, 'to my club.'

'Well, I'm sure, Mrs Lethaby, I can't speak for the ladies; The Cavendish Ladies' Club it was called; and it was but some might consider this a little - irregular.'

situated in Sackville Street, just up from Piccadilly. I knew

'We are here,' answered Diana, screwing the pen together, the road well, I knew all those roads; yet I had never

'for the sake of the irregular.' Then she turned and looked noticed the building - the slender, grey-faced building - to me over, raising a hand to twitch at my necktie, licking the which Diana now had Shilling drive us. Its step, I suppose, tip of one glove-clad finger to smooth at my brow, and is rather shadowy, and its name-plate is small, and its door finally plucking the hat from my head and arranging my is narrow; having visited it once, however, I never missed it hair.

again.

The hat she left for Miss Hawkins to deal with. Then she Go to Sackville Street today, if you like, and try to spot it: put her arm securely through mine, and led me up a flight you shall walk the length of the pavement, quite three or of stairs into the day-room.

four times. But when you find the grey-faced building, rest This room, like the lobby below it, is grand. I cannot say a moment looking up at it; and if you see a lady cross its what colour they have it now; in those days it was panelled shadowy threshold, mark her well.

in golden damask, and its carpets were of cream, and its She will walk - as I walked with Diana that day - into a sofas blue ... It was decked, in short, in all the colours of lobby: the lobby is smart-looking, and in it sits a neat, plain, my own most handsome self - or, rather, I was decked to ageless woman behind a desk. When I first went there, this match it. This idea, I must confess, was disconcerting; for a woman was named Miss Hawkins. She was ticking entries second, Diana's generosity began to seem less of a in a ledger as we arrived, but looked up when she saw compliment than I had thought it, posed that morning Diana, and gave a smile. When she saw me, the smile grew before the glass.

smaller.

But all performers dress to suit their stages, I recalled. And what a stage was this - and what an audience!

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There were about thirty of them, I think - all women; all Diana placed me before them all, and presented me - more seated at tables, bearing drinks and books and papers. You graciously than she had introduced me to Miss Hawkins, might have passed any one of them upon the street, and but again as her 'companion'; and the ladies laughed. The thought nothing; but the effect of their appearance all first of them, the one who had risen to greet us, now seized combined was rather queer. They were dressed, not my hand. Her fingers held a stubby cigar.

strangely, but somehow distinctly. They wore skirts - but

'This, Nancy dear,' said my mistress, 'is Mrs Jex. She is the kind of skirts a tailor might design if he were set, for a quite my oldest friend in London - and quite the most dare, to sew a bustle for a gent. Many seemed clad in disreputable. Everything she tells you will be designed to walking-suits or riding-habits. Many wore pince-nez, or corrupt.'

carried monocles on ribbons. There were one or two rather I bowed to her. I said, 'I hope so, indeed.' Mrs Jex gave a startling coiffures; and there were more neckties than I had roar.

ever before seen brought together at an exclusively female

'But it speaks!' she cried. 'All this' - she gestured to my face, ensemble.

my costume - 'and the creature even speaks!'

I did not notice all these details at once, of course; but the Diana smiled, and raised a brow. 'After a fashion,' she said. room was a large one and, since Diana took her time to lead I blinked, but Mrs Jex still held my hand, and now she me across it, I had leisure to gaze about me as she did so. squeezed it. 'Diana is brutal to you, Miss Nancy, but you We walked through a hush that was thick as bristling velvet must not mind it. Here at the Cavendish we have been

- for, at our appearance at the door the lady members had positively panting to see you and make you our particular turned their heads to stare, and then had goggled. Whether, friend. You must call me "Maria"' - she pronounced it the like Miss Hawkins, they took me for a gentleman; or old-fashioned way - 'and this is Evelyn, and Dickie. Dickie, whether - like Diana - they had seen through my disguise at you can see, likes to think of herself as the boy of the place.'

once, I cannot say. Either way, there was a cry - 'Good I bowed to the ladies in turn. The former showed me a gracious!' - and then another exclamation, more lingering: smile; the one named Dickie (this was the one with the

'My word..." I felt Diana stiffen at my side, with pure monocle: I am sure it was of plain glass) only gave a toss to complacency.

her head, and looked haughty.

Then came another shout, as a lady at a table in the farthest

'This is the new Callisto then, is it?' she said. corner rose to her feet. 'Diana, you old roue! You have done She wore a boiled shirt and a bow-tie, and her hair, though it at last!' She gave a clap. Beside her, two more ladies long and bound, was sleek with oil. She was about two-or looked on, pink-faced. One of them had a monocle, and three-and-thirty, and her waist was thick; but her upper lip, now she fixed it to her eye.

at least, was dark as a boy's. They would have called her terribly handsome, I guessed, in about 1880.

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Maria pressed my fingers again, and rolled her eyes; then eyelashes, and toe-nail clippings - old sanitary wrappings, she tilted her head, and when I bent to her - for she was from what I could see of it; and she has hair -'

rather short - she said, 'Now, my dear, you must satisfy our

'Hair, Diana,' broke in Dickie meaningfully.

appetite. We want the whole sordid story of your encounter

'-hair, which she has had made up into rings and aigrettes. with Diana. She herself will tell us nothing - only that the Lord Myers saw a brooch, and asked her where she bought night was warm; that the streets were gaudy; that the moon it, and Susan told him it was from the tail of a fox, and said was reeling through the clouds like a drunken woman she would have one made for him, for his wife! Can you looking for lovers. Tell us, Miss Nancy, tell us, do! Was the imagine? Now Lady Myers is to be found at, all the moon really reeling through the clouds, like a drunken fashionable parties with a sprig of Susan Dacre's sister-inwoman looking for her lovers?' She took a puff of her cigar, law's quim-hair at her bosom!'

and studied me. Evelyn and Dickie leaned and waited. I Diana smiled. 'And Susan's husband knows it all, and does looked from them back to Maria; and then I swallowed. not mind it?'

'It was,' I said at last, 'if Diana said it was.'

'Mind it? It is he who pays her jewellers' bills! You may And at that, Maria gave a startling laugh, low and loud and hear him boasting - I have heard him myself - of how he rapid as the rattle of a road-drill; and Diana took my arm plans to rename the estate New Lesbos.'

and made a space for me upon the sofa, and called for a

'New Lesbos!' Diana said mildly. Then she yawned. 'With waitress to bring us drinks.

that tired old lesbian Susan Dacre in it, it might just as well At the rest of the tables the ladies still looked on - some of be the original ..." She turned to me, and her voice dropped them, I could not help but notice, rather fastidiously. There a tone. 'Light me a cigarette, would you, child?'

had come some murmurs, and some whispers; also a titter I took two fags from the tortoise-shell case in my breast or two and a gasp. No one in our party paid the slightest pocket, lit them both at my own lip, then passed one over. heed to any of it. Maria kept her eyes fixed upon myself, The ladies watched me - indeed, even while they laughed and when our drinks arrived, she leered at me over her and chattered, they studied all my movements, all my parts. glass: 'To both ends of the busk!' she said, and gave me a When I leaned to knock the ash from my cigarette, they wink. Diana had her face turned, to catch a story from the blinked. When I ran a hand over the stubble at my hairline, lady named Evelyn. She was saying, 'Such a scandal, they coloured. When I parted my trouser-clad legs and Diana, you never heard! She has vowed herself to seven showed the bulge there, Maria and Evelyn, as one, gave a women, and sees them all on different days; one of them is shift in their chairs; and Dickie reached for her brandy glass her sister-in-law! She has put together an album - my dear, and disposed of its contents with one savage swig. I nearly died at the sight of it! - full of bits and pieces of After a moment, Maria came close again. She said, 'Now, stuff that she has cut off them or pulled out of them: Miss Nancy, we are still waiting for your history. We want

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to know all about you, and so far you have done nothing but

'Hell, if I haven't scorched a hole through these dam'

tease.'

trousers!'

I said, 'There's nothing to know. You must ask Diana.'

The words came out louder than I meant them to; and as

'Diana speaks for the sake of cleverness, not truth. Tell me they did, there was an answering cry from the room at my now' - she had grown confiding - 'where were you born? back: 'Really, Mrs Lethaby, this is intolerable!' A lady had Was it some hard place? Was it some rookery, where you risen, and was approaching our table.

must sleep ten to a bed with your sisters?'

'I must protest, Mrs Lethaby,' she said when she arrived at

'A wokery!’ I thought very suddenly, and more vividly than it, 'I really must protest, on behalf of all the ladies present, I had in months, of our old front parlour at home - of the and absent, at the very great damage you are inflicting upon cloth with the fringe that dangled, fluttering, above the our club!'

hearth. I said, 'I was born in Kent, in Whitstable.' Maria Diana raised languid eyes to her. 'Damage, Miss Bruce? only stared. I said again, 'Whitstable - where the oysters Are you referring to the presence of my companion, Miss come from.'

King?'

At that, she threw back her head. 'Why my dear, you're a

'I am, ma'am.'

mermaid! Diana, did you know it? A Whitstable mermaid! 'You don't care for her?'

though thankfully,' and here she placed her free hand upon

'I don't care for her language, ma'am, or for her clothes!'

my knee, and patted it, 'thankfully, without the tail. That She herself wore a silk shirt with a cummerbund and a would never do, now would it?"

cravat; in the cravat there was a pin, cast in silver, of the I could not answer. Hot into my head after the image of our head of a horse. Now she stood expectantly at Diana's side; parlour had come the memory of Kitty, at her dressingand after a moment, Diana sighed. room door. Miss Mermaid, she had called me; and she had

'Well,' she said. 'I see we must bow to the members'

said it again that time in Stamford Hill, when she had heard pleasure.' She rose, then drew me up beside her and leaned me weeping, come, and kissed my tears . . .

rather ostentatiously upon my arm. 'Nancy, dear, you I gave a gulp, and put my cigarette to my lips. It was costume has proved too bold for the Cavendish after all. It smoked right down and almost burned me; and as I fumbled seems that I must take you home and rid you of it. Now, with it, it fell. It struck the sofa, bounced, then rolled who will ride with us to Felicity Place, to catch the sport..." between my legs. I reached for it - that made the ladies stare There was a ripple around the room. Maria rose at once, again, and twitch -but it was caught, still smouldering, and reached for her walking-cane. 'Tantivy, tantivy!' she between my buttock and the chair. I leapt up, found the fag cried. Then: 'Ho, Satin!' I heard a yelp, and from beneath at last, then pulled at the linen that covered my bum. I said, her chair there came - what I had not seen before, as it lay

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dozing behind the curtain of her skirts - a handsome little us, then overhear their murmurs - 'Diana's caprice,' they whippet, on a pig-skin leash.

called me, as if I were an enthusiasm for a wonderful food, Dickie and Evelyn rose too, then. Diana inclined her head that a sensitive palate would tire of. Diana herself, however, to Miss Bruce, and I made her a deeper bow. All eyes had once having found me, seemed only increasingly been upon us as we made our entrance; all eyes were on us disinclined to let me go. With that one brief visit to the still, as we headed for the exit. I heard Miss Bruce return to Cavendish Club she had launched me on my new career as her seat, and someone call, 'Quite right, Vanessa!' But her permanent companion. Now came more excursions, another lady held my gaze as I passed her, and winked; and more visits, more trips; and more suits for me to make them from a table near the door a woman rose to say to Diana in. I grew complacent. I had once sat drooping on her that she hoped that Miss King's trousers had not been too parlour chair, expecting her to send me home with a desperately singed .. .

sovereign. Now, when the ladies whispered of 'this freak of The trousers were rather spoiled; back at Felicity Place, Diana Lethaby's', I brushed the lint from the sleeve of my Diana had me walk and bend before Maria and Evelyn and coat, drew my monogrammed hankie from my pocket, and Dickie, in order to decide it. She said she would order me smiled. When the autumn of 1892 became the winter, and another pair, just the same.

then the spring of '93, and still I kept my favoured place at

'What a find, Diana!' said Maria, as Evelyn patted the cloth. Diana's side, the ladies' whispers faded. I became at last not She said it as she might say it about a statue or a clock that Diana's caprice; but simply, her boy.

Diana had picked up for a song in some grim market. She

'Come to supper, Diana.'

didn't care whether I overheard or not. Why should it matter

'Come for breakfast, Diana.'

that I did? She meant it, she meant it! There was admiration

'Come at nine, Diana; and bring the boy.'

in her eyes. And being admired, by tasteful ladies - well, I For it was always as a boy that I travelled with her now, knew it wasn't being loved. But it was something. And I even when we ventured into the public world, the ordinary was good at it.

world beyond the circle of Cavendish Sapphists, the world Who would ever have thought I should be so good at it!

of shops and supper-rooms and drives in the park. To

'Take off your shirt, Nancy,' said Diana then, 'and let the anyone who asked after me, she would boldly introduce me ladies see your linen.'

as 'My ward, Neville King'; she had several requests for I did so, and Maria cried again, 'What a find!'

introductions, I believe, from ladies with eligible daughters.

These she turned aside: 'He's an Anglo-Catholic, ma'am,'

Chapter 13

she'd whisper, 'and destined for the Church. This is his final Diana's wider circle of friends, I believe, thought our union Season, before taking Holy Orders ..."

a fantastic one. I would sometimes see them look between

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It was with Diana that I returned to the theatre again did this very often, for she was known - I suppose I might flinching to find her lead me to a box beside the foot-lights, have guessed it, in a way - as a philanthropist, and ladies flinching again as the chandeliers were dimmed. But they courted her for schemes. She gave money to certain were terribly grand, the theatres she preferred. They were lit charities. She sent books to girls in prisons. She was with electricity rather than gas; and the crowd sat hushed. I involved in the producing of a magazine for the Suffrage, could not see the pleasure in it. The plays I liked well named Shafts. She attended to all this, with me at her side. enough; but I would more often turn my gaze to the If I leaned to pick up a paper or a list and idly read it, she audience - and there was always plenty of eyes and glasses, would take the sheet away, as if gazing too hard at too of course, that were lifted from the stage and fastened on many words might tire me. In the end, I would settle on the me. I saw several faces that I knew from my old renter cartoons in Punch.

days. One time I stood washing my hands in the lavatory of These, then, were my public appearances. There were not a theatre and felt a gent look me over - he didn't know that too many of them -I am describing here a period that lasted he had had my lips on him already, in an alley off Jermyn about a year. Diana kept me close, for the most part, and Street; later I saw him in the audience, with his Wife. One displayed me at home. She liked to limit the numbers who time, too, I saw Sweet Alice, the mary-anne who had been gazed at me, she said; she said she feared that like a so kind to me in Leicester Square. He also sat in a box; and photograph I might fade, from too much handling. when he recognised me, he blew a kiss. He was with two When I say display, of course, I mean it: it was part of gents: I raised my brows, he rolled his eyes. Then he saw Diana's mystery, to make real the words that other people who it was I sat with - It was Diana and Maria -and he said in metaphor or jest. I had posed for Maria and Dickie stared. I gave a shrug, he looked thoughtful - then rolled his and Evelyn in my trousers with the scorch-mark and my eyes again, as much as to say, What a business!

under-things of silk. When they came a second time, with To all these places, as I have said, I went clad as a boy —

another lady, Diana had me pose for them again in a indeed, the only time I ever dressed as a girl, now, was for different suit. After that, it became a kind of sport with her, our visits to the Cavendish. This was the single spot in the to put me in a new costume and have me walk before her city at which Diana might have put me in trousers and not guests, or among them, filling glasses, lighting cigarettes. cared who knew it; but after Miss Bruce's complaint they Once she dressed me as a footman, in breeches and a introduced a new rule, and ever after I was taken there in powdered wig. It was the costume I had worn for skirts - Diana having something made up for me, I forget Cinderella, more or less - though my breeches at the Brit the cut and colour of it now. At the club I would sit and had not been so snug, nor so large at the groin. drink and smoke, and be flirted with by Maria, and eyed by The freak with the breeches inspired her further. She grew other ladies, while Diana met friends or wrote letters. She tired of gentlemen's suits; she took to displaying me in

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masquerade - had me set up, behind a little velvet curtain in Then Diana came, and put a pink cigarette between my lips, the drawing-room. This would happen about once a week. and led me amongst the ladies and had them stroke the Ladies would come for dinner and I would eat with them, in leather. I cannot say if it was Kitty I thought of then, or trousers; but while they lingered over their coffee and the even Diana herself. I believe I thought I was a renter again, trimming of their fags I would leave them, and slip up to in Piccadilly - or, not a renter, but a renter's gent. For when my room to change my gear. By the time they made their I twitched and cried out there were smiles in the shadows; way into the drawing-room I would be behind the curtain, and when I shuddered, and wept, there was laughter. striking some pose; and when she was ready, Diana would I could help none of it. It was all Diana's doing. She was so pull a tasselled cord and uncover me.

bold, she was so passionate, she was so devilishly clever. I might be Perseus, with a curved sword and a head of the She was like a queen, with her own queer court -I saw it, at Medusa, and sandals with straps that were buckled at the those parties. Women sought her out, and watched her. knee. I might be Cupid, with wings and a bow. I was once They brought presents, 'for your collection' - her collection St Sebastian, tied to a stump - I remember what a job it was was talked about, and envied! When she made a gesture, to fasten the arrows so they would not droop.

they raised their heads to catch it. When she spoke, they Then, another night I was an Amazon. I carried the Cupid's listened. It was her voice, I think, which snared them - bow, but this time had one breast uncovered; Diana rouged those low, musical tones, which had once lured me from the nipple. Next week - she said I had shown one, I might my random midnight wanderings into the heart of her own as well show both - I was the French Marianne, with a dark world. Again and again I heard arguments crumble at a Phyrgian cap and a flag. The week after that I was Salome: cry or a murmur from Diana's throat; again and again the I had the Medusa head again, but on a plate, and with a scattered conversations of a crowded room would falter and beard stuck on it; and while the ladies clapped I danced die, as one speaker after another surrendered the slender down to my drawers.

threads of some anecdote or fancy to catch at the more And the week after that - well, that week I was compelling cadences of hers.

Hermaphroditus. I wore a crown of laurel, a layer of silver Her boldness was contagious. Women came to her, and greasepaint - and nothing else save, strapped to my hips, grew giddy. She was like a singer, shivering glasses. She Diana's Monsieur Dildo. The ladies gasped to see him. was like a cancer, she was like a mould. She was like the That made him quiver.

hero of one of her own gross romances - you might set her And as the quiver did its usual work on me, I thought of in a chamber with a governess and a nun, and in an hour Kitty. I wondered if she was still wearing suits and a topper, they would have torn out their own hair, to fashion a whip. still singing songs like 'Sweethearts and Wives'. I sound weary of her. I was not weary of her then. How could I have been? We were a perfect kind of double act.

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She was lewd, she was daring - but who made that daring But there was one anniversary from the old order of things visible? Who could testify to the passion of her; to the that, even in the enchanted atmosphere of Felicity Place, sympathetic power of her; to the rare, enchanted surrounded by so much narcotic luxury, I could not quite atmosphere of her house in Felicity Place, where ordinary forget. One day, when I had been Diana's lover for a little ways and rules seemed all suspended, and wanton riot less than a year, I was woken by the rustle of news-sheet. reigned? Who, but I?

My mistress was beside me with the morning paper, and I I was proof of all her pleasures. I was the stain left by her opened my eyes upon a headline. Home Rule Bill, it said; lust. She must keep me, or lose everything.

Irish to Demonstrate June 3rd. I gave a cry. It was not the And I must keep her, or have nothing. I could not imagine a words which arrested me - they meant nothing to me. The life beyond her shaping. She had awakened particular date, however, was as familiar as my own name. June the appetites in me; and where else, I thought, but with Diana, third was my birthday; in a week I should be twenty-three. in the company of Sapphists - where else would those queer

'Twenty-three!' said Diana when I told her, in a kind of hungers be assuaged?

delight. 'What a really glorious age that is! With your youth I have spoken of the peculiarly timeless quality of my new still hot upon you, like a lover in a pant; and time with his life, of my removal from the ordinary workings of the face around the curtain, peeping on.' She could talk like hours, the days and the weeks. Diana and I often made love this, even first thing in the morning; I only yawned. But until dawn, and ate breakfast at nightfall; or else, we woke then she said that we must celebrate - and at that, I looked at the regular time, but stayed abed with the drapes closelivelier. 'What shall we do,' she said, 'that we haven't done drawn, and took our lunch by candle-light. Once we rang before? Where shall I take you . . . ?'

for Blake, and she came in her night-gown: it was half-past Where she hit upon, in the end, was the Opera. three, we had woken her from her bed. Another time I was The idea sounded a terrible one to me, though I did not like roused by bird-song: I squinted at the lines of light around to show it - I had not yet grown sulky with her, as I was the shutters, and realised I had not seen the sun for a week. later to do. And I was still too much of a child, not to be In a house kept uniformly warm by the labour of servants, anything other than enchanted with my own birthday, when and with a carriage to collect us and deposit us where we it finally arrived; and of course, there were presents - and wished, even the seasons lost their meanings or gained new presents never lost their charm.

ones. I knew winter had arrived only when Diana's I was given them at breakfast, in two gold parcels. The first walking-dresses changed from silk to corduroy, her cloaks was large, and held a cloak - a proper opera-going cloak, it from grenadine to sable; and when my own closet rail was, and very grand; but then, I had expected that, and sagged with astrakhan, and camel's-hair, and tweed. hardly considered it a gift at all. The second parcel, however, proved more marvellous. It was small and light: I

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knew at once it must be some piece of jewellery - perhaps, The watch was my finest gift; but there was a present, too, a pair of links; or a stud for my cravats; or a ring. Dickie from Maria herself: a walking-cane, of ebony, with a tassel wore a ring on the smallest finger of her left hand, and I had at the top and a silver tip. It went very well with my new often admired it - yes, I was sure it must be a ring, like opera gear; indeed, we made a very striking couple that Dickie's.

night, Diana and I, for her costume was of black and white But it was not a ring. It was a watch, of silver, on a slender and silver, to match my own. It came from Worth's: I strap of leather. It had two dark arms to show the minutes thought we must look just as if we had stepped out from the and the hours, and a faster, sweeping arm to count the pages of a fashion paper. I made sure, when walking, to seconds. Upon the face, there was glass: the arms were hold my left arm very straight, so the watch would show. moved by the winder. I turned it in my hands, Diana We dined in a room at the Solferino. We dined with Dickie smiling as I did so. 'It's for your wrist,' she said at last. and Maria - Maria brought Satin, her whippet, and fed him I gazed at her in wonder - people never wore wrist-watches dainties from a plate. The waiters had been told it was my then, it was marvellously exotic and new - then tried to birthday, and fussed around me, offering wine. 'How old is buckle the watch upon my arm. I could not manage it, of the young gentleman today?' they asked Diana; and the way course: like so many of the things in Felicity Place, you they asked it showed they thought me younger than I was. really needed a maid to do it properly. In the end, Diana They might, I suppose, have taken Diana for my mother; fastened it for me; and then we both sat gazing at the little for various reasons, the idea was not a nice one. Once, face, the sweeping hand, and listened to the ticking. though, I had stopped at a shoe-black while Diana and her I said, 'Diana, it's the most wonderful thing I ever saw!', and friends stood near to watch it, and the man - catching sight she pinked, and looked pleased: she was a bitch, but she of Dickie and reading tommishness, as many regular people was human, too.

do, as a kind of family likeness - asked me if she, Dickie, Later, when Maria came to call, I showed her the watch and were not my Auntie, taking me out for the day; and it had she nodded and smiled at it, stroking my wrist beneath the been worth being mistaken for a schoolboy, for the sake of leather of the strap. Then she laughed. 'My dear, the time is her expression. She once or twice tried to compete with me, wrong! You have it set at seven, and it's only a quarter-past on the question of suits. The night of my birthday, for four!'

example, she wore a shirt with cuff-links and, above her I looked at the face again, and gave a frown of surprise. I skirt, a short gent's cloak. At her throat, however, she had a had been wearing it as a kind of bracelet, only: it had not jabot - I should never have worn anything so effeminate. occurred to me to tell the time with it. Now I moved the She did not know it - she would have been horrified to arms to 4 and 3, for Maria's sake - but there was really no know it! - but she looked like nothing so much as a weary need, of course, for me ever to wind it at all. old mary-anne - one of the kind you see sometimes holding

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court, with younger boys, on Piccadilly: they have rented so reached the desk at last and he tilted his face to the long they're known as queens.

garments I gave him, I saw that he was Billy-Boy, my old Our supper was a very fine one, and when it was over smoking-partner from the Brit.

