by Lissa Evans
She saw the word ‘Angus’ on a page, and started to read. When she looked up again, The Flea had gone.
‘You don’t look quite the thing,’ said Alice Channing to The Flea. ‘She doesn’t look quite the thing, does she, Ethelwynne?’
‘What’s that?’
‘The Flea! She doesn’t look quite the thing.’
Ethelwynne Cripps broke off from unscrewing a Thermos and gave The Flea a long, professional stare.
‘Pale,’ she said.
‘I had a bout of illness a few weeks back,’ said The Flea. ‘I caught rather a nasty fever from a baby I was looking after, but I’m better now.’
‘I hadn’t noticed the pallor,’ said Alice. ‘It’s more your expression.’
‘What’s wrong with my expression?’
‘You look as if you’re under strain, dear. Worried. Is anything wrong – is Mattie quite well? I’m disappointed she couldn’t come this evening.’
‘Yes, perfectly well. We’re both perfectly well. She’s taking advantage of the weather to camp out with her girls’ club.’
‘It’s certainly glorious.’
Within the sheltered brick box of Soho Square it was as balmy as midsummer, boys lying on the grass in their shirtsleeves, girls in bright weekend dresses, an ice-cream cart beside the gates. Alice had bagged a bench at the centre, and the three of them were sitting in a row, rather as they had once done in the offices of the WSPU, Alice, now as then, bright-eyed and bursting with gossip, Ethelwynne more taciturn, her long, heavy-featured face reminiscent of an Easter Island statue.
‘What’s the title of the lecture?’ asked The Flea, hoping to change the subject.
‘What’s that?’ asked Ethelwynne, cupping a hand to her ear. A straw-hatted girl, sitting on the grass close by, nudged her friend, and they both giggled.
‘The title of the lecture,’ repeated The Flea, more clearly, aiming a chilly look at the girls.
‘“The Future of Civilization”,’ said Alice. ‘To be honest, I’m not certain it’ll be up to much, but I was given free tickets. Tea?’
The Flea tried to drink without tasting; Alice routinely dried and re-used tea leaves, reflecting both her tiny income as writer of leaflets for the Radical Thought Society and her life-long commitment to frugality. Ethelwynne, who had always spurned tact, and whose voice had been loud even before she was deafened by a shell burst while nursing on the Western Front, said, ‘Bilge water,’ and tipped the contents of her mug into a flowerbed.
‘Before you arrived,’ said Alice, ‘we were talking about Mrs Pankhurst. You have heard that she’s been dreadfully unwell, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I’m afraid that the news is very bad indeed, there really isn’t any hope … I was told by Annie Taylor yesterday that there’s already talk of funeral plans. Rather morbid, but I suppose necessary – it would be an historic occasion.’
‘I shan’t be going,’ boomed Ethelwynne.
‘I know that, dear.’
‘She betrayed us. Turned on a sixpence when the war began, one moment equal franchise, the next handing out white feathers.’
‘But Ettie, dear, without her fire and her gung-ho, where would we be? Still signing petitions. Still writing letters. Still waiting to be noticed.’
‘And then she joined the Tories,’ said Ethelwynne, undeflected. ‘And opened a teashop. In France.’
‘Nevertheless …’ said The Flea, thinking of that frail figure, already in her fifties at the height of militancy, who had yet survived repeated arrest, assault and starvation; it seemed almost miraculous that she had gone on to live any sort of life beyond the cause – it was still, in fact, hard to think of her without a surge of anxiety; one had always wanted to protect her, to rush to her aid, to carry her to safety …
‘Nevertheless, I would want to pay my respects,’ she said, ‘though of course I can’t speak for Mattie.’
‘No one ever could,’ said Alice. ‘That’s part of her splendour. How are we for time? Ah! A quarter of an hour.’ She dipped into her bag and took out a piece of scarlet-and-blue tapestry-work, and re-threaded a needle. ‘It’s going to be a firescreen for a sale-of-work,’ she said, at The Flea’s enquiry. ‘I’ve found I can charge as much as a guinea if I choose a patriotic theme. So do tell Mattie that I’m managing very well, and there’s really no need for her to keep sending me brandy and hams, as if I’m the parish pauper.’
‘Which patriotic subject in particular?’ asked Ethelwynne, tilting her head to try to identify the design.
