Jealousy

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Ve a tu habitación, Jordan. —Afortunadamente —retrocedo, burlándome de él—, tengo un vibrador con pelotas más grandes que tú. Corre hacia mí y me levanta, lanzándome sobre su hombro, y gruño cuando me quedo sin aire y su hombro se clava en mi estómago. ¿Qué demonios? Sube las escaleras, y siento que voy a caer entre más subimos. —¡Pike, detente! —grito. —¡Entonces deja de presionarme! —grita, y una palmada aterriza en mi culo. Grito, la quemadura se extiende por mi mejilla izquierda. Hijo de.... Extiendo la mano y trato de cubrir mi trasero en caso que me azote de nuevo. Suena como si abriera de un puntapié la puerta de mi habitación, y lo siguiente que sé, es que estoy volando sobre su hombro y chocando contra mi cama. Clavo los codos en el colchón y muevo mi cabeza hacia adelante, haciendo que mi cabello caiga sobre mi rostro. —¡Ahora vete a la cama! —gruñe. Me quito el cabello de los ojos y lo veo salir. —¿Me arropas? Lo veo bajar la cabeza y está respirando tan fuerte, como si estuviera casi sin combustible. Se da vuelta, calmando su voz solo un poco. —¿Qué diablos te está pasando esta noche? ¿Está bromeando? Me bajo de la cama de un tirón y me paro frente a él. —La trajiste aquí, eso es lo que pasa. —¡Es mi casa! Sacudo la cabeza. —Ella no te satisfará —le digo—. Ella no es lo que quieres. —Entonces, ¿estás celosa? Bajo mi voz, acercándome a él. —Tienes todo lo que necesitas en esta casa. No hay razón para buscar en otro lado... —dejo caer la cabeza, un poco avergonzada de repente—, cualquier cosa que necesites —le digo.

• From City of Night (1963)

  And went on: “Didnt I tell you all my exhusbands are jealous of me? Chuck lived with me, dear,” she explains, “as just about every other studhustler has at one time or another, I must add modestly. But, baby, it was a turbulent marriage (that means very stormy, dear). Why, I just couldnt drag Chuck from the window—he—” “Oh, man,” interrupts Chuck. “Next to Miss Destinee’s pad theres this real swell cunt an she walks aroun all day in her brassiere—standin by the window, an she—” “But I fixed that!” Miss Destiny says triumphantly. “I nailed the damn windowshades so no one can look out at that cunt anymore!... Oh!” she sighed, her hand at her forehead, “those days were trying days. Chuck’s a good hustler—but hes too lazy even to try to score sometimes. And, honey, my unemployment check went just so far: You see, I took a job just long enough to qualify for unemployment, and then I turned up all madeup and they let me go—and everytime they call me up for a job, why I turn up in drag and they wont have me!... But anyway—...” Looking at Chuck and Miss Destiny—as she rushes on now about the Turbulent Times—I know the scene: Chuck the masculine cowboy and Miss Destiny the femme queen: making it from day to park to bar to day like all the others in that ratty world of downtown L.A. which I will make my own: the world of queens and malehustlers and what they thrive on, the queens being technically men but no one thinks of them that way—always “she”—their “husbands” being the masculine vagrants—fleetingly and often out of convenience sharing the queens’ pads—never considering theyre involved with another man (the queen), and as long as the hustler goes only with queens—and with other men only for scoring (which is making or taking sexmoney, getting a meal, making a pad)—he is himself not considered “queer”—he remains, in the vocabulary of that world, “trade.” “Yes,” Miss Destiny is going on, “those were stormy times with Chuck—and then, being from cowcountry, God bless him, Chuck believes every Big story: like when Pauline told him she’d really set him up—” “Man,” Chuck explained, laughing, “Pauline is this queen thats got more bull than Texas!”