Diana sent a waiter for a cab. As I have said, I had thought At first, I only stared; I think, actually, that I was her plan not much of a treat; but even I could not help being considering how I might best make my escape before he excited as our hansom joined the line of rocking carriages saw me. But then, when he tugged at the coats and I failed at the door of the Royal Opera, and we - Diana, Maria, to release them, he raised his eyes - and I knew that he Dickie and I - entered the crush of gentlemen and ladies in didn't recognise me at all, only wondered why I hesitated; the lobby. I had never been here before; had never, in a year and the thought made me terribly sorry. I said, 'Bill', and he of fitful chaperoning, been part of such a rich and looked harder. Then he said: 'Sir?'

handsome crowd - the gents, like me, all in cloaks and silk I swallowed. I said again, 'Bill. Don't you remember me?" hats and carrying glasses; the ladies in diamonds, and Then I leaned and lowered my voice. 'It's Nan,' I said, 'Nan wearing gloves so high and slender they might all have just King.' His face changed. He said, 'My God!'

left off dipping their arms, to the armpit, in tubs of milk. Behind me, the queue had grown longer; now there came a We stood jostling in the lobby for a moment or two, Diana cry: 'What's the delay there?' Bill took the coats from me at exchanging nods with certain ladies that she recognised, last, walked quickly to a hook with them, and gave me a Maria holding Satin at her bosom, out of the crush of heels ticket. Then he stepped a little to one side, leaving his and trains and sweeping cloaks. Dickie said she would fetch friend to struggle with the cloaks, for a minute, on his own. us a tray of drinks, and went off to do so. Diana said, 'Take I moved too, away from the jostling gents, and we stood our coats, Neville, will you?' nodding to a counter where facing each other across the desk, shaking our heads. His two men stood, in uniform, receiving cloaks. She turned to brow was shiny with sweat. His uniform was a white bumlet me draw the coat from her, Maria did the same, and I shaver jacket and a cheap bow-tie, of scarlet. picked my way across the lobby with them, then paused to He said, 'Lord, Nan, but you gave me a fright! I thought you unfasten my own cloak -thinking all the time, only, what a must be some gentleman I owed money to.' He looked at handsome gathering it was, and how well I looked in it! and my trousers, my jacket, my hair. 'What are you up to, making sure that the coats I carried weren't falling over my wandering about like that, here?’ He wiped his brow, then wrist and obscuring the watch. The counter had a queue at looked about him. 'Are you here with an agent? You're not it, and as I waited I looked idly at the men whose job it was in the show, Nan - are you?'

to collect the cloaks from the gents, and give them tickets. I shook my head; and then I said, very quietly, 'You mustn't One of them was slim, with a sallow face - he might have say "Nan" now, Bill. The fact is -' The fact was, I hadn't been Italian. The other man was a black man. When I

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thought what I would tell him. I hesitated; but it was married to Flora, and Flora was still with Kitty; and Kitty impossible to lie to him: 'Bill, I'm living as a boy just now.'

had a spot at the Middlesex Music Hall. And that was about

'As a boy?’ He said it loudly; then put a hand before his three streets away from where I stood now.

mouth. Even so, one or two of the grumbling gents in the And Kitty, of course, was married to Walter.

queue turned their heads. I edged a little further away from Are they happy? I wanted to call to Bill then. Does she talk them. I said again: 'I'm living as a boy, with a lady who of me, ever? Does she think of me? Does she miss me? But takes care of me . . .' And at that, at last, he looked a little when he returned - looking even more flustered and damp more knowing, and nodded.

about the brow - I said only, 'How's - how's the act, Bill?'

Behind him, the Italian dropped a gentleman's hat, and the The act?' He sniffed. 'Not so good, I don't think. Not so gentleman tutted. Bill said, 'Can you wait?' and stepped to good as the old days ..."

help his friend by taking another couple of cloaks. Then he We gazed at one another. I looked harder at his face, and moved towards me again. The Italian looked sour. saw that he had gained a bit of weight beneath his chin, and I glanced over to Diana and Maria. The lobby had emptied that the flesh about his eyes was rather darker than I knew a bit; they stood waiting for me. Maria had placed Satin on it. Then the Italian called, 'Bill, will you come?' And Bill the floor and he was scratching at her skirt. Diana turned to said that he must go.

catch my eye. I looked at Bill.

I nodded, and held my hand out to him. As he shook it, he

'How are you, then?' I asked him.

seemed to hesitate again. Then he said, very quickly, 'You He looked rueful, and lifted his hand: there was a weddingknow, we was all really sorry, when you took off like that, ring on it. He said, 'Well, I am married now, for a start!'

from the Brit.' I shrugged. 'And Kitty,' he went on, 'well,

'Married! Oh, Bill, I am happy for you! Who's the girl? It's Kitty was sorriest of all of us. She put notices, with Walter, not Flora? Not Flora, our old dresser?' He nodded, and said in the Era and the Ref, week after week. Did you never see it was.

'em, Nan, those notices?'

'It is on account of Flora,' he added, 'that I am working here.

'No, Bill, I never did.'

She has a job on round the corner, a month at the Old Mo. He shook his head. 'And now, here you are, dressed up like She is still, you know' - he looked suddenly rather awkward a lord!' But he gave my suit a dubious glance, and added:

- 'she is still, you know, dressing Kitty ..."

'You're sure though, are you, that you're doing all right?'

I stared at him. There came more mutters from the queue of I didn't answer him. I only looked over to Diana again. She gents, and more sour looks from the Italian, and he stepped was tilting her head to gaze after me; beside her stood back again to help with the cloaks and hats and tickets. I Maria, and Satin, and Dickie. Dickie held our tray of lifted a hand to my head, and put my fingers through my drinks, and had placed her monocle at her eye. She said, hair, and tried to understand what he had told me. He was

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'The wine will warm, Diana,' in a pettish sort of voice: the had made us late, however, and the stalls were almost full: lobby was thinned of people, I could hear her very clearly. we had to stumble over twenty pairs of legs to reach our Diana tilted her head again: 'What is the boy doing?'

seats. Dickie spilled her wine. Satin snapped at a lady with

'He is talking to the nigger,' answered Maria, 'at the cloaks!'

a fox-fur around her throat. Diana, when she sat at last, was I felt my cheeks flame red, and looked quickly back at Bill. thin-lipped and self-conscious: this was not the kind of His gaze had followed mine, but now had been caught by a entrance she had planned for us, at all.

gentleman offering a coat, and he was lifting the garment And I sat, numb to her, numb to all of it. I could think only over the counter, and already turning with it to the row of of Kitty. That she was still in the halls, in her act with hooks.

Walter. That Bill saw her daily - would see her later, after

'Good-bye, Bill,' I said, and he nodded over his shoulder, the show, when he fetched Flora. That even now, while the and gave me a sad little smile of farewell. I took a step actors in the opera we had come to see were putting on their away -but then, very quickly, I returned to the counter and grease-paint, she was sitting in a dressing-room three streets put my hand upon his arm. I said: 'What's Kitty's place, on away, putting on hers.

the bill at the Mo?'

As I thought all this, the conductor appeared, and was

'Her place?' He thought about it, folding another cloak. 'I'm clapped; the lights went down, and the crowd grew silent. not sure. Second half, near the start, half-past nine or so ..." When the music started and the curtain went up at last, I Then Maria's voice came calling: 'Is there trouble, Neville, gazed at the stage in a kind of stupor. And when the singing over the tip?'

began, I flinched. The opera was Figaro's Wedding. I knew then that if I lingered near him any longer some I can remember hardly any of it. I thought only of Kitty. terrible sort of scene would ensue. I didn't look at him again My seat seemed impossibly narrow and hard, and I shifted but went back to Diana at once, and said it was nothing, I and turned in it, till Diana leaned to whisper that I must be was sorry. But when she raised a hand to smooth back the still. I thought of all the times I had walked through the hair I had unsettled, I flinched, feeling Bill's eyes upon me; city, fearful of turning a corner and seeing Kitty there; I and when she pulled my arm through hers, and Maria thought of the disguise I had adopted, to avoid her. Indeed, stepped around me to take my other arm, the flesh upon my avoiding Kitty had become, in my renter days, a kind of back seemed to give a kind of shudder, as if there was a second nature to me, so that there were whole areas of pistol pointed at it.

London through which I automatically never passed, streets The hall itself, which was so grand and glorious, I only at which I didn't have to pause, for thought, before I turned gazed at rather dully. We did not have a box - there had not away to find another. I was like a man with a bruise or a been time to book a box - but our seats were very good broken limb, who learns to walk in a crowd so that the ones, in the centre of one of the front rows of the stalls. I wound might not be jostled. Now, knowing that Kitty was

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so near, it was as if I was compelled to press the bruise, to Walter's old stage-name. They were, as Bill had said, twist the shrieking limb, myself. The music grew louder, placed near the start of the second half-fourteenth on the and my head began to ache; my seat seemed narrower than list, after a singer and a Chinese conjuror.

ever. I looked at my watch, but the lights were too low for In the booth inside sat a girl in a violet dress. I went to her me to read it; I had to tilt it so that its face caught the glow window, then nodded to the hall. 'Who's on stage?' I asked. from the stage, and in doing so, my elbow caught Diana and

'What number are they at?' She looked up; and when she made her sigh with pique, and glare at me. The watch saw my suit, she tittered.

showed five to nine - how glad I was that I had wound it,

'You've lost your way, dearie,' she said. 'You want the now! The opera was just at that ridiculous point where the Opera, round the corner.' I bit my lip, and said nothing, and countess and the maid have forced the principal boy into a her smile faded. 'All right, Lord Alfred,' she said then. 'It's frock and locked him in a closet, and the singing and the number twelve, Belle Baxter, Cockney Chanteuse.'

rushing about is at its worst. I turned to Diana. I said, I bought a sixpenny ticket - she pulled a face at that, of

'Diana, I can't bear it. I shall have to wait for you in the course: 'Thought we should have the red carpet brung up, at lobby.' She put a hand out to grip my arm, but I shook her the least.' The truth was, I dared not venture too close to the away, and rose and - saying 'Pardon me, oh! pardon me!' to stage. I imagined Billy-Boy having come to the theatre and every tutting lady and gent whose legs I stumbled over or told Kitty that he had met me, and how I was dressed. I feet I trampled, I made my halting way along the row, remembered how near the crowd could seem, from a stage towards the usher and the door.

in a small hall, when you stepped out of the limes; and in Outside, the lobby was wonderfully quiet after all the my coat and my bow-tie, of course, I would be

shrieking on the stage. At the coat-desk the Italian man sat conspicuous. How terrible it would be, to have Kitty see me with a paper. When I went over to him, he sniffed: 'He ain't as I watched her - to have her fix her eyes on mine, as she here,' he said, when I asked after Bill. 'He don't stay once sang to Walter!

the show starts. Did you want your cloak?'

So I went up to the gallery. The stairs were narrow: when I I said I didn't. I left the theatre, and headed for Drury Lane turned a corner and found a couple there, spooning, I had to very conscious of my suit, and the shine on my shoes, and step around them, very close. Like the girl in the booth, the flower at my lapel. When I reached the Middlesex I they gazed at my suit and, as she had done, they tittered. I found a group of boys outside it studying the programme could hear the thumping of the orchestra through the wall. and commenting on the acts. I went and peered over their As I climbed to the door at the top of the staircase and the shoulders, looking for the names I wanted, and a number. thumps grew louder, my own heart seemed to beat against Walter Waters and Kitty, I saw at last: it gave me a shock to my breast, in time to them. When I passed into the hall at know that Kitty had lost her Butler, and was working under

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last - into the lurid half-light, and the heat and the smoke Palace, with my fluttering heart and my gloves with the and the reek of the calling crowd -I almost staggered. bows: it seemed a time immeasurably distant and quaint. On the stage was a girl in a flame-coloured frock, twitching But, as I had used to do then, I clutched the sticky velvet of her skirts so her stockings showed. She finished one song my seat, and gazed at where, with a hint of drooping rope while I stood there, clutching at a pillar to steady myself; and dusty floorboard, the stage gave way to the wings, and I and then she started on another. The crowd seemed to know thought of Kitty. She was there, somewhere, just beyond it. There were claps, and whistles; and before these had the edge of the curtain, perhaps straightening her costume - quite died down, I made my way along the aisle to an whatever that was; perhaps chatting with Walter or Flora; empty seat. It turned out to be at the end of a line of boys - perhaps staring, as Billy-Boy told her of me - perhaps a bad choice, for, of course, when they saw me there in my smiling, perhaps weeping, perhaps saying only, mildly, opera suit and my flower, they nudged each other, and

'Fancy that!' - and then forgetting me ...

sniggered. One coughed into his hand - only the cough I thought all this, and the magician performed his final came out as Toff! I turned my face from them, and looked trick. There was another flash, and more smoke: the smoke hard at the stage. Then, after a moment, I took out a drifted as far as the gallery, and left the entire crowd cigarette and lit it. As I struck the match, my hand coughing, but cheering through their coughs. The curtain trembled.

fell, there was another delay while the number was The Cockney Chanteuse finished her set at last. There were changed, and then a quiver of blue, white and amber, as the cheers, then a brief delay, marked by shouts and shuffling limes-man changed the filter across his beam. I had finished and rustling, before the orchestra struck up with its my cigarette, and now reached for another. This time, the introduction for the next act - a tinkling, Chinese melody, boys in my row all saw me do it, so I held the case to them, which made a boy in the line along from me stand up, and and they each took a fag: 'Very generous.' I thought of call out, 'Ninky-poo!' Then the curtain rose on a magician Diana. Suppose the opera had ended, and she was waiting and a girl, and a black japanned cabinet - a cabinet not for me, cursing, beating her programme against her thigh? unlike the one that sat in Diana's bedroom. When the Suppose she went back to Felicity Place, without me? magician snapped his fingers, there was a flash, and a But then there came music, and the creak of the curtain. I crack, and a puff of purple smoke; and at that the boys put looked at the stage - and Walter was on it.

their fingers to their lips, and whistled.

He seemed very large - much larger than I remembered. I had seen - or felt as if I had seen - a thousand such acts; Perhaps he had grown fatter; perhaps his costume was a and I watched this one now, with my cigarette gripped hard little padded. His whiskers he had teased with a comb, to between my lips, growing steadily more sick and more make them stand out rather comically. He wore tartan peguncertain. I remembered sitting in my box at the Canterbury top trousers and a green velvet jacket; and on his head was

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a smok-ing-cap, in his pocket a pipe. Behind him, there was sailor-suit -a baggy white blouse with a blue sash, white a cloth with a scene on it representing a parlour. Beside him knickerbockers, stockings, and flat brown shoes; and she was an armchair that he leaned on as he sang. He was quite had a straw hat slung over her back, on a ribbon. Her hair alone. I had never seen him in costume and paint before. He was rather longer, and had been combed into a curl. Now was so unlike the figure I still saw, sometimes, in my the band struck up another tune, and she joined her voice dreams - the figure with the flapping shirt, the dampened with Walter's in a duet.

beard, the hand on Kitty - that I looked at him, and The crowd clapped her, and smiled. She skipped, and frowned: my heart had barely twitched, to see him standing Walter bent and wagged a finger at her, and they laughed. there.

They liked this turn. They liked seeing Kitty — my lovely, His voice was a mild baritone, and not at all unpleasant; saucy, swaggering Kitty - play the child, with her husband, there had been a burst of applause at his first appearance, in stockings to the knee. They could not see me, as I and there was another round of satisfied clapping now, and blushed and squirmed; they would not have known why I one or two cheers. His song, however, was a strange one: did it, if they had. I hardly knew it, myself; I only felt he sang of a son that he had lost, named 'Little Jacky'. There myself smart with a terrible shame. I could not have felt were a number of verses, each of them ending on the same worse if they had booed her, or pelted her with eggs. But refrain - it might have been, 'Where, oh where, is Little they liked her!

Jacky now?' I thought it queer he should be there, singing I looked at her a little harder. Then I remembered my opera such a song, alone. Where was Kitty? I drew hard on my glasses, and pulled them from my pocket and lifted them to cigarette. I couldn't imagine how she would fit into this my eyes, and saw her close before me, as close as in a routine, in a silk hat, a bow-tie and a flower . . . dream. Her hair, though longer, was still nut-brown. Her Suddenly a horrible idea began to form itself in my mind. lashes were still long, she was still as slender as a willow. Walter had taken a handkerchief from his pocket, and was She had painted out her own lovely freckles and replaced dabbing at his eye with it. His voice rose on the predictable them with a few comical smudges; but I — who had traced chorus, and was joined by not a few from the hall: 'But the pattern of them, so often, with my fingers - I thought I where, oh where, is Little Jacky now?' I shifted in my seat. I could catch the shape of them beneath the powder. Her lips thought, Let it not be that! Oh please, oh please, let the act were still full lips, and they gleamed as she sang. She lifted not be that!

her mouth and placed a kiss, between the verses, on But it was. As Walter called his plaintive question, there Walter's whiskers . . .

was a piping from the wing: 'Here's your Little Jacky, At that, I let the glasses drop. I saw the boys in the row Father! Here!' A figure ran on to the stage, and seized his looking enviously at them, so passed them along the line - I hand and kissed it. It was Kitty. She was dressed in a boy's think they got thrown, in the end, to a girl at the balcony.

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When I looked at the stage again, Kitty and Walter seemed I pulled my arm free. 'Diana,' I said, 'I feel wretched. Let very small. He had lowered himself into the chair, and had me alone.'

drawn Kitty down to sit upon his knee; she had her hands She seized me again. 'You feel wretched,' she said, with clasped at her breast, and her feet, in their flat boy's shoes, scorn in her voice. 'Do you think it matters to me, how you were swinging. But I could bear to see no more of it. I feel about anything? Get in my bedroom at once, you little started up. The boys called something - their words were bitch, and take your clothes off.'

lost. I stumbled up the darkened aisle, and found the exit. I hesitated. Then: 'No, Diana,' I said.

Back at the Royal Opera I found the singers still shrieking She came closer. 'What?'

upon the stage, the horns still blaring. But I only heard this There is a way rich people have of saying What?: the word through the doors: I couldn't face picking my way across is honed, and has a point put on it; it comes out of their the stalls to Diana's side, and facing her displeasure. I gave mouths like a dagger coming out of a sheath. That is how my ticket to the Italian at the cloaks, then sat in the lobby Diana said it now, in that dim corridor. I felt it pierce me on a velvet chair, watching as the street filled up with through, and make me sag. I swallowed.

waiting hansoms, with women selling flowers, and with gay

'I said, "No, Diana.'" It was no more than a whisper. But girls, and renters.

when she heard it, she seized me by the shirt, so that I At last there came the cries of 'Bravo', and the shouts for stumbled. I said, 'Get off me, you are hurting me! Get off the soprano. The doors were thrown wide, the lobby filled me, get off me! Diana, you will spoil my shirt!'

with chattering people, and in time Diana, Maria, Dickie

'What, this shirt?' she answered. And with that, she put her and the dog emerged, and saw me waiting, and came up to fingers behind the buttons, and pulled it until it ripped, and yawn and scold and ask me what the trouble was. I said I my breasts showed bare beneath it. Then she caught hold of had been sick in the gentlemen's lavatory. Diana put a hand the jacket, and tore that from me too - all the time panting to my cheek.

as she did so, and with her limbs pressed close against my The excitements of the day have proved too much for you,'

own. I staggered, and reached for the wall, then placed my she said.

arm over my face -I thought she would strike me. But when But she said it rather coldly; and all through the long ride I looked at her at last I saw that her features were livid, not back to Felicity Place we sat in silence. When Mrs Hooper in fury, but in lust. She reached for my hand, and placed my had let us in and bolted the great front door behind us, I fingers at the collar of her gown; and, miserable as I was, walked with Diana to her bedroom, but then stepped past when I understood what it was that she wanted me to do, I her, towards my own. As I did so, she put a hand on my felt my own breath quicken, and my cunt gave a kick. I arm: 'Where are you going?'

pulled at the lace, heard a few stitches rip, and the sound worked on me like the tip of a whip, snapping against the

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haunches of a horse. I tore it from her, her gown of black

'Her bag. Then, she might have been going to the and white and silver, that came from Worth's to match my Cavendish Club. Didn't she say, that she was going to her costume; and when it was wrecked and trampled on the rug, club? Didn't she say when she'd be back?'

she had me kneel upon it and fuck her, until she came and

'Please miss, she didn't say a thing. She never does say a came again.

thing like that, to me. You might ask Mrs Hooper ..." Then she sent me to my own room, anyway.

I might; but Mrs Hooper had a way about her, of gazing at I lay in the darkness and shook, and put my hands before me as I lay in bed, that I didn't quite care for. I said, 'No, it my mouth to keep from weeping. Upon the cabinet beside doesn't matter.' Then, as Blake bent to sweep my hearth and the bed, gleaming where the starlight struck it, lay my set a fire there, I sighed. I thought of Diana's rough kisses birthday gift, the wrist-watch. I reached for it, and felt it of the night before - of how they had stirred me, and cold between my fingers; but when I placed it to my ear, I sickened me, while my heart was still smarting after Kitty. I shuddered - for all that it would say was: Kitty, Kitty, Kitty. groaned; and when Blake looked up I said, in a half-hearted

. .

sort of way: 'Don't you get tired, Blake, of serving Mrs I cast it from me, then, and put my pillow over my ears to Lethaby?'

blot the sound out. I would not weep. I would not weep! I The question made her cheeks flush pink. She looked back would not even think. I would only surrender myself, for to the hearth, then said, 'I should get tired, miss, with any ever, to the heartless, seasonless routines of Felicity Place. mistress.'

So I thought then; but my days there were numbered. And I answered that I supposed she would. Then, because it was the arms of my handsome watch were slowly sweeping novel to talk to her - and because Diana had gone out them away.

without waking me, and I was peevish and bored - I said:

'So you don't think Mrs Lethaby a hard one, then?'

Chapter 14

She coloured again. 'They are all hard, miss. Else, how The morning after my birthday I slept late; and when I would they be mistresses?'

woke, and rang for Blake to bring me coffee, it was to find

'Well - but do you like it here? Do you like being a maid that Diana had gone out while I was slumbering. here?'

