by Sarah Waters
By the time she returned to her dressing-room I would have everything tidy and still. Her tea, as I have said, would be ready; sometimes, too, I would have a cigarette lit for her. She would have lost her fierce, distracted look, and be simply merry and kind. ‘What a crowd!’ she’d say. ‘They wouldn’t let me leave!’ Or, ‘A slow one tonight, Nan; I believe I was half-way through “Good Cheer, Boys, Good Cheer” before they realised I was a girl!’
She would unclip her necktie and hang up her jacket and hat, then she would sip her tea and smoke her fag and - since performing made her garrulous - she would talk to me, and I would listen, hard. And so I learned a little of her history.
She had been born, she said, in Rochester, to a family of entertainers. Her mother (she did not mention a father) had died while she was still quite a baby, and she had been raised by her grandmother; she had no brothers, no sisters, and no cousins that she could recall. She had taken her first bows before the footlights at the age of twelve, as ‘Kate Straw, the Little Singing Wonder’, and had known a bit of success in penny-gaffs and public-houses, and the smaller kinds of halls and theatres. But it was a miserable sort of life, she said - ‘and soon I wasn’t even little any more. Every time a place came up there was a crush of girls queuing for it at the stage door, all just the same as me, or prettier, or perter - or hungrier, and so more willing to kiss the chairman for the promise of a season’s work, or a week’s, or even a night’s.’ Her grandmother had died; she had joined a dancing troupe and toured the seaside towns of Kent and the South Coast, doing end-of-pier shows three times a night. She frowned when she spoke about these times, and her voice was bitter, or weary; she would place a hand beneath her chin, and rest her head upon it, and close her eyes.
‘Oh, it was hard,’ she’d say, ‘so hard ... And you never made a friend, because you were never in one place long enough. And all the stars thought themselves too grand to talk to you, or were afraid you would copy their routines. And the crowds were cruel, and made you cry ...’ The thought of Kitty weeping brought the tears to my own eyes; and seeing me so affected, she’d give a smile, and a wink, and a stretch, and say in her best swell accent: ‘But those days are all behind me now, don’t you know, and I am on the path to fame and fortune. Since I changed my name and became a masher the whole world loves me; and Tricky Reeves loves me most of all, and pays me like a prince, to prove it!’ And then we would smile together, because we both knew that if she really were a masher Tricky’s wages would barely keep her in champagne; but my smile would be a little troubled for I knew, too, that her contract was due to expire at the end of August, and then she would have to move to another theatre - to Margate, perhaps, she said, or Broadstairs, if they would have her. I couldn’t bear to think what I would do when she was gone.
What my family made of my trips backstage, my marvellous new status as Miss Butler’s pal and unofficial dresser, I am not sure. They were, as I have said, impressed; but they were also troubled. It was reassuring for them that it was a real friendship, and not just a schoolgirl mash, that had me travelling so often to the Palace, and spending all my savings on the train fare; and yet, I thought I heard them ask themselves, what manner of friendship could there be between a handsome, clever music-hall artiste, and the girl in the crowd that admired her? When I said that Kitty had no young man (for I had found this out, early on, amongst the pieces of her history) Davy said that I should bring her home, and introduce her to my handsome brother - though he only said it when Rhoda was near, to tease her. When I spoke of brewing her pans of tea and tidying her table, Mother narrowed her eyes: ‘She’s doing all right out of you by the sound of it. It’s a little more help with the tea and the tables we could do with, from you, home here ...’
It was true, I suppose, that I rather neglected my duties in the house for the sake of my trips to the Palace. They fell to my sister, though she rarely complained about it. I believe my parents thought her generous, allowing me my freedom at her own expense. The truth was, I think, that she was squeamish of mentioning Kitty now - and by that alone I knew that it was she, more than any of them, who was uneasy. I had said nothing more to her about my passion. I had said nothing of my new, strange, hot desire to anyone. But she saw me, of course, as I lay in my bed; and, as anyone will tell you who has been secretly in love, it is in bed that you do your dreaming - in bed, in the darkness, where you cannot see your own cheeks pink, that you ease back the mantle of restraint that keeps your passion dimmed throughout the day, and let it glow a little.
