by Lissa Evans
‘Is everything a joke to you?’ asked Ida.
‘Most things, yes. Don’t you think life’s funny?’
‘No.’ She wiped her eyes on a sleeve.
‘I don’t have a handkerchief, I’m afraid. But I do have a florin, and I’m fully prepared to spend it. Could I buy you an ice?’
‘No.’
‘Golly, I’d love to hear you say yes to something. Let me have a go – do you like peaches?’
She shook her head.
‘Is the sky blue?’
She shrugged.
‘Do I reek of sweat?’
‘Yes.’
He mimed shock, and she had to bite back a smile.
‘That’s better,’ he said, and then he kissed her, and though she pushed him away, she didn’t push very hard.
The Flea heard the back door open, and hurriedly drew herself upright. She was sitting at the kitchen table, topping and tailing a bowl of gooseberries, though her hands were so cold that the scissors felt awkward in her grasp, like rusty pliers.
‘Sorry I missed it!’ she called. ‘I had a dizzy turn, nothing serious, just the heat. Victory, I hope?’
Mattie didn’t reply, which was strange; equally odd was the silence that followed – no vigorous footsteps along the scullery passage, no wrenching open of the kitchen door.
‘Is that one of the girls?’ called The Flea. ‘Is that you, Elsie?’
She stood up, taking a moment to steady herself and giving her cheeks a quick pinch to brighten them, and then at last there were footsteps. The door opened and it was Mattie after all, her face shaded by the wide-brimmed hat.
‘I’ve promised some local boys a half-crown to bring the crockery and tables back,’ she said, before The Flea could speak. ‘They’ll be here in a few minutes.’ And then she was gone again, through the door into the hall. After a moment, The Flea followed her, and found her in the drawing room, pouring herself a glass of whisky.
‘Is something wrong, Mattie? Where are the girls? Has there been an accident?’
‘No, no accident, no one has been injured.’
She downed half the glass in one gulp, and closed her eyes at the fiery bloom of the whisky. When she opened them again, she was immediately skewered by The Flea’s worried gaze; she swallowed the rest of the measure and poured another. ‘Did you say that you’d had a dizzy spell?’ she asked, delaying the moment of explanation.
‘Oh, it was nothing. I was outside without a hat.’
Mattie put down the glass and withdrew a couple of pins and removed her straw, and the late-afternoon sun seemed to leap into the room.
‘I did something rather unfortunate,’ she said.
The Flea made a little movement; a silent question.
‘During the competition’ – it was like trying to swallow a lump of stale bread – ‘I behaved in what might be seen as an underhand fashion.’
There was a pause.
‘I don’t understand,’ said The Flea.
‘I was talking to Inez and she was … not engaged in the proceedings and, in a moment of what I can only call madness, I gave her the solution to one of the clues, thinking it might ignite her spirit – might allow her to participate, to enjoy the afternoon. For whatever reason, she informed the Amazons that I had done this, and a great deal – a very great deal – of unhappiness has resulted.’
‘Is it true, Miss Simpkin,’ Elsie had asked, ‘what Inez said you done?’ and Mattie had perforce nodded, and that nod – that single nod – had ended everything; the girls had looked at her and left, Winnie and Avril arm in arm for once, Doris holding Elsie’s hand, Freda’s expression pinched, her gaze studiously avoiding Mattie’s, Hildegard holding her head theatrically high; in a straggling line they had walked away along the path towards the bandstand and the bus stop – those marvellous girls, gone; a bunch of roses scattered, a beehive smoked and empty. And all the while, the Cellinis had been watching, and Inez, too, from those faery eyes.
And Mattie – who seldom regretted anything, because life was too large for pettifogging, and brooding over regrets was like swatting midges when one was trying to wrestle a bear – had wanted to stuff her words back into her own foolish, flapping mouth. And as she had walked back across the Heath, the thought that she would be required to actually explain out loud what she had done was almost unbearable, like the prospect of scraping at an already painful graze, and she found herself wishing that the house might be empty for once.