'Gone out?' I said. 'Gone where? Who with?' Blake gave a

'I have a room to myself, which is more than most maids curtsey, and said she didn't know. I sat back against my get. Besides,' she stood, and wiped her hands on her apron, pillow, and took the cup from her. 'What was she wearing?'

'Mrs Lethaby don't half pay a decent wage.'

I asked then.

I thought of how she came every morning with the coffee,

'She was wearing her green suit, miss, and had her bag with and every night with jugs of water for the bowls. I said, her.'

'Don't think me rude, but - whenever do you spent it?'

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'I am saving it, miss!' she said. 'I aim to emigrate. My friend been to the Cavendish, but only to take a letter that must be says, in the colonies a girl with twenty pounds can set up as signed by another lady.

a landlady of a rooming-house, with girls of her own.'

'I didn't like to wake you,' she said, dipping her hand into

'Is that so?' She nodded. 'And you'd like to run a roomingthe water. house?'

I forgot about Blake, then, and how handsome she was.

'Oh yes! They will always need rooming-houses in the I forgot about Blake, indeed, for a month or more. Diana colonies, you see, for the people coming in.'

gave dinners, and I posed and wore costumes; we made

'Well, that's true. And, how much have you saved?'

visits to the club, and to Maria's house in Hampstead. All She flushed again. 'Seven pounds, miss.'

went on as usual. I was occasionally sulky, but, as on the I nodded. Then I thought and said: 'But the colonies, Blake!

night of our trip to the opera, she found ways of turning my Could you bear the journey? You should have to live in a sulkiness to her own lewd advantage - in the end, I hardly boat — suppose there were storms?'

knew if I were really cross or only feigning crossness for She picked up the scuttle of coal. 'Oh, I shouldn't mind that, the sake of her letches. Once or twice I hoped she would miss!'

make me cross - fucking her in a rage, I found, could at the I laughed; and so did she. We had never chatted so freely right moment be more thrilling than fucking her in before. I had grown used to calling her only 'Blake' as kindness.

Diana did; I had grown used to her curtseys; I had grown Anyway, we went on like this. Then one night there was used to having her see me as I was now: swollen-eyed and some quarrel over a suit. We were dressing for a supper at swollen-mouthed, naked in a bed with the sheet at my Maria's, and I would not wear the clothes she picked for bosom, and the marks of Diana's kisses at my throat. I had me. 'Very well,' she said, 'you may wear what you please!'

grown used to not looking at her, not seeing her at all. Now, And she took the carriage, and went off to Hampstead as she laughed, I found myself gazing at her at last, at her without me. I threw a cup against the wall - then sent for pinking cheeks and at her lashes, which were dark, and Blake to come and tidy it. And when she came, I thinking, Oh! - for she was really rather handsome. remembered how pleasant it had been to chat with her And, as I thought it, there came the old self-consciousness before; and I made her sit with me, and tell me more about between us. She hoisted her scuttle of coal a little higher, her plans.

then came to take my tray and ask me, 'Would there be And after that, she would come and spend a minute or two anything else?' I answered that she might run me a bath; with me whenever Diana was out; and she became easier and she curtseyed.

with me, and I grew freer with her. And at last I said to her: And when I lay soaking in the bathroom I heard the slam of

'Lord, Blake, you've been emptying my pot for me for more the front door. It was Diana. She came to find me. She had than a year, and I don't even know what your first name is!'

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She smiled, and again looked handsome.

Is it true, what she said? Or is it only one of her stories? Is Her name was Zena.

it true that they had you in there, because you . . . kissed Her name was Zena, and her story was a sad one. I had it another girl?'

from her one morning in the autumn of that year, as I lay in She let her hands fall to her lap, then sat back upon her Diana's bed, and she came, as usual, to bring breakfast and heels and gazed into the unlit grate. Then she turned her to see to the fire. Diana herself had risen early, and gone face to me and gave a sigh.

out. I woke to find Zena kneeling at the hearth, working

'I was a year in the reformat'ry,' she said, 'when I was quietly with the coals so as not to disturb me. I shifted seventeen. It was a cruel enough place, I suppose, though beneath the sheets, feeling lazy as an eel. My quim - in the not so hard as other gaols I heard of; its mistress is a lady clever way of quims - was still quite slippery, from the Mrs Lethaby knows from her club, and that is how she got passion of the night before.

me. I was sent to reformat'ry on the word of a girl I was I lay watching her. She raised a hand to scratch her brow, friends with at a house in Kentish Town. We were maids and when she took the hand away she left a smudge of soot there, together.'

there. Her face, against the smudge, seemed very pale and

'You were a maid before you came here?'

rather pinched. I said, 'Zena', and she gave a jump: 'Yes,

'I was sent out as a skivvy when I was ten: Pa was rather miss?'

poor. That was at a house in Paddington. When I was I hesitated; then, 'Zena,' I said again, 'don't mind me asking fourteen I went to the place in Kentish Town. It was you something, but I can't help but think of it. Diana once altogether a better place. I was a housemaid, then; and I got told me - well, that she got you out of a prison. Is it true?'

very thick with another girl there, named Agnes. Agnes had She turned back to the hearth, and continued to pile coals a chap, and she threw the chap over, miss, for my sake. upon the fire; but I saw her ears turn crimson. She said. That's how thick we were ..."

'They call it a reformat'ry. It wasn't a gaol.'

She gazed very sadly at her hands in her lap, and the room

'A reformat'ry, then. But it's true you were in one.' She grew still, and I grew sorry. I said, 'And was it Agnes told didn't answer. 'I don't mind it,' I added quickly. the story that got you sent to the reformat'ry?'

She gave a jerk to her head, and said: 'No, I don't mind it, She shook her head. 'Oh, no! What happened was, Agnes now. . .'

lost her place, because the lady didn't care for her. She went Had she said such a thing, in such a tone, to Diana, I think to a house in Dulwich - which, as you will know, is very far Diana would have slapped her. Indeed, she looked at me from Kentish Town, but not so far that we couldn't meet of now a little fearfully; but when she did so, I grimaced. Tm a Sunday, and send each other little notes and parcels sorry,' I said. 'Do you think me very rude? It's only - well, it through the post. But then - well, then another girl came. is what Diana said, about why they had you in there at all. She was not so nice as Agnes, but she took to me like

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anything. I think she was a bit soft, miss, in the head. She

'No, there is something,' I said, smiling. 'What are you would look through all my things - and, of course, she thinking?'

found my letters and all my bits. She would make me kiss She took another puff of her cigarette, smoking it as you her! And when at last I said that I wouldn't, for Agnes' sake see rough men on the street smoking, with her fingers

- well, she went to the lady and told her that I had made her cupped around the fag, the burning end of it nearly kiss me; and that I touched her, in a peculiar way. When all scorching her palm. Then she said: 'Well, you will think me the time, it was her, only her -! And when the lady wasn't forwarder than I ought to be.'

sure whether or not to believe her, she went and took her to

'Will I?'

my little box of letters, and showed her those.'

'Yes. But I have been just about busting to know it, ever

'Oh!'I said.'What a bitch!'

since I first got a proper look at you.' She took a breath. She nodded. 'A bitch is what she was, all right; only, I

'You used to work the halls, didn't you? You used to work didn't like to say it before.'

the halls, alonger Kitty Butler, and calling yourself plain

'And it was the lady, then, who got you sent to the Nan King. What a turn it give me, when I saw you here reformat'ry?'

first! I never maided for no one famous before.'

'It was, on a charge of tampering and corrupting. And she I studied the tip of my cigarette, and did not answer her. made sure Agnes lost her place, too; and they would have Her words had given me a kind of jolt: they were not what I sent her to prison along with me - except that she took up had been anticipating at all. Then I said, with a show of with another young man again, very sharp. And now she is laughter: 'Well, you know, I am hardly famous now. They married to him, and he I hear treats her shabbily.'

were all rather long ago, those days.'

She shook her head, and so did I. I said, 'Well, it seems like

'Not so long,' she said. 'I remember seeing you at Camden you were roundly done over by women, all right!'

Town, and another time at the Peckham Palace. That was

'Wasn't I, though!'

with Agnes - how we laughed!' Her voice sank a little. 'It I gave her a wink. 'Come over here, and let's have a fag.'

was just after that, that my troubles started ..." She stepped over to the bed, and I found us two cigarettes; I remembered the Peckham Palace very well, for Kitty and I and for a little while we sat smoking together in silence, had only played there once. It had been in the December occasionally sighing and tutting and still shaking our heads. before we opened at the Brit, so rather near to the start of At last I saw her gazing at me rather thoughtfully. When I my own troubles. I said, 'To think of you sitting there, with caught her eye, she blushed and looked away. I said, 'What Agnes beside you; and me upon the stage, with Kitty Butler is it?'

..."

'It's nothing, miss.'

She must have caught something in my tone, for she raised her eyes to mine and said: 'And you don't see Miss Butler at

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all, these days . . . ?' And when I shook my head, she looked followed it, very well, for they were busy ones: it was as if knowing. 'Well,' she said then, 'it's something, ain't it, to my stay with Diana were acquiring a kind of hectic have been a star upon the stage!'

intensity, as some sick people are said to be, as it hurtled I sighed. 'I suppose it is. But -' I had thought of something towards its end. Maria, for example, gave a party at her else. 'You oughtn't to let Mrs Lethaby hear you say it. She, house. Dickie threw a party on a boat - hired it to sail with well, she don't quite care for the music hall.'

us from Charing Cross to Richmond, and we danced, till She nodded. 'I dare say.' Then the clock upon the mantel four in the morning, to an all-girl band. Christmas we spent struck the hour and, hearing it, she rose, and stubbed her at Kettner's, eating goose in a private room; New Year was fag out, and napped her hand before her mouth to wave celebrated at the Cavendish Club: our table grew so loud away the flavour of the smoke. 'Lord, look at me!' she cried. and ribald, Miss Bruce again approached us, to complain

'I shall have Mrs Hooper after me.' She reached for my about our manners.

empty coffee-cup, then picked up her tray and went to her And then, in January, came Diana's fortieth birthday; and scuttle of coal.

she was persuaded to celebrate it, at Felicity Place itself, Then she turned, and grew pink again. She said: 'Will there with a fancy-dress ball.

be anything else, miss?'

We called it a ball, but it was not really so grand as that. We gazed at one another for the space of a couple of For music there was only a woman with a piano; and what heartbeats. She still had the smudge of coal-dust at her dancing there was - in the dining-room with the carpet brow. I shifted beneath the sheets, and felt again that rolled back - was rather tame. No one, however, came for slippery spot between my things - only now, it was the sake of a waltz. They came for Diana's reputation, and slipperier than ever. I had been fucking Diana every night, for mine. They came for the wine and the food and the rosealmost, for a year and a half. Fucking had come to seem to tipped cigarettes. They came for the scandal.

me like shaking hands -you might do it, as a kind of They came, and marvelled.

courtesy, with anyone. But would Zena have come and let The house, for a start, we made wonderful. We hung velvet me kiss her, if I had called her to the bed?

from the walls and, from the ceiling, spangles; and we shut I cannot say. I did not call her. I only said: Thank you, off all the lamps, and lit the rooms entirely with candles. Zena; there's nothing else, just now.' And she picked up the The drawing-room we cleared of furniture, leaving only the scuttle, and went.

Turkey

I had some squeamishness upon me about such matters, yet. rug, on which we placed cushions. The marble floor of the And Diana, I knew, would have been furious.

hall we scattered with roses - we placed roses, too, to This, as I have said, was sometime in the autumn of that smoke upon the fires: by the end of the night you felt ill year. I remember that time, and the two or three months that with it. There was champagne to drink, and brandies, and

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wine with spice in: Diana had this heated in a copper bowl Diana. On the other hand, the women who had been more above a spirit-lamp. All the food she had sent over from the daring in their choices risked going unrecognised by Solferino. They did her a cold roast after the manner of the anyone at all. 'I am Queen Anne!' I heard one lady say, very Romans, goose stuffed with turkey stuffed with chicken cross, when Maria failed to identify her — yet, when Maria stuffed with quail - the quail, I think, having a truffle in it. addressed another lady in a crown by the same title, she There were also oysters, which sat upon the table in a barrel was even crosser. She turned out to be Queen Christina, of marked Whitstable; however, one lady, unused to the trick Sweden.

of the shells, tried to open one with a cigar-knife. The blade Diana herself, that night, I never saw look more handsome. slipped, and cut her finger almost to the bone; and after she She came as her Greek namesake, in a robe, and with had bled into the ice, no one much cared for them. Diana sandals showing her long second toe, and her hair piled had them taken away.

high and with a crescent in it; and over her shoulder she Half of the Cavendish Club attended that party - and, wore a quiver full of arrows and a bow. She claimed the besides them, more women, women from France and from arrows were for shooting gentlemen, although later I heard Germany, and one, even, from Capri. It was as if Diana had her say they were for piercing young girls' hearts. sent a general invitation to all the wealthy circles of the My own costume I kept secret, and would not show to world - but marked the card, of course, Sapphists Only. anyone: it was my plan to reveal myself, when the guests That was her prime requirement; her second demand, as I were all arrived, and present a tribute to my mistress. It was have said, was that they come in fancy dress.

not a very saucy costume; but I thought it a terribly clever The result was rather mixed. Many ladies viewed the one, because it had a connection with the gift I had bought evening only as an opportunity at last to leave their ridingDiana, for her birthday. For that event the year before I had coats at home, and put on trousers. Dickie was one of these: begged the money from her to buy her a present, and had she came clad in a morning suit, with a sprig of lilac at her got her a brooch: I think she liked it well enough. This year, lapel, and calling herself 'Dorian Gray'. Other costumes, however, I felt I had surpassed myself. I had bought her, all however, were more splendid. Maria Jex stained her face by post and in secret, a marble bust of the Roman page and put whiskers on it, and came robed as a Turkish pasha. Antinous. I had taken his story out of a paper at the Diana's friend Evelyn arrived as Marie Antoinette - though, Cavendish, and had smiled to read it, because - apart of another Marie Antoinette came later and, after her, yet course from the detail of Antinous being so miserable, and another. That, indeed, was one of the predicaments of the finally throwing himself in the River Nile - it seemed to evening: I counted fully five separate Sapphos, all bearing resemble my own. I had given the bust to Diana at lyres; and there were six Ladies from Llangollen -I had not breakfast, and she had adored it at once, and had it set up on even heard of the Ladies from Llangollen before I met a pedestal in the drawing-room. 'Who would have thought

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the boy had so much cleverness in him!' she had said a little looked knowing, and Diana-standing just where I could later. 'Maria, you must have chosen it for him - didn't you?'

have wished her, beside the bust of Antinous on its little Now, while the ladies all assembled at the party below, I pedestal - raised a brow. Now, at the sight of me in my toga stood in my bedroom, trembling before the glass, garbing and belt, the ladies sighed and murmured.

myself as Antinous himself. I had a skimpy little toga that I gave them a moment, then stepped over to Diana, lifted reached to my knee, with a Roman belt around it - what the extra garland from around my neck, and wound it about they called a zone. I had put powder on my cheeks to make hers. Then I knelt to her, took up her hand, and kissed it. them languorous, and spit-black on my eyes to make them She smiled; the ladies murmured again - and then began, in dark. My hair I had covered entirely in a sable wig that a delighted sort of way, to clap. Maria stepped up to me, curled to my shoulders. About my neck there was a garland and put a hand to the hem of my toga.

of lotus flowers - and I can tell you, the lotus flowers had

'What a little jewel you look tonight, Nancy - doesn't she, been harder to organise, in London, in January, than Diana? How my husband would admire you! You look like anything.

a picture from a buggers' compendium!'

I had another garland to hand to Diana: this I also placed Diana laughed and said that I did. Then she reached and put about my neck. Then I went to the door and listened and, her fingers to my chin and kissed me - so hard, I felt her since the moment seemed right, I ran to Diana's closet and teeth upon the soft flesh of my lips.

took out a cloak of hers and wrapped it tight about me, and And then the music started up in the room across the hall. raised the hood. And then I went downstairs.

Maria brought me a glass of the warm spiced wine and, to There, in the hall, I found Maria.

go with it, a cigarette from Diana's special case. One of the

'Nancy, dear boy!' she cried. Her lips looked very red and Marie Antoinettes weaved her way through the crowd to damp where they showed through the slit of her pasha's take my hand and kiss it. 'Enchantee.' she said - this one whiskers. 'Diana has sent me out to find you. The drawingreally was French. 'What a spectacle you have provided for roem is positively pullulating with women, all of them us! One would never see such a thing in the salons of Paris panting for a peek at your pose plastique?’

..."

I smiled - a pullulating audience was precisely what I The entire evening sounds charming; it might, indeed, have wanted - then let her lead me into the room, still with the been the very high point of my triumph as Diana's boy. And cloak about me, and hand me into the alcove behind the yet, for all my planning, for all the success of my costume velvet curtain. Then, when I had bared my costume and and my tableau, I got no pleasure from it. Diana herself - it struck my pose, I murmured to her and she pulled the was her birthday, after all - seemed distant from me, and tasselled cord, and the velvet twitched back and uncovered preoccupied with other things. Only a minute or two after I me. As I walked amongst them the guests all fell silent and had placed the garland of lotus flowers about her neck, she

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took it off, saying it did not match her costume; she hung it Evelyn said: 'We are to hear Dickie Reynolds' history, from from a corner of the pedestal, where it soon fell off - later I a book written by a doctor.'

saw a lady with one of the flowers from it, at her own lapel.

'A doctor? Is she ill?'

I cannot say why -heaven knows, I had suffered graver

'It is her vie sexuelle!'

abuses at Diana's hand, and only smiled to suffer them! —

'Her vie sexuelle?’

but her carelessness over the garland made me peevish.

'My dear, I know it already, it is terribly dreary ...' This was Then again, the room was terribly hot and terribly from a woman who stood beside me in the shadows, garbed perfumed; and my wig made me hotter than anyone, and as a monk; as I turned to her she gave a yawn, then slipped itched - yet, I could not remove it, for fear of spoiling my quietly from the room in search of other sport. The rest of costume. After Marie Antoinette, more ladies sought me the guests, however, looked just as eager as Dickie could out to tell me how much they admired me; but each proved wish. She stood beside Diana; the book that Evelyn had drunker and more ribald than the last, and I began to find referred to was in Diana's hands - it was small and black then wearisome. I drank glass after glass of spiced wine and and densely printed, with not a single illustration: it was not champagne, in an effort to make myself as careless as they; at all the kind of thing that people usually gave Diana, for but the wine - or, more likely, the hashish I had smoked her box. And yet, she was turning its pages in fascination. seemed to make me cynical rather than gay. When one lady A lady dipped her head to read the title from the spine, then reached to stroke my thigh as she stepped past me, I pushed cried: 'But the book's in Latin! Dickie, whatever is the point her roughly away. 'What a little brute!' she cried, delighted. of a filthy story, if the damn thing's written in Latin?'

In the end I stood half-hidden in the shadows, looking on, Dickie now looked a little prim. 'It is only the title that is rubbing my temples. Mrs Hooper was at the table with the Latin,' she answered; 'and, besides, it is not a filthy book, it hot wine on it, ladling it out; I saw her glance my way, and is a very brave one. It has been written by a man, in an give a kind of smile. Zena had been sent to move amongst attempt to explain our sort so that the ordinary world will the ladies, bearing dainties on a tray; but when she seemed understand us.'

to want to catch my eye, I looked away. Even from her I A lady dressed as Sappho took the cigar from her mouth, felt distant, that night.

and studied Dickie in a kind of disbelief. She said: This So I was almost glad when, at about eleven o'clock, the book is to be passed among the public; and your story is in mood of the party was changed, by Dickie calling for more it? The story of your life, as a lover of women? But Dick, light to be brought, for the lady on the piano to cease her have you gone mad! This man sounds like a pornographer playing, and for all the women present to gather round and of the most mischievous variety!'

pay attention.

'She has taken a nom-de-guerre, of course,' said Evelyn.

'What's this?' cried one lady. 'Why has it grown bright?'

'Even so. Dickie, the folly of it!'

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'You misunderstand,' said Dickie. 'This is a new thing

'It is not true of Indian girls,' said another lady then. 'But it entirely. This book will assist us. It will advertise us.'

is of the Turks. They are bred like it, that they might A kind of collective shudder ran right around the drawingpleasure themselves in the seraglio.'

room. The Sappho with the cigar shook her head. 'I have

'Is that so?' said Maria, stroking her beard.

never heard of such a thing,' she said.

'Yes, it is certainly so.'

'Well,' answered Dickie impressively, 'you will hear more

'But it is true also of our own poor girls!' said someone else. of it, believe me.'

'They are brought up twenty to a bed. The continual fretting

'Let us hear more of it now!' cried Maria; and someone else makes their clitorises grow. I know that for a fact.'

called: 'Yes, Diana, read it to us, do!'

'What rubbish!' said the Sappho with the cigar. And so more candles were brought, and placed at Diana's

'I can assure you it is not rubbish,' answered the first lady shoulder. The ladies settled themselves into comfortable hotly. 'And if we only had a girl from the slums amongst us poses, and the reading began.

now, I would pull her drawers down and show you the I cannot remember the words of it now. I know that, as proof!'

Dickie had promised, they were not at all filthy; indeed, There was laughter at her words, and then the room grew they were rather dry. And yet, her story was lent a kind of rather quiet. I looked at Diana; and as I did so, she slowly lewdness, too, by the very dullness of the prose in which it turned her head to gaze at me. 'I wonder . . .' she said was told. All the time Diana read, the ladies called out thoughtfully, and one or two other ladies began to study ribald comments. When Dickie's history was complete, they me, as she did. My stomach gave a subtle kind of lurch. I read another, which was rather lewder. Then they read a thought, She wouldn't! And as I thought it, a quite different very saucy one from the gentlemen's section. At last the air lady said: 'But Diana, you have just the creature we need!

was thicker and warmer than ever; even I, in my sulkiness, Your maid was a slum-girl, wasn't she? Didn't you have her began to feel myself stirred by the doctor's prim from a prison or a home? You know what the women get descriptions. The book was passed from lady to lady, while up to in prison, don't you? I should think they must frot Diana lit herself another cigarette. Then one lady said, 'You until their parts are the size of mushrooms!'

must ask Bo about that: she was seven years amongst the Diana turned her eyes from me, and drew on her pinkHindoos'; and Diana called, 'What? What must she ask?'

tipped fag; and then she smiled. 'Mrs Hooper!' she called.

'We are reading the story,' cried the woman in reply, 'of a

'Where is Blake?'

lady with a clitoris as big as a little boy's prick! She claims

'She is in the kitchen, ma'am,' answered the housekeeper she caught the malady from an Indian maid. I said, if only from her station at the bowl of wine. 'She is loading her Bo Holliday were here, she might confirm it for us, for she tray.'

was thick with the Hindoos in her years in Hindoostan.'

'Go and fetch her.'

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'Yes ma'am.'

Diana stepped towards her. 'I think you do,' she said. She Mrs Hooper went. The ladies looked at one another, and had picked up the book that Dickie had given her, and now then at Diana. She stood very calm and steady beside the she opened it, and held it oppressively close to Zena's face, bust of cold Antinous; but when she raised her glass to her so that Zena flinched again. 'We have been reading a book lip, I saw that her hand was trembling slightly. I shifted full of stories of girls like you,' she said. 'And now, what from one foot to the other, my briefly flaring lust all faded. are you suggesting? That the doctor who wrote this book - In a moment, Mrs Hooper had returned, with Zena. When this book that Miss Reynolds gave me, for my birthday - is Diana called to her, Zena walked blinkingly into the centre a fool?'

of the room. The ladies parted to let her pass, then stepped

'No, m'm!'

together again at the back of her.