How Kitty would have blushed, to know the part she played in my fierce dreamings - to know how shamelessly I took my memories of her, and turned them to my own improper advantage ! Each night at the Palace she kissed me farewell; in my dreams her lips stayed at my cheek - were hot, were tender - moved to my brow, my ear, my throat, my mouth .. I was used to standing close to her, to fasten her collar-studs or brush her lapels; now, in my reveries, I did what I longed to do then - I leaned to place my lips upon the edges of her hair; I slid my hands beneath her coat, to where her breasts pressed warm against her stiff gent’s shirt and rose to meet my strokings ...
And all this - which left me thick with bafflement and pleasure - with my sister at my side! All this with Alice’s breath upon my cheek, or her hot limbs pressed against mine; or with her eyes shining cold and dull, with starlight and suspicion.
But she said nothing; she asked me nothing; and to the rest of the family, at least, my continuing friendship with Kitty became in time a source not of wonder, but of pride. ‘Have you been to the Palace at Canterbury?’ I would hear Father say to customers as he took their plates. ‘Our youngest girl is very thick with Kitty Butler, the star of the show ...’ By the end of August, when the oyster season had started again and we were back in the shop full-time, they began to press me to bring Kitty home with me, that they might meet her for themselves.
‘You are always saying as how she is your pal,’ said Father one morning at breakfast. ‘And besides - what a crime it would be for her to come so near to Whitstable, and never taste a proper oyster-tea. You bring her over here, before she goes.’ The idea of asking Kitty to sup with my family seemed a horrible one; and because my father spoke so carelessly about the fact that she would soon have left for a new hall, I made him a stinging reply. A little later Mother took me aside. Was my father’s house not good enough for Miss Butler, she said, that I couldn’t invite her here? Was I ashamed of my parents, and my parents’ trade? Her words made me gloomy; I was quiet and sad with Kitty that night, and when after the show she asked me why, I bit my lip.
‘My parents want me to ask you over,’ I said, ‘for tea tomorrow. You don’t have to come, and I can say you’re busy or sick. But I promised them I’d ask you; and now,’ I finished miserably, ‘I have.’
She took my hand. ‘But Nan,’ she said in wonder, ‘I should love to come! You know how dull it is for me in Canterbury, with no one but Mrs Pugh, and Sandy, to talk to!’ Mrs Pugh was the landlady of Kitty’s rooming-house; Sandy was the boy who shared her landing: he played in the band at the Palace, but drank, she said, and was sometimes silly and a bore. ‘Oh, how nice it would be,’ she continued, ‘to sit in a proper parlour again, with a proper family - not just a room with a bed in it, and a dirty rug, and a bit of newspaper on the table for a cloth! And how nice to see where you live and work; and to catch your train; and to meet the people that love you, and have you with them all day ...’
It made me fidget and swallow to hear her talk like this, all unself-consciously, of how she liked me; tonight, however, I had no time even to blush: for as she spoke there came a knock at her door - a sharp, cheerful, authoritative knock that made her blink and stiffen, and look up in surprise.
I, too, gave a start. In all the evenings I had spent with her, she had had no visitors but the call-boy - who came to tell her when she was wanted in the wing - and Tony, who sometimes put his head around the door to wish us both good-night. She had no beau,
as I have said; she had no other ‘fans’ - no friends at all, it seemed, but me; and I had always been rather glad of it. Now I watched her step to the door, and bit my lip. I should like to say I felt a thrill of foreboding, but I did not. I only felt piqued, that our time alone together - which I thought little enough! - should be made shorter.
