Unluckily her husband’s Aunt Caroline came in at that point. ‘Unwanted correspondence?’ she asked, with chilly humour.
‘Saves the cost of postage, not replying to letters,’ Lily responded.
‘I wondered if you’d thought to ask Cook to get some steak and kidney for a pie for tonight’s dinner,’ Caroline asked. ‘Sir Geoffrey and Mr Hislop have both said separately how much they enjoyed Mrs Cartwright’s steak and kidney pie. And the weather’s so cold, I think something substantial is indicated.’
‘I’ve told her to do beef,’ Lily said. ‘It might be too late to change it.’
‘Oh, I’m sure she’ll have time, if we hurry,’ said Caroline. ‘And I’ve asked the fish man to leave some plaice. I spotted him coming up the drive.’
‘Sounds like a good idea,’ Lily said.
‘And gooseberry fool, I thought. We can use the last of the preserves.’
‘Couldn’t be better,’ Lily responded, a great wave of depression washing over her. She imagined them all sitting round the table, eating first soup, then fish, then the steak and kidney pie; heard Gordon saying, eventually, ‘And now – the mighty Stilton,’ and then she and the other women would retreat to the drawing room and talk of children, local affairs, servants and gardens.
‘Let me tell Cook, while you go up to see the baby,’ Caroline said.
As Lily entered the hall, Fidget burst from the kitchen. He followed her upstairs. In the nursery at the top of the house a bright fire burned. Nappies and little clothes were warming on the fender. Lily despondently greeted Nanny Dalrymple and the nursery maid, who stood at semi-attention as she came in. She looked into Digby’s cradle without interest. The large, golden-haired baby was asleep, fists above his head. ‘He’s a little angel,’ Nanny Dalrymple said. ‘Never a peep out of him all night. Won’t his grandfather be pleased with the little lamb when he comes at Christmas?’ Lily did not reply. She turned and walked out of the nursery. Fidget Followed.
‘Well!’ burst from Nanny Dalrymple’s lips. Then she pursed them, for it was against her rules to criticise an employer to an underling.
‘Takes more interest in that dog,’ added the nursery maid, less inhibited. ‘Still, the dog’s hers, but the baby’s theirs.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Nanny, ‘but I advise you to stop.’
Over the ensuing months Lily’s depression increased. She was beginning to find it difficult to get up in the morning. She went to bed early and Gordon found himself coming less and less often to her. She never went, as she so often had in the past, to his room, landing on his bed, laughing, in a flurry of silk ruffles and scent. Sadly, as Gordon became more unhappy, Lily became more irritated by him. Sometimes she couldn’t bear the sight of him. One evening he did come to her room in his dressing gown, sat down on her bed and asked, ‘What’s the matter, Lily? You’re not happy, are you? Do tell me. If we talk about it, perhaps we can do something. Would you like to go to London and buy some dresses?’
Lily said, ‘No. It’s all right. I’m tired, that’s all.’
‘But you’ve been tired for so long.’
‘Perhaps it’s the baby,’ she suggested.
‘Would you like to see Sir Virgil? Maybe he could help.’
Lily shook her head. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m tired, Gordon.’
And Gordon had no choice but to leave and go back to his own, lonely room.
‘What’s got into me?’ Lily moaned. ‘I’m a misery to myself and everybody else. What’s wrong with me?’
But nothing changed. Christmas came and went.
‘The spring will be the turning point,’ Gordon’s aunt promised her anxious nephew. But she was wrong. She was forced to take over more and more of the housekeeping. She tried to talk to Lily, with no result. ‘Why don’t you go to London?’ she suggested. ‘Lionel and Annabel would welcome you at Brook Street.’
‘No they wouldn’t,’ Lily said in a flat voice.
‘Of course they would,’ Caroline told her. This was not true, even if it ought to have been. Gordon’s brother Lionel and sister-in-law Annabel were not keen on visits from the family. As eldest son, Lionel would inherit Lord East’s house and estate, as well as another estate in Yorkshire. Both were entailed to the male heir, which meant that Lord East could not leave them elsewhere even if he wished to. But Lionel had no absolute right to his father’s house in Brook Street. Both he and his wife enjoyed London life very much, so they were very proprietorial about the London house, and cold when other members of the family announced their plans to visit. Nevertheless, Caroline was not an unkind woman, and was concerned about the state of her nephew’s marriage and, indeed, Lily’s unhappiness. After all, however unsuitable she might be, she had achieved the production of a child to inherit, should Gordon’s brothers remain childless. And she suspected that an unhappy Lily Stillwell could endanger the family stability and reputation.