‘Is your companion not here?’ Jacko had asked earlier, looking round as if she expected to see The Flea hiding behind a bush.
‘She’s been preparing the refreshments.’
‘And very delicious they are, too. How well she looks after you!’
And now The Flea was looking aghast.
‘You honestly thought that giving Inez a clue would spring her to life?’
‘It was an impulse,’ said Mattie, ‘not a plan.’
‘But good God, I talked to the girl myself today. She doesn’t give two hoots about competitions or camaraderie, she doesn’t want the answer to a riddle, that’s not what she’s searching for. How can you not see that? She is not yours to shape – you can’t hope to mould a child, when that child doesn’t care for you in the slightest. She doesn’t want what you are offering, Mattie, she wants her mother. Her mother. Only her mother.’ The Flea’s hands were trembling. ‘For all your intellect, you can be an awful fool sometimes. And what on earth did the other girls say? What did Ida say? They must have been so dreadfully upset after all their hard work. You encourage their self-reliance, you praise their initiative and then you …’ The Flea abruptly sat down. ‘I should have said something to you weeks ago. You have been … possessed, and yet I kept hesitating; I’ve been cowardly, I was afraid of making you angry. I know your brothers are precious in your memory, but memories are not always exact and Angus may not have been the paragon you seem to recall, and all the while you have been ignoring the treasure in front of you and searching for something that scarcely exists – a … a … mirage.’ She shook her head. ‘I blame myself,’ she said. ‘I should have spoken.’
Mattie set down her glass. ‘I do not require you to be my conscience, Florrie.’
‘But—’
‘You have no responsibility for me; my mistakes are my own and I shall deal with them. I do not need you to fret about my every move and decision, I do not need to be looked after, nor do I need to be scolded like … like an errant spouse.’
Florrie’s head jerked back as if she’d been slapped and simultaneously the doorbell jangled and Mattie went to answer it. The whole front garden seemed full of boys and tables and crockery, and she found herself distributing handfuls of change in a distracted manner, barely reacting when a pile of plates hit the sink with a careless smash. A jar of ginger jam was dropped, hitting her squarely on the big toe, a small boy’s fingers required attention after being nipped between a table-top and a doorframe, and the ammonite on the windowsill provoked a discussion (‘It’s a dead snail!’) which could only be curtailed by the production of pear drops – and then, at last, limping slightly, she ushered them out and closed the door.
The house was silent, the drawing room empty. Mattie stood at the window for a minute or two, watching swallows loop above the garden, and then she tramped up the stairs and along the corridor to The Flea’s room.
‘Florrie?’
She could hear movements within. She knocked and waited and then knocked again.
‘Would you like a cup of tea? I’ll bring one up for you. Florrie?’
There was no reply, only the sound of a drawer being opened. Mattie felt indescribably weary; the day had been absolutely bloody, and if The Flea wished to sulk in her room, then so be it. The memory of her own words, spoken in fury, dipped briefly towards her and then swooped away, unrecoverable.
Back in the drawing room, she took volume one of Fuller’s Worthies from the bookcase and fell asleep over Thomas de la Lynde, who kill
ed a white hart in Blackmoor Forest and was punished. She didn’t hear the front door open, and then softly close again.
PART 3
‘I MENTIONED IN my letter that I would need an assistant,’ said Mattie to the elderly gentleman who opened the door for her at Ipswich Masonic Hall, an east wind elbowing between them. The cabbie who had driven Mattie from the station helped her to carry in the boxes of glass slides.
The hall itself was almost equally draughty, the canvas screen that hung at the back of the stage bellying like a sail. A lectern stood at the front, and a magic lantern was already in place on a table halfway down the aisle; Mattie arranged the boxes beside it.
‘Yes, my great-nephew Roley will be helping you,’ said Mr Wilkes, his eyes watery behind pince-nez. ‘He’s an intelligent boy.’
