by Sarah Waters
It was quite like dressing for the halls again - except that then, of course, I had had to change at the side of the stage, while the band switched tempo; now, I had entire days to prink in. For Diana was my only audience; and my hours, when out of her company, were a kind of blank. I could not talk to the servants - to strange Mrs Hooper, with her veiled and slithering glances; or to Blake, who flustered me by curtseying to me and calling me ‘miss’; or to Cook, who sent me lunch and supper, but never showed her face outside her kitchen. I might hear their voices, raised in mirth or dispute, if I paused at the green baize door that led to the basement; but I knew myself apart from them, and had my own tight beat to keep to: the bedrooms, and Diana’s parlour, and the drawing-room and library. My mistress had said she wouldn’t care to have me leave the house, unchaperoned - indeed, she had Mrs Hooper lock the great front door: I heard her turn the key each time she stepped to close it.
I did not much mind my lack of liberty; as I have said, the warmth, the luxury, the kissing and the sleep made me grow stupid, and lazier than ever. I might drift from room to room, soundless and thoughtless, pausing perhaps to gaze at the paintings on the walls; or at the quiet streets and gardens of St John’s Wood; or at myself, in Diana’s various looking-glasses. I was like a spectre - the ghost, I sometimes imagined, of a handsome youth, who had died in that house and still walked its corridors and chambers, searching, searching, for reminders of the life that he had lost there.
‘What a scare you gave me, miss!’ the maid might say, hand at her heart, after she had come upon me, lingering at a bend in the stair or in the shadows of some curtain or alcove; but when I smiled and asked what work had she to do there? or, did she know if the day were a fine or a dull one? she would only blush and look frightened: ‘I’m sure, miss, I couldn’t say.’
The climax of my day, the event to which my thoughts naturally tended, and which gave direction and meaning to the hours before it, was Diana’s return. There was drama to be had in the choosing of the chamber, and the pose, in which I would arrange myself for her. She might find me smoking in the library, or dozing, with unfastened buttons, in her parlour; I would feign surprise at her entry, or let her rouse me if I pretended sleep. My pleasure at her appearance, however, was real enough. I at once lost that sense of ghostliness, that feeling of waiting in the wing, and grew warm and substantial again before the blaze of her attention. I would light her a cigarette, pour her a drink. If she was weary I would lead her to a chair and stroke her temples; if she was footsore - she wore high black boots, very tightly laced - I would bare her legs and rub the blood back into her toes. If she was amorous - as she frequently was - I would kiss her. She might have me caress her in the library or drawing-room, heedless of the servants who passed beyond the closed door, or who knocked and, at our breathy answering silence, retired unbidden. Or she might send orders that she was not to be disturbed, and lead me to her parlour, to the secret drawer that held the key that unlocked the rosewood trunk.
The opening of this still enthralled and excited me, though I had soon grown used to handling its contents. They were, perhaps, mild enough. There was, of course, the dildo that I have described (though the device, or the instrument, was what I learned, following Diana, to call it: I think the unnecessary euphemism, with its particular odour of the surgery or house of correction, appealed to her; only when really heated would she call the thing by its proper name - and even then she was as likely to ask for Monsieur Dildo, or simply Monsieur). Besides this there was an album of photographs of big-buttocked girls with hairless parts, bearing feathers; also a collection of erotic pamphlets and novels, all hymning the delights of what I would call tommistry but what they, like Diana, called Sapphic Passion. They were gross enough, I suppose, in their way; but I had never seen the like of them before, and would gaze at them, squirming, till Diana laughed. Then there were cords, and straps and switches - the kind of thing that might be found, I suppose, in a strict governess’s closet, certainly nothing heavier. Lastly, there were more of Diana’s rose-tipped cigarettes. They contained, as I guessed very early on, some fragrant French tobacco that was mixed with hashish; and they were, I thought, the pleasantest things of all, since, when used in combination with the other items, they rendered their interesting effects more interesting still.
I might be weary or stupid; I might be nauseous with drink; I might be sore, at the hips, with the ache of my monthlies, but the opening of this box, as I have said, never ceased to stir me - I was like a dog twitching and slavering to hear his mistress call out Bone!
And every jerk, every slaver, made Diana more complacent.
