This was said in a tone that made Connie afraid. But she betrayed not a hint of her anxiety when, some minutes later, she picked up her hat and bade the good Christian women farewell. On her way out Ivy leaned across her conspiratorially.
‘I knew we could depend on you,’ she said, almost in a whisper.
That evening, back at Thornhill Crescent, she sat down to write a short letter, though its brevity belied the agonising that was spent in its composition.
14 June 1913
Dearest Tam,
I have been pondering the very kind invitation to your testimonial match which you extended the last time we met. You will recall my hesitancy in accepting it, and perhaps also the reason why. I can’t claim that my estrangement from Will has been easy, nor that any future association with him would be greatly relished – yet such feelings on my part seem trivial, and perhaps egotistical, when set against the prospect of your farewell appearance at the Priory. Please don’t think it impertinent that, after several weeks of silence, I write in the hope that your offer still stands. If it does, I would most gladly accept.
I did so enjoy our lunch at the Criterion.
Believe me, affectionately yours,
Constance
There was no word of a lie in it, yet Connie read the letter through with an unpleasant feeling of duplicity. She imagined Tam reading it, and the lift of pleasure it would give to his dark brow. Keener than that, however, was a sense of foreboding. Connie had taken her own commitment to suffrage further than she had ever anticipated, but Edith and her band of zealots, operating beyond any constraints imposed by the Union, made her worry that the cause was being fatally retarded. The woman whose funeral carriage they followed today had, by her action, apparently entrained a new spirit of violent opportunism. Connie had been shocked by the Epsom Derby film, like everybody else. But pondering it later she was moved not by the bravery of a ‘soldier’ who had found something to die for: it was the loneliness of a woman who had run out of anything to live for.
15
CONNIE COULD SMELL and hear the place before she could see it as the train shuddered and slowed into Warwick Square station. She had not visited since Will met her on the platform here more than a year ago, his anxious gaze only brightening when it had settled on her. There was nobody to meet her now, though the seagulls still shrieked in their importunate way. The carriages had disgorged a flood of holidaymakers, day-trippers and other rowdies, and Connie, jostled along, felt a spasm of sadness to have arrived alone and unheeded. She had just gained the station’s little concourse when a shadow rose at her side and Tam was there, doffing his hat, a smile beginning to pull at the edge of his mouth.
‘May I take this for you?’ he said, releasing her hand from the suitcase.
‘Hullo!’ she said, laughing her surprise. ‘How did you know I’d be on that train?’
‘I didn’t. But you’d told me you’d arrive this morning, so it was no trouble to wait. I had a pot of tea and the Daily Mail to keep me company.’
‘So you’ve been here all morning?’
‘As I say, it was no trouble.’ They emerged from the station into Warwick Square, its public gardens ablaze with summer flowers, its white stucco and uniform canted bays sloping gently towards the seafront. Tam suggested they walk into town, to which Connie assented; the day was fine, and he was evidently eager to play the host. ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said, ‘but I’ve taken the liberty of asking my sister to join us at the ground.’
‘Not at all,’ she replied agreeably. They had turned onto a road, Prospect Place, neatly lined with beech trees and mid-Victorian boarding houses of a kind usually damned as ‘respectable’. Tam had slowed to a halt.
‘Which reminds me – I promised Beatrice I’d take a brolly along. They said there might be rain this afternoon.’
Connie looked up at the tall sandstone terrace with its wrought-iron balconies. ‘You live here?’ She had imagined something more secluded.
He nodded, and seemed to register her surprise. ‘Top floor. Carefully chosen, I should add. High enough to blot out the traffic, but still hear the waves against the sea wall at night.’
He excused himself, and hurried into the house. While she waited on the pavement Connie raked her glance casually along the road, and froze on seeing a figure who, she realised, had been tracking them from the station. Relf. She hadn’t encountered him since the day they had met outside Strand Tube station. A minute or so later she heard Tam closing his front door and descending the steps with the promised umbrella. He sensed her dismay almost immediately.
