by Sarah Waters
‘Nan!’ said Kitty quickly. I kept my eyes fixed upon Walter.
‘I know,’ he said slowly, ‘that you were - sweethearts, of a kind.’
‘Of a kind. The kind that - what? Hold hands? Did you think, then, that you were the first to have her, in this bed? Didn’t she tell you that I fuck her?’
He flinched - and so did I, for the word sounded terrible: I had never said it before, and had not known I was about to use it now. His gaze, however, remained steady: I saw, with increasing misery, that he knew it all, and did not care; that perhaps - who knows? - he even liked it. He was too much the gentleman to make me a foul-mouthed reply, but his expression - a curious mixture of contempt, complacency, and pity - was a speaking one. It said, That was not fucking, as the world knows it! It said, You fucked her so well, that she has left you! It said, You may have fucked her first, but I shall fuck her now and ever after!
He was my rival; and had defeated me, at last.
I took a step away from the bed, and then another. Kitty swallowed, her head still upon Walter’s great breast. Her eyes were large and lustrous with unshed tears, her lip red where she had bitten it; her cheeks were pale, and the freckles very dark upon them - there were freckles, too, upon the flesh of her shoulder and chest, where it showed above the blankets. She was about as beautiful as I had ever seen her.
Good-bye, I thought - then I turned and fled.
I ran down the stairs; my skirts snagged about my feet and I almost stumbled. I ran past the open parlour-door; past the hat-stand, where my coat hung next to Walter’s; past the suitcase I had brought from Whitstable. I didn’t pause to pick anything up, not even so much as a glove or a bonnet. I could touch nothing in that place now - it had become like a plague-house to me. I ran to the door and pulled it open, then left it wide behind me as I hurried down the steps and into the street. It was very cold, but the air was still and dry. I didn’t look behind me.
I continued running until my side began to ache; then I half walked, half trotted, until the pain subsided; then I ran again. I had reached Stoke Newington and was headed south on the long straight road that led to Dalston, Shoreditch, and the City. Beyond that, I could not think: I had wit enough only to keep Stamford Hill - and her, and him - continually behind me; and to run. I was half-blind with weeping; my eyeballs felt swollen and hot in their sockets, my face was soaked with slobber, and growing icy. People must have stared as I passed by them; I believe one or two fellows reached out to pluck me by the arm; but I saw and heard them not, simply hurried, stumbling over my skirts, until sheer exhaustion made me slow my pace and look about me.
I had reached a little bridge over a canal. There were barges on the water, but they were some way off yet, and the water below me was perfectly smooth and thick. I thought of that night, when Kitty and I had stood above the Thames, and she had let me kiss her ... I almost cried out at the memory. I placed my hands upon the iron rail: I believe that, for a second, I really considered heaving myself over it, and making my escape that way.
But I was as cowardly, in my own fashion, as Kitty herself. I could not bear the thought of that brown water sucking at my skirts, washing over my head, filling up my mouth. I turned away and put my hands before my eyes, and forced my brain to stop its dreadful whirling. I could not, I knew, keep running all day. I should have to find a place to hide myself. I had nothing on me but my dress. I groaned aloud, and gazed about me again - but this time rather desperately.
Then I held my breath. I recognised this bridge: we had driven over it every night since Christmas, on our way to Cinderella. The Britannia Theatre was nearby; and there was money, I knew, in our dressing-room.
I set off, wiping my face with my sleeve, smoothing my dress and my hair. The door-man at the theatre eyed me rather curiously when he let me in, but was pleasant enough. I knew him well, and had often stopped to chat with him; today, however, I only nodded to him as I took my key, and hurried by without a smile. I didn’t care what he thought; I knew I should not be seeing him again.
The theatre, of course, was still shut up: there were sounds of hammering from the hall as the carpenters finished their work, but apart from that the corridors, the green-room - all were quiet. I was glad: I didn’t want to be seen by anyone. I walked very fast but very quietly to the dressing-rooms, until I reached the door that said Miss Butler and Miss King. Then very stealthily - for I half-feared, in my fevered state, that Kitty might be on the other side, awaiting me - I unlocked the door and pushed it open.
