Tipping the Velvet

by Sarah Waters

Whitstable natives - as they are properly called - the largest and the juiciest, the savouriest yet the subtlest, oysters in the whole of England. Whitstable oysters are, quite rightly, famous.

They were more like my sister: they had cherry lips, and curls that danced about their shoulders; they had bosoms that jutted, and elbows that dimpled, and ankles - when they showed them - as slim and as shapely as beer-bottles.

I was tall, and rather lean. My chest was flat, my hair dull, my eyes a drab and an uncertain blue.

It’s like I am filling up, like a wine-glass when it’s filled with wine.

She makes me want to smile and weep, at once.

I had said too much - but it was that, or say nothing.

when she stepped on stage at last, there would be that rush of gladness so swift and sharp I would catch my breath to feel it, and grow faint.

for the thrill of being addressed by her I would gladly have lost all of my old name, and taken a new one, or gone nameless entirely.

They were acts of love, these humble little ministrations, and of pleasure - even, perhaps, of a kind of self-pleasure,

‘You’re not happy for me, after all,’ she said quietly. ‘I am,’ I said - my voice was thick - ‘but I am more unhappy, for myself.’

Mother and he could not keep me; that I was a grown-up woman, almost, and should be allowed to know my own mind;

But children, he concluded, weren’t made to please their parents; and no father should expect to have his daughter at his side for ever... ‘In short, Nance, even was you going to the very devil himself, your mother and I would rather see you fly from us in joy, than stay with us in sorrow - and grow, maybe, to hate us, for keeping you from your fate.’

if things don’t turn out as you might, quite, wish them, you won’t be too proud to come home to those that love you -’

now, suddenly, I have all these things, that I have dreamed of having for so long! Do you know how that must feel, Nan, to be given your heart’s desire, like that?’

It was a wonderful feeling - but a fearful one, too, for you felt all the time that you didn’t deserve your own good fortune;

it was only as one loathes the looking-glass, that shows one one’s imperfect form in strict and fearful clarity.

She loves me, She loves me — like a fool with a daisy-stalk, endlessly exclaiming over the same last browning petal.

I said nothing; but it was not with regret that I had blushed. I had blushed because my new, shorn head, my naked neck, felt saucy.

A double act is always twice the act the audience thinks it: beyond our songs, our steps, our bits of business with coins and canes and flowers, there was a private language, in which we held an endless, delicate exchange of which the crowd knew nothing.

This was a language not of the tongue but of the body, its vocabulary the pressure of a finger or a palm, the nudging of a hip, the holding or breaking of a gaze,

‘Don’t burden me, I ask you, with no more shameful secrets. But look to yourself and the path that you are treading, and ask yourself if it is really Right.

perhaps I was mad. My life, however, seemed sensible enough to me then.

I was indifferent to everything except my own grief - and this I indulged with a strange and horrible passion.

The taste of it was like the taste of her; and a comfort, and a frightful torment, all at once.

I had thought myself brilliant with new life and promise, but the streets that I thought would welcome me had only cast me back into my former misery.

After all, there are moments in our lives that change us, that discontent us with our pasts and offer us new futures.

I was proof of all her pleasures. I was the stain left by her lust. She must keep me, or lose everything.

Fucking had come to seem to me like shaking hands - you might do it, as a kind of courtesy, with anyone.

I felt a drunken surge of power and pride.

‘They have fucked their last in my house. They can fuck upon the streets, like dogs.’

when the world is so cruel and hard, and yet might be so sweet... The kind of work I do is its own kind of fulfilment, whether it’s successful or not.’ She drank her tea. ‘It’s like love.’

She had the most unusual views. She’d read, it seemed to me, everything, and had opinions on it all.’

With every step I took away from her, the movement at my heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls into a trunk.

‘How queer you are!’ she said mildly. ‘You have never tipped the velvet -’

lost a lot of stuff, and never cared to think of it till now. This, however — ’ I gazed down at the photo. ‘Well, it won’t hurt me, will it, to have this little reminder?’ ‘I hope it won’t, indeed,’ she answered kindly.

‘Did you watch her face, as she lay dreaming - and hope she dreamed of you?’

‘Can we not enjoy even a socialist rally without your wretched past turning up to haunt us?

Most movingly, many of the novel’s readers have shared poignant life stories with me; some have told me that the book helped them come out, take courage, find partners, nurse broken hearts.