Lionel and his wife were forced to accept the visit. The party, consisting of Gordon, Caroline and Lily, left Chivering for London one summer Sunday. Lionel, tall, lean and dark, met them on the station platform and said, ‘Guess what? I’ve brought my new motor to collect you. I’ll drive you to Brook Street myself.’
Gordon laughed. ‘A motor! And you to drive! Can you face it, Aunt Caroline?’
‘I’ve every confidence in Lionel,’ Caroline announced.
Lily had not been to London now for two years. She looked at the people on the platform, the trains, the soot-blackened arc of girders above. Everything and everybody seemed to be moving very fast. She was stunned. Lionel greeted her: ‘Lily – how lovely to see you again.’ They had not met since the wedding. ‘We’ve booked tickets for everything on the stage.’
‘Lily’s rather tired,’ interrupted Gordon warningly.
‘I’ll hurry up the porter,’ Lionel said. ‘Lunch must be ready at Brook Street.’
And so they all got into Lionel’s large Mercedes Benz, which was parked at the station entrance. The porter loaded in their cases and they drove off through the crowded streets.
‘I think the world’s changed,’ Lily remarked. Back in the Smoke, her spirits were rising.
Gordon looked at her sharply. Before they left he had confessed to Caroline that he was worried about Lily’s state of mind. ‘By marrying her I placed her in a very different environment,’ he said doubtfully, ‘and then there is the baby.’
‘What I mean is,’ Lily explained, ‘look at all the motors, even buses. And the ladies’ ankles. See that Gordon – Hullo Ragtime at the Hippodrome.’ She broke into the Gershwin song, ‘Everybody’s Doing It, Doing It, Doing It’, then broke off. ‘It’s all changed.’
‘Not too much, I hope,’ Lionel said. ‘There’s a great deal of social disturbance these days. Progress is one thing but change can be too rapid.’
‘An oft-stated truth, none the worse for that,’ said Gordon.
‘I shall have to get new corsets,’ Lily declared, still scanning the streets. ‘The smartest women look like sticks of celery.’
Lionel burst out laughing. ‘It’s very hard on the gentlemen. You must speak to Annabel about turning yourself into a stick of celery. She is an expert.’
‘I will,’ said Lily, and laughed, for the first time in many months.
Annabel was waiting at the top of the steps at Brook Street. She wore a loose green dress patterned in blue, her blonde hair piled without artifice on top of her head. She led the party in. ‘Lionel – get Gordon a drink. The guests are in the drawing room. Caroline, I’ll rush you and Lily upstairs to comb your hair. Don’t change. There isn’t time and the guests are old friends.’ She led Caroline to one room and Lily to another. The walls in Lily’s room were pale green, the bed plain with a carved wooden head. There was a simple chest of drawers in the window with a blue bowl on it. All the colours were clear. Everything was simple. Lily liked it, but wondered whether it was a new style or whether Lionel and Annabel were
broke.
‘Come down as soon as you’re ready,’ Annabel said with a smile. ‘It’s so lovely to have you here at last.’
They hadn’t had her here before, Lily thought, because they hadn’t felt sure she’d behave herself in front of their friends. And now she’d borne a son and heir. In fact, if her son had been a girl she still might not be here, she reflected. Never mind – they’d brought her to London to cheer her up, so she would enjoy herself her way, and to hell with them all. She tidied up and ran downstairs. The cloud over Lily had lifted very quickly.
In the light-painted dining room, blue vases with simple arrangements of catkins and cherry blossom gave an oriental effect. The party was about to sit down. Apart from the Stillwells there were two other guests, a novelist and a Liberal MP.
The conversation ran on. They talked of the Ballet Russe, which had taken London by storm the previous season: ‘So beautiful – so primitive, yet so sophisticated,’ Annabel said. The talk moved to the Ulster Unionists’ repudiation of the Home Rule Bill, passed the previous year. ‘What chance of revolution in Ireland then?’ demanded Gordon of the MP, Langland. ‘Every chance, I should say,’ Langland responded.
