by Holly Webb
Sally nodded. “I got to go, miss. I got a lot to do.” She went back to pick up her coal box, and Lottie stared after her. “Sally, wait!” She darted out of her room, not caring if anyone saw her talking to the scullery maid. “Don’t you see? It’s a Suffragette brooch. I read the paper! I bought it at the WSPU shop – Papa’s money’s gone to the WSPU.”
“Money!” Sally muttered scornfully.
“What? That’s why they have the shops, so people buy things in them. Why are you being like that about it?”
“He’d be furious if he knew,” Sally mimicked, raising her voice and affecting a la-di-da accent that Lottie realized was meant to be her.
“Don’t!” she whispered furiously. “You’re being horrible. And I don’t see why!”
“Because he doesn’t know, does he, miss? You won’t tell him. His darling daughter mixed up with the likes of those ugly Suffragettes.”
“Well, you don’t tell anybody either,” Lottie snapped. “You’ve got that poster hidden under your bed.”
“Because I’d lose my place if anyone found out!”
“And I’d get into trouble with Miss Minchin, let alone what she’d say to my father.” Lottie sighed, hearing herself. “I suppose it isn’t the same.”
Sally picked up the box and smiled at her. “Nice pin, though, miss. Pretty.”
Chapter Five
Even though Sally had been dismissive, Lottie loved her brooch. It was her own secret rebellion, against her father, against Miss Minchin, against the other girls chattering on about ribbons and hats. It looked so innocent, sparkling at the frilled neckline of her dresses, but it was a hidden message, whispering to Lottie that somewhere, one day, she might belong.
Every week, Lottie would creep up to Sally’s attic and borrow the latest edition of Votes for Women. She read it cover to cover, shuddering at the descriptions of prison stays and puzzling out the meaning of the cartoons. Some things she didn’t understand, however many times she read them, and she would save them up to ask Sally in whispered encounters on the stairs or as they laid the fire in Lottie’s room together. Half the time Sally didn’t understand them either, but there was no one else they could ask. As the months wore on, and summer turned to autumn, and then freezing fogs began to descend upon the city, the news grew more and more dramatic. Instead of processions and demonstrations, Suffragettes had started to burn postboxes and cut telegraph wires.
Lottie and Sally curled up on the bed in the attic, poring over the descriptions in Votes for Women.
“People will be angry,” Sally muttered, whistling through her teeth as they read the article. “This is a lot more than marching and making speeches.”
“Maybe that’s why they’re doing it?” Lottie suggested. “If making speeches didn’t work. Perhaps – perhaps people only listen if you break things.”
Sally stared at her. “I thought you were meant to be a nice little girl.”
“So are most of the Suffragettes. They’re ladies, I mean. Mrs Pankhurst and her daughters, they’re quite rich, I think.” Lottie shrugged. “It’s a lot easier to go out protesting and chaining yourself to railings if you don’t have to work, isn’t it?” She saw Sally’s shoulders droop, and thought about what she had said. Even though they were sitting shoulder to shoulder on the bed, there was suddenly a huge gap between them, and Lottie flushed scarlet.
“Maybe not,” she whispered sadly. “Maybe it won’t be like that, and it’s for everyone. I don’t know.”
“It’s disgusting,” Jessie hissed, and a hush fell over the dining room. She was at the top of the table, where the older girls always sat.
“I don’t believe it,” one of the others said, leaning over to look at the letter next to Jessie’s toast plate.
“What is it, Jessie?” Lottie called. She didn’t care if Jessie was rude to her – it was worth being snubbed, just to find out what was making her so cross.
Jessie peered down to Lottie’s end of the table. “What on earth do you want to know for?” she snapped. Then she seemed to relent. Clearly the story was good enough to be worth telling, even to Lottie. “It’s a letter from Lavinia, about a wedding.”
“A wedding? Is Lavinia married?” one of the littlest girls squeaked, round-eyed with excitement.
