Before she could reply there sounded a sharp rap at the door. They stood where they were, reluctant even to make a sound. Only when she heard a voice outside say ‘Hullo?’ did Connie let out her breath and open the door. Ivy entered, and with a quick birdlike survey of the room, greeted each of them, plainly innocent of any alarm she had caused.
‘You didn’t get my telegram?’ asked Connie.
‘Oh, I did. No time to reply – I spent the whole afternoon trying to throw the police off my trail. I made a roundabout journey to Charing Cross, only to find another bevy of detectives waiting there. So I took a cab to Victoria, announced loudly in the booking office that I wanted a ticket to Chatham, then sneaked onto the Brighton train. From Brighton I came here.’
‘That was clever thinking, Ivy,’ said Connie.
When Ivy had dispensed with her umbrella and rain-damp coat, they settled around a table. Edith said, ‘To business, then. We know for certain that Daventry and Foulkes will be at the Priory for a dinner tomorrow evening. Miss Callaway, you have a contact there?’
Connie nodded. ‘Actually, I’ll be there, as the guest of a friend.’
‘And who would that be?’
‘Andrew Tamburlain.’
Edith almost reared back at this name, and widened her eyes at Connie. ‘Tamburlain – the famous …?’
‘The one and only.’
Edith began to smile slowly. ‘I see. My understanding was that your friend was a woman, who might be able to smuggle us in, so to speak. But if you’re on the inside already … this makes it even better.’ She looked at Miss Webster, who nodded in silent agreement. Connie, prickling with unease, decided that enough nods and winks had passed between them.
‘I’d be very unwilling to see tomorrow night’s occasion disrupted.’
Edith raised an enquiring eyebrow. ‘Oh. Why, may I ask?’
‘Because the dinner is in honour of Mr Tamburlain. It’s his farewell to the club – to cricket.’
‘I’m sure it is. And it will be attended by Daventry and Foulkes. We’ll never have a better opportunity to get at them.’
‘Only think of the stir it will create,’ said Ivy.
‘Foulkes and Daventry are attending tomorrow’s play,’ Connie replied. ‘Why not then? I’ll break the windows myself, if necessary.’
Edith gave her an arch look. ‘Who said anything about breaking windows?’
Connie hesitated, realising she had assumed too much. ‘I thought – well, please to say what you do intend.’
At a sign from Edith, Miss Webster picked up her briefcase and undid its clasp. Her expression remained impassive as she drew out a slim package, wrapped in brown paper, and laid it on the table. It was roughly the size of a book. Connie stared at it for a moment, and began to feel a cold turbulence rise within her. She had never seen such a device before, but she knew instinctively what it was. Edith, who had been watching her narrowly, now took the package in her hands.
‘It contains about five pounds of coarse-grained gunpowder,’ said Miss Webster, with the stolid air of a professional. ‘I only need to prime it.’
Connie paused before speaking. ‘Do you expect me to help you with this?’
Edith made a little gesture of appeal with her hands. ‘It’s why we’re gathered here. Ivy and I will be on hand to create a diversion. Your job is to facilitate Miss Webster’s entry into the building.’
She could not quite believe what she was hearing. ‘And what of the Union’s principle to hold life sacred?’
‘We intend to honour it.’
‘But with a bomb – you understand – there can be no guarantee.’
Edith gave a nearly imperceptible shrug. ‘We do not seek to injure people.’
Connie, keeping herself quite still, returned an appraising look. ‘What you’re proposing …’ She very slowly shook her head. ‘It cannot be. Your plan is – monstrous. I want no part of it.’
Ivy, in a hurt voice, said, ‘Constance, think what we have suffered for the cause. You can’t let us down now.’
‘I’m as loyal to the cause as I ever was,’ she replied. ‘But I’ll not have anyone’s blood on my hands.’ Her body had begun to tremble. She felt suddenly in need of a cigarette.
‘With or without you –’ Miss Webster began, but Edith held up a hand to quieten her. Then, in a tone of conciliatory patience, the latter spoke again.