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  The LD 1000 was like a literary genius’s novel that didn’t quite come together. It happened to the best of them. No reason to stop writing. My pep talks didn’t work. And then I made the mistake of mentioning the air sole we had in development. I told Bowerman about Rudy’s oxygenated innovation, and Bowerman scoffed. “Pff—air shoes. That’ll never work, Buck.” He sounded a bit—jealous? I considered it a good sign. His competitive juices were already flowing again. MANY AFTERNOONS I’D sit around the office with Strasser, trying to figure out why some lines were selling and some not, which led to broader discussions of what people thought of us, and why. We didn’t have focus groups, or market research—we couldn’t afford them—so we tried to intuit, divine, read tea leaves. Clearly people liked the look of our shoes, we agreed. Clearly they liked our story: Oregon firm founded by running geeks. Clearly they liked what wearing a pair of Nikes said about them. We were more than a brand; we were a statement. Some of the credit went to Hollywood. We had a guy out there giving Nikes to stars, all kinds of stars, big, little, rising, fading. Every time I turned on the TV our

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Then I took some tobacco and a paper, and rolled myself a cigarette from a tin upon the mantel, and lit it; then I ground it upon the hearth, and threw it into the fire, and put my head against my arm, and groaned. What a fool I’d been! I had blundered into Florence’s life, too full of my own petty bitternesses to notice her great grief. I had thrust myself upon her and her brother, and thought myself so sly and charming; I had thought that I was putting my mark upon their house, and making it mine. I had believed myself playing in one kind of story, when all the time, the plot had been a different one - when all the time, I was only clumsily rehearsing what the fascinating Lilian had done so well and cleverly before me! I gazed about the room - at the washed blue walls, the hideous rug, the portraits: I saw them suddenly for what they were - details in a shrine to Lilian’s memory, that I, all unwittingly, had been tending. I caught hold of the little picture of Eleanor Marx - except it was not Eleanor Marx I saw, of course; it was her, with Eleanor Marx’s features. I turned it in my hands, and read the back of it: F.B., my comrade, it said, in large, looped letters, my comrade for ever. L.V. I groaned still louder. I wanted to chuck the damn picture into the grate along with my half-smoked fag - I had to return it quickly to its frame in case I did so. I was jealous, of Lilian! I was more jealous than I had ever been, of anyone! Not because of the house; not because of Cyril, or even Ralph - who had been kind to me, but who had wept for her, and wrung his hands in grief when she lay dying; but because of Florence. Because it was Florence, above all, whom Lilian’s story seemed both to have given me, and to have robbed me of for ever. I thought of my labours of the past few months. I had not made Florence fat and happy, as I had supposed: it had only been time, making her grief less keen, her memories duller. Do you remember how we said that we would meet, she had asked me tonight, and how you didn’t come... ? Her eyes had shone as she had asked it, for I had done her some sort of wonderful favour by not turning up that night, two years before. I had done her a wonderful favour - and done myself, it seemed to me now, the worst kind of disservice.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  But she did not try to hide her melancholy now, or to disguise its cause - letting me know, for example, that her trips were (as I might have guessed) to Lilian’s grave. In time she even began to speak of her dead friend, quite routinely. ‘How Lilian would have laughed to hear of that!’ she would say; or, ‘Now, if Lily were only here, we might ask her, and she’d be sure to know.’Her new, sweeter mood had an effect upon us all. The atmosphere of our little house - which I had always thought easy enough, before, but which I now saw to have been quite choked with the memory of Lilian, and with Ralph and Florence’s sorrow - seemed to clear and brighten: it was as if we were passing not into the fogs and frosts of winter, but into springtime, with all its mildnesses and balms. I would see Ralph gazing at his sister as she smiled or hummed or caught at Cyril and tickled him, and his gaze would be soft, and he would sometimes lean to kiss her cheek, in pleasure. Even Cyril himself seemed to feel the change, and to grow bonnier and more content.And I, in contrast, became ever more pinched and secretive and fretful.I could not help it. It was as if, in casting off her own old load, Florence had burdened me with a new one; my feelings - which had been stirred, on the night of her confession, into such a curious mixture - only seemed to grow queerer and more contradictory as the weeks went by. I had been sorry for her, and was as glad as her brother to see her rather lighter-hearted now; I was also pleased and touched that she had confided in me at last, and told me all. But oh, how I wished her story had been different! I could never learn to like the tragic Lilian, and had to bite back my crossness when she was spoken of so reverently. Perhaps I pictured her as Kitty - it was certainly Walter’s face I saw, whenever I thought of her cowardly man-friend; but it made me hot and giddy to think of her, commanding Florence’s passion, sleeping beside her night after night - and never so much as turning he face to her friend, to kiss her mouth. Why had Florence cared for her so much? I would gaze at the photograph of Eleanor Marx - I could never shake off the confused conviction that it was really Lilian’s features printed there - until the face began to swim before my eyes. She was so different from me - hadn’t Florence herself told me that? She said she had never been gladder of anything, than that I was so different from Lilian! She meant, I suppose, that Lilian was clever, and good; that she knew the meaning of words like cooperative, and so never had to ask. But I - what was I?