'Well then. The doctor says you have a cock. Come along, Diana said, 'We have been wondering about you, Blake.'

lift your skirts! Good gracious, girl, we only want to look at Zena blinked again. 'Ma'am?'

you-!'

'We have been wondering about your time at the She had put her hand upon Zena's skirt, and I could see the reformatory.' Now Zena coloured. 'We have been other ladies, all gripped, in their turn, by her wildness, wondering how you filled your hours. We thought there making ready to assist her. The sight made me sick. I must be some little occupation, to which you turned your stepped out of the shadows and said, 'Leave her, Diana! For idle fingers, in your solitary cell.'

God's sake, leave her alone!'

Zena hesitated. Then she said, 'Please, m'm, do you mean, The room fell silent at once. Zena gazed at me in fright, and sewing bags?'

Diana turned, and blinked. She said: 'You wish to raise the At that, the ladies gave a roar of laughter, which made Zena skirt yourself?'

flinch, and blush worse than ever, and put a hand to her

'I want you to leave Blake be! Go on, Blake,' I nodded to throat. Diana said, very slowly, 'No, child, I did not mean Zena. 'Go on back to the kitchen.'

sewing bags. I meant, that we thought you must have turned

'You stay where you are!' cried Diana to her. 'And as for frigstress, in your little cell. That you must have frigged you,' she said, fixing me with one narrow, black, glittering yourself until your cunt was sore. That you must have eye, 'do you think you are mistress here, to give orders to frigged yourself so long and so hard, you frigged yourself a my servants? Why, you are a servant! What is it to you, if I cock. We think you must have a cock, Blake, in your ask my girl to bare her backside for me? You have bared drawers. We want you to lift your skirt, and let us see it!'

yours for me, often enough! Get back behind your velvet Now the ladies laughed again. Zena looked at them, and curtain! Perhaps, when we have finished with little Blake, then at Diana. 'Please, m'm,' she said, beginning to shake, 'I we shall all take turns upon Antinous.'

don't know what you mean!'

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Her words seemed to press upon my aching head - and again, but spoke, still, as if to her guests. 'She will go then, as if my head were made of glass, it seemed to shatter. upstairs,' she said levelly, 'until she is sorry. Then she will I put my hand to the garland of wilting flowers at my throat, apologise to the ladies she has upset. And then, I shall think and tore it from me. Then I did the same with the sable wig, of some little punishment for her.' Her gaze flicked over the and flung it to the floor. My hair was oiled flat to my head, remains of my costume. 'Something suitably Roman, my cheeks were flushed with wine and anger -I must have perhaps.'

looked terrible. But I didn't feel terrible: I felt filled with

'Roman?' I answered. 'Well, you should know about that. power and with light. I said, 'You shall not talk to me in How old are you today? You were there, weren't you, at such a way. How dare you talk to me like that!'

Hadrian's palace?'

Beside Diana, Dickie rolled her eyes. 'Really Diana,' she It was a mild enough insult, after all that I had said. But as I said, 'what a bore this is!'

said it, there came a titter from the crowd. It was only a

'What a bore!' I turned to her. 'Look at you, you old cow, small one; but if there was ever anyone who could not bear dressed up in a satin shirt like a boy of seventeen. Dorian to be tittered at, that person was Diana. I think she would Gray? You look more like the bleedin' portrait, after Dorian rather have been shot between the eyes. Now, hearing that has made a few trips down the docks!'

stifled laugh, she grew even paler. She took a step towards Dickie twitched, then grew pale. Several of the ladies me, and raised her hand; she did it so quickly, I had time laughed, and one of them was Maria. 'My dear boy - !' she only to catch the flash of something dark at the end of her

'Don't "dear boy" me, you ugly bitch!' I said to her then. arm - then there came what seemed to be a small explosion

'You're as bad as her, in your Turkish trousers. What are at my cheek.

you, looking for your harem? No wonder they are off She had still held Dickie's book, all this time; and now she fucking each other with their enormous parts, if they have had struck me with it.

you as their master. You have had your fingers all over me, I gave a cry, and staggered. When I put a hand to my face, I for a year and a half; but if a real girl was ever to uncover found blood upon it - from my nose, but also from a gash her tit and put it in your hand, you would have to ring for beneath my eye, where the edge of the leather-bound spine your maid, for her to show you what to do with it!'

had caught it. I reached for a shoulder or an arm, against

'That's enough!' This was Diana. She was gazing at me, which to steady myself; but now all the ladies shrank away white-faced and furious, but still terribly calm. Now she from me, and I almost stumbled. I looked once at Diana. turned and addressed the group of goggling ladies. She She also had reeled, after dealing me the blow; but Evelyn said: 'Nancy thinks it amusing, sometimes, to kick her little was beside her with her arm about her waist. She said heels; and sometimes, of course, it is. But not tonight. nothing to me; and I, at last, was quite incapable of speech. Tonight, I'm afraid, it is only tiresome.' She looked at me I think I coughed, or snorted. There came a splatter of blood

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upon the Turkey rug, that made the ladies draw even further If only Zena had not forgiven me my harshness in the hall from me, and give little moues of surprise and disgust. had not come creeping to my door, to ask me, was I very Then I turned, and staggered from the room.

hurt, and was there anything that she could do, to comfort At the door stood Maria's whippet, Satin, and when he saw me.

me he barked. Maria had set him there, with a dog's head of When I heard her knock, I flinched: I was sure it must be papier mach6 fixed to each side of his collar, to represent Diana, seeking me out to torture me or-perhaps, who the hound that stood on guard at the gate of Hades. knew?-to caress me. When I saw that it was Zena, I stared. The marble floor of the hall, as I have said, we had

'Miss,' she said. She had a candle in her hand, and its flame scattered with roses: it was terribly hard to cross it, in bare dipped and fluttered, sending shadows dancing crazily feet, with my ringing head and my hand at my cheek. about the walls. 'I couldn't go up, knowing you was here all Before I had reached the staircase, I heard a step behind me, bruised and bleeding-and all, oh! all on my account!

and a bang. I turned to see Zena there: Diana had sent her I sighed. 'Come in," I said, 'and close the door.' And when from the room in my wake, then had the door shut on us. she had done that, and stepped nearer to me, I put my head She gazed at me, then came to put a hand upon my arm: in my hands and groaned. 'Oh Zena,' I said, 'what a night!

'Oh, miss . . .'

What a night!'

And I - who had saved her from Diana's wildness only, as it She set down her candle. 'I've got a cloth,' she said, 'with a seemed to me then, to have that wildness turned upon little bit of ice in it. If you'll just - permit me -' I lifted my myself - I shook her from me. 'Don't you touch me!' I cried. head, and she placed the cloth against my cheek, so that I Then I ran from her, to my own room, and closed the door. winced. 'What a corker of an eye you'll have!' she said. And sat there wretched, in the darkness, nursing my oozing Then, in a different tone: 'What a devil that woman is!' She cheek. Below me, after a few more minutes of silence, there began to wipe away the blood that was crusted about my came the sound of the piano; and then came laughter, and nostril - lowering herself upon the bed, at my side, and then shouts. They were carrying on their revelling, without placing her free hand upon my shoulder to brace herself me! I could not credit it. The sport with Zena, the insults, against me, as she did so.

the blow and the bleeding nose - these seemed only to have Gradually, however, I became aware that she was made the marvellous party more gay and marvellous still. trembling. 'It's the cold, miss,' she said. 'Only the cold and, If only Diana had sent her guests home. If only I had placed well, the bit of fright I had downstairs . . .' But as she said my head beneath my pillow, and forgotten them. If only I it, I felt her shudder harder than ever, and she began to had not grown miserable, and peevish, and vengeful, at the weep. 'The truth is,' she said through her tears, 'I could not sound of their fun.

bear the thought of lying up there in my own room, with

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them wicked ladies roaming about the place. I thought, that

'Go on, you shan't be seen. They are all in the drawingthey might come and have another go at me . . .'

room, and you can go by the back stairs. And if anyone

'There now,' I said. I took the cloth from her and placed it does see you, and asks, you can say you are fetching it for on the floor. Then I drew the counterpane from the bed, and me. Which is true.'

set it about her shoulders. 'You shall stay here with me,

'Well

where the ladies cannot get you . . .' I put my arm around

'Go on! Take your candle!' I rose, then took hold of her her, and her head came against my ear. She still wore her hands and pulled her to her feet; and she - infected at last by servant's cap; now I took the pins from it and drew it from my new recklessness - gave another giggle, put her fingers her, and her hair fell to her shoulders. It was scented with to her lips, then tip-toed from the room. While she was burning roses, and with the spice from the wine, Smelling gone I lit a lamp, but kept it turned very low. She had left it, with Zena warm against my shoulder, I began suddenly her cap upon the bed: I picked it up and set it on my own to feel drunker than I had all night. Perhaps it was only that head, and when she returned five minutes later and saw me my head was reeling, from the force of Diana's blow. wearing it she laughed out loud.

I swallowed. Zena put a handkerchief to her nose, and grew She carried a dewy bottle and a glass. 'Did you see any a little stiller. There came, from the floors below, the sound ladies?' I asked her.

of running feet, a furious thundering upon the piano, and a I saw a couple, but they never saw me. They were at the scream of laughter.

scullery door and - oh! they was kissing the guts out of each

'Just listen to them!' I said, growing bitter again. 'Partying other!'

like anything! They have forgotten all about us, sitting I imagined her standing in the shadows, watching them. I miserable up here..."

went to her and took the bottle, then peeled away the lead

'Oh, I hope they have!'

wrapper from its neck. 'You've shaken it up,' I said. 'It'll go

'Of course they have. We might be doing anything, it off with a real bang!' She put her hands over her ears, and wouldn't matter to them! Why, we might be having a party shut her eyes. I felt the cork squirm in the glass for a of our own!' She blew her nose, then giggled. My head gave second; then it leapt from my fingers, and I gave a yell: a sort of tilt. I said: 'Zena! Why shouldn't we have a party,

'Quick! Quick! Bring a glass!' A creamy fountain of foam just the two of us! How many bottles of champagne are had risen from the neck of the bottle, and now drenched my there left, in the kitchen?'

fingers and soaked my legs -I was still, of course, clad in There are loads of 'em.'

the little white toga. Zena seized the glass from the tray and

'Well, then. Just you run down and fetch us one.'

held it, giggling again, beneath the spurting wine. She bit her lip. 'I don't know ..."

We went and sat upon the bed, Zena with the glass in her hands, me sipping from the frothing bottle. When she

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drank, she coughed; but I filled her glass again and said: After that, I pulled the counterpane over us, and we drank

'Drink up! Just like those cows downstairs.' And she drank, more champagne, taking turns to sip from the bottle. I put and drank again, until her cheeks were red. I felt my own my hand upon her. I said: 'Did you used to frig yourself in head grow giddier with every sip I took, and the pulse at my the reformat'ry?' She gave me a slap, saying, 'Oh, you are as swollen face grow thicker. At last I said, 'Oh! How it bad as them downstairs! I nearly died!' She pushed the hurts!', and Zena set down her glass to put her fingers, very blanket back, and squinted at her quim. 'To think of me gently, upon my cheek. When she had held them there for a with a cock! What an idea!'

second or two, I took her hand in my own, and leaned and

'What an idea? Oh, Zena, I should love to see you with one!

kissed her.

I should love -' I sat up. 'Zena, I should love to see you in She didn't draw away until I made to lie upon the bed and Diana's dildo!'

pull her with me. Then she said: 'Oh, we cannot! What if That thing? She's made you filthy! I should die with shame, Mrs Lethaby should come?'

before I ever tried such a thing!' Her lashes fluttered.

'She won't. She is leaving me, as a kind of punishment.' I I said, 'You are blushing! You've fancied it, haven't you? touched her knee, and then her thigh, through the layers of You've fancied a bit of that kind of sport - don't tell me you her skirts.

haven't!'

'We cannot. . .' she said again; but this time, her voice was

'Really, a girl like me!' But she was redder than ever, and fainter. And when I tugged at her frock and said, 'Come on, would not gaze at me. I caught hold of her hand, and pulled take this off - or shall I tear the buttons?' she gave a her up.

drunken sort of laugh: 'You shall do no such thing! Help me

'Come on,' I said. 'You have got me all hot for it. Diana will nicely, now.'

never know.'

Naked she was very thin, and strangely coloured: flaming

'Oh!'

crimson at the cheeks, a coarser red from her elbows to her I pulled her to the door, then peered into the corridor fingertips, and palely white - almost bluish-white - on her outside. The music and laughter from downstairs was torso, upper arms, and thighs. The hair between her legs - fainter, but still loud and rather furious. Zena fell against you can never guess at that kind of thing in advance - was me, and put her arms around my waist; then we staggered quite ginger. When I dipped my lips to it, she gave a squeal: together, quite naked, and with our hands before our faces

'Oh! What a thing to do!' But then, after a moment, she held to stop ourselves from laughing, to Diana's little parlour. my head and pressed it. She didn't seem to be at all sorry Here, it was the work of a moment to open the bureau's about my swollen nose, then. She only said: 'Oh, turn secret drawer, then take the key to the rosewood trunk, and around, turn around quick, that I might do it to you!'

open that. Zena looked on, all the time casting fearful glances towards the door. When she saw the dildo,

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however, she coloured again, but seemed unable to tear her shoulders and gripped them hard. She opened her eyes, saw eyes from it. I felt a drunken surge of power and pride. what I saw, and gave a squeal of fright. Instinctively, she

'Stand up,' I said - I sounded almost like Diana. 'Stand up, tried to rise, forgetful of the shaft which pinned her and fasten the buckles.'

sweating hips to mine. For a moment we floundered When she had done that, I led her to the looking-glass. I together inelegantly; she let out a burst of nervous laughter, winced, to see my face all red and swollen, and still with more jarring than her first thin shriek of fear. crumbs of blood caught in its creases; but the sight of Zena At last she gave a wriggle; there was - monstrously distinct

-gazing at herself with the dildo jutting from her, placing a in the sudden silence, and horribly incriminating - a kind of hand upon the shaft of it, and swallowing, to feel the sucking sound; then she was free. She stood at the side of motion of the leather - proved more distracting than the the bed, the dildo bobbing before her. One of the ladies at bruise. At last I turned her and placed my hands upon her Diana's side said, 'She has a prick, after all!' And Diana shoulders, and nudged the head of the dildo between my answered: 'That prick is mine. These little sluts have stolen thighs. If my quim had had a tongue, it could not have been it!'

more eloquent; and if Zena's quim had had one, it would Her voice was thick - with drunkenness, perhaps; but also, I now have licked its lips.

think, with shock. I looked again at the wide and spilling She gave a cry. We stumbled to the bed and fell, crosswise, box, that she was so vain and jealous of, and felt a worm of upon the satin. My head hung from it - the blood rushed to satisfaction wriggle within me.

my cheek and made it ache - but now Zena had the shaft And I remembered, too, another room, a room I thought inside me and, as she began to wriggle and thrust, I found that I had carefully forgotten - a room where it was I who myself compelled to lift my mouth and kiss her. stood speechless at the door, while my sweetheart shivered As I did so, I heard a noise, quite distinct, above the and blushed beside her lover. And the sight of Diana, in my shuddering of the bed-posts and the pounding of the pulse old place, made me smile.

inside my ears. I let my head fall, and opened my eyes. The It was the smile, I think, which deranged her at last. 'Maria,'

door of the room was open, and it was full of ladies' faces. she said - for Maria was with her, too, along with Dickie And the face, pale with fury, at the centre of them all, was and Evelyn: perhaps they had all come to the bedroom to Diana's.

retrieve a dirty book - 'Maria, get Mrs Hooper. I want For a second I lay quite frozen; I saw what she must see - Nancy's things brought here: she is leaving. And a dress for the open trunk, the tangle of limbs upon the bed, the Blake. They are both going back to the gutter, where I got pumping, leather-strapped arse (for Zena, alas, had her eyes them from.' Her voice was cold; as she took a step towards tight shut, and still thrust and panted even as her outraged me, however, it grew warmer. 'You little slut!' she said. mistress gazed on). Then I placed my hands on Zena's

'You little trollop! You whore, you harlot, you strumpet,

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you bitch!' But they were words that she had used on me a Now Maria returned with Mrs Hooper. Mrs Hooper's eyes thousand times before, in lust or passion; and now, said in were bright. She held my old sailor's bag, that I had brought hate, they were curiously devoid of any sting. from Mrs Milne's and cast into the furthest corner of my Beside me, however, Zena had begun to shake. As she did closet, and a rusty black dress, and a pair of thick-soled so, the dildo bobbed; and when Diana caught the motion boots. While the ladies all looked on, Diana threw the dress she gave a roar: Take that thing from your hips!' At once, and boots at Zena; then she dipped her hand fastidiously Zena fumbled with the straps; her fingers jumped so that into the sailor's bag, and pulled out a crumpled frock, and she could barely grasp the buckles, and I stepped to help some shoes, which she cast at me. The frock was one I had her. All the time we worked, Diana hurled abuses at her - used to wear in my old life, and thought fine enough. Now she was a half-wit, a street-whore, a common little it was cold and slightly clammy to the touch, and its seams frigstress. The ladies at the door looked on, and laughed. were rimmed with moth-dust.

One of them - it might have been Evelyn - nodded to the Zena began at once to pull on the dreary black dress, and trunk, and called: 'Use the strap on her, Diana!' Diana the boots. I, however, kept my own frock in my hands, and curled her lip.

gazed at Diana, and swallowed.

'They will strap her well enough, at the reformatory,' she

'I'm not wearing this,' I said.

said; 'when she returns there.'

'You shall wear it,' she answered shortly, 'or be thrust naked At that, Zena fell to her knees and began to cry. Diana gave into Felicity Place.'

a sneer, and drew her foot away so that the tears should not

'Oh, thrust her naked, Diana!' said a woman at her back. It fall upon her sandal. Dickie - the necktie at her throat was a Lady from Llangollen, minus her topper.

pulled loose, the lilac at her lapel squashed flat, and

'I'm not putting it on,' I said again. Diana nodded. 'Very browning - said: 'Can't we see them fuck again? Diana, well,' she said, 'then I shall make you.' And while I was still make them do it, for our pleasure!'

too amazed to raise a hand in my defence, she had crossed But Diana shook her head; and the gaze that she turned on the room, torn the robe from my fingers, and lowered the me was as cold and as dead as the eye of a lantern, when hem of its skirts over my head. I writhed, then, and began to the flame inside has been quite put out. She said: 'They kick; she pushed me to the bed, held me fast upon it with have fucked their last in my house. They can fuck upon the one hand and, with the other, continued to tug the folds of streets, like dogs.'

cloth about me. I struggled more fiercely; soon there came Another lady, very drunk, said that, in that case, at least the rip of a broken hem.

they should have the thrill of watching us, from a window. Hearing it, Diana gave a shout: 'Help me with her, can't But I looked only at Diana; and, for the first time in all that you? Maria! Mrs Hooper! You girl -' she meant Zena. 'Do terrible evening, I began to feel afraid.

you want to go back to that damn reformatory?'

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Instantly, there came upon me what felt like fifty hands, all cries. We reached the basement, and it grew colder; when pulling at the dress, all pinching me, all grasping at my Diana opened the door that led from the kitchen to the kicking legs. For an age, they seemed to be upon me. I grew garden at the rear of the house, the wind blew hard upon my hot and faint beneath the layers of wool. My swollen head weeping eyes, and made them sting. I said, 'You cannot, was knocked, and began to pulse and ache. Someone placed you cannot!' The cold was sobering me. I had had a vision, her thumb -I remember this very clearly - at the top of my of my chamber, my closet, my dressing-table, my linen; my thigh, in the slippery hollow of my groin. It might have cigarette case, my cuff-links, my walking-cane with the been Maria. It might have been Mrs Hooper, the silver tip; my suit of bone-coloured linen; my shoes, with housekeeper.

the leather so handsome and fine I had once put out my At last I lay panting upon the bed, the dress about me. The tongue and licked it. My watch, with the strap that secured shoes were placed upon my feet, and laced. 'Stand up!' said it to my wrist.

Diana; and when I had done so she caught me by the Diana pushed me forward, and I turned and grabbed her shoulder and propelled me from her bedroom, through the arm. 'Don't cast me from you, Diana!' I said. 'Let me stay!

parlour, and out into the darkened hall beyond. Behind me, I'll be good! Let me stay, and I'll pleasure you!' But as I the ladies followed, Mrs Hooper and Maria with Zena begged, she kept me marching, backwards; until at last we gripped between them. When I hesitated, Diana prodded me reached the high wooden gate, beside the carriage-house, at forwards, so that I almost stumbled and fell.

the far end of the garden. There was a smaller door set into Now, at last, I began to weep. I said, 'Diana, you cannot the gate, and now Diana stepped to pull it open; beyond mean this -!' But her gaze was cold. She seized me, and seemed perfect blackness. She took Zena from Mrs Hooper, pinched me, and made me walk faster. Down we went - all and held her by the neck. 'Show your face in Felicity Place flushed and panting and fantastically costumed as we were again,' she said, 'or remind me of your creeping, miserable down through the centre of that tall house, in a great jagged little existence by any word or deed, and I shall keep my spiral, like a tableau of the damned heading for hell. We promise, and return you to that gaol, and make sure you passed the drawing-room: there were some ladies there still, stay there, till you rot. Do you understand?' Zena nodded. lolling upon the cushions, and when they saw us they She was thrust into the square of darkness, and swallowed called, What were we doing? And a lady in our party by it. Then Diana turned for me.

answered, that Diana had caught her boy and her maid in She said: The same applies to you, you trollop.' She pushed her own bed, and was throwing them out - they must be me to the doorway, but here I held fast to the gate, and sure to come and watch it.

begged her. 'Please, Diana! Let me only collect my things!'