‘But, my God, what can we do?’ Gordon asked. ‘Turn the British army out to fight the Protestants?’
‘Looks like it,’ Langland responded laconically.
But at that time talk was almost bound to veer towards the ambition of women to get the vote; the means they were employing to achieve it – window-breaking and mass demonstrations; and the means employed to suppress them – arrests and punitive imprisonments. The subject was hard to overlook. There were women in all circles, from all classes and walks of life involved. It was the first time in living memory that people from the prosperous classes had challenged the state and, amazingly, these were women, some, now, apparently starving themselves to death in prison.
‘It’s barbaric,’ said Annabel. The MP nodded in agreement.
Lily had said little during lunch. The conversation was, she thought, beyond her. Now she said, ‘I went on one of those marches, years ago.’
Gordon looked at her and burst out laughing. ‘You, Lily, marching with the suffragists? Wonders will never cease.’
‘Well,’ Lily said hotly, ‘I was earning a big salary and paying taxes, and somebody told me it wasn’t fair I couldn’t vote when any street-corner loiterer could go down to the polling station and put his cross even if he could hardly read and write. So I went with the others.’
There was a silence. Lily’s previous career had been accepted by the Stillwells, but it was thought that there was no need to dwell on the details. Then Lionel said easily, ‘Bravo, Lily. Secretly, I’m sure, most of the opponents of the franchise for women, except the most pig-headed, would support extending the franchise to female householders, those who pay rates and taxes.’
‘They daren’t say so,’ observed the novelist, Charles Wyeth. ‘They’re afraid. With Home Rule, and socialism and strikes, their world seems to be up in arms, all certainty gone. And now the call for change has entered the heart of the home – we see the terror of the aristocrats facing the tumbril.’
‘That’s a rather excessive description of our times, Charles,’ said Langland.
Charles smiled. ‘I am a writer,’ he said. ‘In our vague, abstracted way we see some things vividly.’
‘But perhaps not accurately,’ said Langland.
‘What do you think, Lionel?’ asked Charles.
‘I’m in the Foreign Office,’ said Lionel. ‘We never have an opinion.’
‘I keep on seeing ladies’ ankles,’ said Lily. ‘Do you think that’s got anything to do with it?’
There was a laugh. ‘I don’t think so, Lily,’ Gordon said.
‘And now, Charles,’ Annabel said, standing up, ‘coffee is in the drawing room, where my new painting is now hanging, and I insist on your opinion.’ And the party stood up to leave the room, Annabel and Charles going first.
‘It’s a ghastly daub,’ said Lionel to his brother in an undertone. ‘I can’t make head or tail of it. French. Don’t offer an opinion, I beg you.’
‘All right,’ Gordon agreed. ‘Lily, do you hear? Say nothing about Annabel’s new painting.’
‘“Interesting” will do,’ Lionel added.
In the drawing room Lily stood behind the others and stared, amazed, at Annabel’s new painting, a stark portrait of an angular woman, holding a cello. The colours were very bright. The picture was like nothing she had seen before. ‘It’s interesting,’ she said, but she meant it. She thought, I don’t care what they say. The world’s changing. Then she began to think about a whole new wardrobe. She felt a frump. She’d visit her family, give Queenie a nasty surprise, then she’d look up Sam and take in a few shows at the Alhambra and the Old Tiv, whether the Stillwells liked it or not, and she’d go to the cinema. She’d do everything! Lily was back in London. Lily was elated.
As soon as lunch was over she suggested a Sunday walk in the park. Gordon and Lionel agreed, Charles Wyeth, the novelist, declared himself also free to come, so they walked up Brook Street, across Park Lane, into Hyde Park. The trees were still bare, but the grass was beginning to grow. There was plenty of grass at Chivering, but Lily had an impulse to skip on this particular turf as they moved towards Hyde Park Corner.
Then they heard the sound of shouts. In the semicircular area on which traditionally all protesters, pleaders for causes or advocates of their own personal obsession gathered each Sunday afternoon to stand on soapboxes and address a crowd of strollers, supporters or mockers, a heaving group of men was shoving to and fro, shouting. Objects were being hurled.