• From City of Night (1963)

  Well! One more session with him, and I’ll have him on the couch!—but now—” turning her attention to me full-blast, because, you will understand, Miss Destiny scouts at night among the drifting youngmen, and at the same time you can tell shes out to bug Chuck: and when she asked me would I go to the flix with her now (“across the street, where it is Divine but you mustnt be seen there too often,” she explains, “because they will think youre free trade—...”), Chuck said: “It would not do you no good, Destinée, they will not let you in the men’s head.” “Miss Destiny, Mister Chuck,” she corrects him airily. And went on: “Didnt I tell you all my exhusbands are jealous of me? Chuck lived with me, dear,” she explains, “as just about every other studhustler has at one time or another, I must add modestly. But, baby, it was a turbulent marriage (that means very stormy, dear). Why, I just couldnt drag Chuck from the window—he—” “Oh, man,” interrupts Chuck. “Next to Miss Destinee’s pad theres this real swell cunt an she walks aroun all day in her brassiere—standin by the window, an she—” “But I fixed that!” Miss Destiny says triumphantly. “I nailed the damn windowshades so no one can look out at that cunt anymore!... Oh!” she sighed, her hand at her forehead, “those days were trying days. Chuck’s a good hustler—but hes too lazy even to try to score sometimes. And, honey, my unemployment check went just so far: You see, I took a job just long enough to qualify for unemployment, and then I turned up all madeup and they let me go—and everytime they call me up for a job, why I turn up in drag and they wont have me!... But anyway—...” Looking at Chuck and Miss Destiny—as she rushes on now about the Turbulent Times—I know the scene: Chuck the masculine cowboy and Miss Destiny the femme queen: making it from day to park to bar to day like all the others in that ratty world of downtown L.A. which I will make my own: the world of queens and malehustlers and what they thrive on, the queens being technically men but no one thinks of them that way—always “she”—their “husbands” being the masculine vagrants—fleetingly and often out of convenience sharing the queens’ pads—never considering theyre involved with another man (the queen), and as long as the hustler goes only with queens—and with other men only for scoring (which is making or taking sexmoney, getting a meal, making a pad)—he is himself not considered “queer”—he remains, in the vocabulary of that world, “trade.” “Yes,” Miss Destiny is going on, “those were stormy times with Chuck—and then, being from cowcountry, God bless him, Chuck believes every Big story: like when Pauline told him she’d really set him up—” “Man,” Chuck explained, laughing, “Pauline is this queen thats got more bull than Texas!” “Can you imagine?”

• From Educated (2018)

  — THE WORM CREEK OPERA HOUSE announced a new play: Carousel. Shawn drove me to the audition, then surprised me by auditioning himself. Charles was also there, talking to a girl named Sadie, who was seventeen. She nodded at what Charles was saying, but her eyes were fixed on Shawn. At the first rehearsal she came and sat next to him, laying her hand on his arm, laughing and tossing her hair. She was very pretty, with soft, full lips and large dark eyes, but when I asked Shawn if he liked her, he said he didn’t. “She’s got fish eyes,” he said. “Fish eyes?” “Yup, fish eyes. They’re dead stupid, fish. They’re beautiful, but their heads’re as empty as a tire.” Sadie started dropping by the junkyard around quitting time, usually with a milkshake for Shawn, or cookies or cake. Shawn hardly even spoke to her, just grabbed whatever she’d brought him and kept walking toward the corral. She would follow and try to talk to him while he fussed over his horses, until one evening she asked if he would teach her to ride. I tried to explain that our horses weren’t broke all the way, but she was determined, so Shawn put her on Apollo and the three of us headed up the mountain. Shawn ignored her and Apollo. He offered none of the help he’d given me, teaching me how to stand in the stirrups while going down steep ravines or how to squeeze my thighs when the horse leapt over a branch. Sadie trembled for the entire ride, but she pretended to be enjoying herself, restoring her lipsticked smile every time he glanced in her direction. At the next rehearsal, Charles asked Sadie about a scene, and Shawn saw them talking. Sadie came over a few minutes later but Shawn wouldn’t speak to her. He turned his back and she left crying. “What’s that about?” I said. “Nothing,” he said. By the next rehearsal, a few days later, Shawn seemed to have forgotten it. Sadie approached him warily, but he smiled at her, and a few minutes later they were talking and laughing. Shawn asked her to cross the street

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The habits of articulation formed during the plastic age of childhood are in most persons sufficient to inhibit the formation of new ones of a fundamentally different sort witness the inevitable 'foreign accent' which distinguishes the speech of those who learn a language after early youth. Imitation. The child's first words are in part vocables of his own invention, which his parents adopt, and which, as far as they go, form a new human tongue upon the earth; and in part they are his more or less successful imitations of words he beers the parents use. But the instinct of imitating gestures develops earlier than that of imitating sounds,—unless the sympathetic crying of a baby when it hears another cry may be reckoned as imitation of a sound. Professor Preyer speaks of his child imitating the protrusion of the father's lips in its fifteenth week. The various accomplishments of infancy, making 'pat- a-cake,' saying' 'bye-bye,' 'blowing out the candle,' etc., usually fall well inside the limits of the first year. Later come all the various imitative games in which childhood revels, playing 'horse,' 'soldiers,' etc., etc. And from this time onward man is essentially the imitative animal. His whole educability and in fact the whole history of civilization depend on this trait, which his strong tendencies to rivalry, jealousy, and acquisitiveness reinforce. 