by Sarah Waters
At last she was naked, all except for the pearl and chain about her neck; she turned in my hands, stiff and pimpled with cold, and I felt the brush of her nipples, and of the hair between her thighs. Then she moved away, and the bed-springs creaked; and at that, I didn’t wait to pull the rest of my own clothes off but followed her to the bed and found her shivering there, beneath the sheets. Here we kissed more leisurely, but also more fiercely, than we had before; at last the chill - though not the trembling - subsided.
Once her naked limbs began to strain against my own, however, I felt suddenly shy, suddenly awed. I leaned away from her. ‘May I really - touch you?’ I whispered. She gave again a nervous laugh, and tilted her face against her pillow.
‘Oh Nan,’ she said, ‘I think I shall die if you don’t!’
Tentatively, then, I raised my hand, and dipped my fingers into her hair. I touched her face - her brow, that curved; her cheek, that was freckled; her lip, her chin, her throat, her collar-bone, her shoulder ... Here, shy again, I let my hand linger - until, with her face still tilted from my own and her eyes hard shut, she took my wrist and gently led my fingers to her breasts. When I touched her here she sighed, and turned; and after a minute or two she seized my wrist again, and moved it lower.
Here she was wet, and smooth as velvet. I had never, of course, touched anyone like this before - except, sometimes, myself; but it was as if I touched myself now, for the slippery hand which stroked her seemed to stroke me: I felt my drawers grow damp and warm, my own hips jerk as hers did. Soon I ceased my gentle strokings and began to rub her, rather hard. ‘Oh!’ she said very softly; then, as I rubbed faster, she said ‘Oh!’ again. Then, ‘Oh, oh, oh!’: a volley of ‘Oh!’s, low and fast and breathy. She bucked, and the bed gave an answering creak; her own hands began to chafe distractedly at the flesh of my shoulders. There seemed no motion, no rhythm, in all the world, but that which I had set up, between her legs, with one wet fingertip.
At last she gasped, and stiffened, then plucked my hand away and fell back, heavy and slack. I pressed her to me, and for a moment we lay together quite still. I felt her heart beating wildly in her breast; and when it had calmed a little she stirred, and sighed, and put a hand to her cheek.
‘You’ve made me weep,’ she murmured.
I sat up. ‘Not really, Kitty?’
‘Yes, really.’ She gave a twitch that was half laughter, half a sob, then rubbed at her eyes again, and when I took her fingers from her face I could feel the tears upon them. I pressed her hand, suddenly uncertain: ‘Did I hurt you? What did I do that was bad? Did I hurt you, Kitty?’
She shook her head, and sniffed, and laughed more freely. ‘Hurt me? Oh no. It was only - so very sweet.’ She smiled. ‘And you are - so very good. And I -’ She sniffed again, then placed her face against my breast and hid her eyes from me. ‘And I - oh, Nan, I do so love you, so very, very much!’
I lay beside her, and put my arms about her. My own desire I quite forgot, and she made no move to remind me of it. I forgot, too, Gully Sutherland - who three hours before had put a gun to his own heart, because a man had sat through his routine unsmiling. I only lay; and soon Kitty slept. And I studied her face, where it showed creamy pale in the darkness, and thought She loves me, She loves me — like a fool with a daisy-stalk, endlessly exclaiming over the same last browning petal.
The next morning we were shy together, at first - and Kitty, I think, was the shyest of all.
‘How much we drank, last night!’ she said, not gazing at me; and for a terrible second I thought it might really have been only the champagne that made her cling to me, and say that she loved me, so very very much ... But as she spoke she blushed. I said, before I could stop myself: ‘If you unsay all those things you said last night, oh Kitty, I’ll die!’ and that made her raise her eyes to mine, and I saw that she had simply been anxious, that I might only have been drunk... And then we gazed and gazed at one another; and for all that I had gazed at her a thousand times before, I felt now that I was looking at her as if for the first time. We had lived and slept and laboured, side by side, for half a year; but there had been a kind of veil between us, that our cries and whispers of the night before had quite torn down. She looked flushed, washed - new-born; so that I could hardly press her skin, for fear of marking it - so that I feared, almost, to kiss her lips again in case they bruised.
