I do not know if it is because I live in such fine conditions now, but the house seemed to me dirtier and smellier than I had ever remembered it. There were the baby’s soiled rags just dumped on the kitchen floor with flies buzzing round them. The pans were stacked up dirty in the sink, and a sack of rotting carrots in the corner which, I swear, were there the last time I was home.
Ma was in the front with Ann asleep in her arms. The back door, having broken its hinge, slammed shut behind me and I was fearful it would wake the baby, but she hardly stirred.
Ma looked up and smiled when she saw me. ‘Maggie.’
‘Yes. Ma, I’m sorry I’ve not been home before, but we have been rushed off our feet, truly. Mrs Pethick Lawrence has a grand scheme to raise twenty thousand pounds, can you believe? So we must write to everyone who ever breathed.’
Ma nodded. ‘Twenty thousand pounds is a lot of money.’
‘More than there is in the world, I shouldn’t wonder. I wish I had it.’
‘It would be a fine thing.’ She shifted the baby and I saw that she had a great mucky bruise on her arm.
‘How did you come by that, Ma?’
‘What? Oh, this. It’s nothing.’
‘Did Pa do it?’
‘No. No. I don’t know what it is – I seem to bruise so easy these days. Mrs Grant says I lack iron in my blood. But what’s to do about that, except keep munching lumps of coal? And they’re more use on a fire than in my belly.’
I sat down. ‘I’ll ask Miss Annie. She’ll know what will mend you. I’ve a mutton pie and turnips for our dinner, and a baked custard for after. And here.’ I gave her three pounds that I had saved.
‘Oh, Maggie, you mustn’t give me all your money. You’ll have nothing to live on.’
‘I will. Mrs Garrud feeds me like she’s fattening me for Christmas, and my lunch is never above a sixpence. That’s with a jam tart.’
‘You’re a good girl, Maggie. I’m glad it’s turning out well for you.’
I felt a great slap of guilt to be so fortunate, and my own mother sitting in this tip. ‘I’ll get the dinner on. What time will Pa be in?’
‘Four o’clock, he said. Alfie’s with him.’
‘Where’re Evelyn and Will?’
‘Lucy took them to the park.’
I was relieved to hear that. ‘Is she being better now, Ma?’
Ma was quiet for a moment. ‘It’s not easy for her, living here.’
‘It’s not easy for anyone. That doesn’t mean she needn’t help, and go round acting like it’s everyone else’s fault. If she minds so much she should come to the meetings and learn how to do something about it.’
Ma shook her head. ‘She’s a child, Maggie. You can’t ask her to see things as you do.’
‘I was a child when you sent me to Park Walk.’
‘I meant it for the best, Maggie. Surely you know that now?’
‘Yes, I do now, but that’s because I’m grown up.’ Ma smiled and looked down at the baby who was stirring. ‘And,’ I went on, ‘Lucy could have had my post at the Roes but that she was too lazy and stupid to take it.’
Ma sighed. ‘She’s not like you, Maggie. You’re the clever one. None of the others could have done what you have, with help or without. Even Frank…’
‘Yes, and that’s another thing. I cannot bear how she talks of Frank as though…as though…’ I stopped for Ma was staring at me, almost like she was afraid. I took a breath. ‘It is so long since I have seen him, Ma.’
She looked away. ‘It’s better that way.’
My heart was thumping. ‘Why do you say that?’
Ma wiped her hand across her forehead. ‘Maggie, I am not well. Please believe me, it is for your own good. I want you to have a chance in life. Away from all this. Away from…what it brings with it. Frank is part of that. He is my son and I love him more than my life, but I know him. I know what he is like. He must be best. If he sees how you are bettering yourself, learning so many things, earning a good wage, mixing with important people, he will dislike it. He will try to drag you back.’
Her words cut through me. I had always thought she loved him best.
‘How can you say that? How can you speak so ill of your own son?’
‘Because he is my son. And because he is like his father.’ She slumped back in her chair as though a ton weight was lying on her. ‘He is so very like his father.’
I do not think that Ma and I had ever had so long a conversation in our lives.
I watched her drag her feet across the room to fetch the baby’s milk. From behind she could have been my gran. Why are you so old? I wanted to cry out. Why can’t you be like Mrs Pankhurst? So elegant and beautiful. She has grown up children, too. How can I be proud of you when you are so…worn out by life?
I managed to clean up a bit before dinner. I washed the pans and put the baby’s clothes to boil, then swept the floor and flung the carrots out into the yard for dogs or rats to get them. Ma sat on with the baby, one asleep, the other dozing. How they managed it with all the clattering and clanging, I could not fathom.
Pa and Alfie were quite merry when they came in and the two of them fell to chuckling about nothing at all, as far as I could tell, like a pair of buffoons.
The dinner was almost ready when Lucy appeared. She looked flushed and more so when she saw me. At first I thought she had left the little ones to find their own way, but they came in just after, very quiet and Evelyn’s face muddy with tears. She ran to me and I swept her up in a great big hug, whereupon Will let out a great big howl, which was only to be expected.
I said, ‘How are you, Lucy?’ for I thought I should try to mend the fences between us from last time.
‘I’m very well.’
Pa asked what I had been up to, to stay away so long.
‘Maggie has a lot of work. She cannot come and go as it pleases her,’ Ma said quickly.
‘Why should it please her to come here at all?’ Lucy retorted. ‘She doesn’t come because she’s ashamed of us. Not because she is working.’
There was a silence. Alfie began to giggle. Pa’s face had gone very red. I thought he would belt her and serve her right. The two of them sat there staring at each other, Lucy bold as a parrot, giving him glare for glare. Ma glanced across at me. She looked as though she would sink into the ground if she could.
