A Mad, Wicked Folly

by Sharon Biggs Waller

  “Marching to Parliament to protest the imprisonment of suffragettes. Then the fife-and-drum band are going to Holloway Prison to play music outside to keep the girls’ spirits up. They can hear us, even the ones in solitary confinement.”

  We turned the corner and were onto Whitehall. I could see the spires of Parliament poking up through the foggy gloom of the city. But then I saw police constables milling around the side of the road.

  The women in the queue, unhappy with the police presence, muttered their dismay.

  “Are they always around the suffragettes, the police?” I asked the girl.

  “An awful lot, as of late,” she said. “Wherever we turn up, they’re there. In some ways it’s good because the police protect us from men who want to do us harm. You wouldn’t believe what some men will do. Last week, one of the girls was chalking meeting times on the pavement, and a man shoved her into the railings. She knocked her head badly and had to go to hospital. The story made the newspapers and some wrote that she deserved it. The Daily Bugle said if she’d stayed at home where she belonged, it wouldn’t have happened, and that’s supposed to be a women’s news-

  paper.” The girl banged the head of her drum angrily with one stick. “And now, for safety, the WSPU will only allow us to chalk in groups.”

  Suddenly I saw something else that made my blood run cold: PC Catchpole eyeing the line of women marching past, a look of disdain on his face. The moment I saw him, his gaze met mine. And held it.

  He recognized me. Fear coursed through my body. I was marching with the suffragettes. I had claimed I wasn’t with them before. If Catchpole decided to arrest me, I wouldn’t be able to talk my way out of it again.

  I looked behind me. A crowd had gathered in the street; there was no chance of attempting to walk back through such a mob. I stepped up on the pavement, trying to find an easy exit. There, between a pub and a bookshop, was a small alleyway. Perhaps I could make my way through there and then double back behind the buildings.

  I saw Catchpole take a step forward. I saw him point at me. I heard him shout.

  I broke through a group of people and dashed down the alley.

  The cobblestones clattered under my high-heeled boots, and soon the skin of my heels was rubbed raw. I rushed on, but the alley curved around instead of turning back toward Trafalgar Square, and soon I was hopelessly lost.

  I stopped to get my bearings. The smoke from countless coal fires made the fog thicker. It was stifling and spooky. I gathered my wits about me and chose the closest turning.

  And then I heard footsteps running behind me. Catchpole!

  A whimper caught in my throat and I began to run; my boots pressed painfully against my blisters. The steps behind me picked up in pace.

  I was approaching the back of a public house; workmen were rolling barrels of beer from a brewer’s dray down a long ramp and into a cellar. I darted a look over my shoulder. I heard the voice behind me shout again.

  A barrel spun into me, kicking my legs away. I slammed onto the ground, my arms shooting out in front of me. The impact was so great that my felt beret flew off, and my hairpins fell in a shower around me. I skidded along the brick ground on the palms of my hands.

  Someone knelt down beside me.

  I turned my head and looked into the eyes of the person chasing me. It wasn’t Catchpole.

  It was PC William Fletcher.

  Thirteen

  Behind the pub,

  PC William Fletcher’s beat

  I SAT ON A stack of crates, trying not to cry, while PC Fletcher picked the gravel out of my palms. He had shown no signs of wanting to arrest me. After I fell, he helped me to my feet, had a quiet word with the publican, sat me on a crate, and began to doctor my hands. As friendly as he had been yesterday, I did not fully trust him. I was well aware of the handcuffs hanging from his belt and his prior threats to haul me back to the police station.

  “I need to be on my way. My hands are fine.” I tried to pull them back, but he tightened his grip.

  “I don’t think so. Those cobbles are filthy with muck of all sorts. You don’t want these scrapes to go septic.”

  “So who are you? Florence Nightingale?”

  Instead of getting angry, he grinned. “No, but I’ve been in enough pubs to know what lands on the floor after several pints.”

  “Don’t be vulgar! I’ll clean them as soon as I return home. I’m meant to be going to a charity meeting at the church and I’m horribly late now.”

  “I’ll finish, and then you can be on your way to your meeting.”

  “I—”

  “For once in your life just shut your gob and do as you are told.”

  “How rude!”

  “Just shush and let me work.”

  “I’d better had, because you’ll only chase me down again if I try to get away.”

  “I wasn’t chasing you just now.” He leaned over me so as to see my hands better. He had taken his helmet off and set it on the ground, so I was staring straight into his hair. “I was worried you’d become lost, because these streets are like a maze. The lads and I sometimes get turned about; that’s why I followed you. Were you with the demonstration?”

  “If I say yes, then you’ll only haul me in front of the magistrate again.”

  He scowled. “What makes you think that?”

  “Oh, let’s see . . . could it be because you arrested me once before?”

  “I never arrested you.” He looked different without his helmet on. His wavy brown hair was cut short on the sides but left long on top, but his hair made a mockery of this style; as he spoke, the top flopped down over his face. He pushed it back in a casual manner, as if this happened all the time.

  “Well, you didn’t let me go, either.”

  He fixed me with a pointed frown.