‘I must remind you, Miss Callaway, we are engaged in a war. We do not want to burn down houses or to set off bombs, any more than we want to go to prison. But the position the enemy puts us in – their refusal to yield what is rightfully ours – has made it necessary to take up whatever weapons are at our disposal. Consider it this way. If men were to find themselves bent beneath such a yoke as ours, and compelled to fight, do you imagine for a moment they would hesitate to use gunpowder and paraffin?’
‘Heaven help us if we are to be considered on that footing,’ said Connie. ‘Who knows what enormities men are capable of? Our job, if anything, is to set them an example – not compete with them in infamy.’
‘Then you are handing them the victory,’ said Edith, jutting her chin.
‘On the contrary,’ replied Connie. ‘We are asserting our superiority. Sooner or later they will simply have to concede that we are as deserving of responsibility as they are.’
‘“Sooner or later,”’ repeated Miss Webster with a sneer. ‘And what do you propose we do in the meantime? Simper and smile and make polite petitions to the government? I wish you joy of it.’
‘Ladies, please – remember we are on the same side,’ said Ivy, the plaintive peacemaker.
‘Are we?’ said Edith, fixing Connie with a sceptical look.
Connie sighed, and looked away. In the silence the rain could be heard spattering against the window. ‘Does anyone have a cigarette?’
None of them did, so she would have to go down to reception. She asked the others if they cared for drinks to be sent up. Ivy requested a cocoa. Edith and Miss Webster said nothing. A minute later Connie was exiting the lift and crossing the hotel foyer. The night manager offered to fetch her cigarettes from the restaurant – they sold Woodbines and Gold Plate, but not Sullivans, it seemed. The man said he could send a boy to the tobacconist, but she insisted on going herself.
‘It’s still raining, miss,’ the man said doubtfully.
‘Then perhaps you could lend me an umbrella. I don’t mind a walk.’
The manager led her to the back entrance, where he recited directions to the shop via a short cut. It would take her five minutes. She set off along the rain-slicked pavements, wondering how she might possibly counter Edith’s incendiary purposes. There would be at least a hundred people in or around the Priory’s Long Room tomorrow evening. Could she really stand by, knowing that some might be seriously injured, or worse? The glimmer of a gas lamp alerted her to the tobacconist’s, where she bought Sullivans and a box of matches.
She had retraced her steps to the hotel and turned down the corridor leading to the foyer when she stopped, suddenly. Twenty yards ahead of her, stationed by the lift, two policemen were talking to the night manager. Holding her breath, she softly reversed until she had gained the safety of the corridor turn. Then she bolted through the back door again and onto the street, her heart beating a furious tattoo. They must have been discovered – there was no other explanation for those policemen being there. She tried to calm herself. She would check round the front of the hotel, just to make certain. If what she feared proved correct, then she may just have taken the most providential cigarette break in her life. Her circuit of the building had brought her to Marine Parade, where she could hear the waves bashing against the sea wall. She approached the hotel entrance, the palpitations in her chest now so agitated she wondered they could not be heard. A smartly dressed couple had just emerged from a cab and were heading up the hotel steps. As they did so, Connie took advantage of their cover and looked beyond them into the foyer. What she saw there fr
oze her blood: the place was aswirl with police, and right in the midst of them stood Relf, bowler-hatted, hands on hips. Now there was no doubt. Dipping the umbrella to shield her face, Connie walked on past the entrance, trying to keep her steps at a steady, unpanicked pace. She was putting it all together in her head. Relf must have been waiting for them to gather in her room; she supposed he had distributed police photographs of each of them, and had checked at every hotel reception in town. She had escaped for the moment, but her occupancy of that room was unarguable – a room in which a bomb had been found. She would be implicated with the plotters, however she might protest her innocence. Another prison sentence would follow – a longer one this time.