‘It’s simply a matter of agreeing on a prearranged signal.’ It was the first time she had given a lecture without the aid of The Flea, and she had spent the previous evening whittling down the number of slides so that, instead of the usual six boxes, she need only bring three with her. It had been a complicated and time-consuming exercise, during the course of which, when reaching for a pencil, she had managed to knock two of the glass plates from the desk, and on standing to inspect the damage had inadvertently stepped on another. As ill luck would have it, all had been photographs of the great processions, and it had taken a prolonged search through the cupboards in the lumber room to unearth The Flea’s box of ‘spares’, one of which appeared to show the Coronation March. She had been enraged by her own clumsiness – at one point in the evening, she had stood on the stairs and shouted, ‘Damn and blast!’ so loudly that her throat was still aching.
No one, obviously, had opened the drawing-room door to enquire tartly what might be the matter.
‘Roley, this is Miss Simpkin.’
He was, perhaps, seventeen, shaped like a yardstick – tall but very narrow, his feet the widest part of him – and his expression was that of an Inca sacrifice awaiting slaughter.
‘You’ve operated a magic lantern before?’ asked Mattie.
‘Yes,’ he said, the single syllable covering an octave.
‘Very good. Each of these boxes is numbered, as you can see. I shan’t be progressing through them in order, so we need to work out a system of signals. I see there’s a small bell on the lectern – I can ring it once for Box 1 and twice for Box 2, but to avoid the impression of campanology, I think we should come up with an alternative for Box 3. How would it do if I rapped my knuckles on the lectern instead? And when I give the signal, you must load the next slide from the requisite box and then listen for my verbal cue to actually change it – I shall say, “Slide, please.” Does that seem reasonable?’
Roley swallowed, his Adam’s apple rising and sinking like a bathysphere.
‘Can you say it again, please?’
‘Of course. One bell, Box 1; two bells, Box 2; knuckles, Box 3; and then I’ll say, “slide, please” – would you like to write it down? I’m certain you’ll do a fine job – oh, Mr Wilkes, before I forget, a friend of mine is coming this evening. Could I reserve a seat for her? Her name is Mrs Procter.’
It wasn’t until she was waiting in the wings for the lecture to start that Mattie realized that she had forgotten to bring her sash. Absent, too, was her usual sense of eager tension, that feeling of a runner poised for the pistol; she could hear the audience and yet it seemed to stir nothing within her, beyond the thought that on the whole she would rather be spending the evening in front of the fire with a book. She felt unsprung; unleavened.
‘… fortunate today,’ Mr Wilkes was saying, ‘in having a very experienced speaker, Miss Simpson, here to tell us about her … er … experiences. Which I’m sure will be most interesting. Before I forget, after Colonel Duncan’s talk on Sarawak last week, a black umbrella was found under a seat, and if anyone …’
‘I think that was mine,’ called a faint, elderly voice.
‘Could you see me afterwards, so that I may return it?’
‘Does it have a tortoiseshell handle?’
‘I believe so.’
‘Yes, that’s mine. Good. It was my aunt’s, you know.’
There was a pause, presumably for Mr Wilkes to ensure that any remaining trace of anticipation had been sluiced from the room, and then Mattie was introduced once more, this time as Miss Timpson, and came on to the stage to a smattering of applause.
‘Good evening,’ she said. ‘My name is Matilda Simpkin. I hope, over the next hour or so, to convey something of the history and methods of the militant suffragette movement …’
The lectern lamp was very bright, and she could see little beyond it. Roberta, she knew, was sitting beside the aisle in the fourth row, and Mattie addressed her opening remarks in that direction, flicking the little bell that dangled from the reading light.
‘Slide, please,’ said Mattie. ‘Mary Somerville. Mother of six, self-taught scientist, jointly the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society. The Oxford college for women is named after her.’
She glanced over her shoulder at the screen, and was reassured to see the expected image: the pleasantly ovine face of a genius. ‘I myself studied at that college, although Oxford University did not, and still does not, see fit to award its undergraduettes with a degree, despite exam results which have often exceeded those of the male students.’
‘Shame!’ called a familiar voice from the fourth row.