‘Is something the matter?’ he asked. Relf, keeping his distance, hadn’t moved. His concentrated stillness reminded her of a fox she occasionally saw in the garden at home.
‘That gentleman,’ she replied, ‘I’m – I believe he’s followed me from London.’
She noticed Tam’s neck stiffen as he stared out the man. ‘P’raps I should go and have a word,’ he said, but Connie held his arm.
‘No, please. Let’s just go.’
‘Who is he?’ he said, his eyes still fixed on the stalker.
‘I’ll tell you on the way,’ she said. As they walked on, Connie told herself not to panic. She could not believe that Relf had any inkling of why she had come here, but his shadowing presence made it more imperative than ever to be careful. She explained to Tam her brief and unsought acquaintance with Relf, and why she might be in danger; but she made no mention of her rendezvous with Ivy later that evening. Her mind racing, she asked him if they might make a quick stop at the Royal Victoria, where she was staying: her pretext was to leave her case, but while Tam waited she also sent a telegram to London, hoping that she wasn’t too late. Outside again, the sun was poking through broken clouds in a diffuse way. Connie peered up at the sky.
‘Is it really going to rain?’
Tam considered. ‘They might just be summer clouds – hard to tell.’
As they approached the Priory she saw flyposters announcing Festival Week, and bunting that sprouted along the walls and windows of the narrow old streets. Tam was explaining the line-up of entertainments. Today they would watch a few overs of a local club match, a ‘tee-up’ for the main event tomorrow: M—shire, captained by Tam for the occasion, would play the MCC, followed in the evening by his benefit dinner. Connie, voicing a tentative enquiry as to Will’s whereabouts, was assured that he would definitely not be at today’s match: county players seldom watched ‘the small fry’. He would, however, be at the dinner. She was puzzled that Tam had invited her knowing of the awkwardness between them, and she felt sure Will would have asked him to reconsider her inclusion on the guest list. But here she was.
Outside the players’ entrance a small knot of schoolboys were loitering, and on spotting Tam they surrounded him, autograph books at the ready.
‘Duty calls,’ he said to Connie with a little sigh, though she sensed that he rather enjoyed this ritual show of homage. Cricketers needed the proof of the public’s affection, she thought – and retired cricketers perhaps most of all. Once the signing was done, Tam led her through the players’ gate and thence around to the members’ pavilion. Out on the square play was under way, though the stand was still only a quarter full. A woman, seated on her own at the end of a row, gave them a diffident wave. Connie responded with a smile, and then, on Tam’s introduction, she was shaking hands with his sister. Beatrice had none of her brother’s imposing physicality, but she did have his melancholy grey eyes and the same faint dimple in the chin.
‘Constance. I’m very pleased to meet you. Drewy says that you’re a proper cricket lover – his words.’
Connie had never heard anyone call him Drewy before. ‘I’m honoured to learn it,’ she said, settling on the wooden bench next to her. They talked for a little while about Tam’s benefit the next day, the prospect of a large crowd, and the hope that the weather would stay fine. Beatrice opened the small hamper at her feet, and handed Connie a napkin, a fork a
nd a little bowl of potted shrimp. She was about to do the same for Tam, but he waved it away and rose to his feet. He wanted to check on the preparations, he said, and disappeared through the tall double doors of the pavilion.
‘He’s nervous about tomorrow,’ said Beatrice with a shy little smile.
‘I should think half of the passengers on the train from London will be here to see him,’ said Connie. ‘He’ll never stop being the Great Tam.’
‘It’s good of you to come. I know how much it means to him.’
The earnest tone of her gratitude caused Connie a jolt to her conscience. She dropped her gaze, and noticed in Beatrice’s picnic hamper a library book: the gilt lettering on its spine asked, with unknowing pertinence, Can You Forgive Her? A glance at Beatrice’s unadorned hand confirmed her initial impression of someone too meek for marriage. Yet she looked more settled with her singleness than her brother did. Their conversation, in Tam’s absence, had kept so closely to a path of amiable vagueness – they had like-minded views on Trollope – that Connie was taken quite by surprise when Beatrice, in a moment of sudden particularity, remarked, ‘You really are very beautiful, after all.’ Connie blushed, stumped for a response (after all what?), but without seeming to heed the embarrassment Beatrice continued to scrutinise her. ‘I begin to understand –’
Whatever that might be was left unresolved, for at that moment Tam returned along their row.