The room beyond it was dark: I stepped across it in the light from the corridor, struck a match and lit a gas-jet, then closed the door as softly as I could. I knew just what I wanted. In a cupboard beneath Kitty’s table there was a little tin box with a pile of coins and notes in it - a portion of our wages went there every week, for us to draw on as we chose. The key to it lay mixed up with her sticks of grease-paint, in the old cigar-box in which she kept her make-up. I took this box, and tipped it up; the sticks fell out, and so did the key — and so, I saw, did something else. There had always been a sheet of coloured paper at the bottom of the box, and I had never thought to lift it. Now it had come loose and behind it was a card. I picked it up with trembling fingers, and studied it. It was creased, and stained with make-up, but I knew it at once. On the front was a picture of an oyster-smack; two girls smiled from its deck through a patina of powder and grease, and on the sail someone had inked, ‘To London’. There was more writing on the back - Kitty’s address at the Canterbury Palace, and a message: ‘I can come!!! You must do without your dresser for a few nights, though, while I make all ready ...’ It was signed: ‘Fondly, Your Nan’.
It was the card that I had sent her, so long ago, before we had even moved to Brixton; and she had kept it, secretly, as if she treasured it.
I held the card between my fingers for a moment; then I returned it to its box and placed the paper sheet above it, as before. Then I laid my head upon the table, and wept, again, until I could weep no more.
I opened the tin box at last, and took, without counting it, all the money that lay inside - about twenty pounds, as it would turn out, and only a fraction, of course, of my total earnings of the past twelve months; but I felt so dazed and ill at that moment I could hardly imagine what I would ever need money for, again. I put the cash into an envelope, tucked the envelope into my belt, and turned to go.
I hadn’t glanced about me, yet, at all; now, however, I took a last look round. One thing only caught my eye, and made me hesitate: our rail of costumes. They were all here, the suits that I had worn upon the stage at Kitty’s side - the velvet breeches, the shirts, the serge jackets, the fancy waistcoats. I took a step towards them, and ran my hand along the line of sleeves. I would never take them up again ...
The thought was too much; I couldn’t leave them. There were a couple of old sailors’ bags nearby - giant great things that we had used once or twice to rehearse with, in the afternoons, when the Britannia stage was quiet and clear. They were filled with rags: very quickly I took one of them and loosened the cord at its neck, and pulled all its stuffing out upon the floor until it was quite empty. Then I stepped to the rail, and began to tear my costumes from it - not all of them, but the ones I could not bear to part with, the blue serge suit, the Oxford bags, the scarlet guardsman’s uniform - and stuffed them into the bag. I took shoes, too, and shirts, and neck-ties - even a couple of hats. I didn’t stop to think about it, only worked, sweating, until the bag was full and almost as tall as myself. It was heavy, and I staggered when I lifted it; but it was strangely satisfying to have a real burden upon my shoulders - a kind of counterweight to my terrible heaviness of heart.
Thus laden, I made my way through the corridors of the Britannia. I passed no one; I looked for no one. Only when I reached the stage door did I see a face that I was rather glad to see: Billy-Boy sat in the doorman’s office, quite alone, with a cigarette between his fingers. He looked up when I approached, and gazed in won
der at my bag, my swollen eyes, my mottled cheeks.
‘Lord, Nan,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Whatever is up with you? Are you sick?’
I shook my head. ‘Give me your fag, Bill, will you?’ He did so, and I pulled on it and coughed. He watched me warily.
‘You don’t look right, at all,’ he said. ‘Where’s Kitty?’
I drew on the fag again, and handed it back to him.
‘Gone,’ I said. Then I pulled at the door and stepped into the street beyond. I heard Billy-Boy’s voice, lifted in anxiety and alarm, but the closing door shut off his words. I raised my bag a little higher on my shoulder, and began to walk. I took one turning, and then another. I passed a squalid tenement, entered a busy street, and joined a throng of pedestrians. London absorbed me; and for a little while I ceased, entirely, to think.
