He told me about his sister, Clara. How she has a beautiful singing voice but may not use it for her father says music is a vanity.
‘Surely not church music?’
‘Yes, anything. Plain, everything must be plain and simple. That way sin cannot get a foothold, he says. Why are you smiling?’
‘I was just thinking he should meet the chaplain at Aylesbury who found sin in every breath we took and every blade of grass we trod upon, and there’s not much plainer than a prison.’
‘Well, that’s the sort of righteousness that drove the Quakers away in the first place. They grew tired of being preached at by hypocrites who only got their office by preferment and cared about as much for Christ’s teachings as the people who killed him.’ He looked quite agitated. ‘Would you like another ice?’
I blushed for I had eaten mine very fast. ‘No, thank you. It was so lovely I was afraid that it would melt.’
Fred smiled. ‘That’s no reason not to have another.’
This time we had vanilla. I was so stuffed I could hardly stand when it was time to go.
‘Would you like to walk a little?’ he asked. Though it was cool, the breeze had died, so I said, yes, I thought I should. He gave me his arm again and I thought how someone looking from the tearoom might think that we were sweethearts. This made me feel most funny.
We strolled across the grass. There was the great grey elephant standing stock-still in its cage, its mighty ears spread open like sails to catch the wind. It had not moved.
I said, ‘It’s as though it’s listening.’
‘And watching.’
‘Yes. Waiting for something.’
‘Like a bun coming over the bars?’
I laughed. ‘Maybe. Or something a bit more exciting.’
‘Two buns. It’ll have a long wait.’
‘Elephants don’t mind waiting. They live so long it doesn’t matter.’
‘Lucky old them,’ said Fred. ‘I hate waiting. I like things to happen when I want them to.’
‘So do I. I do hope we get the vote soon. There are so many laws I should like passed.’
‘What laws?’
‘Oh, hundreds. Free hospitals, free schools, free buns for elephants…’
‘How about votes for elephants?’
I laughed. ‘Why not? They’ve got bigger brains than men have.’
‘Yes, and they’d be a lot harder to arrest.’
He asked me what it had been like in prison. I told him how frightened I had been at first but that after a while it just got boring.
‘I read that some of the women were made very ill by it.’
‘Yes, but they were ladies, you see. Not used to such conditions. For me it was not much worse than home except the warders, who are harder than bailiffs, some of them.’
‘Still, I do not like to think of you in a cell, Maggie.’
‘No more do I, but if it is for the Cause, I have no choice.’
‘You do have a choice,’ he said most firmly. ‘You can choose not to be involved in what can only bring you to trouble.’
‘“Stay home and mind my hearth”, you mean?’ (This is what Miss Sylvia says to stir the women to action).
‘Is that so wrong?’
‘It is if you haven’t got one, like half the women of England.’
‘I see you have been well schooled by your employers.’
This riled me. ‘My employers are also my friends. They are not all rich fine ladies, you know. Mrs Drummond has a whole family to look after, and Miss Annie was a mill girl herself. They are fighting for justice, that is all. For people like me and your sister.’
Fred lowered his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I was wrong to speak as I did. Of course you must fight for what you believe in. It’s just – it just seems to me that you have taken on too much. The Government will not give in and a few hundred women marching will not change a single thing.’
‘If a single person can make a difference, how much more can a few hundreds?’
He frowned. ‘Is that what Miss Sylvia says as well? Or is it Miss Christabel, or Mrs Pankhurst?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s what I say.’
We walked a while in silence and I wondered if I should leave go his arm now we had quarrelled so badly, but when I went to wriggle my hand away he took hold of it with his and looked straight down into my eyes. ‘Am I to be forgiven?’
I said I thought it was I who was in disgrace.
‘Why? For standing up for your beliefs? That is what I admire about you most.’
I felt quite tingly. ‘Yes, but you do not agree with them.’
‘Not all of them, but that doesn’t make me right and you wrong.’