“No, of course not!” Jessie sighed, and rested her forehead on her hand – clearly worn out by dealing with these idiotic children. “It’s nothing to do with Lavinia – she only met the woman once, she says, and then she read about the wedding in the newspapers. Some ridiculous Suffragette. She refused to make the proper wedding vows and she wouldn’t let her father give her away. She wouldn’t say that she’d obey her husband. Can you imagine?” Jessie tittered disgustedly. “Ugh, it just shows.”
“Just shows what?” Lottie asked. She’d heard the odd comment about Suffragettes from the other girls at Miss Minchin’s, but she’d never dared ask any of her schoolmates what they really thought.
“Well, clearly the woman is mad,” Jessie pronounced haughtily. “They all are, of course. And completely unwomanly. How could her husband let her behave in such an awful way?” She shuddered dramatically and went back to reading the letter, with the girls on either side of her reading avidly over her shoulders.
Lottie took a bite of toast, chewing thoughtfully. She couldn’t imagine being married. Several of the older ones – Jessie included – sighed over the dancing master and his golden hair, but Lottie thought that he was greasy. She imagined Jessie in a white dress, simpering at Monsieur Carle and promising to love, honour and obey. Once she did, she would belong to him entirely, Lottie mused, squashing the crust into her mouth. So would everything she owned, and even her children. A Suffragette wedding sounded perfectly sensible to her.
One afternoon in March, Sally came into the schoolroom to build up the fire. She swept the ashes with a wild banging of the brush across the hearth and clattered the coal. Several of the girls glanced towards her distastefully and tutted. Lottie, who had been sitting talking to Louisa, looked at Sally in surprise. She was perfectly capable of cleaning the hearth in silence, so why was she making such a fuss about it?
Sally caught her eye and jerked her head sideways to the door. Lottie felt her heart beat faster. Something had happened. She carried on listening to Louisa complain about the meanness of Miss Minchin. “And I was not looking over Ermie’s shoulder in the history lesson. I mean, why would I, when everyone knows she’s a perfect dunce? – I’m sorry, Ermie, but it’s true – she was just being an old cat, like always, and it really isn’t fair…”
“It isn’t,” Lottie agreed. “Louisa, you’ve just reminded me, Miss Amelia told me I must mend the flounce on my pink frock before dancing, she’ll probably tell Miss Minchin if I don’t get it done. I’d better run upstairs and fetch it.”
She left Louisa muttering to anyone who would listen, and darted into the hallway, wondering where Sally would have gone after the schoolroom. Perhaps the salon, where dancing would be? The fire in there would need to be built up. She peered round the door, and then sped in, seeing Sally warming her greyed hands at the fire.
“What is it? What was that look for?”
“You’ll never guess.” Sally’s face was alight with news. “They smashed up Pontings!”
“Pontings?” Lottie frowned – it sounded familiar. “Oh! That shop in Kensington High Street.” Miss Amelia had taken her there to choose fabrics for her dresses.
“Drapers – dress fabrics and ribbons and all that.” Sally nodded. “They smashed the windows, every one. Great huge cracks in them, Mary said.”
“Suffragettes?” Lottie whispered.
“Who else?” Sally muttered scornfully. “You’re right, you know. What you said months back. People only listen if you break things up.”
“Maybe.” Lottie thought of the pretty shop and all the girls who worked there. How must they have felt, seeing stones smash into their windows?
“They did a whole load, all over Lon
don, couple of days ago,” Sally went on. “All the big shops down Oxford Street. Three hundred Suffragettes, Lottie.” Then she sat back on her heels and started to laugh. “And you’ll never guess what some of them used to break the glass.”
Lottie stared at her. “Stones, I suppose.”
Sally shook her head, still giggling. “Toffee hammers! You know, those little hammers you use to break up blocks of toffee. The police said so – it’s in Cook’s paper. I mean, some stones too. But they say a smartly-dressed lady went to a shop and bought twenty-four toffee hammers, last month. Maybe she didn’t know where else to buy a hammer? They must have been planning this for ages.”
Lottie shook her head disbelievingly. “I wonder what she said she wanted them for.” She started to giggle too. “That’s an awful lot of toffee.”
“Lottie!”
