Read Online Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters - Free Book Online Page B

lips and held it for a second before her mouth, her eyes on mine, unblinking.
    I had not been aware of it, but I had spoken softly, and the others had quietened to listen. Now the table was hushed and still. When I took my eyes from Kitty’s I saw a ring of faces turned my way, and blushed.
    At last, someone spoke. It was Father, and his voice was very loud. ‘No bolting him down whole now, Miss Butler,’ he said, ‘like the gormays do. We won’t have that at this table. You go on and give him a real good chew.’ He said it kindly, and Kitty laughed. She peered into the shell in her hand.
    â€˜And is it really alive?’ she said.
    â€˜Alive alive-oh,’ said Davy. ‘If you listen very hard, you will hear him shrieking as he goes down.’
    There were protests at that from Rhoda and Alice. ‘You will make the poor girl sick,’ said Mother. ‘Don’t you mind him, Miss Butler. You just eat your fish, and enjoy it.’
    Kitty did so. With no more glances at me she threw the contents of her shell into her mouth, chewed them hard and fast, and swallowed them. Then she wiped her lips with her napkin, and smiled at Father.
    â€˜Now,’ he said, confidentially, ‘tell the truth: have you ever tasted an oyster such as that, before, or have you not?’
    Kitty said that she had not, and Davy gave a cheer; and for a while there was no sound at all but the delicate, diminutive sounds of good oyster-supper: the creak of hinges, the slap of discarded beards, the trickle of liquor and butter and beer.
    I opened no more shells for Kitty, for she managed them herself. ‘Look at this one!’ she said, when she had handled half-a-dozen or so. ‘What a brute he is!’ Then she looked more closely at it. ‘Is it a he? I suppose they all must be, since they all have beards?’
    Father shook his head, chewing. ‘Not at all, Miss Butler, not at all. Don’t let the beards mislead you. For the oyster, you see, is what you might call a real queer fish - now a he, now a she, as quite takes its fancy. A regular morphodite, in fact!’
    â€˜Is that so?’
    Tony tapped his plate. ‘You’re a bit of an oyster, then, yourself, Kitty,’ he said with a smirk.
    She looked for a moment rather uncertain, but then she smiled. ‘Why, I suppose I am,’ she said. ‘Just fancy! I’ve never been likened to a fish before.’
    â€˜Well, don’t take it the wrong way, Miss Butler,’ said Mother, ‘for spoken in this house, it is something of a compliment.’
    Tony laughed, and Father said, ‘Oh, it was, it was!’
    Kitty still smiled. Then she half-rose to reach a pepper castor; and when she sat again she drew her feet beneath her chair, and I felt my thigh grow cool.
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    When the oyster-barrel was quite empty, and the lemonade and the Bass had all been drunk, and Kitty declared that she had never had a finer supper in all her life, we moved our chairs away from the table, and the men lit cigarettes, and Alice and Rhoda set out cups, for tea. There was more talk, and more questions for Kitty to answer. Had she ever met Nelly Power? Did she know Bessie Bellwood, or Jenny Hill, or Jolly John Nash? Then, on another tack: was it true that she had no young chap? She said she had no time for it. And had she family, in Kent, and when did she see them? She had none at all, she said, since her grandmother died. Mother tut-tutted over that, and said it was a shame; Davy said she could help herself to some of our relations, if she liked, for we had more than we knew what to do with.
    â€˜Oh yes?’ said Kitty.
    â€˜Yes,’ said Davy. ‘You must have heard the song:
    â€˜There’s her uncle, and her brother, and her sister, and her mother,
    And her auntie, and another, who is cousin to her mother...’
    No sooner had he finished the verse, indeed, than there was the sound of our street-door opening, and