‘How vain I am, of my little hoard!’ she would say, a we lay smoking in the soiled sheets of her bed. She might be clad in nothing but a corset and a pair of purple gloves; I would have the dildo about me, perhaps with a rope of pearls wound round it. She would reach to the foot of the bed, and run her hand across the gaping box, and laugh. ‘Of all the gifts I’ve given you,’ she said once, ‘this is the finest, isn’t it, isn’t it? Where in London would you find its like?’
‘Nowhere!’ I answered. ‘You’re the boldest bitch in the city!’
‘I am!’
‘You’re the boldest bitch, with the cleverest quim. If fucking were a country - well, fuck me, you’d be its queen ... !’
These were the words which, pricked on by my mistress, I used now - lewd words which shocked and stirred me even as I said them. I had never thought to use them with Kitty. I had not fucked her, we had not frigged; we had only ever kissed and trembled. It was not a quim or a cunt she had between her legs - indeed, in all our nights together, I don’t believe we ever gave a name to it all ...
Only let her see me now, I thought, as I lay beside Diana, making the necklace of pearls more secure about the dildo; and Diana herself would reach to stroke her box again, and then lean and stroke me.
‘Only see what I’m mistress of!’ she would say with a sigh. ‘Only see - only see what I own!’
I would draw on the cigarette till the bed seemed to tilt; then I’d lie and laugh, while she clambered upon me. Once I let a fag fall on the silken counterpane, and smiled to see it smoulder as we fucked. Once I smoked so much I was sick. Diana rang for Blake and, when she came, cried: ‘Look at my tart, Blake, resplendent even in her squalor! Did you ever see a brute so handsome? Did you?’ Blake said that she had not; then dipped a cloth in water, and wiped my mouth.
It was Diana’s vanity, at last, that broke the spell of my confinement. I had passed a month with her - had left the house only to stroll about the garden, had set not so much as the toe of my boot upon a London street in all that time - when she declared one night at supper that I ought to be barbered. I looked up from my plate, thinking she meant to take me into Soho for it; in fact, she only rang for the servants: I had to sit in a chair with a towel about me, while Blake held the comb and the housekeeper plied the scissors. ‘Gently with her, gently!’ called Diana, looking on. Mrs Hooper came close to trim the hair above my brow, and I felt her breath, quick and hot, upon my cheek.
But the hair-cut turned out to be only the prelude to something better. Next morning I woke in Diana’s bed to find her dressed, and gazing at me with her old enigmatic smile. She said, ‘You must get up. I have a treat for you today. Two treats, indeed. The first is in your bedroom.’
‘A treat?’ I yawned; the word had lost its charge for me, rather. ‘What is it, Diana?’
‘It’s a suit.’
‘What kind of suit?’
‘A coming-out suit.’
‘Coming-out -?’
I went at once.
Now, since my very first trouser-wearing days at Mrs Dendy’s, I had sported a wonderful variety of gentlemen’s suits. From the plain to the pantomimic, from the military to the effeminate, from the brown broad-cloth to the yellow velveteen - as soldier, sailor, valet, renter, errand-boy, dandy and comedy duke - I had worn them all, and worn them wisely and rather well. But
the costume that awaited me in my bedroom that day in Diana’s villa in Felicity Place was the richest and the loveliest I ever wore; and I can remember it still, in all its marvellous parts.
There was a jacket and trousers of bone-coloured linen, and a waistcoat, slightly darker, with a silken back. These came wrapped together in a box lined with velvet; in a separate package I found three piqué shirts, each a shade lighter than the one before it, and each so fine and closely woven it shone like satin, or like the surface of a pearl.
Then there were collars, white as a new tooth; studs, of opal, and cuff-links of gold. There was a neck-tie and a cravat of an amber-coloured, watered silk: they gleamed and rippled as I drew them from their tissue, and slithered from my fingers to the floor like snakes. A flat wooden case held gloves - one pair of kid, with covered buttons, the other of doe-skin and fragrant as musk. In a velvet bag I found socks and drawers and under-shirts - not of flannel, as my linen had been till now, but of knitted silk. For my head there was a creamy homburg with a trim that matched the neckties; for my feet there was a pair of shoes - a pair of shoes of a chestnut leather so warm and rich I felt compelled at once to apply my cheek to it, and then my lips; and finally, my tongue.