PART TWO
Chapter 8
I walked for something like an hour before I rested again; but the course I took was a random one that sometimes doubled back upon itself: my aim was less to run from Kitty than to hide from her, to lose myself in the grey anonymous spaces of the city. I wanted a room — a small room, a mean room, a room that would prove invisible to any pursuing eye. I saw myself entering it and covering my head, like some burrowing or hibernating creature, a wood-louse or a rat. So I kept to the streets where I thought I should find it, the grim and uninviting streets where there were lodging-houses, doss-houses, houses with cards in the window saying Beds-to-Rent. Any one of them, I suppose, might have suited me; but I was looking for a sign to welcome me.
And at last it seemed to me I found it. I had strayed through Moorgate, wandered towards St Paul’s, then turned and finished up almost at Clerkenwell. Still I had given no thought to the people about me - to the men and the children who stared, or sometimes laughed, to see me trudging, blank-faced, with my sailor’s load. My head was bowed, my eyes half-closed; but I became aware now that I had entered some kind of square - grew conscious of a bustle, a hum of business close at hand; grew conscious, too, of a smell: some rank, sweet, sickening odour I vaguely recognised but could not name. I walked more slowly, and felt the road begin to pull, a little stickily, at the soles of my shoes. I opened my eyes: the stones I stood upon were red and running with water and blood. I looked up, and saw a graceful iron building filled with vans and barrows and porters, all bearing carcases.
I was at Smithfield, at the Dead Meat Market.
I gave a kind of sigh to know it. Close at hand there was a tobacconist’s booth: I went to it and bought a tin of cigarettes and some matches; and when the boy handed me my change I asked him if there were any lodging-houses nearby, that might have rooms to spare. He gave me the names of two or three - adding, in a warning sort of way: ‘They ain’t werry smart, miss, the lodgings round these parts.’ I only nodded, and turned away; then walked on, to the first address that he had mentioned.
It turned out to be a tall, crumbling house in an unswept row, very close to the Farringdon Street railway. The front yard had a bedstead in it, and a dozen rusty cans and broken-down crates; in the yard next door there was a group of barefoot children, stirring water into pails of earth. But I hardly raised my eyes to any of it. I only stepped to the door, laid my bag upon the step, and knocked. Behind me, in the cut of the railway, a train rumbled and hissed. As it passed, the step on which I rested gave a shake.
My knock was answered by a pale little girl who stared hard at me while I enquired after the vacant rooms, then turned and called into the darkness behind her. After a second, a lady came; and she, too, looked me over. I thought then of how I must appear, in my expensive dress but hatless and gloveless, and with red eyes and a running nose. But I considered this image of myself rather listlessly, as if it did not much concern me; and the lady at last must have thought me harmless enough. She said her name was Mrs Best, that she had one room left for rent; that the charge was five shillings a week - or seven, with attendance; and that she liked her rent in advance.
Would the terms suit me? I gave a quick, half-hearted show of calculation - I felt quite incapable of serious thought - then said that they would.
The room to which she led me was cramped and mean and perfectly colourless; everything in it - the wallpaper, the carpets, even the tiles beside the hearth - having been rubbed or bleached or grimed to some variety of grey. There was no gas, only two oil-lamps with cracked and sooty chimneys. Above the mantel there was one small looking-glass, as cloudy and as speckled as the back of an old man’s hand. The window faced the Market. It was all about as different from our house at Stamford Hill as it was possible for any room to be: that, at least, gave me a dreary kind of satisfaction and relief. All I really saw, however, was the bed - a horrible old down mattress, yellow at the edges and blackened in the middle with an ancient bloodstain the size of a saucer - and the door. The bed, for all its rankness, seemed at that moment wonderfully inviting. The door was solid, and had a key in it.
I told Mrs Best therefore that I should like to take the room at once, and drew out the envelope that held my money. When she saw that, she sniffed - I think she took me for a gay girl. ‘It is only fair to tell you now,’ she said, ‘that the house I keep here is a tidy one; and I like my lodgers ditto. I have had trouble with single ladies in the past. I don’t care what you do or who you see outside my house; but one thing I won’t have, that’s men-friends in a single lady’s room ...’
I said that I would give her no trouble on that score.
I must have been a queer sort of tenant for Mrs Best, in those first weeks after my flight from Stamford Hill. I paid my rent very promptly, but never went out. I received no visits, no letters or cards; kept stubbornly to my room, with the shutters closed fast - there to pace the creaking floor, or to mumble or to weep ...