‘Britannia,’ said Alice. ‘Who else?’
‘I say!’ called an elderly man with a querulous voice and a Pomeranian on a lead. ‘There’s no camping allowed on the Heath.’
‘I see no tent,’ said Mattie, lifting a straw palliasse from the handcart that she’d borrowed from the greengrocer. ‘Hands up any girl who is concealing a tent about her person. No? Winnie, is that guilt I see writ large on your features?’
‘It’s chocolate, Miss Simpkin.’
Hildegard, unrolling a length of oilcloth beneath the trees, gave a shriek of laughter.
‘There we have it,’ said Mattie to the man. ‘No tents here.’
‘You’re splitting hairs. You clearly have the intention of spending the night in this copse.’
‘And since sleeping on the Heath is not an offence, I fail to see wherein lies the problem.’
The man turned rather red, as men so often did when faced with unassailable logic. ‘You’re a very disputatious woman,’ he said, as if that were a slur.
‘I am merely countering your allegations.’
‘There are Heath by-laws.’
‘Which I know by heart. I assure you we shall be breaking none of them.’
Her accuser made a noise which sounded remarkably like ‘Harrumph,’ and then turned away, the dog staring at Mattie for a moment longer before its head was jerked round by the lead.
‘Incidentally, his collar is too tight,’ called Mattie.
There was no reply.
‘What sort of dog is that?’ asked Freda. ‘It looks like a feather duster.’
‘A Pomeranian – a German breed. I believe that Queen Victoria owned one. Inez, you take this one,’ she said, holding out another palliasse. ‘The straw inside is rather impacted, I’m afraid.’
‘Did you ever meet Queen Victoria, Miss Simpkin?’
‘No, Bessie, though I once saw her in the distance, travelling in an open carriage.’
‘But if you ever had met her, what would you’ve said to her?’
‘That’s a remarkably interesting question,’ said Mattie, pausing. ‘And a good discussion point. Let’s give these mattresses a thorough shake – take one between two, girls, and try not to breathe too deeply – and while we do so, let’s each think of an historical personage to whom we would like to have spoken, and decide what we would have asked them. To Queen Victoria, I would have said, “Your Majesty, as indisputably the most powerful woman in the world, please explain to me your unswerving opposition to the female vote.”’
‘What, she was against it?’
‘Implacably. She referred to Women’s Rights as a mad, wicked folly, to which I would have replied, in the words of Dryden, “Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.” And what would you have asked her, Bessie?’
‘I would’ve said, “How do you keep that tiny little crown on top of your head?”’
The laughter startled a pair of wood-pigeons; Inez ducked as they clattered past.
‘I’m afraid I can’t sleep on this,’ she said to Mattie.
‘Keep shaking it, and you’ll find it softens. So, which historical figure would you most wish to have spoken to?’
Inez shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. It’s not so much the hardness’ – she let her end of the mattress drop, leaving Ida supporting it on her own – ‘it’s the awful smell that comes out when you shake it. I shan’t be able to lie
down on that.’
‘Once it’s covered with a blanket, you won’t notice. Perhaps you’d like to start collecting kindling instead? I’m sure you’d enjoy building the fire.’
‘I’d talk to Florence Nightingale,’ said Ida. ‘I’d ask her—’
‘But I don’t have anything to put the sticks in,’ said Inez.
‘Here, take this.’ Mattie handed her a basket. ‘And now, the rest of us should start arranging these mattresses in a semicircle.’
‘I’d choose Henry the Eighth,’ said Freda. ‘But I wouldn’t talk to him, I’d just kick him in the shins.’
The applause at the end of the lecture was muted, and the audience began to disperse in near-silence.
‘I’m certainly glad the tickets were free,’ said Ethelwynne loudly, re-pinning her hat. ‘Were you actually asleep, Alice?’
‘No, not asleep. Mentally composing my next leaflet. What did you think, Florrie?’
‘I’m certainly a little disappointed that the Future of Civilization promises to be quite so dull.’
Alice gave a hiccup of a laugh. ‘Yes, a flying motor-car or two might have been welcome.’
‘Also a speaker who didn’t repeatedly swallow the end of his sentences,’ announced Ethelwynne, pursing her lips in imitation of the lecturer’s. ‘“My talk will be divided into two parts – firstly, the likely form of universal governance and, secondly, the mimble mimble mimble mimble.”’