The two girls whirled round, Sally half-falling backwards to the floor and spilling the coal out of the scuttle. Automatically, Lottie started to help her pick it up, snatching at a piece of coal rolling by her foot, but a disapproving hiss from Miss Minchin made her drop it again. “What do you think you’re doing? Come out of here at once. Sally, hurry up and finish your work. I will speak to you later.”
Miss Minchin caught Lottie by the wrist and hustled her out of the salon and across the hallway to her own sitting room. It was a dark sort of room, with heavy padded armchairs and a black marble fireplace. “Do you have a taste for low company, Lottie?” she snapped. “Do I need to write to your father and tell him that? What on earth were you doing, sitting there laughing with the scullery maid, as if you were friends? Well? Answer me at once!”
“I … I— ” Lottie wanted to snap that Sally was her friend, more than any of the other girls at the seminary, even Ermengarde. Almost more her friend than Sara was. She and Sally saw each other every day, they talked together, they shared ideas. She only saw Sara every week or so, and Sara had always been more like a loving older sister than a friend her own age.
But if she let out how much time she had been spending with Sally, the maid would probably lose her place. Would she be sent back to the Girls’ Village? Lottie wasn’t really sure. She would certainly be in disgrace – even more so than she was already. “I was looking for the sash to my dancing dress,” she lied, stumbling over the words. “I thought I might have left it in the salon after our last dancing class. That’s all.”
“Nonsense, you were clearly talking to the maid.”
“I only asked her if she’d seen my sash.” Lottie widened her eyes and gazed innocently up at Miss Minchin. “I don’t know where it is, Miss Minchin, and it’s my best blue one. It came undone and I don’t want to have lost it.”
Miss Minchin glared at her. “I shall be keeping my eye on you, Lottie. Your father has entrusted you to my care. He would not be at all happy to find out that you were hobnobbing with the servants.”
“No, Miss Minchin,” Lottie agreed. “Shall I go and ask Miss Amelia about my sash? Perhaps she’s seen it?”
“Go,” Miss Minchin snapped. “Be quick about it.”
Lottie hurried down the hallway to the stairs. When she glanced back from the landing, she saw that Miss Minchin was standing in the hall watching her, but in the doorway behind the mistress was Sally, smiling.
“I wish I could do something too,” Lottie murmured, throwing The Suffragette newspaper on to Sally’s bed and marching up and down the tiny attic room.
Lottie’s twelfth birthday had passed much like her eleventh, with gifts from her father chosen by Miss Minchin and Miss Amelia. Lottie had not even asked him to visit her this time. Sara had given her a beautiful bracelet, but Lottie far preferred the green, white and purple rosette that Sally had handed to her so shyly, digging it out of her apron pocket on the stairs. She knew how much Sally must have saved to buy it.
“I’m thirteen next month. You were only twelve when you started working here. I hate being shut up at school and taught French and dancing and never anything the least bit useful.”
“At least I taught you how to lay a fire. Sit down, Lottie, you’re making me tired, striding about like that. I was up before six.” Sally swallowed a massive yawn.
“It’s nearly two years that I’ve known about the WSPU, and all I’ve ever done is read a newspaper and give my pocket money to collections. And even that you have to do for me, because I’m never allowed out alone. There are women doing amazing things. Don’t you think I could do something for the cause? If I was careful?” Lottie pleaded. “We could at least sneak out and go to a meeting, couldn’t we?”
Sally laughed. “Of course you couldn’t! Only time I get’s my afternoon off. You couldn’t come out with me then, you’d be missed at tea. If Miss Minchin or Miss Amelia didn’t catch you, one of the other girls would let on. You’d never get away with it.”
Lottie slumped back on to the bed. “And what if I didn’t get away with it?” she said quietly. “What if I got caught? What would happen?”
“Miss Minchin would write to your father, I suppose. He’d be furious – like you said. That was why you started all this, wasn’t it? You wanted to put one over on him.”
“That was only how it started,” Lottie said swiftly. “It means so much more than that now.” Then she added, without looking at Sally, “But if I made him angry, at least he’d be thinking about me.”