And so, the lower we went, the greater came the press of I looked past her, to Dickie, and Maria: the gazes they ladies at my back, and the louder the laughter and the ribald turned upon me were livid and blurred, with the wine and

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with the chase, and held not one soft spark of sympathy. I PART THREE

looked at all the ogling ladies in their fluttering costumes. Chapter 15

'Help me, can't you?' I cried to them. 'Help me, for God's You might think that, having sunk so low already, I should sake! How many times have you not gazed at me and not have scrupled to have banged upon the door that had wanted me! How many times have you not come to say been closed on me, or even tried to scale the gate, to plead how handsome I am, how much you envy Diana the owning with my old mistress from the top of it. Perhaps I of me. Any one of you might have me now! Any one of considered such things, in the moments that I stood, you! Only, don't let her put me into the street, into the dark, stunned and snivelling, in that dark and lonely alley. But I without a coin on me! Oh! Dam' you all for a set of bitches, had seen the look that Diana had turned on me - a look that if you let her do such a thing, to me!'

was devoid of any fire, kind or lustful. Worse, I had seen So I cried out, weeping all the time I spoke, then turning to the expressions upon the faces of her friends. How could I wipe my running nose on the sleeve of my cheap frock. My go to them, and ever hope to walk before them again, cheek felt twice its ordinary size, and my hair was matted handsome and proud?

where I had lain upon it; and at last, the ladies turned their The thought made me weep still harder; I might have sat eyes from me in a kind of boredom - and I knew myself and wept before that gate, perhaps, till dawn. But after a done for. My hands slid from the gate, Diana pushed me, moment there came a movement at my side, and I looked and I stumbled into the alleyway beyond. Behind me came up to see Zena standing there, with her hands across her my sailor's bag, to land with a smack on the cobbles at my breast, her face very pale. In all my agony, I had forgotten feet.

her. Now I said, 'Oh, Zena! What an end to it all! What are I raised my eyes from it to look once more upon Diana's we to do?'

house. The windows of the drawing-room were rosy with

'What are we to do?' she answered: she sounded not at all light, and ladies were already picking their way across the like her old self. 'What are we to do? I know what I should grass towards them. I caught a glimpse of Mrs Hooper; of do. I should leave you here, and hope that woman comes Dickie, fixing her monocle to her watery eye; of Maria; and back for you, and takes you in and treats you nasty. It's all of Diana. A few strands of her dark hair had come loose you deserve!'

from their pins, and the wind was whipping them about her

'Oh, she won't come back for me - will she?'

cheeks. Her housekeeper said something to her, and she

'No, of course she won't; nor for me, either. See where all laughed. Then she closed the door, and turned the key in it; your soft talk has landed us! Out in the dark, on the coldest and the lights and the laughter of Felicity Place were lost to night in January, with not a hat nor even a pair of drawers; me, for ever.

nor even a handkerchief! I wish I was in gaol. You have

lost me my place, you have lost me my character. You have

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lost me my seven pounds' wages, what I was keeping for She had bent to the bag, and was squinting into it. 'I mean the colonies - oh! What a fool I was, to let you kiss me!

for us to sell them.'

What a fool you was, to think the mistress wouldn't - oh! I

'Sell them?' Sell my guardsman's uniform, and my Oxford could hit you!'

bags? 'I don't know ..."

'Hit me then!' I cried, still snivelling. 'Black my other eye She raised her hands to her mouth, to blow upon her for me, I deserve it!' But she only tossed her head, and fingers. 'You may sell 'em, miss; or you may walk down to wrapped her arms still tighter about her, and turned away. the Edgware Road and stand at a lamp-post till a feller I wiped my eyes upon my sleeve, then, and tried to grow a offers you a coin . . .'

little calmer. It had been only just midnight when I had We sold them. We sold them to an old clothes seller who staggered from the drawing-room still dressed as Antinous; had a stall in a market off Kilburn Road. He was packing up I guessed it was about half-past now - a terrible time, his bags when Zena found him - the market had been because it meant we still had the longest, coldest hours to trading till midnight or so, but when we reached it the pass, before the dawn. I said, as humbly as I could, 'What barrows were mostly empty and the street was filled with am I to do, Zena? What am I to do?'

litter, and they were shutting down the naphtha lamps and She looked over her shoulder at me. 'I suppose, you shall tipping the water from their buckets into the drains. The have to go to your folks. You have folks, don't you? You man saw us coming and said at once: 'You're too late, I ain't have some friends?'

selling.' But when Zena opened the bag and pulled the suits

'I have nobody, now . . .'

from it, he tilted his head and gave a sniff. The soldier's I put a hand to my face again; she turned, and began to duds is hardly worth my keeping on the stall,' he said, chew on her lip. 'If you really have no one,' she said at last, spreading the jacket out across his arm; 'but I will take it,

'then we are both quite alike, for I have no one, neither: my for the sake of the serge, which might do for a fancy family all threw me over, over the business with Agnes and waistcoat. The coat and trousers is handsome enough, the police.' She gazed at my sailor's bag, and nudged it with likewise the shoes. I shall take them from you, for a guinea.'

her boot. 'Don't you have a bit of cash about you anywhere?

'A guinea!' I said.

What's in there?'

'A guinea is as fair a price as you will get, tonight.' He

'All my clothes,' I answered. 'All the boy's clothes I came to sniffed again. 'I daresay they are hot enough.'

Diana's with.'

They ain't hot at all,' said Zena. 'But the guinea will do; and

'Are they good ones?'

if you'll chuck in a couple of ladies' niceties and a pair of

'I used to think so.' I raised my head. 'Do you mean for us to hats with bows on, call it a pound.'

put them on, and pass as gents . . . ?'

The drawers and stockings he gave us were yellowed with age; the hats were terrible; and we were both, of course,

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still in need of stays. But Zena, at least, seemed satisfied We lay together very straight and stiff, our heads upon the with the deal. She pocketed the money, then led me to a same prickling bolster, but hers turned from mine and her baked-potato stall, and we had a potato each, and a cup of eyes shut fast. The coughing of the other lodgers, the tea between us. The potatoes tasted of mud. The tea was soreness at my cheek, my general wretchedness and panic, really tinted water. But at the stall there was a brazier, and kept me wakeful. When Zena gave a shiver, I put my hand this warmed us.

upon her; and when she didn't take the hand away, I moved Zena, as I have said, seemed very changed since our a little closer to her. I said, very low: 'Oh Zena, I cannot expulsion from the house. She did not tremble - it was I sleep, for thinking of it all!'

who trembled now - and she had an air of wisdom and

'I daresay.'

authority about her, a way of passing through the streets, as I trembled. 'Do you hate me, Zena?' She wouldn't answer. 'I if she were quite at her ease upon them. I had been at ease shan't blame you, if you do. But oh! do you know how upon them once; now, I think that, if she had let me hold sorry I am?' A woman in the bed beside us gave a shriek -I her hand, I would have done it - as it was, I could only think she was a drunkard - and that made both of us jump, stumble at her heels, saying wretchedly, 'What shall we do and brought our faces even closer. Her eyes were still hard next, Zena?' and 'Oh, Zena, how cold it is!' and even 'What shut, but I could tell that she listened. I thought of how do you suppose they are doing now, Zena, at Felicity Place? differently we had lain together, only a few hours before. Oh, can you believe that she has really cast me from her!'

My wretchedness since then had knocked the fire right out

'Miss,' she said to me at last, 'don't take it the wrong way; of me; but because it hadn't been said by either of us, and I but if you don't shut up, I really shall be obliged to hit you, thought it ought to be, I whispered now: 'Oh, if only Diana after all.'

hadn't come when she did! It was fun - wasn't it? - before I said: 'I'm sorry, Zena.'

Diana came and stopped it. . .'

In the end she fell into conversation with a gay girl who had She opened her eyes. 'It was fun,' she said sadly. 'It is also come to stand beside the brazier; and from her she got always fun before they catch you.' Then she gazed at me, the details of a lodging-house nearby, that was said to take and swallowed.

people in, all through the night. It turned out to be a I said: 'It won't be so bad, Zena - will it? You're the only dreadful place, with one chamber for the women and torn I know in London, now; and since you're all alone, I another for the men; and everyone who slept there had a thought - we might make a go of it, mightn't we? We might cough. Zena and I lay two in a bed - she keeping her dress find a room, in a rooming-house. You could get work, as a on, for the sake of the warmth, but me still fretting over the sempstress or a char. I shall buy another suit; and when my creases in mine, and so placing it beneath the foot of the face is all healed up - well, I know a trick or two, for mattress in the hope that it would press flat overnight. making money. We shall have your seven pounds back in a

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month. We shall have twenty pounds in no time. And then, cheeks, and to flatten my hair. My face, when I gazed at it you can make your trip out to the colonies; and I' -I gave a in the sliver of mirror that was glued to the wall, looked like gulp - 'I might go with you. You said they always need a face of wax, that had been set too near a spirit-lamp. My landladies there; surely, they'll always need gentlemen's feet, when I stepped on them, seemed to shriek: the shoes tarts, too - even in Australia . . . ?'

were ones I had used to wear as a renter, but either my feet She gazed at me as I murmured, saying nothing. Then she had grown since then, or I had become too used to gentle bent her head and kissed me once, very lightly, upon the leather; I had gained blisters in the walk to the Kilburn lips. Then she turned away again, and at last I slept. Road, and now the blisters began to rub raw and wet, and When I woke, it was daylight. I could hear the sounds of the stockings to fray.

women coughing and spitting, and discussing, in low, We were not allowed to linger past the morning in the peevish voices, the nights that they had passed, and the bedroom of the lodging-house: at eleven o'clock a woman days they must now move on to. I lay with my eyes shut came, and chivvied us out with a broom. I walked a little and my hands before my face: I didn't want to look at them, way with the drunkard. When we parted, at the top of or at any part of the squalid world I was now obliged to Maida Vale, she took out the smallest screw of tobacco, share with them. I thought of Zena, and the plan that I had rolled two thread-like cigarettes, and gave me one. put to her - I thought: It will be hard, it will be terribly hard; Tobacco, she said, was the best cure for a bruise. I sat on a but Zena will keep me from the worst of the hardness. bench, and smoked till my fingers scorched; and then I Without Zena, it would be hard indeed . . .

considered my plight.

Then I took my hands from my face at last, and turned to My situation, after all, was a ridiculously familiar one: I gaze at the bed beside me; and it was empty. Zena was had been as cold and as ill and as wretched as this four gone. The money was gone. She had risen at dawn, with her years before, after my flight from Stamford Hill. Then, servant's habits; and she had left me, slumbering, with however, I had at least had money, and handsome clothes; I nothing.

had had food, and cigarettes - had all I required to keep me, Understanding it at last left me curiously blank: I think, I not happy, but certainly quick. Now, I had nothing. I was was too giddy already to be dazed any further, too wretched nauseous with hunger and with the after-effects of wine; to descend to greater depths. I rose, and drew my frock and to get so much as a penny for a cone of eels, I should from beneath the mattress - it was creased worse than ever - have to beg for it - or do what Zena recommended, and try and buttoned it on. The drunkard in the neighbouring bed my luck as a tart, up against some dripping wall. The idea had spent a ha'penny on a bowl of tepid water, and she let of begging was hateful to me - I could not bear the thought me use it, after she had stood in it and washed herself of trying to extract pity and coins from the kind of down, to wipe the last remaining flakes of blood from my gentlemen who, a fortnight before, had admired the cut of

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my suit or the flash of my cuff-links as I passed amongst when I rang the bell and no one came, I thought: Well, I them at Diana's side. The thought of being fucked by one of will sit upon the step, Mrs Milne is never out for long; and them, as a girl, was even worse.

if I grow numb from the cold, it will serve me right. . . I got up: it was too cold to sit upon the bench all day. I But then I pressed my face to the glass beside the door and remembered what Zena had said the night before - that I peered into the hall beyond, and I saw that the walls - that must go to my folks, that my folks would take me. I had used to have Gracie's pictures on them, the Light of the said that I had no one; but now I thought that there might, World and the Hindoo idol, and the others - I saw that they after all, be one place I could try. I did not think of my real were bare; that there were only marks upon them, where the family, in Whitstable: I had finished with them, it seemed pictures had been fastened. And at that, I trembled. I caught to me then, for ever. I thought instead of a lady who had hold of the doorknocker and banged it, in a kind of panic; been like a mother to me, once; and of her daughter, who and I called into the letter-box: 'Mrs Milne! Mrs Milne!' and had been a kind of sister. I thought of Mrs Milne, and

'Gracie! Grace Milne!' But my voice sounded hollow, and Gracie. I had had no contact with them in a year and a half. the hall stayed dark. Then there came a shout, from the I had promised to visit them, but had never been at liberty tenement behind. 'Are you looking for the old lady and her to do so. I had promised to send them my address: I had daughter? They have gone, dear - gone a month ago!'

never sent them so much as a note to say I missed them, or I turned, and looked up. From a balcony above the street a a card on Grade's birthday. The truth was that, after my first man was calling to me, and nodding to the house. I went few, strange days at Felicity Place, I had not missed them at out, and gazed miserably up at him, and said, Where had all. But now I remembered their kindness, and wanted to they gone to?

weep. Diana and Zena between them had made an outcast He shrugged. 'Gone to her sister's, is what I heard. The lady of me; but Mrs Milne -I was sure of it! - was bound to take was took very bad, in the autumn; and the girl being a me in.

simpleton - you knew that, did you? - they didn't think it And so I walked, from Maida Vale to Green Street - walked clever to leave the pair of them alone. They have took all creepingly, in my misery and my shame and my pinching the furniture; I daresay that the house will come up for sale boots, as if every step were taken barefoot on open swords.

..." He looked at my cheek. 'That's a lovely black eye you The house, when I reached it at last, seemed shabby - but have,' he said, as if I might not have noticed. 'Just like in the then, I knew what it was, to leave a place for something song - ain't it? Except you only have one of 'em!'

grand, and come back to find it humbler than you knew. I stared at him, and shivered while he laughed. A little fairThere was no flower before the door, and no three-legged haired girl had appeared on the balcony beside him, and cat - but then again, it was winter, and the street very cold now gripped the rail and put her feet upon the bars. I said, and bleak. I could think only of my own sorry plight; and

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'Where does the lady live - the sister they've gone to?' and lived here once, with Mrs Milne. I am looking for a girl, he pulled at his ear and looked thoughtful.

who called on you when you moved in. She worked for the

'Now, I did know, but have forgotten it ... I believe it was people that found you your flat.'

Bristol; or it may have been Bath . . .' 'Not London, then?'

He frowned. 'A girl, you say?'

'Oh no, certainly not London. Now, was it Brighton . . . ?' I

'A girl with curly hair. A plain-faced girl called Florence. turned away from him, to gaze back up at Mrs Milne's Don't you know who I mean? Don't you have the name of house - at the window of my old room, and at the balcony the charity she worked for? It was run by a lady — a very where I had liked, in summer-time, to sit. When I looked at clever-looking lady. The lady played the mandolin.'

the man again, he had his little girl in his arms, and the He had continued to frown, and to scratch at his head; but at wind had caught her golden hair and made it flap about his this last detail he brightened. That one,' he said; 'yes, I cheeks: and I remembered them both, then, as the father remember her. And that gal what helped her, that was your and daughter that I had seen clapping their hands to the chum, was it?'

sound of a mandolin, on that balmy June evening, in the I said it was. Then: 'And the charity? Do you remember week I met Diana. They had lost their home and been given them, and where their rooms are?'

a new one. They had been visited by that charity-visitor

'Where their rooms are, let me see ... I did go there wunst; with the romantic-sounding name.

but I don't know as I can quite recall the partic'lar number. I Florence! I did not know that I had remembered her. I had do know as it was a place rather close to the Angel, not thought of her at all, for a year and more. Islington.'

If only I might meet her, now! She found houses for the

'Near Sam Collins's?' I asked.

poor; she might find a house for me. She had been kind to

'Past Sam Collins's, on Upper Street. Not so far as the post me once - wouldn't she be kind, if I appealed to her, a office. A little doorway on the left-hand side, somewhere second time? I thought of her comely face, and her curling between a public-house and a tailor's ..." hair. I had lost Diana, I had lost Zena; and now I had lost This was all he could recall; I thought it might be enough. I Mrs Milne and Grace. In all of London she was the closest thanked him, and he smiled. 'What a lovely black eye,' he thing I had, at that moment, to a friend - and it was a friend said again, but to his daughter this time. 'Just like the song - just then that, above all else, I longed for.

ain't it, Betty?'

On the balcony above me, the man had turned away. Now I By now I felt as if I had been on my feet for a month. I called him back: 'Hey, mister!' I walked closer to the wall suspected that my boots had worn their way right through of the tenement, and gazed up at him: he and his daughter my stockings, and had started on the bare flesh of my toes leaned from the balcony rail - she looked like an angel on and heels and ankles. But I did not stop at another bench, the ceiling of a church. I said, 'You won't know me; but I and untie my laces, in order to find out. The wind had

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picked up a little and, though it was only two o'clock or so, naked stairs. The banister was sticky, but I grasped it, and the sky was grey as lead. I wasn't sure what time the charity began to climb. Before I had reached the third or fourth offices might close; I wasn't sure how long it would take me step, a door at the top of the staircase had opened, a head to find them; I didn't know if Florence would even be there, had emerged in the gap, and a lady's voice called when I did. So I walked rather quickly up Pentonville Hill, pleasantly: 'Hallo down there! It's rather steep, but worth and let my feet be rubbed to puddings, and tried to plan the effort. Do you need a light?'

what I would say to her when I found her. This, however, I answered that I did not, and climbed faster. At the top, a proved difficult. After all, she was a girl I hardly knew; little out of breath, I was led by the lady into a tiny chamber worse - I could not help but recall this, now -I had once that held a desk, and a cabinet, and a set of mismatched arranged to meet her, then let her down. Would she, even, chairs. When she gestured, I sat; she herself perched upon remember me at all? In that gloomy Green Street the edge of the desk, and folded her arms. From a room passageway I had been certain that she would. But with nearby came the fitful crack-crack-crack of a typewriting every burning step, I grew less sure of it.

machine.

It did not, as it turned out, take me very long to find the

'Well,' she said, 'what can we do for you? I say, what an eye right office. The man's memory was a good one, and Upper you have!' I had removed my hat, as if I were a man, and, as Street itself seemed wonderfully unchanged since his last she studied my cheek - and then, more warily, my closevisit there: the public-house and the tailor's were quite as he clipped head -I fiddled with the ribbon on the hatband, had described them, close together on the left-hand side of rather awkwardly. She said, 'Have you an appointment with the street, just past the music hall. In between them were us?' and I answered that I hadn't come about a house, at all. three or four doors, leading to the rooms and offices above; I had come about a girl.

and upon one of these was screwed a little enamel plaque,

'A girl?'

which said: Ponsonby's Model Dwelling Houses. Directress

'A woman, I should say. Her name is Florence, and she Miss J. A. D. Derby - I remembered this very well now as works here, for the charity.'

the name of the lady with the mandolin. Beneath the plaque She gave a frown. 'Florence,' she said; then 'are you sure? was a handwritten, rain-spattered note with an arrow There's really only Miss Derby, myself, and another lady.'

pointing to a bell-pull at the side of the door. Please Ring, it

'Miss Derby,' I said quickly, 'knows who I mean. She said, and Enter. So, with some trepidation, I did both. definitely used to work here; for the last time I saw her she The passageway behind the door was very long and very said - she said -'

gloomy. It led to a window, which looked out at a view of

'She said . . . ?' prompted the lady, more warily than ever bricks and oozing drain-pipes; and from here there was only for my mouth had fallen open, and my hand had flown to one way to proceed, and that was upwards, via a set of

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my swollen cheek; and now I cursed, in a hopeless kind of heard the murmur of voices, the prolonged rustling of miserable fury.

paper, and finally the slam of a cabinet drawer.

'She said that she was leaving this post,' I said, 'and moving The lady reappeared, bearing a white page - a letter, by the to another. What a fool I've been! I had forgotten it till now. look of it - in her hand. 'Success! Thanks to Miss Derby's That means that Florence hasn't worked here for a year and beautiful clerking system we have tracked your Florence - a half, or more!'

or, at least, a Florence - down; she left here just before both The lady nodded. 'Ah, well, you see, that was before my Miss Bennet and I began, in 1892. However' - she grew time. But, as you say, Miss Derby is sure to remember her.'

grave - 'we really do not think that we can give you her own That, at least, was still true. I lifted my head. 'Then, may I address; but she left here to work at a home for friendless see her?'

girls, and we can tell you where that is. It's a place called

'You may - but not today; nor even tomorrow, I'm afraid. Freemantle House, on the Stratford Road.'

She won't be in now until Friday -'

A home for friendless girls! The very idea of it made me

'Friday!' That was terrible. 'But I must see Florence today, I tremble and grow weak. 'That must be her,' I said. 'But really must! Surely you have a list, or a book, or something, Stratford? So far?' I shifted my feet beneath my chair, and that says where she has gone to. Surely somebody here felt the leather slide against my bleeding heels. The boots must know.'

themselves were thick with mud; my skirt had gained a frill The lady seemed surprised. 'Well,' she said slowly, 'perhaps of filth, six inches deep, at the hem. Against the window we do ... But I cannot really give that sort of detail out, you there came the spatter of rain. 'Stratford,' I said again, so know, to strangers.' She thought for a moment. 'Could you miserably that the woman drew near and put her hand upon not write her a letter, and let us forward it . . . ?' I shook my my arm.

head, and felt my eyes begin to prick. She must have seen,

'Have you not the fare?' she asked gently. I shook my head. and misunderstood, for she said then, rather gently: 'Ah -

'I have lost all my money. I have lost everything!' I placed a perhaps you're not very handy with a pen . . . ?'

hand over my eyes, and leaned in utter weariness against I would have admitted to anything, for the sake of a kind the desk. As I did so, I saw what lay upon it. It was the word. I shook my head again: 'Not very, no.'

letter. The lady had placed it there, face upwards, knowing - She was silent for a moment. Perhaps she thought, that thinking -that I could not read it. It was very brief; it was there could be nothing very sinister about my quest, if I signed by Florence herself-Florence Banner, I now saw her could not even read or write. At any rate, she rose at last full name to be - and was addressed to Miss Derby. Please and said, 'Wait here.' Then she left the room and entered accept notice of my resignation ... it ran. I didn't read that another, across the hall. The sound of the typewriter grew part. For at the top right-hand corner of the page there was a louder for a second, then ceased altogether; in its place I date, and an address - not that of Freemantle House but,

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clearly, the home address that I was not allowed to know. A Having no intention at all, now, of travelling to Stratford, I number, followed by the name of a street: Quilter Street, did not, as the lady recommended, catch a bus. I did, Bethnal Green, London E. I memorised it at once. however, buy myself a cup of tea, from a stall with an Meanwhile, the woman talked kindly on. I had scarcely awning to it, on the High Street. And when I gave back my heard her, but now I raised my head and saw what she was cup to the girl, I nodded. 'Which way,' I asked, 'to Bethnal about. She had taken a little key from her pocket and Green?'

unlocked one of the drawers in the desk. She was saying,'. . I had never been much further east before - alone, and on

. not something we make a habit of doing, at all; but I can foot - than Clerkenwell. Now, limping down the City Road see that you are very weary. If you take a bus from here to towards Old Street, I felt the beginnings of a new kind of Aldgate, you can pick up another there, I believe, that will nervousness. It had grown darker during my time in the take you along the Mile End Road, to Stratford.' She held office, and wet and foggy. The street-lamps had all been lit, out her hand. There were three pennies in it. 'And perhaps and every carriage had a lantern swinging from it; City you might get yourself a cup of tea, along the way?'

Road was not, however, like Soho, where light streamed I took the coins, and mumbled some word of thanks. As I upon the pavements from a thousand flares and windows. did so a bell rang, close at hand, and we both gave a start. For every ten paces of my journey that were illuminated by She glanced at a clock upon the wall. 'My last clients of the a pool of gas-light, there were a further twenty that were day,' she said.

cast in gloom.