She had been walking, almost blindly, along the Parade, glancing back every so often to see if anybody had followed her from the hotel. She must press on – but to where? To London? Even if she eluded the police at the railway station, they would be waiting for her at Islington. Lily? Marianne? They too were under surveillance. She knew of one suffragette safe house in Holborn, but with Relf on the warpath she could not depend on it remaining safe for long. Away, away … it was frightening to be so abruptly a fugitive. Never mind. Keep walking. A taxi chugged by, its tyres hissing in the rain. She should have hailed it, but then you only took a taxi if you had a destination. A line from a book came to her: When you don’t know where you’re going, every path takes you there. She was now in the vicinity she had walked through that morning with Tam. And in the same moment she realised – he was her only refuge. It would shame her to tell him, after all that he had done for her, but she would have to bear it.
After several wrong turns she arrived at Prospect Place. Under cover of dark the street seemed less friendly, and the tall houses with their trustworthy chimneys all looked the same. She hurried along the row until she came to the one she thought was his. At the top of the steps she paused; there were bell pushes, but no names to distinguish them. Then she remembered him saying that he lived on the top floor. She tried the bell, and waited. If Tam wasn’t there then she truly was alone. In a moment of madness she had even considered Will, and then dismissed it. He was more likely to turn her in than respond to a plea for help. Through the frosted glass of the door she saw a lamp swim in the dark, and then the door swung back to reveal Tam. As his eyes focused upon her, Connie sensed his reaction turn from surprise to pleasure: it was as if presenting herself at his doorstep like this was something he had expected – or hoped for. He stood aside to let her pass, and once she had stepped into the hallway, she turned to him.
‘Tam, I’m so sorry. I –’ Where to begin? She had dragged the ghost of her seeming treachery across the threshold, and now stood there, obliged to explain it. Tam had turned up the gas lamp.
‘You’re soaked through,’ he said, and took the dripping brolly from her hand. ‘Come upstairs.’
She followed him up the darkened staircase and into his rooms, rehearsing what she would say. All of it sounded wrong – horribly, grievously wrong. Tam put down the lamp, and turned to her. Moonlight leaked narrowly through the sash windows, and she felt grateful at least for the shadows in the room.
‘Let me take your coat,’ he said, but she shook her head. ‘A drink, then?’
It was intolerable that he should be so unwitting. Her words came out in a rush: ‘Tam, I’ve something to say, and please don’t offer me a drink and be nice because you won’t want to after what I’ve told you, in fact you’ll probably show me the door, and be perfectly justified in doing so.’
Tam cocked his head. ‘What d’you mean?’
She began, distractedly, to stumble through it: the chance meeting with the Christian militants, the proposed attack on the Priory and her reluctant rendezvous, the unexpected arrival this evening of Edith Aitken and Miss Webster at her hotel, and the subsequent raid on the room.
‘I swear to you, I had no idea about the bomb …’ She now raised her eyes in appeal to Tam. He had been standing by the fireplace, listening in silence, lost in shadowy profile. She took a half-step towards him, needing to see his expression, and he turned his face to her. It wasn’t congested with anger, nor could she read any sardonic gleam of disapproval. It was only very sad, and that seemed to her now the hardest thing of all.
‘Please say that you believe me,’ she said in a broken voice, and Tam, with a nod, replied that he did. He went to a drinks table, and poured each of them a finger of Scotch.
‘Drink that,’ he said, putting the glass into her hand. She swallowed a mouthful, and felt the smoky liquid burn down her throat. For some moments she watched him as he stood at the window, facing away from her. ‘You’re not safe in this country,’ he said presently. ‘Do you have people – abroad?’
Connie shook her head. ‘Could I go to Ireland – Scotland?’
‘You’d still have to go by the railways. And they’ll be looking for you.’
After another silence she said, ‘If I could get to Paris – I have a friend –’
‘That’s good.’ He took out his watch. ‘You need to start out now.’
She felt a recoil within her. ‘But I haven’t got – all my clothes, my case –’
‘You know you can’t go to the hotel.’
‘But I’ve no money!’ she heard herself almost wail. ‘Only what I have in this purse.’
‘I have money,’ he said. ‘Now, give me a moment.’ He left the room, returning half a minute later in his bowler and mackintosh.
Connie, distraught, shook her head. ‘Tam, I don’t know what to say –’
‘Then don’t say anything,’ he replied, handing her the umbrella. ‘Come, you need to get to the station. There’s a ferry crossing at twenty to midnight.’