A last, flimsy package I almost overlooked: this held a set of handkerchiefs, each one as fine and fragile as the pique shirts and each embroidered with a tiny, flowing N.K. The suit, in all its parts, with all its delicate, harmonising textures and hues, enchanted me; but this last detail, and the unmistakable stamp of permanence it conferred upon my relations with the passionate and generous mistress of my curious new home - well, this last detail satisfied me most of all.
I bathed then, and dressed before the glass; and then I threw back the window-shutters, lit a cigarette, and gazed upon myself as I stood smoking. I looked - I think I can say without vanity - a treat. The suit, like all expensive clothes, had a bearing and a lustre all of its own: it would have made more or less anyone look handsome. But Diana had ordered wisely. The bleached linen complemented the dull gold of my hair and the fading renter’s tan at my cheek and wrists. The flash of amber at my throat set off my blue eyes and my darkened lashes. The trousers had a vertical crease, and made my legs seem longer and more slender than ever; and they bulged at the buttons, where I had rolled one of the scented doe-skin gloves. I was, I saw, almost unsettlingly attractive. Framed by the wooden surround of the mirror, my left leg slightly bent, one hand hanging loosely at my thigh and the other with its fag arrested half-way on its journey to my faintly carmined lips, I looked not like myself at all, but like some living picture, a blond lord or angel whom a jealous artist had captured and transfixed behind the glass. I felt quite awed.
There came a movement at the door. I turned, and found Diana there: she had been watching me as I gazed at myself - I had been too taken with my own good looks to notice her. In her hand she held a spray of flowers, and now she came to attach them to my coat. She said, ‘It should be narcissi, I did not think of it’: the flowers were violets. I bent my head to them as she worked at my lapel, and breathed their perfume; a single bloom, come loose from the stem, fluttered to the carpet and was crushed beneath her heel.
When she had finished at my breast she took my cigarette to smoke, and stepped back to survey her handiwork - just as Walter had done, so long ago, at Mrs Dendy’s. It seemed my fate to be dressed and fashioned and admired by others. I didn’t mind it. I only thought back to the blue serge suit of those innocent days, and gave a laugh.
The laugh brought a hardness to my eyes, that made them sparkle. Diana saw, and nodded complacently.
‘We shall be a sensation,’ she said. ‘They will adore you, I know it.’
‘Who?’ I asked then. ‘Who have you dressed me for?’
‘I’m taking you out, to meet my friends. I’m taking you,’ she put a hand to my cheek, ‘to my club.’
The Cavendish Ladies’ Club it was called; and it was situated in Sackville Street, just up from Piccadilly. I knew the road well, I knew all those roads; yet I had never noticed the building - the slender, grey-faced building - to which Diana now had Shilling drive us. Its step, I suppose, is rather shadowy, and its name-plate is small, and its door is narrow; having visited it once, however, I never missed it again.
Go to Sackville Street today, if you like, and try to spot it: you shall walk the length of the pavement, quite three or four times. But when you find the grey-faced building, rest a moment looking up at it; and if you see a lady cross its shadowy threshold, mark her well.
She will walk - as I walked with Diana that day - into a lobby: the lobby is smart-looking, and in it sits a neat, plain, ageless woman behind a desk. When I first went there, this woman was named Miss Hawkins. She was ticking entries in a ledger as we arrived, but looked up when she saw Diana, and gave a smile. When she saw me, the smile grew smaller.
She said, ‘Mrs Lethaby, ma’am, how pleasant! Mrs Jex is expecting you in the day-room, I believe.’ Diana nodded, and reached to sign her name upon a sheet. Miss Hawkins glanced again at me. ‘Shall the gentleman be waiting for you, here?’ she said.
Diana’s pen moved smoothly on, and she did not raise her eyes. She said: ‘Don’t be tiresome, Hawkins. This is Miss King, my companion.’ Miss Hawkins looked harder at me, then blushed.
‘Well, I’m sure, Mrs Lethaby, I can’t speak for the ladies; but some might consider this a little - irregular.’
‘We are here,’ answered Diana, screwing the pen together, ‘for the sake of the irregular.’ Then she turned and looked me over, raising a hand to twitch at my necktie, licking the tip of one glove-clad finger to smooth at my brow, and finally plucking the hat from my head and arranging my hair.