I looked up at him amazed. For a man who had bought me two ices and a cake, to let himself be so countered! ‘Perhaps we are both right?’
Fred laughed. ‘Perhaps. Or both wrong. Either way I must take you home or it will be midnight and the ladies will come looking for you and beat me with their umbrellas.’
‘They will have no need of that for I am trained in self-defence.’
‘Really?’ He looked mightily surprised.
‘Mrs Garrud, where I lodge, teaches it. It is from Japan where everyone is yellow,’ I explained.
He stopped dead and, seizing both my hands, asked most earnestly, ‘And will all this fighting turn you yellow, too, Maggie?’
For a moment I thought he was serious, then I saw that his beautiful green-brown eyes were dancing.
‘Strawberry ices can prevent it, I have heard,’ I told him.
Fred gave my hands a real strong squeeze. ‘Then it shall be my duty to supply them. Shall you last till next Sunday, do you think?’
I am the happiest person alive.
There has been violence in the north. One of our speakers was knocked unconscious by a marble thrown by a lout (paid for by the Liberals, Miss Annie said). She is all right now, but every day there are mobs of stupid useless youths hurling rotten eggs and fruit at our women. The police do nothing to prevent it. Miss Christabel said it was all to the good for the local people think such behaviour wicked, and have turned out all the more to give support. I can understand her reasoning, but I still should not like to be knocked senseless by a marble, or a rotten egg, for that matter.
Mrs Pethick Lawrence has worked miracles in the office. We now have a separate department, The Women’s Press, for selling pamphlets, badges, postcards and photographs of the leaders, as well as books explaining the Cause. Miss Knight has come to take charge of it and on Thursdays I am her assistant. If we are not busy she talks to me about government things, and lets me read the books so that I really begin to understand how much we are seeking to achieve. The more I learn the more I wonder if it can ever be done, for there are women who have been campaigning for nigh on fifty years and still see so little progress. Is this to be my whole life’s work?
Just when I was feeling truly crushed by it all, into the office burst Miss Christabel, sparkling as a shooting star. ‘Look at this! Look at this! Look at this!’ Great big photograph of Miss Annie being carried shoulder high through a crowd of cheering miners. SUFFRAGETTES SWEEP ALL BEFORE THEM ran the headline. ‘What do you think of that, Maggie? Where shall we display it, do you think? On the wall? On the window? How about Big Ben?’
In five minutes I was back up again. I said so to Miss Sylvia. She nodded. ‘My sister is a very remarkable creature. My mother, too.’ Probably I was wrong but I fancied she looked a bit sad as she spoke. She has had to leave her painting course. The Cause takes too much of her time and she told me if she could not attend to it properly, she would as soon not do it at all.
Though she works all day and into the night, I think she misses it greatly, for I remember how with a brush in her hand, she looked as if she was in another world, full of calm and peace. And there is certainly none of that in Clement’s Inn!
She asked if I was glad to have left being in service. I said, yes, mightily, though I still
miss Cook and Mr and Mrs Roe, for they are the finest people in the world. She agreed. ‘But nothing is wasted, Maggie, for if you were to marry…’ here I was attacked of a coughing fit, ‘…there is no harm in being able to cook.’
I said my ma was a very good cook and could make a feast of a pig’s cheek and a potato. This is not entirely true, for she tends to forget about it once it is stewing and often the dinner boils over. Miss Sylvia asked if I had been home lately. I said, no, I had been much occupied with sending out the circulars. She looked quite anxious.
‘Maggie, you must not give over your free days to your work. I will speak to Mrs PL. You shall go home next Sunday, for sure.’ I felt quite sick.
‘If it please, miss, I should like not to go home next Sunday, if it can be arranged.’
Miss Sylvia looked a lot surprised. ‘Why not, Maggie?’
‘Because… I think I may be unwell, and little Ann being so tiny…’
‘Ah. Well, perhaps the one after. I’m sure your handsome bobby will understand.’
