A Woman's Place

by Maggie Ford

  ‘And what did you expect to achieve? Forgiveness for the pain you caused your mother and me? I do not forgive and I think you had better go.’

  ‘Is that all you have to say to me?’ she asked, hating the entreaty in her tone.

  ‘What else would I have to say to you?’

  ‘But this is your grandchild!’

  ‘She is the child of a person I no longer know and a man I have no wish to know,’ he said slowly.

  Connie searched for a retort. There was so much she wanted to say: what a good man George was and how dare he belittle him; that this baby was an innocent in this family rift; that the father she had once loved now declared himself her enemy. But she could only draw herself up with as much dignity as she could muster and, with a small bow of her head, meant as an insult, retrieve her umbrella and, holding Rebecca tightly, turn to go. He wasn’t going to have the satisfaction of ordering her from the house.

  She saw him flick his hand towards the hovering maid who, skirting the puddle from the wet umbrella, obediently opened the door as if being controlled by machinery.

  Without another glance at the two people she had once called her parents, Connie went out into the gloomy afternoon with its cold, fine drizzle, the door closing behind her with a soft click as soon as she reached the last of the few steps to the drive.

  No one had asked how she had arrived or what transport would be taking her to the station. It seemed they didn’t care, yet a child was a child and as a doctor her father should surely have some thought to its welfare in such miserable weather. Apparently he didn’t. But he could have at least asked his chauffeur William to drive her to the station, especially with Rebecca in her arms, and if not in his motor at least in her Mother’s brougham.

  She felt eaten up with fury, her eyes so blocked with tears of anger refusing to be shed that it seemed they would overflow into her lungs. She hurried down the drive without looking back. If they were watching from the window, she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of a backward glance. The sound of running footsteps, however, did make her turn as she reached the low iron gates out of sight of the house.

  Verity, slightly out of breath, a coat over her shoulders, was hurrying towards her. Seeing her sister glance fearfully towards the house, Connie stepped back behind the tall hedge that separated the house from the road and waited.

  ‘I had to talk to you,’ Verity burst out. ‘I couldn’t let you go like that.’

  She glanced towards the baby. ‘She’s so beautiful.’ When Connie did not acknowledge the compliment, she added almost vehemently, ‘It’s unkind of them allowing you to walk to the station in this weather. They could at least have telephoned for a taxicab to come and collect you.’

  Connie didn’t reply. Taxicabs cost money. She wasn’t hard up but she and George needed to go carefully with money, with rent to pay and a baby to bring up. Her last frivolity had been the hat she’d bought for that suffragette demonstration last June. Since then, she was beginning to learn that money spent doesn’t replenish itself as easily as once she had imagined, nor did she want to see that look on George’s face again when she had shown him the hat. True, it had been her money, but once gone, it could not so easily be replaced.

  ‘I’ll keep you company to the station,’ Verity was saying. ‘Let me carry the baby.’

  ‘Her name is Rebecca,’ Connie reminded her a little stiffly, conscious that she was unfairly taking out her spite on Verity, but neither of her parents had spoken the child’s name. Her father hadn’t even glanced at her. That wasn’t Verity’s fault and she had no cause to be spiteful towards her sister.

  In a rush of contrition she handed Rebecca over to her; Rebecca’s aunt fumbled with the shawl, not being used to holding babies.

  ‘Can you handle her?’ she asked. Verity smiled brightly. She had a pretty smile. No wonder she’d landed a likely young man so quickly. Father would have made sure she did. Had she possessed a face like an old boot, he’d have made sure she would have been found a good match.

  ‘I could carry this one for miles, she is so light,’ Verity said in a tone somewhat broody and wistful, making Connie smile for the first time today.

  ‘What is this young man of yours like?’ asked Connie as they walked. She saw Verity’s face fill with serene happiness.

  ‘He’s wonderful,’ she sighed, her blue eyes so like her mother’s taking on a faraway glow. ‘I was so fortunate. Father had no idea I already had a crush on Douglas even before we were introduced.’

