Tipping the Velvet

I haven’t had the heart for it...’ I gazed into my rum. All at once there came a burst of laughter from the stall at my back that made me jump. ‘I said,’ came a girl’s voice, “‘I only does that sort of thing, sir, with my friends.” “Emily Pettinger,” he said, “said you let her flat fuck you for an hour and a half” — which is a lie, but anyway, “Flat fucking is one thing, sir,” I said, ‘and this quite another. If you want me to - her” ’ - here she must have made a gesture - “ ‘you shall have to pay me for it, rather dear.” ’ ‘And did he, then?’ came another voice. The first speaker paused, perhaps to take a sip from her glass; then, ‘Swipe me!’ she said, ‘if the bastard didn’t put his hand in his pocket and pull out a sov, and lay it on the table-top, all cool as you like...’ I looked at Florence, and she smiled. ‘Gay girls,’ she said. ‘Half the girls who come in here are gay. Do you mind it?’ How could I mind it, when I had been a gay girl - well, a gay boy - once, myself? I shook my head. ‘Do you mind it?’ I asked her. ‘No. I’m only sorry that they must do it...’ I didn’t listen: I was too taken with the gay girl’s story. She was saying now: ‘We flat fucked for a half-an-hour; then tipped the velvet while the gent looked on. Then Susie took a pair of vampers, and -’ I looked again at Florence, and frowned. ‘Are they French, or what?’ I asked. ‘I can’t understand a thing they’re saying.’ And indeed, I could not; for I had never heard such words before, in all my time upon the streets. I said, ‘Tipped the velvet: what does that mean? It sounds like something you might do in a theatre...’ Florence blushed. ‘You might try it,’ she said; ‘but I think the chairman would chuck you out...’ Then, while I still frowned, she parted her lips and showed me the tip of her tongue; and glanced, very quickly, at my lap. I had never known her do such a thing before, and I found myself terribly startled by it, and terribly stirred. It might just as well have been her lips that she had dipped to me: I felt my drawers grow damp, and my cheeks flush scarlet; and had to look away from her own warm gaze, to hide my confusion. I looked at Mrs Swindles at the bar, and at the pewter mugs that hung, in one long gleaming row, above her; and then I looked at the group of figures at the billiard table. And then, after a moment or two, I studied them a little harder.

I haven’t had the heart for it...’ I gazed into my rum. All at once there came a burst of laughter from the stall at my back that made me jump.