‘I’ve put you two beside one another,’ he said of the seating arrangements for the following night’s gala dinner. ‘I’m obliged to sit next to the mayor. It seems they’re going to make me a freeman of the town.’ He didn’t look enthused by the prospect.
‘It’s meant to be an honour, Drewy,’ Beatrice reminded him gently.
Tam shrugged, then turned to Connie. ‘I’ve placed our mutual friend at the other end of the table, by the mayor’s wife and Lord Daventry.’
A smile passed between them. ‘I’m sure he’ll enjoy that,’ said Connie.
The rain started just before tea. The sky had been glowering all afternoon; slowly at first, then more insistently, a thin grey curtain of drizzle swept over the ground. When it began to thicken, and they could see fat drops ploshing onto the lower steps, the umpires pocketed the bails and called the players off. Tam stood up, and sniffed the damp air like a gun dog.
‘I reckon we should call it a day,’ he said with casual authority. ‘This rain’s not going to stop.’
They gathered the detritus of their lunch and retreated up the steps into the pavilion. Tam had suggested a drink in the long bar, and they were dithering in the hallway when Connie saw the door swing open and Will emerge, with a young woman in attendance. They all momentarily froze at once, though Connie was slightly better prepared for this untimely encounter, half believing that, the stronger the assurance of a thing not happening – the Titanic being sunk, for example – the greater seemed the inevitability that it would.
Will, visibly discomfited by this unforeseen social iceberg, was mumbling his way through the forms. ‘… and this is Miss Callaway – Miss Ada Brink.’
He did not dare lift his gaze as she and Ada exchanged handshakes. Nor did he listen to the polite talk that followed, Ada twittering on to the strangers in her amiable and uninhibited way, until he realised he had missed a conversational cue – from her.
‘I’m sorry?’ he said, coming to attention.
Connie, leaning forward slightly, as one might to a dotard, said, ‘I was just asking about your family. Your sister is well?’
‘Indeed, yes, she’s very well – thank you,’ he replied disjointedly, obliged now to look her in the eye. This caused him a severe inward turmoil. She had changed again since he last saw her at Holloway. Gone was the sallow complexion and the depleted physique; she was still thin (her cheekbones were expressively taut) but a gleam danced in her eye, her back was straight and her hair, though short, had recovered its lustre of old. Her beauty was, if anything, the nobler for having outfaced its traumatic assaults. This much he had taken in at a glance. What utterly confounded him was her self-possession, her readiness to deal with this highly awkward encounter as though it were a happy coincidence.
‘I trust we’ll meet again tomorrow,’ he heard himself say, and Connie replied in a manner that could not have been better calculated to pierce him. She smiled – and not in a merely social way; it was a smile that seemed to encompass both agreement and acknowledgement of their former familiarity. This was more than Will could bear. With a stiff bow to them, he steered Ada away and out of the pavilion.
The rain, pittering thinly on their umbrella, had cleared the beach and most of the esplanade in front of them. Beatrice had caught a bus in the opposite direction, leaving Tam to accompany Connie back to the Royal Victoria. Tramcars made a whooshing sound as they passed along the promenade. A few hardy bathers were still braving the slate-grey sea.
Connie, pondering the recent encounter, said very little as they walked. She had not failed to register Will’s embarrassment, and it had amused her to assume graciousness in the face of it. But it was the lady he was squiring who occupied her thoughts. She had seemed very comely, vivacious, youthful, and – Ada, was it? – would make someone an excellent wife, she supposed. Yet was it possible that someone so young, not much more than a girl, could truly sustain Will’s interest? Or was it rather that she had seriously misjudged Will all along, and that Ada might be his ideal companion?