  She’d first seen Douglas Brent-Harrison, she went on, at a coming-out party and her heart had gone pit-a-pat. She’d hardly been able to speak on being formally introduced, later hardly able to believe it when he had asked if he could have her permission for him to see her again. A few months later when both sets of parents began discussing engagement details for the two young people, her joy had been absolute.

  ‘We are very much in love with each other,’ she ended as they entered the station booking hall, her tale having taken up the entire ten-minute walk.

  Connie wondered if Verity would have behaved as she herself had if her father had tried to marry her to someone she hadn’t cared for. Would she too have gone against his wishes? Not in the way Connie had. She could imagine Verity’s tears melting her father’s heart and him placating her. Of course the matter had not arisen – Verity was in love with a man her father approved of, very much so; she was a good, obliging daughter.

  Connie couldn’t completely condemn him. He had always had his daughters’ happiness at heart and would never have forced them to marry men whom they couldn’t love. It was just that she had fallen in love with someone he could never approve of. It must have been a blow to him for her go off with a man who was virtually penniless – in his eyes, a fortune hunter. It was today’s attitude that she could not forgive; he had averted his gaze, not just from her, but from his own granddaughter. He had no right to blame an innocent child for what he assumed were her mother’s shortcomings. For that she could not, would not forgive him, and at this moment she didn’t care if he never forgave her. She would never come here again.

  ‘I wish you all the luck in your coming marriage, Verity,’ she said as Verity handed back the baby. ‘You still seem a little too young to marry.’

  Verity took on a look of mild indignation ‘I’m old enough!’

  ‘Of course you are,’ she relented, too drained by today’s events to argue. Verity was happy. That was all that should matter. She turned as she passed through the ticket barrier. Her sister was still standing there.

  Seeing her wave, Verity waved back, then turned and went out of the ticket office and out of sight.

  Verity had said she’d try and invite her to her wedding though it all depended on their father, but Connie knew that if he objected, Verity would not persist. A good, obedient daughter, she thought for the second time. She didn’t set much store by an invitation and she’d have to pardon Verity.

  Hoisting Rebecca to a more comfortable position in her arms, she walked along the short platform to the ladies’ waiting room to pass the time there until her train came.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Connie’s mind had been on Verity’s marriage as she emerged from Bethnal Green Station around one o’clock. Seconds later her thoughts were diverted by the distant clanging of police car bells and a faint whiff of burning hanging in the air. She found herself wondering if it might have anything to do with suffragette activity. Lately some had begun to resort to arson.

  She was glad to find it had nothing to do with them. That evening, the third of January 1911, George’s newspaper reported that a house in Sidney Street, a quarter of a mile from where she and George lived, in which three suspected anarchists had been under siege in a gun battle with a thousand troops and armed police, had been set ablaze; deliberately or not wasn’t clear, but the fire was said to have been caused by the criminals themselves.

  Even so, thoughts of suffragette activity worried Con
nie. If police were resorting to gun battles with suspected criminals, would they begin reacting the same way towards stone-throwing and property-wrecking suffragettes?

  She spoke of it to Eveline on the Sunday. Her friend had popped over while George had his after-dinner nap, while Albert was occupied in his bedroom studying to be an engineer.

  ‘Engineer?’ she’d queried when Eveline had told her. ‘I thought he was going to be a surveyor.’

  ‘He found it a bit beyond him,’ Eveline had said. ‘He feels engineering might suit him better.’

  ‘That siege in Sidney Street,’ she said now, ‘I knew something wasn’t right when I came out of the railway station. But if the police have started to arm themselves who knows what might happen should any suffragettes get out of hand? The newspapers said several bystanders were hurt in the battle and two of the anarchists were found dead – only one escaped. But what if they begin to think it quite in order to threaten us with firearms? Someone could get badly hurt.’