‘How awfully rude,’ said a man in the row behind. ‘Professor Adams is highly respected in forward-thinking circles.’
‘More likely semicircles,’ said Alice, ‘if only half of what he says is audible.’
Ethelwynne’s laugh, a wild staccato, rarely heard but never forgotten, turned every head in the hall, and The Flea put a hand over her own mouth in a vain effort not to join in and almost ran, hunched over, towards the exit, faint squeaks escaping between her fingers. A dishevelled Alice joined her shortly, puce in the face, and then Ethelwynne arrived too, dabbing at her eyes, her voice a quavering ghost of its usual self.
‘Oh, good Heavens, just look at us! Professional women behaving like hooligans. If any of my probationers saw me now …’
The Flea shook her head, her lips still wobbling – she felt as if she’d been turned inside out, like a glove; unfamiliar muscles twanged. ‘It’s a long time since I …’
‘Yes, me, too – years,’ said Alice. ‘Years and years.’ She let out a sudden, final whinny.
‘I would like a proper cup of tea,’ said Ethelwynne. ‘Shall we go to the Lyons on New Oxford Street?’
‘And yet,’ said Alice, straightening her coat, ‘I used to laugh like this all the time – even in Holloway, that’s the extraordinary thing. Mattie would sometimes have me howling, I’d have to throw my apron over my face so that the warders wouldn’t see …’
‘Mattie hasn’t been quite herself,’ said The Flea, the words taking advantage of her weakened state and emerging before she could stop them – though she felt instant relief, as if a boil had burst.
‘Really? Not herself in what way?’
‘A new girl called Inez Campbell has joined the Amazons, and it transpires’ – The Flea paused for a second, steadying herself so that she wouldn’t blurt out the impermissible – ‘it transpires that she’s Venetia Campbell’s daughter.’
‘Venetia! One of the Young Hot-Bloods! Oh, that was terribly sad, of course. She was a suicide at the start of the war, wasn’t she? So does the daughter take after her?’
‘No. And she’s not at all like the other Amazons, either. She has no enthusiasm – no spirit – and yet Mattie’s so determined to make something of her. Inez preoccupies her; she seems to think of little else. The effect is … is …’ Like the banking of a fire, she thought, or the muffling of a bell. ‘The effect is deadening.’
There was a short silence.
‘Odd,’ said Alice.
‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ said Ethelwynne, sonorously.
‘Whatever do you mean?’ asked The Flea.
‘Mattie’s brother Angus – Venetia Campbell was one of his many conquests. It may be playing on her mind.’
‘Oh yes, Angus,’ said Alice, with significance.
The Flea looked from one of them to the other.
‘You didn’t know?’ asked Alice. ‘He was a fearful womanizer.’
‘No – I never met him. And Mattie hasn’t ever hinted that he—’
‘Oh, I don’t suppose she ever saw that side of him. Or perhaps she was simply blind to his behaviour – she doted on him. Of course, one mustn’t forget that she almost brought him up.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Ethelwynne.
‘I suppose it was because we were locked up together,’ said Alice. ‘We all knew one another’s life stories – gassed non-stop whenever we got the chance, which wasn’t often. And then, of course, since the war, Mattie doesn’t have any family left, does she?’
‘She has a distant cousin,’ said The Flea, ‘in Kentish Town.’
‘Really? Is he simpatico?’
‘He’s a rate collector and a member of the Conservative Party.’
‘Ah. Well, to get back to the gist, their own mother died shortly after giving birth to Angus, when Mattie was already quite grown-up – sixteen, I think – and all set to fly the nest, though her parents didn’t know that. She was secretly studying for a scholarship, you see, to follow her older brother to Oxford – terribly daring in those days – and then suddenly there was a motherless babe in the house and no question of Mattie leaving. I think she was in her mid-twenties when she finally went to Somerville – Angus was away at school by then. And her older brother was a physician, wasn’t he?’
‘A surgeon,’ corrected The Flea. ‘With the Red Cross.’
‘Killed in the Boer War, another awful tragedy – and he was a fine man, an exceptional man, by all accounts. So then only Angus was left. Her baby brother.’
