She gave a cry. We stumbled to the bed and fell, crosswise, upon the satin. My head hung from it - the blood rushed to my cheek and made it ache - but now Zena had the shaft inside me and, as she began to wriggle and thrust, I found myself compelled to lift my mouth and kiss her.
As I did so, I heard a noise, quite distinct, above the shuddering of the bed-posts and the pounding of the pulse inside my ears. I let my head fall, and opened my eyes. The door of the room was open, and it was full of ladies’ faces. And the face, pale with fury, at the centre of them all, was Diana’s.
For a second I lay quite frozen; I saw what she must see - the open trunk, the tangle of limbs upon the bed, the pumping, leather-strapped arse (for Zena, alas, had her eyes tight shut, and still thrust and panted even as her outraged mistress gazed on). Then I placed my hands on Zena’s shoulders and gripped them hard. She opened her eyes, saw what I saw, and gave a squeal of fright. Instinctively, she tried to rise, forgetful of the shaft which pinned her sweating hips to mine. For a moment we floundered together inelegantly; she let out a burst of nervous laughter, more jarring than her first thin shriek of fear.
At last she gave a wriggle; there was - monstrously distinct in the sudden silence, and horribly incriminating - a kind of sucking sound; then she was free. She stood at the side of the bed, the dildo bobbing before her. One of the ladies at Diana’s side said, ‘She has a prick, after all!’ And Diana answered: ‘That prick is mine. These little sluts have stolen it!’
Her voice was thick - with drunkenness, perhaps; but also, I think, with shock. I looked again at the wide and spilling box, that she was so vain and jealous of, and felt a worm of satisfaction wriggle within me.
And I remembered, too, another room, a room I thought that I had carefully forgotten - a room where it was I who stood speechless at the door, while my sweetheart shivered and blushed beside her lover. And the sight of Diana, in my old place, made me smile.
It was the smile, I think, which deranged her at last. ‘Maria,’ she said - for Maria was with her, too, along with Dickie and Evelyn: perhaps they had all come to the bedroom to retrieve a dirty book - ‘Maria, get Mrs Hooper. I want Nancy’s things brought here: she is leaving. And a dress for Blake. They are both going back to the gutter, where I got them from.’ Her voice was cold; as she took a step towards me, however, it grew warmer. ‘You little slut!’ she said. ‘You little trollop! You whore, you harlot, you strumpet, you bitch!’ But they were words that she had used on me a thousand times before, in lust or passion; and now, said in hate, they were curiously devoid of any sting.
Beside me, however, Zena had begun to shake. As she did so, the dildo bobbed; and when Diana caught the motion she gave a roar: ‘Take that thing from your hips!’ At once, Zena fumbled with the straps; her fingers jumped so that she could barely grasp the buckles, and I stepped to help her. All the time we worked, Diana hurled abuses at her - she was a half-wit, a street-whore, a common little frigstress. The ladies at the door looked on, and laughed. One of them - it might have been Evelyn - nodded to the trunk, and called: ‘Use the strap on her, Diana!’ Diana curled her lip.
‘They will strap her well enough, at the reformatory,’ she said; ‘when she returns there.’
At that, Zena fell to her knees and began to cry. Diana gave a sneer, and drew her foot away so that the tears should not fall upon her sandal. Dickie - the necktie at her throat pulled loose, the lilac at her lapel squashed flat, and browning - said: ‘Can’t we see them fuck again? Diana, make them do it, for our pleasure!’
But Diana shook her head; and the gaze that she turned on me was as cold and as dead as the eye of a lantern, when the flame inside has been quite put out. She said: ‘They have fucked their last in my house. They can fuck upon the streets, like dogs.’
Another lady, very drunk, said that, in that case, at least they should have the thrill of watching us, from a window. But I looked only at Diana; and, for the first time in all that terrible evening, I began to feel afraid.
Now Maria returned with Mrs Hooper. Mrs Hooper’s eyes were bright. She held my old sailor’s bag, that I had brought from Mrs Milne’s and cast into the furthest corner of my closet, and a rusty black dress, and a pair of thick-soled boots. While the ladies all looked on, Diana threw the dress and boots at Zena; then she dipped her hand fastidiously into the sailor’s bag, and pulled out a crumpled frock, and some shoes, which she cast at me. The frock was one I had used to wear in my old life, and thought fine enough. Now it was cold and slightly clammy to the touch, and its seams were rimmed with moth-dust.