I think my fellow tenants thought me mad; perhaps I was mad. My life, however, seemed sensible enough to me then.
For where else, in my misery, could I have run to? All my London friends - Mrs Dendy, Sims and Percy, Billy-Boy and Flora - were also Kitty’s friends. If I went to them, what would they say? They would only be glad, to know that Kitty and Walter were lovers at last! And if I went home, to Whitstable, what would they say? I had come away from there so recently, and been so proud; and it seemed as if they had all been promising I would be humbled from the very day I left them. It had been hard to live among them, wanting Kitty. How could I return to them, and take up my old habits, having lost her?
So, though I imagined their letters arriving at Stamford Hill, and lying there unopened and unanswered; though I guessed that, recalling my archness, they would think that I had turned my back on them, and soon stop writing at all, I could not help it. If I remembered the things I had left behind me - my women’s clothes, and my wages; my letters and cards from fans and admirers; my old tin trunk with my initials on it - I remembered them dully, as if they were the pieces of some other person’s history. When I thought of Cinderella, and how I had broken my contract and let them down at the Britannia, I didn’t much care. I was known in my new home as ‘Miss Astley’. If my neighbours had ever seen Nan King upon the stage, they did not see her now, in me - indeed, I barely recognised her there myself. The costumes I had brought with me I found myself quite unable, after all, to gaze upon. I placed them beneath my bed, still in their bag, and left them there to moulder.
No one came after me, for no one knew where I was. I was hidden, lost. I had cast off all my friends and joys, and embraced misery as my career. For a week - and then another - and another, and another - I did nothing but slumber, and weep, and pace my chamber; or else I would stand with my brow pressed to the dirty window, gazing at the Market, watching as the carcases were brought and piled, and heaved about, and sold, and taken away. The only faces I saw were those of Mrs Best, and Mary - the little skivvy who had opened the door to me, who changed my pot and brought me coal and water, and who I sometimes sent on errands to buy me cigarettes and food. Her expression as she handed me
my packages showed me how strange I had become; but to her fear and her wonder alike, I was indifferent. I was indifferent to everything except my own grief - and this I indulged with a strange and horrible passion.
I believe I barely washed in all those weeks - and certainly I did not change my dress, for I had no other. Very early on I gave off wearing my false chignon, too, and let my hair straggle greasily about my ears. I smoked, endlessly - my fingers grew brown, from the nail to the knuckle; but I ate hardly at all. For all that I liked to watch the carcases being towed about at Smithfield, the thought of meat upon my tongue made me nauseous, and I had stomach for none but the blandest of foods. Like a woman quickening with child I developed a curious appetite: I longed only for sweet, white bread. I gave Mary shilling after shilling, and sent her to Camden Town and Whitechapel, Limehouse and Soho, for bagels, brioches and flat Greek loaves, and buns from the Chinese bakeries. These I would eat dipped in mugs of tea, which I brewed, ferociously strong, in a pot on the hearth, and sweetened with condensed milk. It was the drink I had used to make for Kitty, in our first days together at the Canterbury Palace. The taste of it was like the taste of her; and a comfort, and a frightful torment, all at once.
The weeks, for all my carelessness to their passing, passed by anyway. There is little to say about them, except that they were dreadful. The tenant in the room above my own moved out, and was replaced by a poor couple with a baby: the baby was colicky, and cried in the night. Mrs Best’s son found a sweetheart, and brought her to the house: she was given tea and sandwiches in the downstairs parlour; she sang songs, while someone played on the piano. Mary broke a window with a broom, and shrieked - then shrieked again when Mrs Best rolled up her sleeve and slapped her. Such were the sounds I caught, in my grim chamber. They might have solaced me, except that I was beyond solace. They only kept me mindful of the things - all the ordinary things! the smack of a kiss, the lilt of a voice lifted in pleasure or anger - that I had left behind me. When I gazed at the world from my dusty window, I might as well have been gazing at a colony of ants, or a swarming bee-hive: I could recognise nothing in it that had once been mine. It was only by the lightening and the warming of the days, and the thickening of the reek of blood from Smithfield, that I began to realise that the year was edging slowly into spring.