The hat she left for Miss Hawkins to deal with. Then she put her arm securely through mine, and led me up a flight of stairs into the day-room.
This room, like the lobby below it, is grand. I cannot say what colour they have it now; in those days it was panelled in golden damask, and its carpets were of cream, and its sofas blue ... It was decked, in short, in all the colours of my own most handsome self - or, rather, I was decked to match it. This idea, I must confess, was disconcerting; for a second, Diana’s generosity began to seem less of a compliment than I had thought it, posed that morning before the glass.
But all performers dress to suit their stages, I recalled. And what a stage was this - and what an audience!
There were about thirty of them, I think - all women; all seated at tables, bearing drinks and books and papers. You might have passed any one of them upon the street, and thought nothing; but the effect of their appearance all combined was rather queer. They were dressed, not strangely, but somehow distinctly. They wore skirts - but the kind of skirts a tailor might design if he were set, for a dare, to sew a bustle for a gent. Many seemed clad in walking-suits or riding-habits. Many wore pince-nez, or carried monocles on ribbons. There were one or two rather startling coiffures; and there were more neckties than I had ever before seen brought together at an exclusively female ensemble.
I did not notice all these details at once, of course; but the room was a large one and, since Diana took her time to lead me across it, I had leisure to gaze about me as she did so. We walked through a hush that was thick as bristling velvet - for, at our appearance at the door the lady members had turned their heads to stare, and then had goggled. Whether, like Miss Hawkins, they took me for a gentleman; or whether - like Diana - they had seen through my disguise at once, I cannot say. Either way, there was a cry - ‘Good gracious!’ - and then another exclamation, more lingering: ‘My word...’ I felt Diana stiffen at my side, with pure complacency.
Then came another shout, as a lady at a table in the farthest corner rose to her feet. ‘Diana, you old roué! You have done it at last!’ She gave a clap. Beside her, two more ladies looked on, pink-faced. One of them had a monocle, and now she fixed it to her eye.
Diana placed me before them all, and presented me - more graciously than she had
introduced me to Miss Hawkins, but again as her ‘companion’; and the ladies laughed. The first of them, the one who had risen to greet us, now seized my hand. Her fingers held a stubby cigar.
‘This, Nancy dear,’ said my mistress, ‘is Mrs Jex. She is quite my oldest friend in London - and quite the most disreputable. Everything she tells you will be designed to corrupt.’
I bowed to her. I said, ‘I hope so, indeed.’ Mrs Jex gave a roar.
‘But it speaks!’ she cried. ‘All this’ - she gestured to my face, my costume - ‘and the creature even speaks!’
Diana smiled, and raised a brow. ‘After a fashion,’ she said.
I blinked, but Mrs Jex still held my hand, and now she squeezed it. ‘Diana is brutal to you, Miss Nancy, but you must not mind it. Here at the Cavendish we have been positively panting to see you and make you our particular friend. You must call me “Maria”’ - she pronounced it the old-fashioned way - ‘and this is Evelyn, and Dickie. Dickie, you can see, likes to think of herself as the boy of the place.’
I bowed to the ladies in turn. The former showed me a smile; the one named Dickie (this was the one with the monocle : I am sure it was of plain glass) only gave a toss to her head, and looked haughty.
‘This is the new Callisto then, is it?’ she said.
She wore a boiled shirt and a bow-tie, and her hair, though long and bound, was sleek with oil. She was about two- or three-and-thirty, and her waist was thick; but her upper lip, at least, was dark as a boy’s. They would have called her terribly handsome, I guessed, in about 1880.
Maria pressed my fingers again, and rolled her eyes; then she tilted her head, and when I bent to her - for she was rather short - she said, ‘Now, my dear, you must satisfy our appetite. We want the whole sordid story of your encounter with Diana. She herself will tell us nothing - only that the night was warm; that the streets were gaudy; that the moon was reeling through the clouds like a drunken woman looking for lovers. Tell us, Miss Nancy, tell us, do! Was the moon really reeling through the clouds, like a drunken woman looking for her lovers?’ She took a puff of her cigar, and studied me. Evelyn and Dickie leaned and waited. I looked from them back to Maria; and then I swallowed.