Zena began at once to pull on the dreary black dress, and the boots. I, however, kept my own frock in my hands, and gazed at Diana, and swallowed.
‘I’m not wearing this,’ I said.
‘You shall wear it,’ she answered shortly, ‘or be thrust naked into Felicity Place.’
‘Oh, thrust her naked, Diana!’ said a woman at her back. It was a Lady from Llangollen, minus her topper.
‘I’m not putting it on,’ I said again. Diana nodded. ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘then I shall make you.’ And while I was still too amazed to raise a hand in my defence, she had crossed the room, torn the robe from my fingers, and lowered the hem of its skirts over my head. I writhed, then, and began to kick; she pushed me to the bed, held me fast upon it with one hand and, with the other, continued to tug the folds of cloth about me. I struggled more fiercely; soon there came the rip of a broken hem.
Hearing it, Diana gave a shout: ‘Help me with her, can’t you? Maria! Mrs Hooper! You girl — ’ she meant Zena. ‘Do you want to go back to that damn reformatory?’
Instantly, there came upon me what felt like fifty hands, all pulling at the dress, all pinching me, all grasping at my kicking legs. For an age, they seemed to be upon me. I grew hot and faint beneath the layers of wool. My swollen head was knocked, and began to pulse and ache. Someone placed her thumb — I remember this very clearly — at the top of my thigh, in the slippery hollow of my groin. It might have been Maria. It might have been Mrs Hooper, the housekeeper.
At last I lay panting upon the bed, the dress about me. The shoes were placed upon my feet, and laced. ‘Stand up!’ said Diana; and when I had done so she caught me by the shoulder and propelled me from her bedroom, through the parlour, and out into the darkened hall beyond. Behind me, the ladies followed, Mrs Hooper and Maria with Zena gripped between them. When I hesitated, Diana prodded me forwards, so that I almost stumbled and fell.
Now, at last, I began to weep. I said, ‘Diana, you cannot mean this -!’ But her gaze was cold. She seized me, and pinched me, and made me walk faster. Down we went - all flushed and panting and fantastically costumed as we were - down through the centre of that tall house, in a great jagged spiral, like a tableau of the damned heading for hell. We passed the drawing-room: there were some ladies there still, lolling upon the cushions, and when they saw us they called, What were we doing? And a lady in our party answered, that Diana had caught her boy and her maid in her own bed, and was throwing them out - they must be sure to come and watch it.
And so, the lower we went, the greater came the press of ladies at my back, and the louder the laughter and the ribald cries. We reached the basement, and it grew colder; when Diana opened the door that led from the kitchen to the garden at the rear of the house, the wind blew hard upon my weeping eyes, and made them sting. I said, ‘You cannot, you cannot!’ The cold was sobering me. I had had a vision, of my chamber, my closet, my dressing-table, my linen; my cigarette case, my cuff-links, my walking-cane with the silver tip; my suit of bone-coloured linen; my shoes, with the leather so handsome and fine I had once put out my tongue and licked it. My watch, with the strap that secured it to my wrist.
Diana pushed me forward, and I turned and grabbed her arm. ‘Don’t cast me from you, Diana!’ I said. ‘Let me stay! I’ll be good! Let me stay, and I’ll pleasure you!’ But as I begged, she kept me marching, backwards; until at last we reached the high wooden gate
, beside the carriage-house, at the far end of the garden. There was a smaller door set into the gate, and now Diana stepped to pull it open; beyond seemed perfect blackness. She took Zena from Mrs Hooper, and held her by the neck. ‘Show your face in Felicity Place again,’ she said, ‘or remind me of your creeping, miserable little existence by any word or deed, and I shall keep my promise, and return you to that gaol, and make sure you stay there, till you rot. Do you understand?’ Zena nodded. She was thrust into the square of darkness, and swallowed by it. Then Diana turned for me.
