Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters Page B

Very gently - but quite matter-of-factly -
    you?'
    she moved her hand to my wrist, pulled my arm above the I patted her shoulder stiffly. Then I turned my face away -
    bedclothes, and ducked her head beneath it to place her quite dazed, with mixed relief and disappointment. I said, temple against my collar-bone, my arm about her neck. The
    'Oh yes, Kitty,' and she squeezed me tighter.
    hand that dangled before her throat she squeezed, and held.
    Then she slept, and her head and arm grew slack and heavy.
    Her cheek, against my shallow breast, felt hotter than a flat-I, however, lay awake - just as I had used to lie at Alice's iron.
    side. But now I did not dream; I only spoke to myself rather
    'How your heart beats!' she said — and at that, of course, it sternly.
    beat faster. She sighed again - this time her mouth was at I knew that I would not, after all, pack my bags in the the opening of my nightgown, and I felt her breath upon the morning and bid Kitty farewell; I knew that, having come naked skin beneath - she sighed and said, 'So many times I so far, I could not. But if I were to stay with her, then it lay in that dull room at Mrs Pugh's and thought of you and must be as she said; I must learn to swallow my queer and Alice in your little bed beside the sea. Was it just like this, inconvenient lusts, and call her 'sister'. For to be Kitty's being with her?'
    sister was better than to be Kitty's nothing, Kitty's no one.
    I didn't answer her. I, too, was thinking back to that little And if my head and my heart -and the hot, squirming centre bed. How hard it had been, having to lie next to slumbering of me - cried out at the shame of it, then I must stifle them.
    Alice, my heart and my head all filled with Kitty. How I must learn to love Kitty as Kitty loved me; or never be much harder would it be to have Kitty herself beside me, so able to love her at all.
    close and so unknowing! It would be a torture. I thought: I And that, I knew, would be terrible.
    shall pack my trunk tomorrow. I shall get up very early and catch the first train back . . .
    Chapter 4
    Kitty spoke on, not minding my silence. 'You and Alice,'
    The Star, when we reached it at noon the next day, turned she was saying again. 'Do you know, Nan, how jealous I out to be not a tenth as smart as those marvellous West End was . . . ?'
    halls before which we had leaned, with Mr Bliss, to dream I swallowed. 'Jealous?' The word sounded terrible in the of Kitty's triumph; even so, however, it was quite darkness.
    alarmingly handsome and grand. Its manager at this time
    'Yes, I -' She seemed to hesitate; then, 'You see,' she went was a Mr Ling; he met us at the stage door and took us to on, 'I never had a sister like other girls did . . .' She let go of his office, to read aloud the terms of Kitty's contract and 87

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    secure her signature upon it; but then he rose and shook our
    'Thank God, a woman with a cigarette! Give us one, ducks, hands and shouted for the call-boy, and had us shown, would you? I'm quite broke till pay-day.'
    rather briskly, to the stage. Here, self-conscious and Kitty was booked to appear that night, a little way into the awkward, I waited while Kitty spoke with the conductor first half of the show. While I helped her with her collar and and ran through her songs with the band. Once a man her neck-tie and her rose, I felt quite steady; but when we approached me, with a broom on his shoulder, and asked walked to the wing to wait for her number to go up, to gaze me rather roughly who I was and what I did there.
    from the shadows at the unfamiliar theatre and its vast and
    'I'm waiting for Miss Butler,' I said, my voice as thin as a careless crowd, I felt myself begin to tremble. I looked at whistle.
    Kitty. Her face was white beneath its layer of paint - though
    'Are you, then,' he said. 'Well, sweetheart, you'll have to whether with fear, or with fierce ambition, I could not tell.
    wait somewhere else, for I've to sweep this spot, and you