  Eveline appeared not to be taking it quite as seriously as she should have as she busied herself feeding eight-month-old Helena with bits of the cake she had put on plates to go with their cup of tea.

  ‘I don’t think that would happen with us,’ she said. ‘It was on the orders of the Home Secretary and they were foreigners. They wouldn’t dare use firearms against women like us.’

  ‘You remember Black Friday?’ Connie warned darkly. ‘Who’s to say they won’t come at us armed next time?’ But Eveline wasn’t at all convinced.

  ‘That’ll never happen, not to women,’ she said.

  Connie felt a shudder go through her and glanced down at Rebecca asleep in her pram. ‘I know one thing, we should make sure that we aren’t included in any more militant protests. It was all very well when we were single, but we have children now.’

  At last Eveline’s expression deepened, the portent sinking in. She nodded. ‘I expect you’re right. Stick to passive roles in future. Let others do the dangerous work.’

  They needn’t have worried. Spring saw little militant activity other than public meetings and peaceful demonstrations, everyone hanging on for the Conciliation Committee to redraft its bill. Though its prospects were far from clear, it was their best chance and people were optimistic. Nothing must mar its chances.

  In May the redrafted bill passed its second reading and everyone felt they had been right not to create waves. Even so, over the next seven weeks, with usual government slowness, the tide kept turning, the bill in favour at one point then out of favour days later and so on, keeping everyone on edge and prompting meetings and processions all over the country, but everyone peaceable, no one daring to rock this boat.

  As expected, no invitation to her sister’s wedding ever arrived but Verity could have written if only to say that circumstances had prevented it. She’d have understood. Maybe Verity was too over the moon with her hundred-and-one arrangements to give much thought to it, but that hurt worse than her parents forbidding any invitation. So much for sisterly love! And if this was the case then she would wash her hands of them all, though she’d said that so many times before. They were still her family and always on her mind.

  Verity’s wedding on the third of June came and went. Connie tried to think of that Saturday as just another day but it was hard not to feel it. In an effort to put it behind her, she turned to her suffragette work as far as a husband and baby allowed. She and Eveline made up a plan to take turns looking after each other’s daughters so that one or other could attend a meeting or a rally without getting too involved or being apprehended by the police.

  In early June, they along with thousands of others were informed that in support of the campaign every suffragette society in the country would combine in one great and hopefully final demonstration on the seventeenth, an estimated forty thousand women marching five abreast in a gala of music and floats.

  As well as being a national procession, with many in historical costume, it would be international with suffragettes from every country with their own banners and flags and traditional dress as well as women from every part of the British Empire. ‘Can you imagine the colour and the spectacle?’ Connie said, trying to feel excited.

  She desperately needed to put her sister’s wedding the previous week behind her but the snub continued to hurt. Hopefully, marching in this huge procession would help take her mind off it.

  ‘With so much support we’ll win in the end,’ she said to Eveline, determined to concentrate on that.

  It was to be called the Women’s Coronation Procession, arranged to take place six days prior to the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary. With the entire week already earmarked as one of celebration and festivity by the whole country, this procession would have the largest number of onlookers they could ever wish for.

  ‘It could even become a victory march,’ Connie said, following Eveline into her kitchen. ‘The way things are going, the Conciliation Bill has to go through. We’ve had so many setbacks in the past, it just has to.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Eveline said solemnly. ‘What I’d like to know is how we are both going to be there?’

  ‘We’ve got to be there, both of us.’

  Eveline remained glum. ‘If we both go, who’ll look after Helena and Rebecca?’ She so wanted to attend, but how could she expect Connie to do the honours on such a special day? ‘We can’t ask Albert or George,’ she pointed out. ‘Both of them are at work on Saturday mornings.’

  Connie frowned. ‘You mean one of us stay behind?’ As Eveline gave a phlegmatic shrug, her frown deepened. ‘You don’t expect me to stay behind, not on an occasion like this.’