She said: ‘The same applies to you, you trollop.’ She pushed me to the doorway, but here I held fast to the gate, and begged her. ‘Please, Diana! Let me only collect my things!’ I looked past her, to Dickie, and Maria: the gazes they turned upon me were livid and blurred, with the wine and with the chase, and held not one soft spark of sympathy. I looked at all the ogling ladies in their fluttering costumes. ‘Help me, can’t you?’ I cried to them. ‘Help me, for God’s sake! How many times have you not gazed at me and wanted me! How many times have you not come to say how handsome I am, how much you envy Diana the owning of me. Any one of you might have me now! Any one of you! Only, don’t let her put me into the street, into the dark, without a coin on me! Oh! Dam’ you all for a set of bitches, if you let her do such a thing, to me!’
So I cried out, weeping all the time I spoke, then turning to wipe my running nose on the sleeve of my cheap frock. My cheek felt twice its ordinary size, and my hair was matted where I had lain upon it; and at last, the ladies turned their eyes from me in a kind of boredom - and I knew myself done for. My hands slid from the gate, Diana pushed me, and I stumbled into the alleyway beyond. Behind me came my sailor’s bag, to land with a smack on the cobbles at my feet.
I raised my eyes from it to look once more upon Diana’s house. The windows of the drawing-room were rosy with light, and ladies were already picking their way across the grass towards them. I caught a glimpse of Mrs Hooper; of Dickie, fixing her monocle to her watery eye; of Maria; and of Diana. A few strands of her dark hair had come loose from their pins, and the wind was whipping them about her cheeks. Her housekeeper said something to her, and she laughed. Then she closed the door, and turned the key in it; and the lights and the laughter of Felicity Place were lost to me, for ever.
PART THREE
Chapter 15
You might think that, having sunk so low already, I should not have scrupled to have banged upon the door that had been closed on me, or even tried to scale the gate, to plead with my old mistress from the top of it. Perhaps I considered such things, in the moments that I stood, stunned and snivelling, in that dark and lonely alley. But I had seen the look that Diana had turned on me - a look that was devoid of any fire, kind or lustful. Worse, I had seen the expressions upon the faces of her friends. How could I go to them, and ever hope to walk before them again, handsome and proud?
The thought made me weep still harder; I might have sat and wept before that gate, perhaps, till dawn. But after a moment there came a movement at my side, and I looked up to see Zena standing there, with her hands across her breast, her face very pale. In all my agony, I had forgotten her. Now I said, ‘Oh, Zena! What an end to it all! What are we to do?’
‘What are we to do?’ she answered: she sounded not at all like her old self. ‘What are we to do? I know what I should do. I should leave you here, and hope that woman comes back for you, and takes you in and treats you nasty. It’s all you deserve!’
‘Oh, she won’t come back for me - will she?’
‘No, of course she won’t; nor for me, either. See where all your soft talk has landed us! Out in the dark, on the coldest night in January, with not a hat nor even a pair of drawers; nor even a handkerchief! I wish I was in gaol. You have lost me my place, you have lost me my character. You have lost me my seven pounds’ wages, what I was keeping for the colonies - oh! What a fool I was, to let you kiss me! What a fool you was, to think the mistress wouldn’t - oh! I could hit you!’
‘Hit me then!’ I cried, still snivelling. ‘Black my other eye for me, I deserve it!’ But she only tossed her head, and wrapped her arms still tighter about her, and turned away.
I wiped my eyes upon my sleeve, then, and tried to grow a little calmer. It had been only just midnight when I had staggered from the drawing-room still dressed as Antinous; I guessed it was about half-past now - a terrible time, because it meant we still had the longest, coldest hours to pass, before the dawn. I said, as humbly as I could, ‘What am I to do, Zena? What am I to do?’
She looked over her shoulder at me. ‘I suppose, you shall have to go to your folks. You have folks, don’t you? You have some friends?’
‘I have nobody, now ...’
I put a hand to my face again; she turned, and began to chew on her lip. ‘If you really have no one,’ she said at last, ‘then we are both quite alike, for I have no one, neither: my family all threw me over, over the business with Agnes and the police.’ She gazed at my sailor’s bag, and nudged it with her boot. ‘Don’t you have a bit of cash about you anywhere? What’s in there?’
‘All my clothes,’ I answered. ‘All the boy’s clothes I came to Diana’s with.’
‘Are they good ones?’