Sally clicked her tongue. “You want him to come to London and shout at you? What good would that do? What if he takes you back to your great big palace of a house, where you won’t even be allowed to go out of the grounds? How’d you get the newspaper, then? You’d be worse off, not better.”
“And I’d never see you either,” Lottie agreed. “I suppose you’re right. Then we’d just better not get caught.”
It was easy to say, but Sally was right. Lottie couldn’t sneak out to a Suffragette meeting, she was far too closely watched. The only time she was free was now, when all the girls were supposed to be asleep.
I was up before six.
Or early in the morning, before the rest of the house was awake. When Sally went downstairs to light the kitchen stove and get everything ready for when Cook came down.
“Is the door that leads out to the area steps locked at night?” Lottie asked suddenly.
“Of course it is – but the key’s on a hook next to it. Why?”
“So we could get out!” Lottie’s eyes had brightened. “I was thinking that we’d never be able to, because Miss Minchin keeps the key to the front door, but of course there’s the kitchen door as well. I’d never thought of that! Early in the morning, Sally, before everyone else is up – you’re up then, anyway, and you could wake me, couldn’t you?”
“And what are we going to do, once we’re out of the kitchen door at six in the morning?” Sally asked, frowning.
“I don’t know yet.” Lottie sighed. “There must be something.”
“I’m not breaking windows,” Sally said flatly. “Or setting anything on fire. Burning down that church – that was wrong. I’m not even setting a postbox on fire, I don’t see why that helps anybody.”
Lottie leaned against the wall, gazing at the sloping ceiling. “I know, but … if no one listens any other way, maybe it’s right,” she murmured. “It’s a war, Mrs Pankhurst keeps saying so in all her speeches. Suffragettes have to use the weapons of war. They blew up the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s house! With a bomb, like real soldiers. If a man did that, he’d be a hero.”
“I don’t see why putting a bomb in a half-built house makes you a hero,” Sally said stubbornly. “At least it was empty. How can Suffragettes be heroes if hundreds of people who had nothing to do with the cause get hurt! They put bombs in that theatre in Dublin last year too, Lottie, a packed theatre. Just because they wanted to catch the prime minister. I don’t like him either, but I don’t think anyone should be trying to kill him – and what about the people in the audience? They never did nothing wrong!”
“Are you giving u
p?” Lottie demanded.
“No … I still think women should have the vote – but not like this. You said people only listened when things got broken. I don’t want to win like that. And I don’t think it’ll work either.”
“Women have been asking for the vote for years and years, campaigning and writing and making speeches. No one listened! They’re listening now, aren’t they? Deeds not Words.”
Sally shook her head. “No. They think all Suffragettes are violent and mad. No one’s listening to the words at all, Lottie, they’re just angry. Frightened.”
Lottie sighed. “I’d just like to do something, like Miss Spark and Mrs Shaw, capturing the Monument. They didn’t hurt anyone, only flew the WSPU colours off the flagpole. Hundreds of people came and watched. It was in all the papers. People noticed.”
“What are you going to do, take over the Albert Hall?”
“There must be something,” Lottie murmured. “Would you write on the pavement?”
“Write what?”
“‘Votes for Women’? Maybe some of the other slogans we’ve seen in The Suffragette. In chalk.”
“Like they advertise the meetings in chalk messages?” Sally nodded. “That can’t hurt anyone. If we’re careful, I suppose. I can’t lose my place, Lottie. I don’t want to go back to the Girls’ Village – and I don’t know if they’d even take me, now I’m not far off fourteen. If Miss Minchin sends me away and she don’t give me a reference, I won’t have anywhere to go.”
“Maybe you’d better not, it’s too risky. But I could do it.”
Sally stared at her hands for a moment. “No. You’re right. We should do something real. Is there coloured chalk in the schoolroom?”
Lottie nodded. “I’ll find some tomorrow in the cupboard. The day after, then?”
“Where are we going to do it?” Sally asked. “It’ll have to be somewhere close, if we’re to get back before we’re missed.”
“Here! It’s perfect. Anyone who walks past will notice, because they can see from the sign outside that this is a girls’ school. It’ll be funny. And just think how furious Miss Minchin will be.”