  ‘I never said you,’ Eveline said waspishly. ‘I suppose it’ll have to be me.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘What other choice is there?’ Her tone was still sharp and Connie fell silent; as the silence grew, Eveline made a great business of wiping around her butler sink for a second time since washing up plates from her midday meal.

  It was Connie who finally spoke, miserably and ineffectually. ‘We’ll have to work something out.’

  ‘What? How?’

  Connie reflected for a moment. ‘Do you think we could ask your gran to oblige?’

  ‘I don’t think it comes into it,’ Eveline said, putting aside the damp dishcloth as she surveyed the sink that never really looked any cleaner for all the wiping, the stained digs and cracks in the porcelain indelible from years of wear. ‘I don’t think my Albert would care for me toddling off the second he’s home from work on a Saturday.’

  She turned abruptly to Connie. ‘Though I expect your George doesn’t mind too much even if he had been working all morning and wanting his dinner? But everyone has to be at the starting point before midday to find out where they’ll be in the procession and everything. It takes time with forty or more thousand before they march off.’

  She began to regret the sharpness of her tongue as she saw a blank look creep across Connie’s face. ‘What I mean is, our lives have changed. It’s impossible to do what we once did.’

  Connie’s lips became a tight line. ‘Nothing is impossible. I’m going to tell George exactly what the situation is. He’ll understand. He’ll have to.’

  ‘What’re you going to say?’

  ‘That I’m a suffragette and I believe in what we are doing and that he will have to make allowances and June the seventeenth will be one of them.’

  ‘What about Rebecca?’

  For a moment came a prick of suspicion that Connie might have already taken it that she’d look after her baby for her. But Connie had gone quiet, her small show of defiance seeping away. ‘I couldn’t ask George to take an hour or two off from work so I can go out. His job’s important.’

  So it’s down to me, came the thought, but she held her tongue. The last thing she wanted was to quarrel with Connie though she felt dangerously close to it, beginning to seethe.

  Connie was looking contemplative. ‘If we
could find someone to look after the two of them. If you could persuade your mother to have Helena, perhaps your gran might be willing to have Rebecca. She has said how she likes having them around her.’

  ‘While we’re there with them,’ Eveline reminded her.

  ‘But she once said she would be happy to keep an eye on them if we had to be somewhere special. And this is special.’

  ‘No. I know what my mum’ll say,’ Eveline put in. ‘There’s going to be forty thousand there – they won’t miss one. I can just hear her saying it.’

  ‘If we all believed that, there’d be no procession, no one ready to fight, no chance for enfranchisement for us ever.’

  Connie was right. Anger began to dissipate and, full of determination, she went to see her mother.

  Dora Fenton’s answer was instant. ‘Yer think I’ve got nothing better to do than give eye to a baby so you can go gallivanting off just as you please? I’ve got a shop ter run, a liveli’ood ter keep going. Do I ever ask someone ter look after that shop so I can go gallivanting off?’

  ‘But Dad is in the shop.’

  ‘And I ’elp ’im. He can’t do it all on ’is own. Yer know he ain’t getting no younger. Whyn’t you go an’ ask your mother-in-law?’

  Eveline bit at her lip. As nice as the woman was, how could she ask Albert’s mother to look after a child that wasn’t her son’s?

  ‘You’ve got May,’ she said desperately. ‘She helps in the shop.’

  For a moment or two Dora was stumped. She knew she was being uncooperative, but Eveline had made her bed so to speak and it wasn’t her fault that she could find no affection for this baby conceived out of wedlock. Eveline had imagined she could share a bed with some upper-class toff then expect him to marry her when things went wrong. She didn’t realise how lucky she was finding Bert Adams to bale her out. Maybe he was a fool to have done so but a nice fool. She liked Bert Adams – in her estimation the finest man there ever was, stepping in like he had, whether he’d been in love with her or not. As for the baby, she’d feel different if Bert was the legitimate father, but he wasn’t and she couldn’t bring herself to love it. Almost as if it wasn’t her flesh and blood at all.