‘I used to think so.’ I raised my head. ‘Do you mean for us to put them on, and pass as gents ... ?’
She had bent to the bag, and was squinting into it. ‘I mean for us to sell them.’
‘Sell them?’ Sell my guardsman’s uniform, and my Oxford bags? ‘I don’t know ...’
She raised her hands to her mouth, to blow upon her fingers. ‘You may sell ’em, miss; or you may walk down to the Edgware Road and stand at a lamp-post till a feller offers you a coin ...’
We sold them. We sold them to an old clothes seller who had a stall in a market off Kilburn Road. He was packing up his bags when Zena found him - the market had been trading till midnight or so, but when we reached it the barrows were mostly empty and the street was filled with litter, and they were shutting down the naphtha lamps and tipping the water from their buckets into the drains. The man saw us coming and said at once: ‘You’re too late, I ain’t selling.’ But when Zena opened the bag and pulled the suits from it, he tilted his head and gave a sniff. ‘The soldier’s duds is hardly worth my keeping on the stall,’ he said, spreading the jacket out across his arm; ‘but I will take it, for the sake of the serge, which might do for a fancy waistcoat. The coat and trousers is handsome enough, likewise the shoes. I shall take them from you, for a guinea.’
‘A guinea!’ I said.
‘A guinea is as fair a price as you will get, tonight.’ He sniffed again. ‘I daresay they are hot enough.’
‘They ain’t hot at all,’ said Zena. ‘But the guinea will do; and if you’ll chuck in a couple of ladies’ niceties and a pair of hats with bows on, call it a pound.’
The drawers and stockings he gave us were yellowed with age; the hats were terrible; and we were both, of course, still in need of stays. But Zena, at least, seemed satisfied with the deal. She pocketed the money, then led me to a baked-potato stall, and we had a potato each, and a cup of tea between us. The potatoes tasted of mud. The tea was really tinted water. But at the stall there was a brazier, and this warmed us.
Zena, as I have said, seemed very changed since our expulsion from the house. She did not tremble - it was I who trembled now - and she had an air of wisdom and authority about her, a way of passing through the streets, as if she were quite at her ease upon them. I had been at ease upon them once; now, I think that, if she had let me hold her hand, I would have done it - as it was, I could only stumble at her heels, saying wretchedly, ‘What shall we do next, Zena?’ and ‘Oh, Zena, how cold it is!’ and even ‘What do you suppose they are doing now, Zena, at Felicity Place? Oh, can you believe that she has really cast me from her!’
‘Miss,’ she said to me at last, ‘don’t take it the wrong way; but if you don’t shut up, I really shall be obliged to hit yo
u, after all.’
I said: ‘I’m sorry, Zena.’
In the end she fell into conversation with a gay girl who had also come to stand beside the brazier; and from her she got the details of a lodging-house nearby, that was said to take people in, all through the night. It turned out to be a dreadful place, with one chamber for the women and another for the men; and everyone who slept there had a cough. Zena and I lay two in a bed - she keeping her dress on, for the sake of the warmth, but me still fretting over the creases in mine, and so placing it beneath the foot of the mattress in the hope that it would press flat overnight.
We lay together very straight and stiff, our heads upon the same prickling bolster, but hers turned from mine and her eyes shut fast. The coughing of the other lodgers, the soreness at my cheek, my general wretchedness and panic, kept me wakeful. When Zena gave a shiver, I put my hand upon her; and when she didn’t take the hand away, I moved a little closer to her. I said, very low: ‘Oh Zena, I cannot sleep, for thinking of it all!’
‘I daresay.’
I trembled. ‘Do you hate me, Zena?’ She wouldn’t answer. ‘I shan’t blame you, if you do. But oh! do you know how sorry I am?’ A woman in the bed beside us gave a shriek — I think she was a drunkard - and that made both of us jump, and brought our faces even closer. Her eyes were still hard shut, but I could tell that she listened. I thought of how differently we had lain together, only a few hours before. My wretchedness since then had knocked the fire right out of me; but because it hadn’t been said by either of us, and I thought it ought to be, I whispered now: ‘Oh, if only Diana hadn’t come when she did! It was fun - wasn’t it? - before Diana came and stopped it ...’