‘Young women fell for him like nine-pins,’ said Ethelwynne. ‘Simply toppled over.’
‘I mean, he wasn’t entirely a bad lot,’ said Alice. ‘He helped the cause. Adored his sister. Was sent to the Scrubs after Black Friday. But one couldn’t help wondering …’
‘… if he were actually on the side of women, or merely in a place where he could meet a great many of them,’ said Ethelwynne, with severity. ‘I think Venetia fell for him awfully heavily.’
There was a pause.
‘This daughter,’ added Ethelwynne. ‘When was she born?’
The fire had died down a little and the sausages were being digested when a white shape, swift and formless, moved at head height across the clearing.
‘It’s not a ghost!’ shouted Mattie, over the screaming. ‘And there is an extra sausage, only very slightly burned, for anyone who can accurately name the creature.’
‘It was a ghost.’
‘No, Elsie, I promise you it was a bird.’
‘An eagle?’
‘No, an owl.’
‘But owls are brown.’
‘Tawny owls are brown. This was a barn owl, otherwise known as—’
A thin shriek, suggestive of a small child being murdered, pierced the air.
‘—a screech owl. As you can hear. And, of course, it’s one of the easiest bird calls to imitate. Shall we all attempt it?’
A banshee chorus swelled monstrously and then died away and, for a moment, only the barking of every dog in Hampstead was audible. A branch cracked in the fire, sending up a bloom of sparks.
‘I’d still quite like to go home,’ said Inez, for the third time. Ida, sharing her mattress, muttered, ‘Why don’t you, then?’, but quite softly, so that Miss Simpkin wouldn’t hear.
In the firelight, Mattie was thinking, Inez’s profile was more than ever like that of Angus. And yet, in this situation – a fire, the stars, a wild freedom – her brother’s face would have been animated, full of mischief. He had loved building fires, had loved spectacle and d
anger – in fact, it had been an experiment with a home-made Roman candle that had resulted in the scarring to his shoulder. (Mattie had never forgotten the horror of glancing out of the window and seeing green-and-pink flames spurting from Angus’s shirt.) But despite having been put in charge of the fire, Inez was looking bored; as Mattie watched, she listlessly dropped a dried pine cone into the flames, barely glancing as it spat and curled, the air suddenly resinous.
‘I saw a ghost once,’ said Hildegard. ‘In our school.’
‘Please describe exactly what you witnessed,’ said Freda, who had recently decided that she wanted to be a barrister, and was practising courtroom technique whenever possible.
‘Well, I didn’t actually see it. I was in the sick room, waiting for Matron – I had a ghastly sore throat – and all of a sudden the door slammed shut, with no draught and nobody there to slam it, and somebody told me afterwards that it was the ghost of a girl in the Lower Fourth who’d died.’
‘Died of what?’
‘No one knows, though someone said that the Matron they had then was a drunkard, and she locked the girl in the room when she was blotto and then completely forgot about her, and it was the school holidays, and the girl starved to death.’
‘Doesn’t sound very likely.’
‘And if the girl got locked in, wouldn’t the ghost try to open the door and not slam it?’ asked Ida.
‘Good point,’ said Freda. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts.’
‘I do,’ said Elsie, her face solemn. ‘Have you ever seen a ghost, Miss Simpkin?’
‘No. Like Freda, I have no belief in a corporeal afterlife. I do, however, have a ghost story, which took place in my very own house. And it may interest one of you in particular.’
Hildegard rolled her eyes and mouthed, ‘Inez,’ to Bessie, and they both smirked. Ida, lying on the mattress, her head resting on one elbow, could find nothing to smile at. Everything seemed to be about Inez now, as if the rest of them were only there to smooth her way, like ladies-in-waiting. Can someone help Inez with the blankets? Can you teach her how to work the flint? Inez, if you’re finding that difficult, I’m sure that Ida will give you a hand, she’s a tip-top wielder of the penknife. And then, when Ida helped, Inez would simply stop what she was doing and watch her. ‘You try it now,’ Ida had said, handing over the penknife. ‘Oh, I can’t,’ Inez had said, with absolute certainty. There was something wrong with her, thought Ida; she was like a clock with a cog missing, so that the hands never moved round the face but just twitched on the spot, and it was always five to four but never teatime.