But I did kiss them; and then I lay, quite at my leisure, and watched as she splashed water on her face and arms, and fastened on her underclothes and frock, and buttoned her shoes. As she worked at her hair I lit a cigarette: I struck the match and let it burn almost to my fingers, gazing at the flame as it ate its way along the wood. I said, ‘When I first knew you, I used to think that, whenever I thought of you, I was all lit up, like a lamp. I was afraid that people would see...’ She smiled. I gave the match a shake. ‘Didn’t you know,’ I said then, ‘didn’t you know, that I loved you?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she answered; then she sighed. ‘I didn’t like to think of it.’
‘Why not?’
She shrugged. ‘It seemed easier to be your friend ...’
‘But Kitty, that’s just what I thought! And oh! wasn’t it terribly hard! But I thought, that if you knew I liked you as a, as a sweetheart - well, I never heard of such a thing before, did you?’
She moved to the glass to work again at the pins in her plait, and now, without turning, she said, ‘It’s true I never cared for any other girl, like I care for you ...’ As she said it I saw her neck and ears grow pink, and felt myself grow weak and warm and silly in response; but I caught a glimpse of something, too, behind her words.
‘It has happened before, then,’ I said flatly, ‘with you...’ She grew redder than ever, but would make me no reply; and I fell silent. But the fact was, I loved her too much to want to fret for very long about the other girls she might have kissed before me. ‘When was it,’ I asked next, ‘that you began to think of me like ... When did you begin to think that you might learn to - to love me?’
Now she did turn, and smiled. ‘I remember a hundred little times,’ she said. ‘I remember how you made my dressing-room so nice and neat; I remember your blushes as I kissed you good-night. I remember how you opened an oyster for me at your father’s table - but then, I think I loved you then, already. Indeed, I’m ashamed to say, that it must have been that moment, at the Canterbury Palace, when I first smelled the oyster-liquor on your fingers, that I began to think of you as - as I shouldn’t have.’
‘Oh!’
‘And I’m even more ashamed to say,’ she went on in a slightly different tone, ‘that it wasn’t until last night - when I saw you larking with that boy, and was so jealous - that I learned how much, how much ...’
‘Oh, Kitty...’ I swallowed. ‘I’m glad you learned it, at last.’ She looked away, then came to me and took my fag, and gave me one brisk kiss.
‘So am I.’
After that she bent to rub with a cloth at the leather of her boots, and I found myself yawning: I was weary, and rather sick from the champagne and the excitements of the night. I said, ‘Must we really get up?’ and Kitty nodded.
‘We must - for it’s almost eleven, and Walter will be here soon. Had you forgotten?’
It was a Sunday, and Walter was coming, as usual, to take us driving. I had not forgotten - but had had no time and no desire, yet, to think of ordinary things. Now, at the mention of Walter’s name, I grew thoughtful. It would be rather hard on him, now that this had happened.
As if Kitty knew what I was thinking, she said, ‘You will be sensible with Walter, won’t you, Nan?’ Then she repeated what she had said the night before upon the bridge: ‘You won’t let on, will you, to anyone? You will be careful - won’t you?’
I silently cursed her for being so prudent; but took her hand and kissed it. ‘I have been being careful since the first minute I saw you. I am the Queen of Carefulness. I shall go on being careful for ever, if you like - so long as I mi
ght be a bit reckless, sometimes, when we are quite alone.’
Her smile, when she gave it, was a little distracted. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘things have not changed, so very much.’
But I knew that everything had changed - everything.
At length I rose too, and washed and dressed and used the chamber-pot, while Kitty went downstairs. She came back with a tray of tea and toast - ‘I could hardly look Ma Dendy in the eye!’ she said, all shy and red again - and we had our breakfast in our own parlour, before the fire, kissing the crumbs and butter from one another’s lips.