'Nil humani a me alienum puto,' is the motto of each individual of the species; and makes him, whenever another individual shows a power or superiority of any kind, restless until he can exhibit it himself. But apart from this kind of imitation, of which the psychological roots are complex, there is the more direct propensity to speak and walk and behave like others, usually without any conscious intention of so doing. And there is the imitative tendency which shows itself in large masses of men, and produces panics, and orgies, and frenzies of violence, and which only the rarest individuals can actively withstand. This sort of imitativeness is possessed by man in common with other gregarious animals, and is an instinct in the fullest sense of the term, being a, blind impulse to act as soon as a certain perception occurs. It is particularly hard not to imitate gaping, laughing, or looking and running in a certain direction, if we see others doing so. Certain mesmerized subjects must automatically imitate whatever motion their operator makes before their eyes. [389] A successful piece of mimicry gives to both bystanders and mimic a peculiar kind of aesthetic pleasure. The dramatic impulse, the tendency to pretend one is someone else, contains this pleasure of mimicry as one of its elements.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  In all the evenings I had spent with her, she had had no visitors but the call-boy - who came to tell her when she was wanted in the wing - and Tony, who sometimes put his head around the door to wish us both good-night. She had no beau, as I have said; she had no other ‘fans’ - no friends at all, it seemed, but me; and I had always been rather glad of it. Now I watched her step to the door, and bit my lip. I should like to say I felt a thrill of foreboding, but I did not. I only felt piqued, that our time alone together - which I thought little enough! - should be made shorter.The visitor was a gentleman: a stranger, evidently, to Kitty, for she greeted him politely, but quite cautiously. He had a silk hat on his head which - seeing her, and then me lurking in the little room behind her - he removed, and held to his bosom. ‘Miss Butler, I believe,’ he said; and when she nodded, he gave a bow: ‘Walter Bliss, ma’am. Your servant.’ His voice was deep and pleasant and clear, like Tricky’s. As he spoke he produced a card from his pocket and held it out. In the second or so it took Kitty to gaze at it and give a little ‘Oh!’ of surprise, I studied him. He was very tall, even without his hat, and was dressed rather fashionably in chequered trousers and a fancy waistcoat. Across his stomach there was a golden watch-chain as thick as the tail of a rat; and more gold, I noticed, flashed from his fingers. His head was large, his hair a dull ginger; gingerish, too - and somehow at once both impressive and rather comical - were the whiskers that swept from his top lip to his ears, and his eyebrows, and the hair in his nose. His skin was as clear and shiny as a boy’s. His eyes were blue.When Kitty returned his card to him, he asked if he might speak with her a moment, and at once she stood aside to let him pass. With him in it, the little room seemed very full and hot.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She gaped at me. ‘Annie said it all along; but I never thought much about it, after that first night.’ She began to frown. ‘And so, if there never was a man, your story wasn’t like Lilian’s, at all...’ I shook my head. ‘And you were never in trouble...’‘Not that kind of trouble.’‘And all this time, you have been here, and I’ve been thinking you one thing, and...’ She looked at me, then, with a strange expression - I didn’t know if she felt angry, or sad, or bewildered, or betrayed, or what.I said, ‘I’m sorry.’ But she only shook her head, and put a hand across her eyes for a second; and when she took the hand away, her gaze seemed perfectly clear, and almost amused.‘Annie always said it,’ she said again. ‘Won’t she be pleased, now! Will you mind it, if I tell her?’‘No, Flo,’ I said. ‘You may tell who you like.’Then she went, still shaking her head; and I sat, and listened to her climb the stairs and creak about in the room above my head. Then I took some tobacco and a paper, and rolled myself a cigarette from a tin upon the mantel, and lit it; then I ground it upon the hearth, and threw it into the fire, and put my head against my arm, and groaned.What a fool I’d been! I had blundered into Florence’s life, too full of my own petty bitternesses to notice her great grief. I had thrust myself upon her and her brother, and thought myself so sly and charming; I had thought that I was putting my mark upon their house, and making it mine. I had believed myself playing in one kind of story, when all the time, the plot had been a different one - when all the time, I was only clumsily rehearsing what the fascinating Lilian had done so well and cleverly before me! I gazed about the room - at the washed blue walls, the hideous rug, the portraits: I saw them suddenly for what they were - details in a shrine to Lilian’s memory, that I, all unwittingly, had been tending. I caught hold of the little picture of Eleanor Marx - except it was not Eleanor Marx I saw, of course; it was her, with Eleanor Marx’s features. I turned it in my hands, and read the back of it: F.B., my comrade, it said, in large, looped letters, my comrade for ever. L.V.I groaned still louder. I wanted to chuck the damn picture into the grate along with my half-smoked fag - I had to return it quickly to its frame in case I did so. I was jealous, of Lilian!