The visitor was a gentleman: a stranger, evidently, to Kitty, for she greeted him politely, but quite cautiously. He had a silk hat on his head which - seeing her, and then me lurking in the little room behind her - he removed, and held to his bosom. ‘Miss Butler, I believe,’ he said; and when she nodded, he gave a bow: ‘Walter Bliss, ma’am. Your servant.’ His voice was deep and pleasant and clear, like Tricky’s. As he spoke he produced a card from his pocket and held it out. In the second or so it took Kitty to gaze at it and give a little ‘Oh!’ of surprise, I studied him. He was very tall, even without his hat, and was dressed rather fashionably in chequered trousers and a fancy waistcoat. Across his stomach there was a golden watch-chain as thick as the tail of a rat; and more gold, I noticed, flashed from his fingers. His head was large, his hair a dull ginger; gingerish, too - and somehow at once both impressive and rather comical - were the whiskers that swept from his top lip to his ears, and his eyebrows, and the hair in his nose. His skin was as clear and shiny as a boy’s. His eyes were blue.
When Kitty returned his card to him, he asked if he might speak with her a moment, and at once she stood aside to let him pass. With him in it, the little room seemed very full and hot. I rose, reluctantly, and put on my gloves and my hat, and said that I should go; and then Kitty introduced me - ‘My friend, Miss Astley,’ she called me, which made me feel a little gayer - and Mr Bliss shook my hand.
‘Tell your Mother,’ said Kitty as she showed me to the door, ‘that I shall come tomorrow, any time she likes.’
‘Come at four,’ I said.
‘Four it is, then!’ She briefly took my hand again, and kissed my cheek.
Over her shoulder I saw the flashy gentleman fingering his whiskers, but with his eyes turned, politely, away from us.
I can hardly say what a curious mix of feelings mine were, the Sunday afternoon when Kitty came to call on us in Whitstable. She was more to me than all the world; that she should be visiting me in my own home, and supping with my family, seemed both a delight too lovely to be borne and a great and dreadful burden. I loved her, and could not but long to have her come; but I loved her, and not a soul must know it - not even she. It would be a torture, I thought, to have to sit beside her at my father’s table with that love within me, mute and restless as a gnawing worm. I would have to smile while Mother asked, Why didn’t Kitty have a beau? and smile again when Davy held Rhoda’s hand, or Tony pinched my sister’s knee beneath the table - when all the while my darling would be at my side, untouchable.
Then again, there was the crampedness, and the dinginess - and the unmistakable fishiness - of our home to fret over. Would Kitty think it mean? Would she see the tears in the drugget, the smears on the walls; would she see that the armchairs sagged, that the rugs were faded, that the shawl which Mother had tacked to the mantel, so that it fluttered in the draught from the chimney, was dusty and torn, its fringes unravelling? I had grown up with these things, and for eighteen years had barely noticed them, but I saw them now, for what they really were, as if through her own eyes.
I saw my family, too, anew. I saw my father - a gentle man, but prone to dullness. Would Kitty think him dull? And Davy: he could be rather brash; and Rhoda - horrible Rhoda - would certainly be over-pert. What would Kitty make of them? What would she think of Alice - my dearest friend, until a month ago? Would she think her cold, and would her coldness puzzle her? Or would she - and this thought was a dreadful one - would she think her pretty, and like her more than me? Would she wish it had been Alice in the box for her to throw that rose to, and invite backstage, and call a mermaid ... ?
Waiting for her that afternoon I was by turns anxious, gay and sullen - now fussing over the setting of the tea-table, now snapping at Davy and grumbling at Rhoda, now earning scolds from everyone for fretting and complaining, and generally turning what should have been a glad day for myself into a gloomy one, for us all. I had washed my hair and it had dried peculiarly; I had added a new frill to my best dress, but had sewn it crooked and it wouldn’t lie flat. I stood at the top of the stairs, sweating over the silk with a safety-pin, ready to weep because Kitty’s train was due and I must run to meet her, when Tony emerged from our little kitchen, carrying bottles of Bass for the tea-table. He stood and watched me fumbling. I said, ‘Go away’, but he only looked smug.
‘You won’t want to hear my bit of news, then.’
‘What news?’ The frill was flat at last. I reached for my hat on the peg on the wall. Tony smirked and said nothing. I stamped my foot. ‘Tony, what is it? I’m late and you’re making me later.’
‘Well then, nothing at all, I expect. I dare say Miss Butler will tell you herself ...’
‘Tell me what?’ Now I stood with my hat in one hand, a hat-pin in the other. ‘Tell me what, Tony?’
He glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice. ‘Now, don’t let on about it yet, for it ain’t been properly settled. But your pal - Kitty - she’s due to leave the Palace, ain’t she, in a week or so?’ I nodded. ‘Well, she won’t be going - not for a good while, anyway. Uncle has offered her a sparkling new contract, till the New Year - said she was too good to lose to Broadstairs.’
The New Year! That was months away, months and months and weeks and weeks; I saw them all spread out before me, each one full of nights in Kitty’s dressing-room, and good-night kisses, and dreams.
I gave a cry, I think; and Tony took a swig of Bass, complacently. Then Alice appeared, demanding to know what it was that must be talked about in whispers, and shrieked over, on the stairs ... ? I didn’t wait for Tony’s answer, I thundered down to the door and into the street, and ran to the station like a hoyden, with my hat flapping about my ears -because I had forgotten, after all, to pin it properly.
I had hardly expected Kitty to swagger to Whitstable in her suit and her topper and her lavender gloves; but even so, when she stepped from the train and I saw that she was clad as a girl, and walked like a girl, with her plait fastened to the back of her head and a parasol over her arm, I felt a little pang of disappointment. This swiftly turned, however - as always - to desire, and then to pride, for she looked terribly smart and handsome on that dusty Whitstable platform. She kissed my cheek when I went up to her, and took my arm, and let me lead her from the station to our house, across the sea-front. She said, ‘Well! And this is where you were born, and grew up?’
‘Oh yes! Look there: that building, beside the church, is our old school. Over there - see that house with the bicycle by the gate? - that’s where my cousins live. Here, look, on this step, I once fell down and cut my chin, and my sister held her handkerchief to it, the whole way home ...’ So I talked and pointed, and Kitty nodded, biting her lip. ‘How lucky you are!’ she said at last; and as she said it, she seemed to sigh.
I had feared that the afternoon would be dismal and hard; in fact, it was merry. Kitty shook hands with everyone, and had a word for them all, such as, ‘You must be Davy, who works in the smack’, and ‘You must be Alice, who Nancy talks about so often, and is so proud of. Now I can see why’ - which made Alice blush, and look to the floor in confusion.
With my father she was kind. ‘Well, well, Miss Butler,’ he said when he took her hand, nodding at her skirts, ‘this is rather a change, ain’t it, from your usual gear?’ She smiled and said it was; and when he added, with a wink, ‘And something of an improvement, too - if you don’t mind a gentleman saying so’, she laughed and said that, since gentlemen were usually of that opinion, she was quite used to it, and did not mind a bit.
All in all she made herself so pleasant, and answered their questions about herself, and the music hall, so sweetly and cleverly, that no one - not
even Alice, or spiteful Rhoda - could dislike her; and I - watching her gaze from the windows at Whitstable Bay, or incline her head to catch a story of my father’s, or compliment my mother on some ornament or picture (she admired the shawl, above the fireplace!) - I fell in love with her, all over again. And my love was all the warmer, of course, since I had that special, secret knowledge about Tricky, and the contract, and the extra four months.
She had come for tea, and presently we all sat down to it - Kitty marvelling, as we did so, at the table. It was set for a real oyster-supper, with a linen cloth, and a little spirit-lamp with a plate of butter on it, waiting to be melted. On either side of this there were platters of bread, and quartered lemons, and vinegar and pepper castors - two or three of each. Beside every plate there was a fork, a spoon, a napkin, and the all-important oyster-knife; and in the middle of the table there was the oyster-barrel itself, a white cloth bound about its top-most hoop, and its lid loosened by a finger’s width - ‘Just enough,’ as my father would say, ‘to let the oysters stretch a little’; but not enough to let them open their shells and sicken. We were rather cramped around the table, for there were eight of us in all, and we had had to bring up extra chairs from the restaurant below. Kitty and I sat close, our elbows almost touching, our shoes side by side beneath the table. When Mother cried, ‘Do move along a bit, Nancy, and give Miss Butler some room!’, Kitty said that she was quite all right, Mrs Astley, really; and I shifted a quarter of an inch to my right, but kept my foot pressed against hers, and felt her leg, all hot, against my own.