There was a hamper of suits beneath the window, that we had had sent over from a costumier’s and not yet properly examined; and now, as we waited for Walter, Kitty began rather idly to sort through it. She pulled out a black tail-coat, very fine. ‘Look at this!’ she said. She slipped it on over her dress, and did a stiff little dance; then she began, very lightly, to sing.
‘In a house, in a square, in a quadrant,’ she sang, ‘In a street, in a lane, in a road; Turn to the left, on the right hand, You see there my true love’s abode.’
I smiled. This was an old song of George Leybourne’s: everyone had used to whistle it in the ’seventies, and I had even once seen it sung by Leybourne himself, at the Canterbury Palace. It was a silly, nonsensical, but rather infectious kind of song, and Kitty sang it all the sweeter for singing it so softly and carelessly.
‘I go there a courting and cooing,
To my love, like a dove.
And swearing on my bended knee,
If ever I cease to love,
May sheep’s heads grow on apple trees,
If ever I cease to love.’
I listened for a while, then raised my voice with hers for the chorus:‘If ever I cease to love,
If ever I cease to love,
May the moon be turned into green cheese,
If ever I cease to love.’
We laughed, then sang louder. I found a hat in the hamper, and tossed it to Kitty, then pulled out a jacket and a boater for myself, and a walking-cane. I linked my arm with hers, and imitated her dance. The song grew sillier.
‘For all the money that’s in the bank,
For the title of lord or duke,
I wouldn’t exchange the girl I love,
There’s bliss in every look.
To see her dance the polka,
I could faint with radiant love,
May the Monument a hornpipe dance,
If ever I cease to love!
May we never have to pay the Income Tax,
If ever I cease to love!’
We finished with a flourish, and I attempted a twirl - then froze. Kitty had left the door ajar, and Walter stood at it watching us, his eyes as wide as if he had had some sort of fright. I felt Kitty’s gaze follow mine; she gripped my arm, then dropped it sharply. I thought wildly of what he might have seen. The words of the song were foolish but, unmistakably, we had sung them to one another, and meant them. Had we also kissed? Had I touched Kitty where I shouldn’t have?
While I still wondered, Walter spoke. ‘My God,’ he said. I bit my lip - but he didn’t frown, or curse, as I expected. Instead he broke into a great beaming smile, and slapped his hands together, and stepped into the room to seize us both excitedly by the shoulders.
‘My God - that’s it! That’s it! Why, oh why, didn’t I see it before! That is what we have been looking for. This, Kitty’ - he gestured to our jackets, our hats, our gentlemanly poses - ‘this will make us famous!’
And so the day that I became Kitty’s sweetheart was also the day that I joined her act, and began my career - my brief, unlooked-for, rather wonderful career - on the music-hall stage.
Chapter 5
At first, the prospect of joining Kitty upon the stage, in a profession for which I had never been trained, never yearned, and had - as I thought - no special talent, filled me with dismay.
‘No,’ I said to Walter that afternoon, when at last I understood him. ‘Absolutely not. I cannot. You, of all people, should know what a fool I would make of myself - and of Kitty!’
But Walter wouldn’t listen.
‘Don’t you see?’ he said. ‘How long have we been looking for something that will lift the act above the ordinary, and make it really memorable? This is it! A double act! A soldier - and his comrade! A swell - together with his chum! Above all: two lovely girls in trousers, instead of one! When did you ever see the like of it before? It will be a sensation!’
‘It might be a sensation,’ I said, ‘with two Kitty Butlers in it. But Kitty Butler and Nancy Astley, her dresser, who never sang a song in her life -’
‘We have all heard you sing,’ said Walter, ‘a thousand times - and very prettily, too.’
‘Who never danced -’ I went on.
‘Pooh, dancing! A bit of shuffling about the stage. Any fool with half a leg can do it.’
‘Who never raised her voice before a crowd -’
‘Patter!’ he said carelessly. ‘Kitty can take care of the patter!’