  “Yes, all right,” I said. “That was for the judge to decide. At least you weren’t horrible. Not like that other man.”

  He frowned. “Catchpole? I hate how he treats the suffragettes.” He dropped another pebble to the ground. “Well, that is the last of the stones.”

  The publican’s wife came out and left a cloth and a bowl of water on a nearby barrel. PC Fletcher busied himself rinsing my hands with the cloth. My fingers began to tingle under his gentle touch and my headache began to fade. I found myself no longer wanting to run away from him. I felt as though I could stay there in the dirty back alley behind that pub all day with him.

  He drew a handkerchief from his pocket. “It’s quite clean,” he said, grinning up at me. He bound it round one the worst of the abrasions, tying a neat bow. “I had better see you back.” He took my hand and helped me down from the crates. The pain from my blisters made my knees buckle, and he caught me by the elbow.

  “Careful,” he said.

  His touch compelled me to step a little closer to him. I hadn’t noticed before how his mouth lifted up at one corner, as if he found life too humorous to stop smiling completely. Such a smile should be preserved forever in a drawing. If only the feeling of his hand on my arm could somehow be captured and kept. My stomach fluttered strangely and my mind recalled that moment when I fell on top of him. I found that it wasn’t an unpleasant memory anymore.

  “Your hair seems to have come undone,” he said.

  My hands flew to the back of my head. “My hairpins came out when I fell.”

  We searched around on the ground and found several by the barrel that had tripped me. My beret lay on the other side.

  With the pins found, I bunched my hair up and tried to put them back in, but my sore hands wouldn’t allow me to.

  “Here, let me help.” I turned around, and PC Fletcher gathered my hair up in his hands. “Um, I’m not sure what to do; I’ve never dressed a lady’s hair before.”

  “Wind it all up and ram the pins in as best you can. Try not to skew
er me in the process.”

  He laughed. “I’ll give it my best attempt.”

  I felt his fingers gently comb through one of the tangles in my hair, and little tingles flashed through me. I closed my eyes, wanting to lean into his hands, but I forced myself not to. Thankfully he finished quickly.

  “I don’t think it looks too clever. Rather like a Chelsea cinnamon bun.”

  I turned around, feeling suddenly shy. “Thank you for helping me. I don’t think I would have found my way out if you hadn’t come along.”

  “I was only doing my job,” he said, reaching for his police helmet. “You shouldn’t walk about on your own. Not in London. There are a lot of villains knocking about who wouldn’t hesitate to take a swipe at a woman, especially lately. A lot of blokes hate suffragettes.”

  “I thank you all the same, PC Fletcher.”

  “Call me Will.”

  Somehow the name Will suited him very well indeed. “And you must call me Vicky.”

  “Vicky Darling. Not Smith,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, as if he’d known it all along. “Your real name was in your sketchbook.”

  Feeling embarrassed for the lie, I said nothing. I simply shrugged.

  “Well, then. Allow me to escort you back, Vicky.”

  We set off. With Will next to me, the fog no longer seemed ominous; instead, it felt peaceful. The fog blotted out the surroundings and any passersby, making it feel as though we were the only people about.

  “So you believe in votes for women?” I asked as we walked.

  “I don’t see the point in denying half the population the right to vote. I think the politicians are frightened women will take over if they have it.” He shook his head. “My mum and sister are more capable than my dad and me put together, so I see no reason to worry about that. It’s daft. So yes, the suffragettes have my sympathies. I can’t work out which side you’re on, though.”

  “With the women, of course.”

  “But you don’t fight with them?” He looked at me, his eyes questioning.

  “I’m going to help them with the artwork. I’m not the fighting type.” I twirled my beret around my hand.

  He grinned. “And an artist can’t fight?”

  “Not this one.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  The sun was beginning to cut through the fog, and a shaft of light fell upon William Fletcher’s face, illuminating the angles of his cheekbones and the length of his jaw. I thought once again that he had the perfect face to draw. And then the vision of him on a battlefield struck me once more, and I thought of how I would like to draw him: as the knight Lancelot in the Arthurian legend. I wondered if he would pose for me. Perhaps he might be willing to if I took him up on his offer of illustrating his stories. Doing so was certainly worth the risk for me now that my parents had taken away my sketchbook.

  “Your offer from yesterday. Does it still stand?” My fingers gripped an imaginary pencil.

  “Too right! Have you changed your mind?”

  “Maybe. If you’ll do something for me in turn.”

  “Name it.” He waved his hand. “Anything.”

  “I need a model.”

  He looked confused. “A model?”

  “Yes. I’m submitting work for my RCA application and I need an artist’s model. Someone to pose for me.”

  He swallowed. “You mean, like the drawing in your book? Of that man?”

  I smiled. “Yes.”

  “You mean you want me to model for you with . . . without my kit on?” Even in the fog I could see his cheeks flushing bright red.

  “Would you?” I held my breath, hoping I hadn’t crossed a line, but Will seemed like the only person I had met in London who understood art and its process. And because of his political views, he didn’t seem a slave to convention either. I did need a model, desperately. But also the thought of seeing him without his clothes brought the flutter back to my stomach. An unclothed man wasn’t the most awful thing to gaze upon—the broad shoulders with the lines of muscles down the arms and back, a strong chest, a long thigh. No, drawing Will without his garments wouldn’t be the most arduous task a girl could embark upon.