‘It is indeed a shame,’ said Mattie, nodding towards her fellow Somervillian. ‘And illustrates a familiar pattern in the struggle of the female for both civil and legal equality, viz: it is not enough for us to match the intellectual and organizational accomplishments of men – it is not even enough for us to outstrip them. Whatever our achievements, we are expected to wait, like patient Griselda, on the whim of those in power.’ She tapped the bell. ‘Now here is another cloistered member of our sex – one to whom three successive Viceroys of India came for advice. Slide please.’
As Florence Nightingale replaced Mary Somerville, Mattie glanced at the notebook that lay open on the lectern. Usually, she would talk extempore, but on this occasion it was clearly expedient that she stick to an order, and the thought of this marked path, from which she must not stray, made the hour ahead seem like a forced march. She was conscious that her speech was less fluent than normal, its content more pedestrian, the audience no more than politely attentive.
‘Any questions?’ she asked, after the introduction. ‘Before we move on to the birth of the WSPU.’
‘Yes, I have one.’ It was the quavering voice of the umbrella owner.
‘Fire away,’ said Mattie, shading her eyes in an attempt to see the questioner.
‘Do you think you will be finished by eight o’clock?’
‘Finished?’ Mattie checked her wristwatch. ‘I rather doubt it, given that I’ve only just started and it’s already seven forty-five.’
‘Oh dear. Only I told Maria that I would be back by ten past eight. I must have got the time wrong. I don’t know what to do now.’ There was a sigh.
‘In 1903—’ began Mattie.
‘No, I think I should go, or Maria will worry. Excuse me, I’m most awfully sorry, could I just get past?’ Inevitably, the speaker was at the centre of a row.
‘That rather reminds me,’ said Mattie, raising her voice in an attempt to cover the shuffles, apologies and exclamations, ‘of the story of the cook Maria, which was sometimes used to illustrate the masculine attitude towards women’s talents. “Maria,” said her master, “you are a most excellent cook but I can no longer afford to—”’
‘Oh, I’ve forgotten my umbrella – do you have it, Mr Wilkes?’
‘Yes, here it is, Miss Carr.’
‘“—I can no longer afford to pay your wage. Will you marry me?”’
The joke died quietly, its back broken.
‘So where were we?’ asked Mattie, slightly rattled, checking her notebook and then flicking th
e bell twice. ‘Yes, 1903, and Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, together with Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence – slide, please – met in Manchester, in order to …’ There was an odd rustle of laughter. Mattie twisted round to look at the screen and saw three suffragettes dressed as nuns.
‘Ah. They met in disguise, obviously,’ she said, attempting to salvage the moment. ‘No, clearly I’ve given the wrong signal to our magic-lantern operator.’ She rapped her knuckles on the lectern. ‘So, as I say, Mrs Pankhurst and the Pethwick Lawrences – slide, please.’
The nuns remained in place.
‘Slide, please, Roley.’
‘Is it Box 2 when you do that?’ His voice was wretched.
‘Yes. No. I’m so sorry, I’m not being clear. When I give a knock, it’s Box 3.’ Mattie demonstrated the signal once again.
‘Come in!’ called a wag.
There were fumbling noises beside the magic lantern, and the squeak of a hinge. Mattie turned back to look at the screen just as the nuns were replaced by a photograph of a poster parade: a long line of suffragettes walking along a road in single file, each wearing a sandwich board that advertised a public meeting. The picture was unfamiliar to her – it was, she realized, the slide she’d found the day before, and which she’d assumed (after briefly raising it to the blueish bulb in the lumber room) showed a march.
‘No, that’s still not the – oh!’ Mattie stopped and stared. A poster parader had merely been an ambulant hoarding, instructed not to engage with the public and to ignore derision or laughter. But the first woman in the line was looking directly at the camera and smiling, her skirts a blur as she strode forward. She was strikingly handsome, dark-eyed, alight with energy; alive with it. Venetia Campbell.
Distantly, a door slammed and a gust of wind swept through the hall, strong enough to set the screen swinging violently. Mattie shot out a hand to steady the lectern, and the bell jingled; there was a panicked movement from behind the magic lantern, followed by a gasp and a monstrously loud crash. Mattie closed her eyes.