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Even Cyril himself seemed to feel the change, and to grow bonnier and more content. And I, in contrast, became ever more pinched and secretive and fretful. I could not help it. It was as if, in casting off her own old load, Florence had burdened me with a new one; my feelings - which had been stirred, on the night of her confession, into such a curious mixture - only seemed to grow queerer and more contradictory as the weeks went by. I had been sorry for her, and was as glad as her brother to see her rather lighter-hearted now; I was also pleased and touched that she had confided in me at last, and told me all. But oh, how I wished her story had been different! I could never learn to like the tragic Lilian, and had to bite back my crossness when she was spoken of so reverently. Perhaps I pictured her as Kitty - it was certainly Walter’s face I saw, whenever I thought of her cowardly man-friend; but it made me hot and giddy to think of her, commanding Florence’s passion, sleeping beside her night after night - and never so much as turning he face to her friend, to kiss her mouth. Why had Florence cared for her so much? I would gaze at the photograph of Eleanor Marx - I could never shake off the confused conviction that it was really Lilian’s features printed there - until the face began to swim before my eyes. She was so different from me - hadn’t Florence herself told me that? She said she had never been gladder of anything, than that I was so different from Lilian! She meant, I suppose, that Lilian was clever, and good; that she knew the meaning of words like cooperative, and so never had to ask. But I - what was I? I was only tidy, and clean. Well, I think I was never quite so tidy, after that night. I certainly never beat the dirt from Lilian’s gaudy rug again - but smiled when people stepped on it, and took a dreadful pleasure in watching its colours grow dim. But then I would imagine Lilian in paradise, weaving more carpets so that Florence might one day come and sit on them and rest her head against her knee. I imagined her stocking up the bookshelves with essays and poems, so that she and Florence might walk, side by side, reading together. I saw her preparing a stove in some small back kitchen in heaven, so that I should have somewhere to stew the oysters while she and Flo held hands.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She had been nervous, as all performers are, and her nervousness had infected me; but when she stepped into the wing at the end of her final number, pursued by stamping, by shouts and ‘Hurrahs!’, she was flushed and gay and triumphant. To tell the truth, I did not quite like her then. She seized my arm, but didn’t see me. She was like a woman in the grip of a drug, or in the first flush of an embrace, and I felt a fool to be at her side, so still and sober, and jealous of the crowd that was her lover.After that, I passed the twenty minutes or so that she was gone each night alone, in her room, listening to the beat of her songs through the ceiling and walls, happier to hear the cheers of the audience from a distance. I would make tea for her - she liked it brewed in the pan with condensed milk, dark as a walnut and thick as syrup; I knew by the changing tempos of her set just when to set the kettle on the hearth, so the cup would be ready for her return. While the tea simmered I would wipe her little table, and empty her ashtrays, and dust down the glass; I would tidy the cracked and faded old cigar-box in which she kept her sticks of grease-paint. They were acts of love, these humble little ministrations, and of pleasure - even, perhaps, of a kind of self-pleasure, for it made me feel strange and hot and almost shameful to perform them. While she was being ravished by the admiration of the crowd, I would pace her dressing-room and gaze at her possessions, or caress them, or almost caress them - holding my fingers an inch away from them, as if they had an aura, as well as a surface, that might be stroked. I loved everything that she left behind her - her petticoats and her perfumes, and the pearls that she clipped to the lobes of her ears; but also the hairs on her combs, the eyelashes that clung to her sticks of spit-black, even the dent of her fingers and lips on her cigarette-ends. The world, to me, seemed utterly transformed since Kitty Butler had stepped into it. It had been ordinary before she came; now it was full of queer electric spaces, that she left ringing with music or glowing with light.By the time she returned to her dressing-room I would have everything tidy and still. Her tea, as I have said, would be ready; sometimes, too, I would have a cigarette lit for her.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Inevitably, we had spent so many hours with Walter - working upon songs at Mrs Dendy’s piano, or supping with him after shows - that we had begun to look upon him less as Kitty’s agent and more as a friend, to both of us. In time it wasn’t only working-days that we were spending with him, but Sundays, too; eventually, indeed, Sundays with Walter became the rule rather than the exception, and we began to listen out for the rumble of his carriage in Ginevra Road, the pounding of his boots upon our attic stairs, his rap upon our parlour door, his foolish, extravagant greetings. He would bring bits of news and gossip; we would drive into town, or out of it; we would stroll together - Kitty with her hand in the crook of one of his great arms, me with mine in the crook of the other, Walter himself like a blustering uncle, loud and lively and kind. I thought nothing of it, except that it was pleasant, until one morning as I sat eating my breakfast beside Kitty and Sims and Percy and Tootsie. It was a Sunday, and Kitty and I were rather tardy; when Sims heard who it was that we were rushing for, he gave a cry: ‘My word, Kitty, but Walter must be expecting marvellous things of you! I’ve never known him spend so much time with an artiste before. Anyone would think he was your beau!’ He seemed to say it guilelessly enough; but as he did so I saw Tootsie smile and give a sideways glance at Percy - and, worse! saw Kitty blush and turn her face away - and all at once I understood what they all knew, and cursed to think I had not guessed it sooner. A half-hour later, when Walter presented himself at the parlour door, offering a gleaming cheek to Kitty and crying ‘Kiss me, Kate!’, I didn’t smile, but only bit my lip, and wondered. He was a little in love with her; perhaps, indeed, rather more than a little. I saw it now - saw the dampness of the looks he sometimes turned upon her, and the awkwardness of the glances which, more hastily, he turned away. I saw how he seized every foolish opportunity to kiss her hand, or pluck her sleeve, or place his arm, heavy and clumsy with desire, about her slender shoulders; I heard his voice catch, sometimes, or grow thick, when he addressed her.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I was within about twenty yards of her, and had lifted a hand to remove my hat, when she turned, and seemed to raise her eyes to mine. Her gaze grew hard, sardonic and lustful all at once, just as I remembered it; and my heart twitched in my breast - in fright, I think! - as if a hook had caught it. But then she opened her mouth to speak; and what she said was: ‘Reggie! Reggie, here!’ That made me stumble. From somewhere close behind me came a gruffer answering cry — ‘All right’ - and I turned, and saw a boy picking his way across the grass, his eyes in a scowl and fixed on Diana’s, his hand bearing a sugared ice, which he held before him and sucked at very gingerly, for fear it would drip and spoil his trousers. The trousers were handsome, and bulged at the fork. The boy himself was tall and slight; his hair was dark, and cut very short. His face was a pretty one, his lips pink as a girl’s ... When he reached Diana she leaned and drew the handkerchief from his pocket, and began to dap with it at his thigh - it seemed, he had spilt his ice-cream after all. The other lady at the stall looked on, and smiled; then murmured something that made the pretty boy blush. I had stood and watched all this, in a kind of astonishment; but now I took a slow step backwards, and then another. Diana may have raised her face again, I cannot say: I didn’t stop to see it. Reggie had lifted his hand to lick at his ice, his cuff had moved back, and I had caught the flash of a wrist-watch beneath it ... I blinked my eyes, and shook my head, and ran back to the bush where Zena still stood peeping, and put my face against her shoulder. When I looked again at Diana, through the leaves, she had her arm in Reggie’s and their heads were close, and they were laughing. I turned to Zena, and she bit her lip. ‘It is only the devils what prosper in this world, I swear,’ she said. But then she bit her lip again; and then she tittered. I laughed, too, for a moment. Then I cast another bitter look towards the stall, and said: ‘Well, I hope she gets all she deserves!’ Zena cocked her head. ‘Who?’ she asked. ‘Diana, or — ?’ I pulled a face, and would not answer her. We wandered back to the speakers’ tent, then, and Zena said she had better try to find her Maud. ‘We’ll be friends, won’t we?’ I said as we shook hands.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I was more jealous than I had ever been, of anyone! Not because of the house; not because of Cyril, or even Ralph - who had been kind to me, but who had wept for her, and wrung his hands in grief when she lay dying; but because of Florence. Because it was Florence, above all, whom Lilian’s story seemed both to have given me, and to have robbed me of for ever. I thought of my labours of the past few months. I had not made Florence fat and happy, as I had supposed: it had only been time, making her grief less keen, her memories duller. Do you remember how we said that we would meet, she had asked me tonight, and how you didn’t come... ? Her eyes had shone as she had asked it, for I had done her some sort of wonderful favour by not turning up that night, two years before.I had done her a wonderful favour - and done myself, it seemed to me now, the worst kind of disservice. I thought again of how I had spent that night, and the nights following it; I thought of all the lickerish pleasures of Felicity Place - all the suits, the dinners, the wine, the poses plastiques. I would have traded them all in, at that moment, for the chance to have been in Lilian’s place at that dull lecture, and had Florence’s hazel eyes upon me, fascinated! Chapter 18 [image "024" file=wate_9781101078198_oeb_024_r1.jpg] In the days and weeks following Florence’s sad disclosure I became aware that things at Quilter Street were rather changed. Florence herself seemed gayer, lighter - as if, in telling me her history, she had rid herself of some huge burden, and was now flexing limbs that had been cramped and numbed, straightening a back that had been bowed. She was still gloomy, sometimes, and she still went off for walks, alone, and came back wistful.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  You know how dull it is for me in Canterbury, with no one but Mrs Pugh, and Sandy, to talk to!’ Mrs Pugh was the landlady of Kitty’s rooming-house; Sandy was the boy who shared her landing: he played in the band at the Palace, but drank, she said, and was sometimes silly and a bore. ‘Oh, how nice it would be,’ she continued, ‘to sit in a proper parlour again, with a proper family - not just a room with a bed in it, and a dirty rug, and a bit of newspaper on the table for a cloth! And how nice to see where you live and work; and to catch your train; and to meet the people that love you, and have you with them all day ...’ It made me fidget and swallow to hear her talk like this, all unself-consciously, of how she liked me; tonight, however, I had no time even to blush: for as she spoke there came a knock at her door - a sharp, cheerful, authoritative knock that made her blink and stiffen, and look up in surprise. I, too, gave a start. In all the evenings I had spent with her, she had had no visitors but the call-boy - who came to tell her when she was wanted in the wing - and Tony, who sometimes put his head around the door to wish us both good-night. She had no beau, as I have said; she had no other ‘fans’ - no friends at all, it seemed, but me; and I had always been rather glad of it. Now I watched her step to the door, and bit my lip. I should like to say I felt a thrill of foreboding, but I did not. I only felt piqued, that our time alone together - which I thought little enough! - should be made shorter. The visitor was a gentleman: a stranger, evidently, to Kitty, for she greeted him politely, but quite cautiously. He had a silk hat on his head which - seeing her, and then me lurking in the little room behind her - he removed, and held to his bosom. ‘Miss Butler, I believe,’ he said; and when she nodded, he gave a bow: ‘Walter Bliss, ma’am. Your servant.’ His voice was deep and pleasant and clear, like Tricky’s. As he spoke he produced a card from his pocket and held it out. In the second or so it took Kitty to gaze at it and give a little ‘Oh!’ of surprise, I studied him.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  When she put a finger to her mouth to chew at a nail I lifted my hand to stop her; but she pushed my arm away, and made to rise. ‘Where are you going?’ I asked. ‘Upstairs. I want to sit a little while and think.’ ‘No!’ I cried; and as I cried it, Cyril, in his crib upstairs, woke up, and began to call out for his mother. I reached for Florence and seized her wrist and, all heedless of the baby’s cries, pulled her back and pressed her to the bed. ‘I know what you mean to do,’ I said. ‘You mean to go and think of Lilian!’ ‘I cannot help but think of Lilian!’ she answered, stricken. ‘I cannot help it. And you - you’re just the same, only I never knew it. Don’t say - don’t say you weren’t thinking of her, of Kitty, last night, as you kissed me!’ I took a breath - but then I hesitated. For it was true, I couldn’t say it. It was Kitty I had kissed first and hardest; and it was as if I had had the shape or the colour or the taste of her kisses upon my lips, ever after. Not the spendings and the tears of all the weeping sods of Soho, nor the wine and the damp caresses of Felicity Place, had quite washed those kisses away. I had always known it - but it had never mattered with Diana, nor with Zena. Why should it matter with Florence? What should it matter who she thought of, as she kissed me? ‘All I know is,’ I said at last, ‘if we had not lain together last night, we would have died of it. And if you tell me now we shall never lie together again, after that, that was so marvellous -!’ I still held her to the bed, and Cyril still cried; but now, by some miracle, his cries began to die - and Florence, in her turn, grew slack in my arms, and turned her head against me. ‘I liked to think of you,’ she said quietly, ‘as Venus in a sea-shell. I never thought of the sweethearts you had, before you came here...’ ‘Why must you think of them now?’ ‘Because you do! Suppose Kitty were to show up again, and ask you back to her?’ ‘She won’t. Kitty’s gone, Flo. Like Lilian. Believe me, there’s more chance of her coming back!’ I began to smile. ‘And if she does, you can go to her, and I won’t say a word. And if Kitty comes for me, you can do similar. And then, I suppose, we shall have our paradises - and will be able to wave to one another from our separate clouds.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  of foll.; Ar. US become intensely 9‏ /) קנא red (or black), with aes NH 782? jealousy ;‏ Syr. [18 lividus fuit, JUILS zeal, envy (rare);‏ vb. denom. NH §3?, Aram. 82), Eth. 7: all‏ be jealous, zealous).‏ TARP n.f. ardour, zeal, jealousy (from colour produced in face by deep emotion) ;— abs. ’p קְכָאת .086 ; +*5 גוא‎ Iso°; sf. ‘N82? Nu 257+, ete.; pl. M82? Nu 1 ardour of jealousy husband BY" 234: , PO jealous disposition Nu 5“ (P); offering for jealousy, מנחת ק'‎ v'385 (P); תורת הק'‎ v3 (P); of rivalry Ee 4‘ 9°; Ephr. eae Judah Is 11°; ardent love, || אהבה‎ 8°. 2. ardour of zeal: a. of men for God ור‎ 0 2 K 6 house of 69". _b. of God for his people, 888 קנה esp. in battle Is 42" 63% Ze 1 8% ק'‎ boy Is 59%; ק' " תעשה זאת‎ 9"37"=2 19%" 8. ardour of anger: a. of men against adversaries ץ‎ 119’ Jb 5? (|| ,(בעש‎ Pr 14° (opp, SBT 22). b. of God against men, || 79M Ez 5° 16%* 23” 36%; || MBP 38"; || אף‎ Dt 29” Ex 35"; + 8 Is 26" Ez 36° Zpr® 38 y 79%; mp0 ‘pa dep Ez 8° the anger-image provoking to anger; ‘pn ’D alone ."ץצ‎ 1 [קנא]‎ vb.denom. Pi. be jealous, zealous (Gerber™) ;—Pf. 3 ms. 832 Nu 255+; 1 ₪ ‘O83? Ze 1+ ete.; 172% 83% 1: "זז‎ Pr 23%, ete.; 2 Inf. abs. קפא‎ 1 K 19°; ‘estr. sf. 822 Nu 254; INN32 2 8 215; Pt. supp טא‎ 4. a jealous 65 —_ אֶתאָשָתו‎ Nu 14+ (P): 3 rivalry Is 11% 2. be envious of, c. ב‎ 00 4 Gn 30! (E), 37" (J) +37" 73° Pr 3° 237 % 0. 800. pers. Gn 26% (J), Ez31°; ₪. ל‎ pers. 106. 3. be zealous for: a. of man, ₪. pers. Nu 11% (J), 2S 217; for God Nu 25* (P) 1K 19%; טא ק' קנאה‎ 25" (P). ob. of . WIR OVD Ez 39%, Syd 16 2%, WAN? Zor, excite to jealous anger, c.‏ .4 3 לצוון ef.‏ ; הַקָכַאוּנִי instr. Dt 32% * (dub.; probably‏ 3 Hiph. provoke to jealous‏ .14% 76 ד vb)‏ anger : Impf. 3 mpl. sf. SIP Dt 32"; WAI‏ 1s. ONIN Dt 327%; Pp.‏ ; (וַיִכְעִיסוּהו ||) 78% ץ metapl. 713?! Ez 8* (Ges*”4, del. Co).‏ Trap adj. jealous ;—only of God: 3? by Ex 20° (J)=Dt 5° (as punishing those whi hate him), Ex 34% (J), Dt 4* 6” (demanding exclusive service); 10Y 832 Ex 34" (J). Jos 24” (E) (cf‏ אֶל adj. id.;—Niaz‏ קנוא1 (נקם ||( ?1 Dt 6" supr.), Nah‏