  “I . . . well . . . I . . .” He laughed a little. “Blimey. I never thought you’d ask me that. You already have pictures like that. Can’t you show the school those?”

  “I would, but I don’t have my sketchbook any longer. My parents took it. They don’t approve.”

  “Of you drawing?”

  “Yes. They’ve forbidden it, but obviously I’m not letting that stop me.”

  He digested this. “That’s why you lied about your name.” His face fell. “And then there’s me, behaving like a rotter. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should’ve given you a chance to explain.”

  “You couldn’t have known. But yes, that’s the reason why I lied about my name. I didn’t want my father to know I’d snuck out of the house to draw. That and the fact I was around the suffragettes.”

  “It’s a shame you lost your book. It was really good.”

  “I hope I’ll be able to replace the work in time, but what really worries me is the lack of life studies. They would really impress the examiners, but now I don’t have any to show.”

  He frowned, taking things in a bit more deeply. “Life studies?”

  “The undraped form. The nude? No clothes on and all that.”

  “Why is it important to know how to draw people in the buff?”

  “It’s not so much about drawing people in the buff. There’s a difference between naked and nude.”

  Will looked unsure. “How do you mean?”

  “The nude figure is inspiring, sensual. Naked is simply the result of the everyday act of removing one’s clothes. Someone who is naked is often embarrassed to be looked at, and that’s certainly not what an artist is after. Depicting the nude is the most difficult thing for an artist to master,” I said, remembering Monsieur Tondreau’s lecture on the subject. “Get one thing wrong and the person will look skewed. And when you draw the undraped form, you learn about anatomy and how the clothing should fall upon a person. And there is an emotional component that is challenging as well; the muscles show tension, relaxation, fear. That kind of thing is clearer with no clothing on.”

  “I see.” Will looked thoughtful.

  “A life-drawing session is always professional, mind, never risqué,” I added.

  “Hmm,” Will said. “What will I have to do?”

  “Stand as I tell you, keep very still, and don’t speak; it’s dead easy.”

  He stopped walking and leaned against the brick wall of a building. “Without my clothes on.”

  “You don’t have to worry about it. I’ve seen men undraped before.” I watched him mull it over in his head. He kept tapping his fingers nervously against the brick and shooting little glances at me. I hoped he would say yes, but I knew it was a lot to ask of a person.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said. “Can I think about it a bit?”

  As Bertram had pointed out to me that day in France, it wasn’t the done thing for an artist to press a model to take his clothes off. Although I was disappointed, I nodded. “I can draw you as you are, if you’re more comfortable with that.”

  “That sounds like a better starting place. Where?”

  I bit my lip, realizing I had no place to draw him undraped anyway. I hadn’t quite thought it all the way through. “Can you meet me at the Royal Academy? By the Burlington Arcade; do you know it? There’s a place there where we can work undisturbed. Lots of artists work there, and people tend to leave them be.”

  He nodded. “I have Thursday afternoons off. We can meet then. Say two o’clock?”

  The Royal Academy was close to my house. I could get away with a church-charity excuse and meet Will for an hour or two. I woul
d have to find art supplies in the meantime. Somehow.

  We started walking again, and after a little while Will turned down a small lane that opened out to Northumberland Avenue. All too soon, Nelson’s Column came into view. I felt a pang of guilt. Emma stood exactly where I had left her, two paper cones of nuts clutched in her hands, scanning the crowd, a look of panic on her face, which changed to relief when she saw me.

  “Here I am!” I said. “I got dragged along in the crowd and I couldn’t get back. I fell, and then P.C. Fletcher helped me.”

  “I was that worried about you, miss,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do. I went to buy the nuts and just like that you was gone! I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left your side.” She pointed at my bandaged hand. “You’ve hurt yourself!”

  “It’s nothing, Emma.” I said. “Only a little scratch.”

  Will walked with us all the way up the steps of the church.

  “I will leave you then, miss,” Will said, his face crinkling into a smile. He bowed slightly and then trotted down the steps. I watched him walk across the street toward Whitehall. I couldn’t help but notice other women glancing at him as he went.

  Perhaps my artistic sensibilities weren’t so misguided after all.

  Fourteen

  Darling Residence

  AFTER WE SPENT a crushingly boring morning replacing old hymnals with new ones, John met Emma and me at the church door and escorted me back to the carriage, and we headed home. My new prison warden and lady’s maid was due to arrive at any moment, but I wasn’t looking forward to meeting her. Despite the maid’s reported ability to transform Joan Hollingberry from an ugly duckling into a swan, she would have to be someone of whom my mother approved: someone old, someone dull, and someone who shared the same fashion sense. She would probably keep a hand on me at all times and report back to my mother every time I sneezed. At least I could slip away from her with an excuse to work at the charity. I would have no need of a chaperone within the saintly walls of a church and under the watchful eye of the vicar.