Down in the hallway he told her to wait. She watched him hurry down the steps onto Prospect Place, where he looked up and down the street. The rain had thinned into a drizzle, a gauzy veil against the gas lamps. Within minutes Tam had flagged down a cab, and beckoned her from the shelter of his doorstep. He ushered her into the vehicle, and stepped in after. As the cab descended through the narrow streets towards the front, Connie said, ‘Won’t there be police posted at Warwick Square?’
‘Yes – that’s why we’re going to Roe Street instead.’
His forbearance was heroic, given everything she had told him. Instead of throwing her out of his flat, he had taken pity on her, again. She stole a glance at him as he sat there, bands of brightness and dark falling across his face from the road’s lamplight.
‘You’ll tire of saving me one day,’ she said in a half-joking undertone. The words hung in the air, until Connie wondered if Tam hadn’t heard, or else wasn’t bothering to reply. Long moments passed before he did say, quietly, ‘Why would I?’
They encountered no one at Roe Street. In the compartment of the train to Folkestone they exchanged barely a word. Connie, in a stupor of fatigue, had nothing of use to say, though she sensed Tam’s gaze on her as she stared out of the window. She imagined the scene back at the Royal Victoria, the police searching the room, upending the contents of her case, sifting through her personal effects for incriminating evidence – as though they needed any more. She could scarcely yet take in the stroke of good fortune that had enabled her to escape, and at the same time she berated herself for having allowed Ivy to co-opt her into such a cabal. The naivety of it … but how could she have anticipated consorting with a bomb-maker?
They alighted at Folkestone, and Tam directed her to the tea room before heading to the ticket office. She thought of sending her mother and Fred a telegram, but realised that this would betray her movements should Relf intercept it. She took off a glove and rubbed her eyes, itching with tiredness. Moments later she heard someone call her name, more than once, and jerked back her head suddenly – she had fallen asleep. Tam was now sitting opposite her.
‘Constance – put these in your handbag.’ On the table before her was a ticket for the night ferry to Boulogne. So it was irrevocable: she was leaving. There was
also an envelope, unsealed, which crackled with banknotes when she picked it up.
‘Tam, I really –’
‘Do you have any French?’ he said, cutting short her attempt at a thank-you.
She nodded. ‘Un petit peu … I’m going to pay this back to you. I mean it.’
‘Write to me with your address, when you have one,’ he said. ‘I’ll try to recover that case for you.’
She looked intently at him, and in doing so felt a memory tug at her. She opened her purse, and picked out a cigarette card, perfectly preserved but for a tiny tear at one corner. It was a sepia portrait of A. E. Tamburlain, Sussex and England.
‘I found it in my father’s desk. I’m going to keep it with me.’
Tam looked at it for a few moments, then with a wry shake of his head he handed it back. ‘It seems that they’re boarding.’ She followed his gaze across to the landing stage, where a ferry was moored. Passengers were straggling up the gangway. As Connie looked back at him, she felt her eyelids involuntarily begin to brim. She had not thought that a day which began with Tam meeting her off the train would end with this melancholy goodbye at a Channel port.
‘I did so want to see you batting tomorrow,’ she said with a choking sob. ‘I hope the rain –’
‘There, there,’ said Tam, taking her gloved hand and holding it reverently to his lips. ‘There won’t be rain tomorrow. And that ticket’s a return, you know.’
She nodded her comprehension, her heart so swollen it seemed to have blocked her throat, making it difficult to speak. She took out a handkerchief and blotted her eyes. Then, raising herself on tiptoe, she kissed his cheek – and walked away. She didn’t turn round even as she reached the foot of the swaying plank, and allowed one of the steamer’s crew to help her on. She grasped the sodden rope and walked across. Not until they had cast off the mooring ropes and she felt the engine’s deep, slow throbbing underfoot did she go to the stern and stand against the passenger rail. Below her the black waters had begun to churn. She raised her hand, and Tam, still standing there, answered it with his own.
Half of the Human Race Page 30