‘Very pretty, wasn’t she?’ she said, after such a length of silence that Tam seemed to twig the deliberation that had preceded it. He murmured in assent, though when Connie pressed him for information he hadn’t much to add.
‘I barely know the girl. I haven’t seen a great deal of Will since he took up with her.’
‘D’you think they seemed – very close?’
Tam shrugged. ‘He looks rather tense about her, ’sfar as I can tell. Not like he was with you.’
Connie gave a rueful little snort at this last remark, though a keen reader of her face might have discerned an ambiguous satisfaction flit across it. Tam himself was such a reader, but he didn’t say anything else until they had reached the entrance of the hotel. He looked back in the direction they had been walking.
‘No sign of that fellow who was stalking you.’
Connie nodded. ‘All the same, I should be on guard for Mr Relf. He seems … tenacious.’
Tam enquired as to her dinner arrangements, and Connie sensed that he would have liked a part in them. But matters lay in such a state of uncertainty that she dared not venture out of her hotel that evening. She offered Tam a regretful smile and the excuse of tiredness.
‘But I’ll be champing at the bit for the start of play tomorrow. Eleven thirty?’
‘Eleven thirty. Come to the players’ entrance. I’ll be there.’
He took her gloved hand and pressed it close to his mouth; then he turned away down the promenade.
Once inside, she went to reception and asked whether any telegrams had arrived for her. The desk manager reported none. So she couldn’t be sure if Ivy had already left London and was on the train down here. Were Relf to get wind that Ivy was in town, it would not take him long to deduce that mischief was in the offing. For now, Connie would simply have to follow instructions and wait. Up in her room, she opened the windows and listened to the rain pattering outside. Along the front she could see the pier, its lights beginning to wink on as the evening paled to grey.
It troubled her that she had yet to be told her part in whatever scheme was afoot. Militants had got wind of the fact that police were intercepting their mail, thus enabling them to anticipate campaigns and arrest the suspects. Connie was told not to write to any suffragist associate in the weeks following the Davison funeral, but to wait until someone made contact with her. A note had come through the door at Thornhill Crescent, hand-delivered, not posted, instructing her to be at the Royal Victoria on the evening of 9 July. Her liaison was codenamed ‘Hedera’, which
Connie knew was Latin for ‘ivy’. She had a sudden comical image of Ivy turning up at the hotel and checking in a suitcase full of bricks.
Ivy had been due to arrive at eight this evening. It was now quarter past. Connie had been pacing her room for so long she felt like a circus lion before showtime. She was about to go down for a fresh box of Sullivans when there came a knock from outside. Opening her door she found two entirely unexpected visitors. One of them was Edith Aitken herself. The other was a younger woman Connie did not know.
‘Miss Callaway,’ she said, with a brief smirk on seeing Connie’s bemused expression. ‘May we – come in?’
Connie held the door open and stepped aside.
‘This is Miss Webster,’ said Edith, introducing her companion, a pale, somewhat prim-faced woman of about Connie’s age, who gave a businesslike nod by way of greeting. Hers was the demeanour of the exceptionally clever but plain girls Connie had known at school. Edith was checking her watch. ‘Typical, I suppose. Punctuality has never been Ivy’s forte.’
‘I’m not sure Ivy will be coming,’ said Connie. ‘I sent her a telegram earlier today warning her off.’
‘Why?’ asked Edith sharply.
‘A Mr Relf has followed me here. Special Branch. If he sees Ivy and me together, the game’s up.’
Edith exchanged a look with Miss Webster. ‘Might he be waiting down there?’ she asked Connie, who crossed to the window and took a long look over the darkening parade. She could see only the black blooms of passing umbrellas and an occasional motor cab. She turned back into the room.
‘I don’t see him. He may not know I’m staying here. Are you certain that you weren’t followed?’
Edith shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
Miss Webster spoke directly to Edith. ‘Whatever happens, it wouldn’t do to get caught with this.’ She gestured at a small leather briefcase which Connie had only just noticed. Edith was frowning, her eyes hard with calculation, and Connie now felt it was time to ask: ‘May I know why you’re here?’
Half of the Human Race Page 29