I went redder than ox blood. How is it people always know about your business when you particularly do not wish them to?
‘I didn’t mean to interfere,’ she went on, noting my discomfort. ‘I just think it’s important to stay in touch with your family.’
‘It is. I do…want to. I will go soon, I promise. It is just I had sort of made an arrangement… I do not like to let people down.’
‘No, of course not. You are right. Families must not always be put before friends, much as they would like it.’
I thought this a strange thing to say, for I have always been told otherwise. ‘But would you not put your mother and sister above all others?’ I asked.
Miss Sylvia glanced at me, half ashamed. ‘If they needed me, of course I should, but sometimes they expect me to fall in with their plans, no matter the inconvenience. And that, I think, is…unnecessary. Besides I have another sister and a brother. Are they not equal claimants to my time?’
‘It is hard when you have a big family,’ I agreed.
‘Has your young man got brothers and sisters?’
I told her about Fred’s sister who may not sing. She said she thought that sad, but that Quakers were generally very good people. She asked me how Fred could be a policeman and a Quaker, so I told her he had left it.
‘What does his father say to that?’
‘I think he is unhappy, but Fred likes music and painting and all things that are forbidden by the Quakers. He especially likes painting,’ I added. ‘He took me to a gallery.’
‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘Yes, of course, but I told him they were nowhere as good as your paintings.’
Miss Sylvia laughed. ‘I’m sure they were.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘They were not. And Fred and I had a right falling out over it.’
‘Goodness. I hope I was not the cause of a quarrel between you.’
‘No, no. It was all right. He said he liked me to state my own feelings and stand by them. It was what he liked best about me.’
Miss Sylvia smiled. ‘He sounds a very astute young man.’
I had no idea what that meant, but was certain it was good. I should so like her to meet him. I am sure they would be friends.
This Sunday it was fine and sunny. We went to Hyde Park and strolled for miles and miles round it. It must be bigger than some counties, for you can walk for a whole hour and not see the same tree twice.
We talked and talked. It was as though we had known each other forever. Fred is nineteen. I am amazed. I had thought him at least twenty. He lives in rooms with a Mrs Blackett, north of Marylebone. She is a widow and a dreadful cook, he says. He thinks she may have poisoned her husband, not on purpose, with her suet pudding. I was pleased to tell him I could cook most things, including biscuits.
‘Perhaps you will cook me a meal one day?’ he asked rather wistfully.
‘Yes, if Mrs Garrud allows it. I should have to ask.’
‘Yes, of course.’
He told me Mrs Blackett has a daughter of thirty-seven who works in one of the great shops in Oxford Street. ‘She says she is a buyer, but somehow I don’t believe it.’
I said I thought it was strange to buy things from your own shop.
Fred laughed. ‘Buyers buy things for customers to buy. How else do you think they stock the shelves?’
I had not thought of that.
He says Mrs Blackett wants him to marry her daughter. This unsettled me. ‘And are you going to?’
He burst out laughing. ‘Not unless she knocks me out and dopes me. Besides Miss Blackett has been looking for a husband for the past twenty years, I would guess, but never found anyone quite to her taste.’
‘She must be very particular,’ I said, meaning ‘fit for Bedlam’.
‘Well, there you are. A humble policeman is not much of a catch, is he?’
I said I did not know and, fortunately, tripped over a sticking up root so did not have to continue. Fred caught my arm.
Our conversation turned to Mrs Garrud’s fighting classes, for she teaches us how to fall down and not be hurt by it. Fred was most interested. In the police they learn self-defence, he says, but it is mostly hitting people with a truncheon and blowing a whistle to summon assistance, so he does not think it can be half so useful as what I do.
‘What made you want to be a policeman?’ I asked.
He thought for a bit. ‘I liked the uniform.’
‘Surely that was not all?’ Though thinking how much I love my office clothes I could hardly blame him.