I laughed, in sheer exasperation, then turned to Kitty herself. So far she had taken no part in the exchange, only stood at my side, biting at the edge of one of her nails, and frowning. ‘Kitty,’ I said now, ‘for goodness’ sake, tell him what madness he is talking!’
She didn’t answer at first, but continued to chew distractedly at her fingertip. She looked from me to Walter, then back to me again, and narrowed her eyes.
‘It might work,’ she said.
I stamped my foot. ‘Now you have both lost your minds, entirely! Think what you’re saying. You come from families where everybody is an actor. You live all your lives in houses like this, where even the dam’ dog is a dancing one. Four months ago I was an oyster-girl in Whitstable!’
‘Four months before Bessie Bellwood made her debut,’ Walter replied, ‘she was a rabbit-skinner in the New Cut!’ He put his hand upon my arm. ‘Nan,’ he said kindly, ‘I am not pressing you, but let us see if this thing will work, at least. Will you just go and take a suit of Kitty’s, and try it on properly? And Kitty, you go and get fitted up, too. And then we’ll see what the two of you look like, side by side.’
I turned to Kitty. She gave a shrug. ‘Why not?’ she said.
It seems strange to think that, in all my weeks of handling so many lovely costumes, I had never thought to try one on myself; but I had not. The piece of sport with the jacket and the boater had been a novel one, born of the gaiety of that marvellous morning; until then Kitty’s suits had seemed too handsome, too special - above all, too peculiarly hers, too fundamental to her own particular magic and swank - for me to fool with. I had cared for them and kept them neat; but I had never so much as held one up in front of me, before the glass. Now I found myself half-naked in our chilly bedroom, with Kitty beside me with a costume in her hand, and our roles quite reversed.
I had removed my dress and petticoats, and buttoned a shirt over my stays. Kitty had found a morning-suit of black and grey for me to wear, and had a similar costume ready for herself. She looked me over.
‘You must take your drawers off,’ she said quietly - the door was shut fast, but Walter was audibly pacing the little parlour beyond it - ‘or else they’ll bunch, beneath the trousers.’
I blushed, then slid the drawers down my thighs and kicked them off, so that I stood clad only in the shirt and a pair of stockings, gartered at the knee. I had once, as a girl, worn a suit of my brother’s to a masquerade at a party. That, however, had been many years before; it was quite different, now, to pull Kitty’s handsome trousers up my naked hips, and button them over that delicate place that Kitty herself had so recently set smarting. I took a step, and blushed still harder. I felt as though I had never had legs before - or, rather, that I had never known, quite, what it really felt like to have two legs, joined at the top.
I reached for Kitty, and pulled her to me. ‘I wish Walter were not waiting for us,’ I whispered - though, in truth, there was some
thing rather thrilling about embracing her, in such a costume, with Walter so near and so unknowing.
That thought - and the soundless kiss which followed it - made the trousers feel still stranger. When Kitty stepped away to see to her own suit, I looked at her a little wonderingly. I said, ‘How can you dress like this, before a hall of strangers, every night, and not feel queer?’
She fastened the clip of her braces, and shrugged. ‘I have worn sillier costumes.’
‘I didn’t mean that it was silly. I meant - well, if I were to be beside you, in these’ - I took another couple of steps - ‘oh Kitty, I don’t think I should be able to keep from kissing you!’
She put a finger to her lips; then pushed at the fringe of her hair. She said, ‘You will have to get used to it, for Walter’s plan to work. Otherwise - well, what a show that would be!’
I laughed; but the words Walter’s plan had made my stomach lurch in sudden panic, and the laughter sounded rather hollow. I gazed down at my own two legs. The trousers, after all, were far too short for me, and showed my stockings at the ankle. I said, ‘It won’t do, will it, Kitty? He won’t really think that it will do - will he?’
He did. ‘Oh yes!’ he cried when we emerged at last together, all dressed up. ‘Oh yes, but what a team you make!’ He was more excited than I had ever seen him. He had us stand together, with our arms linked; then he made us turn, and do again the little stiff-legged dance that he had caught us at before. And all the time he walked about us with narrowed eyes, stroking his chin and nodding.