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Her maid was an older woman in a plain brown dress; I saw her tugging at the frock, and thought nothing of it. But when she had the hooks fastened tight, she leaned and gently blew upon the singer’s throat, where the power had clogged; and then she whispered something to her, and they laughed together with their heads very close ... and I knew, as surely as if they had pasted the words upon the dressing-room wall, that they were lovers..The knowledge made me blush like a beacon. I looked at Kitty, and saw that she had caught the gesture, too; her eyes, however, were lowered, and her mouth was tight. When the comic singer passed us on her way to the stage, she gave me a wink: ‘Off to please the public,’ she said, and her dresser laughed again. When she came back and took her make-up off, she wandered over with a cigarette and asked for a light; then, as she drew on her fag, she looked me over. ‘Are you going,’ she said, ‘to Barbara’s party, after the show?’ I said I didn’t know who Barbara was. She waved her hand: ‘Oh, Barbara won’t mind. You come along with Ella and me: you and your friend.’ Here she nodded - very pleasantly, I thought - to Kitty. But Kitty, who had had her head bent all this time, working at the fastenings of her skirt, now looked up and gave a prim little smile.‘How nice of you to ask,’ she said; ‘but we are spoken for tonight. Our agent, Mr Bliss, is due to take us out to supper.’I stared: we had no arrangement that I knew of. But the singer only gave a shrug. ‘Too bad,’ she said. Then she looked at me. ‘You don’t want to leave your pal to her agent, and come on alone, with me and Ella?’‘Miss King will be busy with Mr Bliss,’ said Kitty, before I could answer; and she said it so tightly the singer gave a sniff, then turned and went over to where her dresser waited with their baskets. I watched them leave - they didn’t look back at me. When we returned to the theatre the next night, Kitty chose a hook that was far from theirs; and on the night after that, they had moved on to another hall ...At home, in bed, I said I thought it was a shame.‘Why did you tell them Walter was coming?’ I asked Kitty.She said: ‘I didn’t care for them.’‘Why not? They were nice. They were funny. They were - like us.’I had my arm about her, and felt her stiffen at my words. She pulled away from me and raised her head. We had left a candle burning and her face, I saw, was white and shocked.‘Nan!’ she said. ‘They’re not like us! They’re not like us, at all. They’re toms.’‘Toms?’ I remember this moment very distinctly, for I had never heard the word before.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Uncle Joe said, ‘Well, that’s a shame, that is. You should hear her in the kitchen, Miss Butler. She’s a regular song-bird, she is, then: a regular lark. Makes your heart turn over, to hear her.’ There were murmurs of agreement throughout the room, and I saw Kitty look blinkingly my way. Then George whispered rather loudly that I must be saving my voice for serenading Freddy, and there was a fresh round of laughter that set me gazing and blushing into my lap. Kitty looked bemused. She asked then, ‘Who is Freddy?’ ‘Freddy is Nancy’s young feller,’ said Davy. ‘A very handsome chap. She must’ve boasted about him to you?’ ‘No,’ said Kitty, ‘she has not.’ She said it lightly, but I glanced up and saw that her eyes were strange, and almost sad. It was true that I had never mentioned Fred to her. The fact was, I barely thought of him as my beau these days, for since her arrival in Canterbury I had had no evenings spare to spend with him. He had recently sent me a letter to say, did I still care? - and I had put the letter in a drawer, and forgotten to reply. There was more chaff about Freddy, then; I was glad when one of Rhoda’s sisters caused a fuss, by snatching the harmonica from George and giving us a tune so horrible it made the boys all shout at her, and pull her hair, to make her stop. While they quarrelled and swore, Kitty leaned towards me and said softly, ‘Will you take me to your room, Nan, or somewhere quiet, for a bit - just you and me?’ She looked so grave suddenly I feared that she might faint. I got up, and made a path for her across the crowded room, and told my mother I was taking her upstairs; and Mother - who was gazing troubledly at Rhoda’s sister, not knowing whether to laugh at her or to scold - gave us a nod, distractedly, and we escaped. The bedroom was cooler than the parlour, and dimmer, and - although we could still hear shouts, and stamping, and blasts from the harmonica - wonderfully calm compared to the room we had just left. The window was raised, and Kitty crossed to it at once and placed her arms upon the sill. Closing her eyes against the breeze that blew in from the bay, she took a few deep, grateful breaths. ‘Are you poorly?’ I said. She turned to me and shook her head, and smiled; but again, her smile seemed sad. ‘Just tired.’ My jug and bowl were on the side. I poured a little water out and carried it to her, for her to wash her hands and splash her face.