I took the hint, and rose and put on my hat. There were The gloom lifted a little at Old Street itself, for here there footsteps in the passageway below, now, and the sound of were offices, and crowded bus stops and shops. As I walked stumbling on the stairs. She ushered me to the door, and towards the Hackney Road, however, it seemed only to called to her visitors: 'Come up, that's right. It's rather steep, deepen, and my surroundings to grow shabbier. The I know, but worth the effort. . .' A young man, followed by crossings at the Angel had been decent enough; here the a woman, emerged from the gloom. They were both rather roads were so clogged with manure that, every time a swarthy -Italians, I guessed, or Greeks - and looked terribly vehicle rumbled by, I was showered with filth. My fellow pinched and poor. We all shuffled around in the doorway of pedestrians, too - who, so far, had all been honest workingthe office for a moment, smiling and awkward; then at last people, men and women in coats and hats as faded as my the lady and the young couple were inside the room, and I own - grew poorer. Their suits were not just dingy, but was alone at the head of the staircase.

ragged. They had boots, but no stockings. The men wore The lady raised her head, and caught my eye.

scarves instead of collars, and caps rather than bowlers; the

'Good luck!' she called, a little distractedly. 'I do so hope women wore shawls; the girls wore dirty aprons, or no you find your friend.'

apron at all. Everyone seemed to have some kind of burden

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- a basket, or a bundle, or a child upon their hip. The rain either, for the glass in some of the street-lamps was fell harder.

cracked, or missing entirely, and the pavement was I had been told by the tea-girl at the Angel to head for blocked, here and there, by piles of broken furniture, and by Columbia Market; now, a little way along the Hackney heaps of what the novels politely term ashes. I looked at the Road, I found myself suddenly on the edge of its great, number of the nearest door: number 1. I started slowly shadowy courtyard. I shivered. The huge granite hall, its down the street. Number 5 ... number 9 ... number 11 ... I towers and tracery as elaborate as those on a gothic felt weaker than ever ... 15 ...

cathedral, was quite dark and still. A few rough-looking 17 ... 19 ...

fellows with cigarettes and bottles slouched in its arches, Here I stopped, for now I could see the house I sought quite blowing on their hands to keep the cold off.

clearly. Its drapes were drawn against the dark, and A sudden clamour in the clock tower made me start. Some luminous with lamplight; and seeing them, I felt suddenly complicated pealing of bells - as fussy and useless as the quite sick with apprehension. I placed a hand against the great abandoned market hall itself - was chiming out the wall, and tried to steady myself; a boy walked by me, hour: it was a quarter-past four. This was far too early to whistling, and gave me a wink -I suppose he thought I had visit Florence's house, if Florence herself was at work all been drinking. When he had passed I looked about me at day: so I stood for another hour in one of the arches of the the unfamiliar houses in a kind of panic: I could remember market where the wind was not so cutting and the rain was the sense of purpose that had visited me in Green Street, but not so hard. Only when the bells had rung half-past five did it seemed a piece of wildness, now, a piece of comedy - I I step again into the courtyard, and look about me: I was would tell it to Florence, and she would laugh in my face. now almost numb. There was a little girl nearby, carrying a But I had come so far; and there was nowhere to turn back great tray about her neck, filled with bundles of to. So I crept to the rosy window, and then to the door; and watercresses. I went up to her, and asked how far it was to then I knocked, and waited. I seemed to have presented Quilter Street; and then, because she looked so sad and cold myself at a thousand thresholds that day, and been cruelly and damp - and also because I had a confused idea that I disappointed or repulsed, at all of them. If there was no must not turn up on Florence's doorstep entirely emptyword of kindness for me here, I thought, I would die. handed -I bought the biggest of her cress bouquets. It cost a At last there came a murmur and a step, and the door was ha'penny.

opened; and it was Florence herself who stood there –

With this cradled awkwardly in the crook of my stiff arm I looking remarkably as she had when I had seen her first, began the short walk to the street I wanted; soon I found peering into the darkness, framed against the light and with myself at the end of a wide terrace of low, flat houses - not the same glorious halo of burning hair. I gave a sigh that a squalid terrace, by any means, but not a very smart one was also a shudder - then I saw a movement at her hip, and

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saw what she carried there. It was a baby. I looked from the

'But who might she be?' I heard the man say.

baby to the room behind, and here there was another figure:

'I don't know.' This was Florence. There was a creak, a man, seated in his shirt-sleeves before a blazing fire, his followed by a silence, in which I felt her squinting at my eyes raised from the paper at his knee to gaze at me in mild features. 'And yet,' she went on, 'there is something a little enquiry.

bit familiar about her face ..."

I looked from him back to Florence.

'Look at her cheek,' said the man in a lower voice. 'Look at

'Yes?' she said. I saw that she didn't remember me at all. her poor dress and bonnet. Look at her hair! Do you think She didn't remember me and - worse - she had a husband, she might've been in prison? Could she be one of your gals, and a child.

just come from a reformat'ry?' There was another pause; I did not think that I could bear it. My head whirled, I perhaps Florence shrugged. 'I do think she must've been in closed my eyes - and sank upon her doorstep in a swoon. prison, though,' the man went on, 'judging by the state of

her poor hair ..." I felt slightly indignant at that; and Chapter 16

indignation made me twitch. 'Look out!' said the man then. When next I knew myself I was lying flat upon a rug with

'She is waking up.'

my feet apparently raised on a little cushion; there was the I opened my eyes again to see him stooping over me. He warmth and the crackling of a fire at my side, and the low was a very gentle-featured man, with short-cut hair of a murmur of voices somewhere near. I opened my eyes: the reddish-golden hue, and a full set of whiskers that made room turned horribly and the rug seemed to dip, so I closed him look a little like the sailor on the Players' packets. The them again at once, and kept them tight shut until the floor, thought made me long all at once for a cigarette, and I gave like a spinning coin, seemed slowly to cease its lurching a dry little cough. The man squatted, and patted my and grow still.

shoulder. 'Ho there, miss,' he said. 'Are you well, dear? Are After that it was rather wonderful simply to lie in the glow you well at last? You are quite, you know, amongst friends.'

of the fire, feeling the life creep back into my numbed and His voice and manner were so very kind that - still weak aching limbs; I forced myself, however, to consider my and slightly bewildered from my swoon -I felt the tears peculiar situation, and pay a little thoughtful heed to my rising to my eyes, and raised a hand to my brow to press surroundings. I was, I realised, in Florence's parlour: she them back. When I took the hand away, there seemed blood and her husband must have lifted me over their threshold upon it; I gave a cry, thinking I had set my nose off and made me comfortable before their hearth. It was their bleeding once again. But it was not blood. It was only that murmurs that I could hear: they stood a little way behind the rain had soaked into my cheap hat, and the dye had run me -they had evidently not caught the flash of my opening all down my brows in great wet streaks of crimson. eyes -and discussed me, in rather wondering tones.

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What a guy Diana had made of me! The thought made me our heads and gazed at them. They had been placed on a weep at last in earnest, in terrible, shaming gulps. At that, table near the door and looked very sad, for I had fallen the man produced a handkerchief, and patted me once again upon them when I swooned. The leaves were crushed and upon the arm. 'I expect,' he said, 'that you would like a cup blackened, the stems broken, the paper damp and green. of something hot?' I nodded, and he rose and moved away. Florence said, 'That was kind of you.' I smiled a little In his place came Florence. She must have put her baby nervously. For a second there was a silence - then the baby down somewhere, for now she had her arms folded stiffly gave a kick and a yell, and she bent to pick it up and hold it across her chest.

against her breast, saying as she did so: 'Shall Mama take She asked me: 'Are you feeling better?' Her voice was not you? There, now.' Then the man reappeared, bearing a cup quite as kind as the man's had been, and her gaze seemed of tea and a plate of bread and butter which he set, with a rather sterner. I nodded to her, then with her help raised smile, on the arm of my chair. Florence placed her chin myself from the floor into an armchair near the fire. The upon the baby's head. 'Ralph,' she said, 'this lady is a friend baby, I saw, was lying on its back on another, clasping and of Miss Derby's - do you remember, Miss Derby that I used unclasping its little hands. From a room next door - the to work for?'

kitchen, I guessed - came the chink of crockery and a

'Good heavens,' said the man - Ralph. He was still in his tuneless whistle. I blew my nose, and wiped my head; then shirt-sleeves; now he picked up his jacket from the back of wept some more; then grew a little calmer.

a chair and put it on. I busied myself with my cup and plate. I looked again at Florence and said, 'I am sorry, to have The tea was very hot and sweet: the best tea, I thought, that turned up here in such a state.' She said nothing. 'You will I had ever tasted. The baby gave another cry, and Florence be wondering, I suppose, who I am ..." She gave a faint began to sway and jiggle, and to smooth the child's head, smile. 'We have been a little, yes.'

distractedly, with her cheek. Soon the cry became a gurgle,

'I'm,' I began - then stopped, and coughed, to mask my and then a sigh; and hearing it, I sighed too - but turned it hesitation. What could I say to her? I'm the girl who flirted into a breath for cooling my tea with, in case they thought I with you once eighteen months ago? I'm the girl who asked was about to start up weeping again.

you to supper, then left you standing, without a word, on There was another silence; then, 'I'm afraid I've forgotten Judd Street? 'I'm a friend of Miss Derby's,' I said at last. your name,' said Florence. To Ralph she explained: 'It Florence blinked. 'Miss Derby?' she said. 'Miss Derby, from seems we met once.'

the Ponsonby Trust?'

I cleared my throat. 'Miss Astley,' I said. 'Miss Nancy I nodded. 'Yes. I - I met you once, a long time ago. I was Astley.' Florence nodded; Ralph held out his hand for mine, passing through Bethnal Green, on a visit, and thought I and shook it warmly.

might call. I brought you some watercresses ..." We turned

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'I'm very glad to meet you, Miss Astley,' he said. Then he discussed this for a moment, then admired the baby for a gestured to my cheek. 'That's a smart eye you have.'

little longer; then grew silent again.

I said, 'It is, rather, ain't it?'

'So,' said Ralph doggedly, 'you are a friend of Miss He looked kind. 'Perhaps it was the blow, as made you Derby's?' I looked quickly at Florence. She had faint. You gave us quite a scare.'

recommenced her jiggling, but was still rather thoughtful. I Tm sorry. I think you're right, it must have been the blow. I said, 'That's right.' 'And how is Miss Derby?' said Ralph

- I was struck by a man with a ladder, in the street.'

then. 'Oh, well, you know Miss Derby!' 'Just the same, then,

'A ladder!'

is she?' 'Exactly the same,' I said. 'Exactly.' 'Still with the

'Yes, he - he turned too sharp, not seeing me and -'

Ponsonby, then?'

'Well!' said Ralph. 'Now, you'd never believe such a thing

'Still with the Ponsonby. Still doing her good works. Still, could happen, would you, outside of a comedy in the you know, playing her mandolin.' I raised my hands, and theatre!'

gave a few half-hearted imaginary strums; but as I did so I gave him a wan sort of smile, then lowered my eyes and Florence ceased her swaying, and I felt her glance grow started on the bread and butter. Florence was studying me, I hard. I looked hurriedly back to Ralph. He had smiled at my thought, rather carefully.

words.

Then the baby sneezed and, as Florence took a

'Miss Derby's mandolin,' he said, as if the memory amused handkerchief to its nose, I said half-heartedly: 'What a him. 'How many homeless families must she not've cheered handsome child!' At once, his parents turned their eyes with it!' He winked. 'I had forgotten all about it. . .'

upon him and gave identical, foolish smiles of pleasure and

'So had I.' This was Florence, and she did not sound at all concern. Florence lifted him a little way away from her, the ironical. I chewed very hard and fast on a piece of crust. lamplight fell upon him; and I saw with surprise that he Ralph smiled again, then said, very kindly: 'And where was really was a pretty boy - not at all like his mother, but with it you met Flo?'

fine features and very dark hair and a tiny, jutting pink lip. I swallowed. 'Well -' I began.

Ralph leaned to stroke his son's jerking head. 'He is a

'I believe,' said Florence herself, 'I believe it was in Green beauty,' he said; 'but he is dozier, tonight, than he should Street, wasn't it, Miss Astley? In Green Street, just off the be. We leave him in the daytime with a gal across the street, Gray's Inn Road?' I put down my plate, and raised my eyes and we are sure that she puts laud'num in his milk, to stop to hers. I knew one second's pleasure, to find that she had his cries. Not,' he added quickly, 'as I am blaming her. She not after all quite forgotten the girl who had studied her, so must take in that many kids, to bring the money in, the saucily, on that warm June night so long ago; then I saw noise when they all start up is deafening. Still, I wish she how hard her expression was, and I trembled.

wouldn't. I hardly think it can be very healthful..." We

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'Oh dear,' I said, closing my eyes and putting a hand to my

'You are certainly very changed,' she said after a moment, brow. 'I think I am not quite well after all.' I felt Ralph take

'since I saw you last.' I looked down at my crumpled frock, a step towards me, then grow still: Florence must have my terrible boots. Then I looked at her. She, I now saw, stopped him with some significant look.

was also changed. She seemed older and thinner, and the

'I think Cyril might go up, now, Ralph,' she said quietly. thinness didn't suit her. Her hair, which I remembered as so There was the sound of the baby being passed over, then of curly, she had pulled back into a tight little knot at the back a door opening and shutting, and finally of boots upon a of her head, and the dress she was wearing was plain and staircase, and the creaking of floorboards in the room above very dark. All in all, she looked as sober as Mrs Hooper, our heads. Then there was silence; Florence lowered herself back at Felicity Place.

into the other armchair, and sighed.

I took a breath to steady my voice. 'What can I do?' I said

'Would it really make you very ill, Miss Astley,' she said in simply. 'I've nowhere to go. I've no money, no home . . .'

a tired voice, 'to tell me just why it is you're here?' I looked

'I am sorry for you, Miss Astley,' she answered awkwardly. at her, but couldn't speak. 'I can't believe Miss Derby really

'But Bethnal Green is busting with badly-off girls. If I was recommended you to come.'

to let them all come and stay, I should have to live in a

'No,' I said. 'I only saw Miss Derby that once, in Green castle! Besides, I -I don't know you, or anything about you.'

Street.'

'Please,' I said. 'Just for one night. If you only knew how

'Then who was it told you where I live?'

many doors I have been turned away from. I really think

'Another lady at the Ponsonby office,' I said. 'At least, she that, if you send me out into the street, I shall keep walking didn't tell me, but she had your address on her desk and I until I reach a river or a canal; and then I shall drown saw it.'

myself.'

'You saw it.'

She frowned, then put a finger to her lips and bit at a nail;

'Yes.'

all her nails, I now noticed, were very short and chewed.

'And thought you would visit..."

'What kind of trouble are you in, exactly?' she said at last. I bit my lip. 'I'm in a spot of trouble,' I said. 'I remembered

'Mr Banner thought you might have come from - well, from you -' Remembered you, I almost added, as rather kinder gaol.'

than you are proving yourself to be. 'The lady at the office I shook my head, and then said wearily: 'The truth is, I've said you work at a home for friendless girls ..." been living with someone; and they have thrown me out.

'And so I do! But this ain't it. This is my home.'

They have kept my things - oh! I had such handsome

'But I am quite, quite friendless.' My voice shook. 'I am things! - and they have left me so miserable and poor and more friendless than you can possibly know.'

bewildered ..." My voice grew thick. Florence watched me

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in silence for a moment. Then she said, rather carefully I She shook her head at that; then grew thoughtful again, and thought, 'And this person was .. . ?'

glanced quickly at my waist. 'You ain't - you ain't in But that made me hesitate. If I told her the truth, what trouble, are you?' she asked quietly.

would she make of it? I had thought her almost tommish,

'In trouble? I -' I couldn't help it: it was as if she was once; but now — well, maybe she had only ever been an handing me the play text, for me to read it back to her. 'I ordinary girl, asking me to a lecture for friendship's sake. was in trouble,' I said, with my eyes on my lap, 'but the gent Or perhaps she had liked girls once, then turned her back on fixed that when he beat me. It was on account of it, I think, them - like Kitty! That thought made me cautious: if a torn that I was so poorly, earlier on ..."

with a bruise turned up at Kitty's door, I knew very well At that, there came a very queer and kind expression to her what a welcome she would get. I put my head in my hands. face; and she nodded, and swallowed - and I saw I had

'It was a gent,' I said quietly, 'I've been living in the house convinced her.

of a gent, in St John's Wood, for a year and a half. I let him

'If you truly have nowhere, it will not hurt, I suppose, for make me a' -I remembered a phrase of Mrs Milne's - 'a pack you to stay a night - just one night - here with us. And of promises. He bought me all manner of stuff. And now . . tomorrow I shall give you the names of some places where

.' I raised my eyes to hers. 'You must think me very wicked. you might find a bed . ..'

He said he would marry me!'

'Oh!' I felt ready to swoon all over again, in sheer relief. She look terribly surprised; but she had also begun to look

'And Mr Banner,' I said, 'won't mind it?'

sorry, too. 'It was this bloke blacked your eye for you, I Mr Banner, it turned out, had no objection to my staying suppose,' she said, 'and not a ladder, at all.'

there at all; indeed, as before, he proved pleasanter than his I nodded, and raised a hand to the bruise at my cheek; then wife, and willing to go to all sorts of trouble for the sake of I put my fingers to my hair, remembering that. 'What a my comfort. When they ate - for I had interrupted them as devil he was!' I said then. 'He was rich as anything, could they were about to take their tea - it was he who set a plate do what he pleased. He saw me on my balcony, just as you before me and filled it with stew. He brought me a shawl did, in a pair of trousers. He -' I blushed. 'He used to like to when I shivered; and, when he saw me limping into the make me dress up, as a boy, hi a suit like a sailor ..." room after a visit to the privy, he made me pull off my

'Oh!' she cried, as if she had never heard anything more boots, and fetched a bowl of salty water for me to soak my awful. 'But the wealthy ones are the worst, I swear it! Have blistered feet in. Finally - and most wonderfully of all - he you no family to go to?"

took down a tin of tobacco from the shelf of a bookcase,

'They - they've all thrown me over, because of this rolled two neat cigarettes, and offered me one to smoke. business.'

Florence, meanwhile, sat all night a little apart from us, at the supper-table, working through a pile of papers - lists, I

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fondly supposed them to be, of friendless girls; accountThere was an awkward silence. She looked so tired and sheets, perhaps, from Freemantle House. When we lit our ordinary I had a foolish urge to kiss her cheek good-night, cigarettes she looked up and sniffed, but made no as Ralph had. Of course, I did not; I only took a step complaint; occasionally she would sigh or yawn, or rub her towards her as she nodded to me and prepared to make her neck as if it ached, and then her husband would address her way upstairs, and said, 'I am more grateful to you, Mrs with some word of encouragement or affection. Once the Banner, than I can say. You have been very kind to me - baby cried: she tilted her head, but didn't stir; it was Ralph you, who hardly know me; and more especially your who, all ungrudgingly, rose to see to it. She simple worked husband, who doesn't know me at all.'

on: writing, reading, comparing pages, addressing As I spoke she turned to me, and blinked. Then she placed envelopes . . . She worked while Ralph yawned, and finally her hand on a chair-back, and smiled a curious smile. 'Did stood and stretched and touched his lips to her cheek and you think he was my husband?' she said. I hesitated, bade us both a polite good-night; she worked while I suddenly flustered.

yawned, and began to doze. At last, at around eleven

'Well, I -'

o'clock, she shuffled her papers together and passed her

'He ain't my husband! He's my brother.' Her brother! She hand over her face. When she saw me she gave a start: I continued to smile at my confusion, and then to laugh: for a really believe that, in her industry, she had forgotten me. moment she was the pert girl I had spoken with in Green Now, remembering, she first blushed, then frowned. 'I had Street, all those months before . . .

better go up, Miss Astley,' she said. 'You won't mind But then the baby, in the room above us, gave a cry, and we sleeping in here, I hope? I'm afraid there's nowhere else for both raised our eyes to the sound, and I felt myself blush. you.' I smiled. I did not mind - though I thought there must And when she saw that, her smile faded. 'Cyril ain't mine,'

be an empty room upstairs, and wondered, privately, why she said quickly, 'though I call him mine. His mother used she did not put me in it. She helped me push the two to lodge with us, and we took him on when she — left us. armchairs together, then went to fetch a pillow, a blanket He is very dear to us, now . . .'

and a sheet.

The awkward way she said it showed there was some story

'Do you have everything you need?' she asked then. 'The there - perhaps the mother was in prison; perhaps the baby privy is out the back, as you know. There's a jug of clean was really a cousin's, or a sister's, or a sweetheart's of water kept in the pantry, if you're thirsty. Ralph will be up Ralph's. Such things happened often enough in Whitstable at six or so, and I shall follow him at seven - or earlier, if families: I didn't think much of it. I only nodded; and then I Cyril wakes me. You'll have to leave at eight, of course, yawned. And seeing me, she yawned too.

when I do.' I nodded quickly. I wouldn't think about the morning, just yet.

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'Good-night, Miss Astley,' she said from behind her hand. return -with Cyril, I supposed - to bed. And after that he She did not look like the Green Street girl now. She looked didn't stir again, and neither did I.

only weary again, and plainer than ever.

When I woke next morning it was at the slam of the back I waited a moment while she stepped upstairs -I heard her door: this was Ralph, I guessed, leaving for work, for the shuffling above me, and guessed of course that she must clock showed ten to seven. There was movement overhead share her chamber with the baby - then I took up a lamp, soon after that, as Florence rose and dressed, and much and made my way out to the privy. The yard was very activity in the street outside - amazingly close, it all small, and overlooked on every side by walls and darkened sounded to me, who was used to slumbering undisturbed by windows; I lingered for a second on the chilly flags, gazing early risers in Diana's quiet villa.

at the stars, sniffing at the unfamiliar, faintly riverish, I lay quite still, the contentment of the night all seeping faintly cabbagey, scents of East London. A rustling from from me. I didn't want to rise and face the day, to pull my the neighbouring yard disturbed me and I started, fearing pinching boots back on, bid Florence good-bye, and be a rats. It was not rats, however, but rabbits: four of them, in a friendless girl again. The parlour had grown very cold hutch, their eyes flashing like jewels in the light I turned on overnight, and my little makeshift bed seemed the only them.

warm place in it. I pulled the blankets over my head, and I slept in my petticoats, half-lying, half-sitting between the groaned; groaning, I found, was rather satisfying, so I two armchairs, with the blankets wrapped around me and groaned still louder ... I stopped only when I heard the click my dress laid flat upon them for extra warmth. It does not of the parlour door - then lifted the blankets from my face sound very comfortable; it was, in fact, extraordinarily to see Florence squinting at me, gravely, through the cosy, and for all that I had so much to keep me ill and gloom.

fretful, I found I could only yawn and smile to feel the

'You're not ill again?' she said. I shook my head. cushions so soft beneath my back, and the dying fire warm

'No. I was only - groaning.'

beside me. I was woken, in the night, twice: the first time

'Oh.' She looked away. 'Ralph has left some tea. Shall I by the sound of shouting in the street, and the slam of doors fetch you some?'

and the rattle of the poker in the grate, in the house next

'Yes, please.'

door; and the second time by the crying of the baby, in

'And then - then you must get up, I'm afraid.'

Florence's room. This sound, in the darkness, made me

'Of course,' I said. 'I shall get up now.' But when she had shiver, for it recalled to me all the awful nights that I had gone I found I could not get up, at all. I could only lie. I spent at Mrs Best's, in that grey chamber overlooking needed to visit the privy again, rather badly; I knew that it Smithfield Market. It did not, however, last for very long. I was dreadfully rude to lie abed like this, in a stranger's heard Florence rise and step across the floor, and then parlour. Yet I felt as if I had been visited in the night by a

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surgeon, who had taken all my bones away and replaced from the back of the door, and pulled it on. Then she took them with bars of lead. I could no nothing at all - except lie up her satchel, reached into it, and brought out a piece of

...

paper and a coin. 'I've made you a list,' she said, 'of hostels Florence brought me my tea, and I drank it - then lay back and houses you might try to find a bed in. The money' - it again. I heard her moving about in the kitchen, washing the was a half-crown - 'is from my brother. He asked me to tell baby; then she returned and pulled the curtains open, you good-bye and good luck.'

meaningfully.