‘The trouble’s at Speakers’ Corner. Let’s go the other way,’ Gordon suggested.
‘No. Let’s go and look,’ Lily suggested. Charles Wyeth agreed, so they moved over the grass to the wide semicircle of speakers on improvised platforms, with banners proclaiming the causes they espoused. Most of the speakers were staring in one direction, as were knots of people standing about. They heard a cry of ‘You ought to be tarred and feathered!’ There were boos and threatening shouts. A little further off, a policeman was looking at the spot where the uproar was taking place, but doing nothing. A clod of grassy earth flew at a woman standing on a soapbox in a blue suit and hat. Beside her, trying to stand firm in the face of flying turf and cries of insult from twenty men – ‘Go home and mind the baby!’ ‘We don’t want you here!’ – was a group of five women, one of them, young and in black, holding a banner marked ‘Votes for Women’.
Lily broke away from Gordon and Charles and rushed to the constable. She looked up into his eyes and cried indignantly, ‘Send for reinforcements. They’ll kill those women.’
Even as she spoke, the crowd of men began to move towards the little group.
‘Madam,’ he began, in a dignified way, but Lily broke in, ‘Blow your bloody whistle, man, or I’ll report you for negligence.’ And then, alarmed by the shouting, and the fact that the women were almost surrounded, he did put his whistle to his lips and blow.
‘Come on, Gordon,’ Charles Wyeth urged, and the two ran forward, pushing with difficulty through the men and placing themselves in front of the little group of women. Gordon put his fist in a gaping mouth full of blackened teeth; Charles Wyeth grabbed a starched collar and shook the wearer to and fro powerfully. But two burlier men grabbed him and threw him aside. Then three policemen arrived at a run. As they picked up some of the women who had gone down in the mêlée, the attackers rapidly disappeared.
‘Arrest them!’ cried Lily. But this did not seem to be a priority, and soon the men were gone.
The women, battered and rumpled, one with a rising bruise on her cheek where a clod of earth had struck her, dusted themselves down, straightened their hats and got their breath back.
‘Well, how disgusting,’ said Lily. ‘The police didn’t even try to arrest anyone, or ask for descriptions.’
‘They don’t,’ said o
ne of the women.
‘I’m afraid they see the whole thing as a nuisance,’ Gordon said.
‘They don’t want their own wives or daughters to have the vote,’ Lily declared. ‘Well, we’re out for a walk – good luck, girls.’
And they continued their peaceful Sunday stroll in the park.
Chapter Thirty–Four
1914
“Many who have hitherto had no small sympathy with the claim of some women to have the vote may now withdraw that sympathy and substitute something very like an uncompromising antagonism”,’ Annabel read out from the newspaper. She continued, ‘Mumble, mumble, mumble, “If giving the vote to women includes giving it to militant suffragists then, in Heaven’s name, let well alone.”’
They were all sitting at breakfast next day. ‘What tosh and hypocrisy,’ she said, laying the paper aside with an air of exhaustion. ‘Thank goodness there are so many other things to think of.’
‘It’s all very well,’ Gordon said. ‘But men attacking ladies in that manner…’
‘I suppose they’ve brought it on themselves by going out and breaking windows and setting fire to letter boxes,’ Caroline observed. ‘If ladies will not behave, then civilisation is at an end. It is only they who keep the world from barbarism.’
‘So I suppose you believe women ought not to vote, Aunt?’ Annabel enquired.
‘Women – no. Ladies – perhaps,’ Caroline Stillwell said firmly. ‘I certainly believe that a lady of independent means, without a husband, should vote.’
That would leave Queenie Strugnell firmly out of the picture on election day, thought Lily. She had no independent means and certainly was no lady. Lily planned to take a trip round the stores early that morning, to dress herself in a more modern way, and then, later, turn up in Hoxton and give Queenie a shock, the treat she’d promised herself when she reached London.
Lily shopped diligently in the stores of Oxford Street and Regent Street, where she bought for five guineas a straight dress in a Liberty print, which she thought imparted to her an air of the Higher Bohemia rather like Annabel’s. It had so little material she felt undressed when she put it on, topping it with a light coat and an expensive hat with a blue ribbon hanging down at the back. The rest of her purchases would be sent to Brook Street.
Elizabeth and Lily Page 35