He smiled. ‘No. Lots of reasons. I had an idea I wanted to serve my country.’
‘Why did you not join the army?’
He shrugged. ‘There are other ways of serving your country than charging around killing people.’
‘Why else? You said there were lots of reasons?’
‘To get away from home, mainly, I suppose. I was suffocating. The village is so small and everyone there knew my father. I felt as though I was being judged all the time, compared with him and his achievements. And of course, I could never measure up.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ I said with perhaps more feeling than I should have done.
He glanced at me and smiled. ‘Also I heard rumours a beautiful young suffragette was in danger of getting lost in Downing Street and might need rescuing.’
I blushed very red but could not help myself. ‘If you had not come along then I don’t know what would have happened to me.’
‘Oh I expect some other lucky man would have come to your rescue.’
I shook my head. ‘I doubt it. That tobacconist was all for pushing me under a cab. It was the road sweeper saved me.’
Fred looked quite angry. ‘Why did you not tell me? I would have clapped him in irons.’
‘The road sweeper?’
‘No. The shopkeeper, of course. No, better – I’d have had him lashed to the back of the cab and dragged down Pall Mall and back three times.’
I said, ‘I can see the army would be no place for someone as gentle as you.’
We sat by the river. Some men were diving into the water. They came out mighty quick with their teeth all chattering so it seemed a pretty silly thing to do with Easter not yet on us. A group of young ladies were watching them and clapped like mad, so I suppose that was what drove them in the first place. I was just wondering to myself if I would dive into icy water to catch a man’s eye when Fred asked, ‘Would you like a man the better if he jumped in an icy river for you, Maggie?’
‘Only if I was drowning.’
We laughed ourselves stupid. The bathers gave us a very funny look.
Ma is not well. At first I thought maybe she was starting a new baby, for she looked as sick and yellowy as ever, but when I asked if there was another coming she shook her head. ‘Nor will be, Maggie.’ I was glad for, God knows, she has enough to deal with Alfie and Evelyn and Will and little Ann, and Lucy who is worse than any of th
em.
I had made up my mind that I would try to talk some sense into my sister before I left. I had brought her a book. It was called Enquire Within and stuffed full of ideas, like how to feed a family for sixpence, what to put on a burn, the best cure for flea bites – everything you could need to know, and more besides. I greatly hoped it would have a bit about the bleeding for Lucy is gone thirteen and sure to start it soon, but I could find nothing. I knew I should have to speak to her straight out for I should not like her to find it out as I did – for all the ladies were kind and gave me shortbread. Ma will say nothing, I am sure. I sometimes wonder if she understands herself, or why would she keep having children, which must hurt a good deal more than the bleeding? And if Lucy’s should start when Frank is home… I think he lied about putting a baby in me. I think you have to start the bleeding first. But he knows how to do it. I know he does. And if the fancy takes him…
I wonder if Fred knows how to make a baby. I hope not, for he is the finest man I ever met and I would so love to marry him and be with him forever. But not to have that…to have to…for all Frank says it is a sign of his affection and if I truly love him I will not refuse. I do love him. I am so proud to have a brother that is tall and fine and handsome, when half the men are cripples in my street. To see the girls nudge each other and gaze at me so enviously when we are out. But you cannot live forever at the playhouse, or wandering round the fair in your best clothes. Some time you must go home.
When I was little I believed everything he told me – that I was a fairy he had found in a ditch and brought home to Ma to be her daughter; that he was truly a prince and I was a princess and that one day we would go back to our palace and never be hungry again but I must not tell a living soul. It was our secret. He used to steal potatoes from the market and we would share them when the others were asleep. And when we had eaten the potatoes he would give me a kiss and we would tuck our arms round each other to be warm and pretend we were a king and queen and anything we wanted we could have. It was our secret. And then there was another and another. So many secrets. Only now I hate them.
Crooked Pieces Page 14