'He's a very kind man,' I said.

'It's a quarter to eight, Miss Astley,' she said. 'I have to take She shrugged, then buttoned up her coat, put her hat upon Cyril across the street. You will be up and dressed, now, her head, and thrust a pin through it. The coat and the hat won't you, when I come back? You really will?'

were the colour of mud. She said, There's a piece of bacon

'Oh, certainly,' I said; yet when she reappeared, five still warm in the kitchen, which you may as well have for minutes later, I had not budged an inch. She gazed at me, your breakfast. Then - oh! then you really must go.'

and shook her head. I gazed back at her.

'I promise I will!'

'You know, don't you, that you cannot stay here. I must go She nodded, and pulled at the door. There came a blast of to work, and I must go now. If you keep me any longer, I icy air from the street outside that made me shiver. Florence shall be late.' With that, she caught hold of the bottom of shivered, too. The wind blew the brim of her hat away from the blanket. But I caught hold of the top.

her brow, and she narrowed her hazel eyes against it, and

'I can't do it,' I said. 'I must be sick, after all.'

tightened her jaw.

'If you're sick, you must go to a place where they will care

for you properly!'

I said, 'Miss Banner! I - might I come back, sometime, on a

'I'm not that sick!' I cried then. 'But if I might only lie a visit? I should like - I should like to see your brother, and little and get my strength ... Go on to work, and I'll let thank him ...' I should like to see her, was what I meant. I myself out, and be long gone by the time you get home. had come to make a friend of her. But I didn't know how to You may trust me in your house, you know. I shan't take say it.

anything.'

She put a hand to her collar, and blinked into the wind.

'There's little enough to take!' she cried. Then she threw her

'You must do as you like,' she said. Then she pulled the end of the blanket at me, and put a hand to her brow. 'Oh,'

door shut, leaving the parlour chill behind her, and I saw she said, 'how my head aches!' I looked at her, saying her shadow on the lace at the window as she walked away. nothing. At last she seemed to force herself into a kind of After she had gone my leaden limbs seemed all at once, and calmness, and her voice grew stiff: 'You must do as you quite miraculously, to lighten. I rose, and braved again the said, I suppose, and let yourself out.' She caught up her coat chilly privy; then I found the slice of bacon that had been

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put aside for me, and took a piece of bread and a bunch of suffering some disease of the eyes, might weave to while cress, and ate my breakfast standing at the kitchen window, away the endless gloomy hours of a Hebridean winter. The gazing sightlessly at the unfamiliar view beyond it. mantelpiece was draped with a fluttering shawl, just as my After that I rubbed my hands, and glanced about me, and mother's had been, and upon it were the kind of ornaments I began to wonder what to do.

had seen, as a child, in all my friends' and cousins' homes: a The kitchen, at least, was warm, for someone - Ralph, dusty china shepherdess, her crook broken and inexpertly presumably - had lit a small fire in the range, early on, and mended; a piece of coral, beneath a dome of soot-spotted the coals were only half consumed. It did seem a shame to glass; a glittering carriage-clock. Besides these, however, waste their lovely heat - and it could not hurt, I told myself, there were other less predictable items on display: a creased to boil up some water for a bit of a wash. I opened a postcard, with a picture of working-men on it and the words cupboard door, looking for a pan to set upon the hob, and Dockers' Tanner or Dockers' Strike!; an oriental idol, rather came across a flat-iron; and seeing this I thought: They tarnished; a colour print of a man and woman in workingwouldn't mind, surely, if I warmed that, too, and gave my gear, their right hands clasped, their left hands supporting a battered frock a little press ...

billowing banner: Strength Through Unity!

While I waited for these things to heat I wandered back into These things did not much interest me. I looked next at the the parlour, to separate the armchairs that had made my alcove beside the chimney-breast, where there was a set of bed, and set the blankets in a tidy pile. This done, I did home-made shelves, fairly bursting with books and what I had been at first too bewildered, and then too sleepy, magazines. This collection was also very mixed, and very to do the night before: I stood and had a proper look dusty. There was a good supply of shilling classics - around.

Longfellow, Dickens, that sort of thing - and one or two The room, as I have said, was a very small one - far cheap novels; but there were also a number of political smaller, certainly, than my old bedroom at Felicity Place - texts, and two or three volumes of what might be called and there were no gas-jets in it, only oil-lamps and interesting verse. At least one of these -Walt Whitman's candlesticks. The furniture and decorations were, I thought, Leaves of Grass -I had seen before on Diana's bookshelves a rather curious mixture. The walls were bare of paper, like at Felicity Place. I had tried to read it once in an idle Diana's, but had been stained a patchy blue, like a moment: I had thought it terribly dull.

workshop's; for decoration they had only a couple of These shelves and their contents claimed my attention for a almanacks - this year's and last year's - and two or three minute or so; it was seized after that by two pictures which dull-looking prints. There were two rugs upon the floor, one hung from the rail above. The first of these was a family ancient and threadbare, the other new and vivid and coarse portrait, and as stiff, as quaint and as marvellously and rather rustic: the kind of rug I thought a shepherd, intriguing as other families' portraits always are. I looked

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for Florence first, and found her - aged, perhaps, fifteen or filth from my skirts and pressed them flat and put them on so, and very fresh and plump and earnest - seated between a again, I felt fit and warm and quite unreasonably gay. I white-haired lady and a younger, darker girl, who had the walked back into the parlour - it was a matter of some ten beginnings of a barmaid's flash good looks about her and steps or so - stood for a second there, then returned to the must, I thought, be a sister. Behind them stood three boys: kitchen. It was, I thought, a very pleasant house; as I had Ralph, minus his sailor's whiskers and wearing a very high already begun to notice, however, it was not a very clean collar; a rather older brother who looked very much like one. The rugs, I saw, all badly wanted beating. The him; and an older brother again. There was no father. skirting-boards were scuffed and streaked with mud. Every The second portrait was a picture-postcard photograph: it shelf and picture was as dusty as the sooty mantelpiece. If had been placed in the edge of the large picture's frame, but this was my house, I thought, I would keep it smart as a its corner curled a little, showing a loop of faded writing on new pin.

the back. The subject of the portrait was a woman - a Then I had a rather wonderful idea. I ran back into the heavy-browed woman with untidy dark hair: she seemed to parlour and looked at the clock. Less than an hour had be sitting very squarely, and her gaze was rather grave. I passed since Florence's departure, and neither she nor thought she might be the sister from the family group, Ralph, I guessed, would be home much before five. That grown up; or she might be a friend of Florence's, or a gave me about eight whole hours - slightly less, I supposed, cousin, or - well, anybody. I leaned over to try to read the if I wanted to be sure of finding myself a room in some handwriting that showed where the card curled over; but it lodging-house or hostel while it was still light. How much was hidden, and I didn't like to pluck it free - it wasn't that cleaning could you do in eight hours? I had no idea: it was intriguing. Then I caught the bubbling of the pan of water I generally Alice who had helped Mother out at home; I had had set upon the stove, and hurried out to see to it. hardly cleaned a thing before in my life; lately I had had I found a little tin bowl to wash in, and a block of green servants to do my cleaning for me. But I felt inspired, now, kitchen soap; and then - since there was no towel, and I to tidy this house - this house where I had been, albeit didn't think it really polite to use the dish-cloth - I danced briefly, so content. It would be a kind of parting gift, I about before the range until I was dry enough to climb back thought, for Ralph and Florence. I would be like a girl in a into my dirty petticoats. I thought, with a little sigh, of fairy story, sweeping out the dwarves' cottage, or the Diana's handsome bathroom - of that cabinet of unguents robbers' cave, while the dwarves or the robbers were at that I had liked to sample for hours at a time. Even so, it work.

was marvellous to be clean again, and when I had combed I believe I laboured, that day, harder than I had ever my hair and tended my face (I rubbed a bit of vinegar into laboured over anything before; and I have wondered since, the bruise, and then a bit of flour); when I had thumped the thinking back to the industry of those hours, whether the

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thing that I was really washing was not my own tarnished

'A fine job you've taken on,' she said, 'cleaning the Banners'

soul. I began by lighting a bigger fire in the range, to heat place.' I smiled, glad of the rest, and wiped the sweat from more water with. Then I found that I had used up all the my brow and lip.

water in the house: I had to limp up and down Quilter Street

'Are they known for their dirt, then?'

with two great buckets, looking for a stand-pipe; and when

'They are,' she said, 'in this street. They do too much in I found one I also found a line of women at it, and had to other folks' houses, and not enough in their own. That's the wait amongst them for half-an-hour, until the tap - which trouble." She spoke good-humouredly, however: she didn't ran no faster than a trickle, and sometimes only spluttered seem to mean that Ralph and Florence were busy-bodies. I and choked - was free. The women looked me up and rubbed my aching shoulder. 'You'll be the new lodger, I down, rather - they looked at my eye, and more especially suppose?' she asked me then. I shook my head, and at my head, for I had placed a cap of Ralph's upon it in lieu repeated what I had told the other neighbours - that I was of my damp hat, and they could see where the hair was only passing through. She seemed as unimpressed by that shorn and razored beneath. But they were not at all as they had been. She watched me for a minute or two unfriendly. One or two, who had seen me leave the house, while I resumed my beating; then she went indoors, without asked me, 'Was I lodging with the Banners?' and I answered another word.

that I was only passing through. They seemed happy When the rugs were beaten I swept the fireplace in the enough with that, as if people passed through, in this parlour; then I found some blacklead in the pantry, and district, very frequently.

began to dab at it with that. I had not leaded a grate since I When I had staggered home with the water, set it warming left home -though I had seen Zena blacking Diana's on the stove, and wrapped myself in a great, crusty apron I fireplaces a hundred times, and remembered it as rather found hanging on the back of the pantry door, I began on easy labour. In fact, of course, it was tricky, filthy work, the parlour. First I wiped down all the dim and sooty things and kept me busy for an hour, and left me feeling not a half with a wet cloth; then I washed the window, and then the so blithe as I had been at first. Still, however, I didn't stop skirting-boards. The rugs I carried out into the yard: here I to rest. I swept the floors, and then I scrubbed them; then I hung them over the wash-line, and beat them until my arm washed the kitchen tiles, and then the range, and then the ached. As I did so, the back door of the neighbouring house kitchen window. I did not like to venture upstairs, but the was pulled open and a woman, her sleeves rolled up like parlour and the kitchen, and even the privy and the yard, I mine and her own cheeks flushed, emerged to stand upon worked upon until they fairly gleamed; until every surface the step. When she saw me she nodded, and I nodded back. that was meant to shine, shone; until every colour was vivid, rather than dulled and paled by dust.

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My final triumph was the front doorstep: this I swept and thought, like a child, How pleased they will be! How washed, and finally scrubbed with a piece of hearthstone pleased ... I was not quite so gay, however, as I had been until it was as white as any doorstep in the street - and my six hours before. Like the darkening day beyond the parlour arms, which had been black with lead, were streaked with window, there was a gloomy knowledge pressing at the chalk from my fingernails to my elbows. I knelt for a few edges of my own pleasure -the knowledge that I must go, moments when I had finished it, admiring the effect and and find some shelter of my own. I picked up the list that stretching my aching back, too warmed with work to be Florence had made for me. Her handwriting was very neat bothered by the January breezes. Then I saw a figure but the ink had stained her fingers, and there was a smudge emerge from the house next door, and looked up to see a where she had lain her tired hand upon the sheet. little girl in a tattered frock and a pair of over-large boots I could not bear the idea of going just yet - of working my pigeon-stepping her way towards me with a spilling mug of way through the list of hostels, of being shown to a bed in tea.

another chamber like the one I had slept in with Zena. I

'Mother says you must be fairly fagged, and to give you would go in an hour; for now, I thought again, this,' she said. Then she ducked her head. 'But I'm to stay determinedly, of how enchanted Ralph and Florence would with you while you drink it, to make sure we get the cup be, to come home to a tidy house - and then, with more back.'

enthusiasm, I thought: And how much more pleased would The tea had been made murky with a bit of skim-milk, and they be, to come home to their tidy house, and find their was terribly sweet. I drank it quickly, while the girl supper bubbling on the stove! There was not much food in shivered and stamped her feet. 'No school for you today?' I the cupboards, so far as I could see; but there was, of asked her.

course, the half-crown that they had left for me ... I didn't

'Not today. It's wash-day, and Mother needs me at home to stop to think that I should keep it for my own needs. I keep the babies out from under her heels.' All the while she picked the coin up - it was just where Florence had placed talked to me she kept her eyes fixed on my shorn head. Her it, for I had lifted it only to wipe beneath it with a cloth, own hair was fair, and - much as mine had used to - then put it back again - and hobbled off down Quilter dribbled down between her jutting shoulder-blades in a Street, towards the stalls and barrows of the Hackney Road. long, untidy plait.

A half-hour later I was back. I had bought bread, meat and It was now about half-past three, and when I returned to vegetables and - purely on the grounds that it had looked so Florence's kitchen to wash my filthy hands and arms I handsome on the fruit-man's barrow - a pineapple. For a found the house had grown quite dark. I removed my apron, year and a half I had eaten nothing but cutlets and salmis, and lit a lamp; then I took a few minutes to wander between pates and crystallised fruits; but there was a dish that Mrs the rooms, gazing at the transformation I had effected. I Milne had used to make, consisting of mashed potato,

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mashed cabbage, corned beef and onions - Gracie and I had She laughed, showing her teeth. 'Then you, I suppose, must used to smack our lips at the sight of it placed before us on be the fairy king himself. Or is it, the fairy queen? I cannot the table. I thought it couldn't be very hard to make; and I tell if your hair is at odds with your costume, or the other set about cooking it now, for Ralph and Florence. way around. If that' - she laughed again - 'means anything.'

I had set the potatoes and the cabbage on to boil, and got as I didn't know what it might mean. I said only, rather primly, far as browning the onions, when I heard a knock at the that I was waiting for my hair to grow; and she answered, door. This made me jump, then grow a little flustered. I had

'Ah', and her smile grew a little smaller. Then she said, in a made myself so comfortable that I felt, instinctively, that I puzzled sort of way: 'And you're staying with Florrie and should answer it; but should I, really? Was there not a point Ralph, are you?'

at which helpfulness, if persevered with, became

'They let me sleep last night in the parlour, as a favour; but impertinence? I looked down at the pan of onions, my today I have to move on. In fact - what time have you?' She rolled-up sleeves. Had I perhaps crossed over that point, showed me her watch: a quarter to five, and much later than already?'

I had expected. 'I really must go very soon.' I took the pan While I wondered, the knock came again; and this time I off the stove - the onions had burned a little browner than I didn't hesitate, but went straight to the door and opened it. wanted - and began to look about me for a bowl. Beyond it was a girl - a rather handsome girl, with dark hair

'Oh,' she said, waving her hand at my haste, 'have a cup of showing beneath a velvet tam-o'-shanter. When she saw me tea with me, at least.' She put some water on to boil, and I she said, 'Oh! Is Florrie not at home, then?' and looked began jabbing at the potatoes with a fork. The dish, as I quickly at my arms, my dress, my eye, and then my hair. assembled it, did not look quite like the meal that Mrs I said, 'Miss Banner isn't here, no. I'm on my own.' I Milne had used to make; and when I tasted it, it was not so sniffed, and thought I caught the smell of burning onions. savoury. I set it on the side, and frowned at it. The girl

'Look here,' I went on, 'I'm doing a bit of frying. Do you handed me a cup. Then she leaned against a cupboard, quite mind . . . ?' I ran back to the kitchen to rescue my dish. To at her ease, and sipped at her own tea, and then yawned. my surprise I heard the thud of the front door, and found

'What a day I have had!' she said. 'Do I stink like a rat? I've that the girl had followed me. When I looked round she was been all afternoon down a drain-pipe.'

unbuttoning her coat, and gazing about her in wonder.

'Down a drain-pipe?'

'My God,' she said - her voice had a bit of breeding to it, but

'Down a drain-pipe. I'm an assistant at a sanitary she was not at all proud. 'I called because I saw the step, inspector's. You may not pull such a face; it was quite a and thought Florrie must have had some sort of fit. Now I triumph, I tell you, my getting the position at all. They see she's either lost her head entirely, or had the fairies in.'

think women too delicate for that sort of work.'

I said, 'I was me that did it all. . .'

'I think I would rather be delicate,' I said, 'than do it.'

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'Oh, but it's marvellous work! It's only now and then I have

'Is there someone out there?' It was Florence's voice. I heard to peer into sewers, as I did today. Mostly I measure, and her stepping, cautiously, into the kitchen. Then she must talk to workers, and see if they are too hot or too cold, have have seen her Mend. 'Annie, oh, it's you! Thank goodness. enough air to breathe, enough lavatories. I have a For a moment I thought - what's the matter?'

government order, and do you know what that means? It Tm not sure.'

means I can demand to see an office or a workshop, and if

'Why do you look so queer? What's going on? What has it's not right, I can demand that it be put right. I can have happened to the step at the front of the house? And what's buildings closed, buildings improved ...' She waved her this mess on the stove?'

hands. 'Foremen hate me. Greedy masters from Bow to

'Florrie -'

Richmond absolutely loathe the sight of me. I wouldn't

'What?'

swap my work for anything!' I smiled at the enthusiasm in

'I think I might as well tell you; indeed, I really think I'm her voice; she might be a sanitary inspector, but she was quite obliged to tell you ..." 'What? You're frightening me.'

also, I could tell, something of an actress. Now she took

'There's a girl in your pantry.'

another mouthful of tea. 'So,' she said, when she had There was a silence then, during which I swiftly surveyed swallowed it, 'how long have you been a friend of my options. They were, I found, very few; so I decided on Florrie's?'

the noblest. I took hold of the handle of the pantry door,

'Well, friend isn't quite the word for it, really ..." and slowly pushed it open. Florence saw me, and twitched.

'You don't know her terribly well?'

'I was just about to leave,' I said. 'I swear it.' I looked at the

'Not at all.'

girl called Annie, who nodded. 'She was,' she said. 'She That's a shame,' she said, shaking her head. 'She's not been was.'

herself, these past few months. Not been herself at all..." Florence gazed at me. I stepped out of the pantry and edged She would have gone on, I think, if there had not, at that past her, into the parlour. She frowned.

moment, come the sound of the front door opening, and

'What on earth have you been doing?' she asked, as I then of feet upon the parlour floor.

searched for my hat. 'Why does everything look so strange?'

'Oh hell!' I said. I put my cup down, gazed wildly about me She picked up a box of matches, and lit the two oil-lamps for a second, then ran past the girl to the pantry door. I and then a couple of candles. The light was taken up by a didn't stop to think; I didn't say a word to her or even look thousand polished surfaces, and she started. 'You have at her. I simply hopped inside the little cupboard, and cleaned the house!'

pulled the door shut behind me. Then I put my ear to it, and

'Only the downstairs rooms. And the yard. And the front listened.

step,’ I said, in increasing tones of wretchedness. 'And I made you supper.'

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She gaped at me. 'Why!'

Now Florence's eyes were wider than ever. 'Clean and do

'Your house was dirty. The woman next door said you were my washing? Look after Cyril? I'm sure I couldn't let you famous for it..."

do all those things!'

'You met the woman next door?'

'Why not? I met fifty women in your street today, all doing

'She gave me some tea.'

exactly those things! It's natural, ain't it? If I was your wife

'I leave you in my home for one day and you quite

- or Ralph's wife, I mean -I should certainly do them then.'

transform it. You get yourself in with my neighbours. Now she folded her arms. 'In this house, Miss Astley, that's You're thick, I suppose, with my best friend. And what has possibly the very worst argument you could have hit upon.'

she been telling you?'

As she spoke, however, the front door opened and Ralph

'I haven't told her anything, I'm sure!' called Annie from the appeared. He had an evening paper under one arm, and kitchen.

Cyril under the other.

I pulled at a thread that had come loose at my cuff. 'I

'My word,' he said, 'look at the shine on this step! I am thought you would be pleased,' I said quietly, 'to have a tidy frightened to tread on it.' He saw me and smiled - 'Hallo, house. I thought -' I had thought that it would make her like still here?' - then he glanced about the room. 'And look at me. In Diana's world, it would have. It, or something all this! I haven't come into the wrong parlour, have I?'

similar.

Florence stepped across to him to take the baby, then

'I liked my house the way it was,' she said.

propelled him out towards the kitchen. Here I heard him

'I don't believe you,' I replied; and then, when she hesitated, exclaiming very warmly - first over Annie, and then over I said - what, I suppose, I had been planning to say to her, the beef and potatoes, and finally over the pineapple. all along - 'Let me stay, Miss Banner! Oh, please let me Florence struggled with Cyril for a moment: he was stay!'

squirming and fractious and about to cry. I went to her, and She gave me a bewildered look. 'Miss Astley, I cannot!'

- with terrible boldness, for the last baby I had held had

'I could sleep in here, like I did last night. I could clean and been my cousin's child, four years before: and he had cook, like I did today. I could do your washing.' I was screamed in my face - I said, 'Give him to me, babies love growing more rash and desperate as I spoke. 'Oh, how I me.' She handed him over and, through some extraordinary longed to do those things, when I was in the house in St miracle - perhaps I was holding him so inexpertly, the grip John's Wood! But that devil I lived with said I must let the quite stunned him - he fell against my shoulder, and sighed, servants do it - that it would spoil my hands. But if I stayed and grew calm.

here - well, I could look after your little boy while you are I might have thought, if I had had more experience in the at work, I wouldn't give him laudanum when he cried!'

matter, that the sight of her foster-son content and still in another girl's arms would be the last thing to convince a

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mother to allow that girl to stay in her own house; and yet, that she was rather plain, and rather ordinary. She had taken when I looked at Florence again I saw that her eyes were out a handkerchief, and was wiping at her nose; now she upon me, and her expression - as it had been once, last was calling out to Ralph, to put the kettle on the stove. My night - was strange and almost sad, but also desperately lusts had been quick, and driven me to desperate pleasures: tender. One curl had worked its way out of her knot of hair, but she, I knew, would never raise them. My too-tender and hung, rather limply, over her brow. When she raised a heart had once grown hard, and had lately grown harder - hand to brush it from her eye, it seemed to me that the but there was no chance of it softening, I thought, at Quilter finger came away a little damp at the tip.

Street.

I thought: Blimey, I was wasted in male impersonation, I

should have been in melodrama. I bit my lip, and gave a Chapter 17

gulp. 'Good-bye, Cyril,' I said, in a voice that shook a little. One of the ladies who had come dressed as Marie

'I must put on my damp bonnet now, and head off into the Antoinette to Diana's terrible party had come clad, not as a darkening night, and find some bench to sleep on ..." queen, but as a shepherdess, with a crook: I had heard her But this, after all, proved too much. Florence sniffed, and tell another guest (who had mistaken her for Bo Peep, from her face grew stern again.

the nursery poem) about how Marie Antoinette had had a

'All right,' she said. 'You may stay - for a week. And if the little cottage built in the garden of her palace, and had week works out, we shall try it for a month: you may have a thought it droll to play in it, with all of her friends dressed share of the family salary, I suppose, for the sake of up as dairymaids and yokels. I remembered that story, in watching Cyril and keeping house. But if it does not work, the first few weeks of my time at Quilter Street, a little then you must promise me, Miss Astley, that you will go.'

bitterly. I think I had felt rather like Marie Antoinette, the I promised it. Then I hitched the baby a little higher at my day that I put on an apron and cleaned Florence's house for shoulder, and Florence turned away. I didn't look to see her and cooked her supper; I think I even felt like her, the what her expression was, now. I only smiled; and then I put second day I did it. By the third day, however - the third my lips to Cyril's head - he smelt rather sour - and kissed day of waiting in the street for the stand-pipe to spit out its him.

bit of cloudy water, of black-leading the fireplaces and the How thankful I was then, that I had lied about Diana! What stove, of whitening the step, of scouring out the privy - I did it matter, that I was not all that I pretended? I had been was ready to hang up my crook and return to my palace. a regular girl once; I could be regular again - being regular, But the palace doors, of course, had been closed on me; I indeed, might prove a kind of holiday. I thought back over must work, now, in earnest. And I must work, too, with a my recent history, and gave a shudder; and then I glanced at baby squirming on my arm - or rolling about the floor, Florence, and was glad - as I had been glad once before - cracking his head against the furniture - or, more usually,

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shrieking out, from his crib upstairs, for milk and breadThen again, there were so many people who came calling. and-butter. For'} all my promises to Florence, if there had There was, for example, Florence's family: a brother and his been gin in the house,'

wife and children; a sister, Janet. The brother was the oldest I think I would have given it to him - or else, I might have of the sons in the family portrait (the middle one was gone swallowed some of it myself, to make the chores a little to Canada); he worked as a butcher, and sometimes brought gayer. But there was no gin; and Cyril stayed lively, and the us meat; but he was rather boastful - he had moved to a chores remained hard. And I could not complain, not even house in Epping, and thought Ralph a fool for remaining in to myself: for I knew that, dreary as they were, they were Quilter Street, where the family had all grown up. I didn't not so dreary as the habits I should have to learn if I left like him much. Janet, however, who called oftener, I took Bethnal Green to try my luck, all friendless and in winter, to at once. She was eighteen or nineteen, big-boned and upon the streets.

handsome; a born barmaid I had thought her when studying So, I did not complain; but I did think, often, of Felicity her photograph - so I was rather tickled to learn that she Place. I thought of how quiet and how handsome that worked as a tapstress in a City public-house, lodging with square was; of how grand Diana's villa was, how pleasant the family who ran it, in their rooms above the bar. its chambers, how light, how warm, how perfumed, how Florence fretted over her like anything: their mother had polished -how different, in short, to Florence's house, which died while the sisters were still quite young (their father had was set in one of the poorest, noisiest quarters of the city; died many years before that), Florence had had all the had one dark room to do duty as bed-chamber, diningraising of the girl to do herself and, like older sisters room, library and parlour; had windows that rattled and everywhere, was sure that Janet would be led astray by the chimneys that smoked, and a door that was continually first young man who got his hands on her. 'She will marry opening, shutting, or being banged by a fist. The whole without giving it a second's thought,' she said wearily to street, it seemed to me, might as well be made of India me, when Janet paid her first visit after I moved in. 'She'll rubber - there was such a passage of shouts and laughter be dragged down having babies all her life, and her good and people and smells and dogs, from one house to its looks will be spoiled, and she'll die worn out at forty-three, neighbours. I should not have minded it -after all, I had like our own mother did.' When Janet came for supper, she grown up in a street that was similar, in a house where stayed the night; then she would sleep up in Florence's bed, cousins thundered up and down the stairs, and the parlour and I'd hear their murmurs and their laughter as I lay in the might be full, on any night of the week, with people parlour below - the sound made me terribly restless. But drinking beer and playing cards and sometimes quarrelling. Janet herself seemed marvellously unsurprised to see me But I had lost the habit of enduring it; and now it only made dishing up the herrings at the breakfast-table, or putting her me weary.

brother's linen, on a wash-day, through the mangle. 'All

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right, Nancy,' she would say - she called me 'Nancy' from weren't blushing into their tea-cups over it, they were taking the start. The first time we met I still had the bruise at my me aside to ask me, privately, Was I quite well now? and to eye, and when she saw it, she whistled. She said, 'I bet it recommend some man who would prove helpful if I was a girl done that - wasn't it? A girl always goes for the thought to take my case to court, or else some vegetable yes, every time. A bloke goes for the teeth.'

treatment that would ease the bruising at my cheek ... When the house wasn't being shivered to its foundations by All of Ralph and Florence's circle, in fact, were quite sickthe thud of Janet's footsteps on the stairs, it was trembling eningly kind and earnest and conscientious over matters to the arguments and the laughter of Florence's girl-friends, like this. As I could not help but find out very early on, the who came by regularly to bring books and pamphlets and Banners were big in the local labour movement - they bits of| gossip, and to take tea. I thought them a very quaint always had some desperate project on hand, some plan to breed,; these girls. They all worked; but, like Annie Page, get a parliamentary act passed or opposed; the parlour, as a the sanitary! inspector, not one of them had a dull, consequence, was always full of people holding emergency straightforward kind r* job - making felt hats, or dressing meetings or dreary debates. Ralph was a cutter in a silk feathers, or serving in shop. Instead they all worked for factory, and secretary of the silk workers' union. Florence - charities or in homes: they a had lists of cripples, or as well as working at the Stratford girls' home, Freemantle immigrants, or orphaned girls, whom was their continual House - volunteered for a thing called the Women's ambition to set up in jobs, houses, ani friendly societies. Cooperative Guild: it was Guild work (not lists, as I had Every story they told began the same: 'I had a girl come imagined, of friendless girls) which had kept her up so late into the office today ..."

on the night of my arrival at her home - and which, indeed,

'I had a girl come into the office today, fresh from gaol, and kept her up late on many subsequent nights, balancing her mother has taken her baby and disappeared with it..." budgets and writing letters. In those early days, I would

'I had a poor woman come into the office today: she was occasionally glance at the pages she worked on; but brought over from India as a maid, and now the family whatever I saw, made me frown. 'What does it mean, won't pay her passage back ..."

cooperative!' I asked her once. It was not a word I had ever

'There was a woman come in today: she has been ruined by heard used at Felicity

a gent, and the gent has given her such a thump she -' This Place.

particular story, however, never got finished: the girl who And yet, there were moments at Quilter Street, when I was telling it caught sight of me, perched on an armchair at found myself handing out cups of tea, rolling cigarettes, Florence's elbow; then she flushed pink, and put her cup to nursing babies while other people argued and laughed, her lips, and turned the subject. They had all had my history when I thought I might as well still be in Diana's drawing-my pretend history - from Florence herself. When they room, dressed in a tunic. There, no one had ever asked me

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anything, because they never thought I might have had an coins to some man who had lost his job. I thought them opinion worth soliciting; but at least they had liked to look mad to do it. We had been kind enough to our neighbours, at me. At Florence's house, no one looked at me at all - and back in Whitstable; but the kindness had had limits to it - what was worse, they all supposed I must be quite as good Mother had never had time for feckless wives, or idlers, or and energetic as themselves. I lived in a continual panic, drunkards. Florence and Ralph, however, helped therefore, that I would accidentally disenchant them - that everybody, even - or, it seemed to me, especially - those someone would ask me my opinion on the SDF or the ILP, layabout fathers, those slatternly mothers, whom all the rest and my reply would make it clear that, not only had I of Bethnal Green had taken against. Now, hearing confused the SDF with the WLF, the ILP with the WTUL, Florence's plans to visit the family that had the bailiffs but I had absolutely no idea, and never had had, what the coming, I grew sour. 'You're a regular pair of saints, you initials stood for anyway. When I shyly confessed one time, two,' I said, filling a bowl with soapy water. 'You never about six weeks after I moved in there, that I scarcely knew have a minute for yourselves. You have a pretty house - the difference between a Tory and a Liberal, they took it as now that I am here to make it so - and not one moment to a kind of clever joke. 'You are so right, Miss Astley!' a man enjoy it. You earn a decent wage, between you, and yet you had answered. 'There is no difference at all, and if only give it all away!'

everyone were as clear-sighted as yourself, our task would

'If I wanted to close my doors to my neighbours and gaze be an easier one.' I smiled, and said no more. Then I all night at my pretty walls,' she replied, still passing a hand collected the cups, and took Cyril into the kitchen with me; across her bleary features, 'I would move to Hampstead! I and while I waited for the kettle to boil I sang him an old have lived in this house all my life; there's not a family in song from the music hall, which made him kick his legs and this street who didn't help Mother out, at one time or gurgle. Then Florence appeared. 'What a pretty song,' she another, when we were kids and things were rather hard. said absently. She was rubbing her eyes. 'Ralph and I are You're right: we do draw a fair wage between us, Ralph and going out - you won't mind watching Cyril, will you? There me; but do you think I could enjoy my thirty shillings, is a family up the road - they are having the bailiffs in. I knowing that Mrs Monks next door must live, with all her said we would go, in case the men get rough . . .' There was girls, on ten? That Mrs Kenny across the street, whose always something like this - always some neighbour in husband is sick, must make do with the three shillings she trouble, and needing money, or help, or a letter writing or a gets making paper flowers, sitting up all night and squinting visit to the police; and it was always Ralph and Florence at the wretched things until she is gone half-blind that they came to -I had not been with them a week before I

'All right,' I said. She made speeches like this often - saw Ralph leave his supper and run along the street in his sounding always, I thought, like a Daughter of the People in shirt-sleeves, to give some word of comfort and a couple of some sentimental novel of East End life: Maria Jex had

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liked to read such novels, and Diana had liked to laugh at I should not have been myself, if her indifference had not her. I didn't say this to Florence, however. I didn't say rather piqued me. I had spent eighteen months at Felicity anything at all. But when she and Ralph and their union Place, shaping my behaviour to the desires of lustful ladies friends had gone, I sat down in an armchair in the parlour, until I was as skilled and as subtle at it as a glove-maker: I rather heavily. The truth was, I hated their charity; I hated could not throw those skills over now, just because I also their good works, their missions, their orphan proteges. I learned the blacking of a grate. On Florence, however, the hated them, because I knew that I was one of them. I had skills proved useless. 'She really can't be a torn,' I would thought that Florence had let me into her house through say to myself - for, if she never flirted with me, then there some extraordinary favour to myself; but what kind of a were plenty of other girls who passed through our parlour, compliment was it, when she and her brother would and I never saw her flirt with a single one of them, not regularly take in any old josser that happened to be once. But then, I never saw her flirting with a fellow, either. staggering about the street, down on his luck, and give him At last, I supposed she was too good to fall in love with supper? It was not that they were careless with me. Ralph, anyone.

for example, I knew to be the gentlest man that I should And, after all, I had not come to Quilter Street to flirt; I had ever meet: no one, not even the most hardened Sapphist in come to be ordinary. And knowing there was no one's eye the city, could have lived with Ralph without loving him a to charm or set smarting only made me more ordinary still. little; and I - who liked to think of myself as no very soft My hair - which had lost its military sharpness after a week torn - learned early on to love him a great deal. Florence, or two, anyway -I let grow; I even began to curl it at the too, was pleasant enough to me, in her own tired, distracted ends. My pinching boots became less stiff, the more I sort of way. But though she ate the suppers I cooked; walked in them; but I traded them in, at a second-hand though she handed me Cyril to wash and dress and cradle; clothes stall, for a pair of shoes with bows on. I did the and though, when a month had passed, she had agreed that I same with my bonnet and my rusty frock - exchanged them, might stay if I still cared to, and sent Ralph into the attic to for a hat with a wired flower and a dress with ribbon at the bring me down a little truckle-bed, which she said would be neck. 'Now, there's a pretty frock!' said Ralph to me, when I cosier, in the parlour, than the two armchairs -though she put it on for the first time; but Ralph would have told me I did all these things, she never did them as if she really did looked handsome wrapped in a piece of brown paper, if he them for me. She did them because the suppers and the thought it would make me smile. The truth was, I had baby-minding gave her more hours to devote to her other looked awful ever since leaving St John's Wood; and now, causes. She had given me work, as a lady might give work in a flowery frock, I only looked extraordinarily awful. The to a shiftless girl, come fresh from prison.

clothes I had bought, they were the kind I'd used to wear in Whitstable and with Kitty; and I seemed to remember that I

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had been known then as a handsome enough girl. But it was she had worn skirts as bright as mustard, she had laughed as if wearing gentlemen's suits had magically unfitted me and shown her teeth. Florence Banner of Bethnal Green, for girlishness, for ever - as if my jaw had grown firmer, however, was only grave, and weary. Her hair was limp, my brows heavier, my hips slimmer and my hands extra and her dresses were dark, or the colour of rust or dust or large, to match the clothes Diana had put me in. The bruise ashes; and when she smiled, you found you were surprised at my eye faded quickly enough, but the brawl with Dickie's by it, and flinched.

book had left me with a scar at my cheek - I have it there For her temper, I discovered, was fickle. She was kind as an still; and this, combined with the new firmness at my angel to the undeserving poor of Bethnal Green; but at shoulders and thighs, got from carrying buckets and home she was sometimes depressed, and very often cross - I whitening steps, gave me something of the air of a rough. would see her brother and her friends tiptoeing about her When I washed in the mornings in a bowl in the kitchen, chair, so as not to rouse her: I thought their patience quite and caught sight of myself, from a certain angle, reflected astonishing. She might be gay as you like, for days at a in the darkened window, I looked like a youth in the backtime; but then she would come home from a walk, or wake room of some boys' club, rinsing himself down after a one morning, as if from troubled dreams, dispirited. boxing match. How Diana would have admired me! At Strangest of all, to my mind, was her behaviour towards Quilter Street, however, as I have said, there was no one to Cyril: for though I knew she loved him as her own, she gasp. By the time Ralph and Florence came down for their would sometimes seem to turn her eyes from him, or push breakfasts, I would have my frock upon me and my hair in his grasping hands away, as if she hated him; then at other a curl; and then, more often than not, Florence would only times she would seize him and cover him with kisses until gulp at her tea and say she had no time to eat, she was he squealed. I had been at Quilter Street for several months calling at the Guild on her way to work. Ralph would help when the talk, one evening, turned to birthdays; and I himself to the red herrings left on her plate - 'My word, realised with a little start of surprise that Cyril's must have Cyril, but don't these look good!' - and she would leave, passed and gone uncelebrated. When I asked Ralph about it without a glance at me, wrapping a muffler about her throat he answered that, just as I'd thought, it had passed in July, like a woman of ninety.

but they had not thought it worthwhile to mark it. I said, However much I thought about her - and I spent many laughing, 'Oh, do socialists not keep birthdays, then?' and hours at it: for there is not much to occupy the brain in he had smiled; Florence, however, had risen without a housework, and I might as well puzzle over her, as over word, and left the room. I wondered again about what story anything -I could not figure her out, at all. The Florence I there might be behind the baby; but Florence offered no had met first, the Green Street Florence, had been gay; she clue to it, and I did not pry. I thought, if I did, that it might had had hair that twisted from her head like bed-springs, prompt her to ask me again about the gent who had

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supposedly kept me in luxury, then blacked my eye: she it mine to fatten up Florence, with breakfasts and lunches, had never referred to him after that first night. I was glad with sandwich teas, with dinners and suppers and biscuits she hadn't. She was so good and honest, after all -I should and milk. I had not much success with this, to start with - have hated to have had to lie to her.

for, though I took to haunting the meat stalls of the Indeed, I should have hated to have had to abuse her, in any Whitechapel Market, buying faggots and sausages, rabbits way. When she worked so hard and grew so weary, it made and tripe, and bagfuls of those scraps of flesh we had used me pace about the room and wring my hands, and want to to call, in Whitstable, 'bits and ears', I was really rather an shake her. It was not her job at the girls' home that so indifferent cook, and was as liable to burn the meat, or exhausted her, it was the endless guild and union work - the leave it bloody, as make it savoury; Florence and Ralph did piles of lists and ledgers she would place upon the suppernot notice, I think, because they were used to nothing table, when the supper-things had been cleared off it, and better. But then, one day at the end of August, I saw that the squint at, all night long, until her eyes were red, and creased oyster season had started up, and I bought a barrel of as currants. Sometimes, since I had nothing better to do, I natives and an oyster-knife; and as I put the blade to the would take a chair and sit beside her, and make her share hinge, it was as if I turned a key which unlocked all my the chores with me: she gave me envelopes to address, or mother's oyster-parlour recipes, and sent them flooding to other little harmless tasks I could not muddle. When, in my finger-ends. I dished up an oyster-pie - and Florence put spring, the Guild set up a local seamstresses' union, and aside the paper she was writing on, to eat it, then picked at Florence began visiting the home-workers of Bethnal Green the crust that was left in the bowl, with her fork. The next

- all the poor women who worked long hours, alone, in night I served oyster-fritters, the next night oyster-soup. I squalid rooms, for wretched pay -I went with her. The made grilled oysters, and pickled oysters; and oysters rolled scenes we saw were very miserable, and the women were in four and stewed in cream.

pleased to be visited, and the Guild was grateful; but it was When I passed a plate of this last dish to Florence, she for Florence's sake I really went. I couldn't bear for her to smiled; and when she had tasted it, she sighed. She took a do the dreary task, and walk the East End streets, at night, piece of bread-and-butter, and folded it to mop the sauce alone.

with; and the bread left cream upon her lips, that she licked And then — as I have said, a housekeeper will look for any at with her tongue, then wiped with her fingers. I little thing to liven her day — I began to labour for her, in remembered another time, in another parlour, when I had the kitchen. She was thin, and the thinness looked wrong on served another girl an oyster-supper, and accidentally her: the sight of the shadows at her cheeks made me feel wooed her; and as I was thinking of this, Florence lifted a sad. So, while the Women's Cooperative Guild made it their spoonful offish, and sighed again.

cause to unionise the home-workers of East London, I made

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'Oh,' she said, 'I really think, that if there were one dish, and as lilies at Felicity Place, but now they were red at the one dish only, that had to be served in paradise, that dish knuckles and split at the nails, and scented with soda; and would be oysters - don't you think so, Nance?'

the cuffs above them had frills, that had got spotted with She had never called me 'Nance' before; and I had never, in grease - I hadn't learned the trick of pushing ladies' sleeves all the months that I had lived with her then, known her say back, there seemed never enough material to roll. Now I anything so fanciful. I laughed to hear it; and then so did twitched at one of these cuffs, and bit my lip. The fact was I her brother, and so did she.

didn't know who would be beside me in my paradise. The

'I think it might be oysters," I said.

fact was, there was no one who would want to have me in

'It would be marzipan, in my paradise,' said Ralph: he had a theirs . . .

very sweet tooth.

I looked again at Florence. 'Well, you and Ralph,' I said at

'And there would have,' I said then, 'to be a cigarette beside last, 'I imagine will be in everybody's paradise, instructing the dish, otherwise it would be hardly worth eating.'

them in how to run it.'

'That's true. And my supper-table would be set upon a hill, Ralph laughed. Florence tilted her head, and smiled a sad but overlooking a town - there would not be a chimney in smile of her own. Then, after a moment, she blinked and it; every house would be lit and warmed by electricity.'

caught my gaze. 'And you, of course,' she said, 'will have to

'Oh, Ralph!' I said; 'but only think how dull it would be, to be in mine . . .'

be able to see into all the corners! There wouldn't be

'Really, Florence?'

electric lights, or even houses, in my paradise. There would

'Of course - else, who will stew my oysters?'

be -' Pigmy ponies and fairies on a wire, was what I wanted I had had better compliments paid me - but not recently. I to say, thinking back to my nights at the Brit; but I was not found myself pinking at her words, and dipped my head. up to explaining it.

When I looked at her again, she was gazing over into the And while I hesitated, Florence said: 'So, are we all to have corner of the room. I turned, to see what it was she was a separate paradise?'

looking at: it was the family portrait, and I guessed she Ralph shook his head. 'Well, you, of course, would be in must be thinking of her mother. But in the corner of the mine,' he said. 'And Cyril.'

frame, of course, there was the smaller picture, of the

'And Mrs Besant, I suppose.' She took another spoonful of grave-looking woman with the very heavy brows. I had her supper, then turned to me: 'And who would be in yours never learned who she was, after all. Now I said to Ralph: then, Nancy?'

'Who is that girl, in the little photo? She don't half need a She smiled, and I had been smiling; but even as she asked hairbrush.'

her question, I felt my smile begin to waver. I gazed at my hands where they lay upon the table: they had grown white

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He looked at me, but did not answer. It was Florence who home of a seamstress at Mile End. It was a terribly poor spoke. 'That's Eleanor Marx,' she said, with a kind of quiver home: there was no furniture, hardly, in the woman's to her voice.

rooms, only a couple of mattresses, a threadbare rug, and

'Eleanor Marks? Have I met her? Is she that cousin of one rickety table and chair. In the chamber that passed for a yours, who works at the poulterers?'

parlour, a tea-chest was upturned and had the remains of a She gazed at me then as if I had not asked the question, but sad little supper on it: a crust of bread, a bit of dripping in a barked it. Ralph put down his fork. 'Eleanor Marx,' he said, jar, and a cup half-full of bluish milk. The dinner-table was

'is a writer and a speaker and a very great socialist. . .'

all covered with the paraphernalia of the woman's trade - I blushed: this was worse than asking what cooperative with folded garments and tissue wrappers, with pins and meant. But when Ralph saw my cheeks, he looked kind: cotton reels and needles. The needles, she said, were always

'You mustn't mind it. Why should you know? I'm sure, you dropping on the floor, and the children were always might mention a dozen writers you have read, and Flo and I stepping on them; her baby had recently put a pin in his would not know one of them.'

mouth, and the pin had stuck in his palate and almost That true,' I said, very grateful to him; but though I had read choked him.

proper books at Diana's, I could think, at that moment, only I listened to her story, and then watched while Florence of the improper ones - and they all had the same author: spoke to her about the Women's Guild, and about the Anonymous.

seamstresses' union it had established. Would she come to a So I said nothing, and we finished our supper in silence. meeting? Florence asked. The woman shook her head, and And when I looked at Florence again, her eyes were turned said she didn't have the time; that she had no one to mind away from me and seemed rather dark. I thought then that, the children; that she was frightened that the masters at the after all, she would never really want a girl like me in outfitters for whom she worked would hear about it, and paradise with her, not even to stew the oysters for her tea; stop her shillings.

and the thought, just then, seemed a dreary one.

'Besides that, miss,' she said at last, 'my husband wouldn't But I was quite wrong about her. Whether I were in her care for me to go. Not but what he ain't a union man paradise or not, she wouldn't have noticed; and it was not himself; but he don't think much of women having a say in her mother she hoped to see there, nor even Eleanor Marx, all that stuff. He says there ain't the need for it.'

nor even Karl Marx. It was another person altogether that

'But what do you think, Mrs Fryer? Don't you think the she had in mind - but it was not until a few weeks later, one women's union a good thing? Wouldn't you like to see evening in the autumn of that year, that I found out who. things changed - see the masters made to pay you more, and I had begun, as I have said, to accompany Florence on her work you kinder?' Mrs Fryer rubbed her eyes.

visits for the Guild, and on this night I found myself in the

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