‘I’m sorry if that’s what you think, Lucy,’ I said. ‘If it was true I wouldn’t be here now.’
Pa looked somewhat calmer. He took a great swig of beer. ‘You mind your manners to your sister, Lucy,’ he said. ‘Or she won’t bring you no more presents.’
‘I’ve got you a book,’ I told her.
‘I don’t need presents from you. I can get presents any time.’
Good, I thought, for that’s the last you’ll get, you little cat. ‘That’s nice.’
Fortunately the baby started crying and Ma got up to her. I brought in the custard tart but somehow it didn’t taste so fine to me as usual. I suppose when you are not starving you notice more the manner of your mealtimes – how people eat, their conversation, the way they are to each other. I could not but think how I would sooner share a plate of grass with Fred than a Savoy dinner with my own family.
Alfie helped me clear up. I would rather he had not for he kept dropping things and giggling like an idiot, but it was good of him to offer so the two of us (two and a half, for little Evelyn was hanging round my heels like she was stuck to them) battered against each other till all the dishes were clean or broken.
Afterwards Alfie showed me a wooden box he had made to keep his money in. ‘No one can have it,’ he told me. ‘All mine, I did it.’ I said it was very fine and I wished I had one like it. This pleased him mightily. ‘I can make you one.’
‘Thank you, Alfie. I would really like that.’ I had not meant him to start that moment, but off he went to look for his hammer and soon there was banging and sawing and crashing fit to wake the dead.
Evelyn sho
wed me a picture she had coloured at Sunday School. It was of an angel floating over a lake with a great loaf of bread under its arm. ‘It’s a manna from heaven,’ she whispered. ‘It’s for you.’
Will gave me a tooth that had been knocked out when he fell over the curb stone. I was sorry he had lost it so soon, especially as it looked to be the only good one in his mouth, but I gave him a piece of barley sugar I had been saving till goodbye time and he seemed to think it fair exchange. I only hope he won’t go knocking out the rest to get more sweetmeats.
I asked Ma if I could wash the baby for her. Although Ann is my sister, I seem to have had so little to do with her, and yet she should be all the more precious to me for she is named after someone I truly admire.
Evelyn wanted to help and kept trying to wash the baby’s hair (she cannot get enough of hair-washing since Miss Annie’s visit). Ann did not like this much and mewed like a drowning kitten but apart from that seemed content enough. She is thriving on the cow’s milk which is just as well because I doubt Ma has the strength to suckle her as things are.
It grew time for me to leave and I knew I could not delay speaking to Lucy any longer. I asked Ma where she was. She jerked her head towards the ceiling. ‘Maggie, please be…don’t… I can manage. Truly. Mrs Grant comes round…’
‘I have to speak Lucy, Ma. Not just about the house. About…other things.’’
Ma sank back like someone who knows she cannot win.
Lucy was sitting by the window threading beads on to a string. She looked up as I came in and then continued with her task.
‘Lucy, I have to talk to you about something. Now you are thirteen you are on the way to being grown up.’ I thought this might please her, but she merely carried on threading. ‘I have to tell you about babies,’ I burst out, thinking the sooner it was done the sooner I could go and catch my bus.
She did look up now, frowning. ‘Babies?’
‘Yes. When you don’t have them. It happens when you are grown up, like me. You get a bleeding – between your legs. It hurts a bit, and you get a sore belly, but then it goes again. Till the next month. It happens every month.’
Lucy was staring at me as though I was completely mad. ‘Why?’
I had no idea why. ‘I don’t know. If you like I will ask at the office, and then next time I come I can tell you.’
‘Does Ma get it?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know. She keeps having babies, so maybe she doesn’t. I don’t know.’
Lucy was staring out of the window. ‘It won’t happen to me.’
‘It will. It happens to all women unless they are having babies. It stops for that.’
Lucy turned to me. ‘I don’t believe you. What do you know about anything? You don’t even know about babies, where they come from.’
I could feel myself burning up. ‘I do so. I know exactly where they come from.’
‘Oh, yes. “Ezekiel begat Simeon, begat Daniel, begat Josiah…” Every Sunday. Mrs Beckett telling us how we must study our Bibles and try to be like Maggie Robins who is going up in the world. Up, up, up. Not like her stupid sister, Lucy, who cannot be fussed to learn a load of psalms and prayers and so has to stay living in a street full of rats and fleas with one brother daft and another…’
‘Another what? What are you talking about? And don’t call Alfie daft. Just because he has trouble with some things. He’s made a fine box for his money, and he’s making me one at this minute.’ Lucy gave a snort. I could dearly have clouted her. ‘Answer me. Another…what? Will’s a whiner. We all know that.’
She frowned as though she had never heard the name before. ‘Will? I didn’t mean Will. It’s Frank I was talking about.’
I ripped the beads out of her hand and threw them all over the floor.
When I went downstairs Alfie had finished my box. It was just like his. Without a lid.
I thought all the way back on the omnibus about what Lucy had said. It is true I do not understand how babies get there. I only know how they don’t. And that is the bleeding. I know you cannot have one without a man and that the man must put it inside you, but where does he get it from? And how can it breathe? Perhaps it does not need to breathe in your belly, though when Will was born he wailed as if he’d been holding his breath from the second he got in there. He’s hardly stopped since.
I will ask Miss Sylvia if I can borrow her animal books again for I remember they had a picture of a lion with her cubs, so maybe it will tell me how she got them.
My head is so packed with questions, sometimes I think they will burst right out of me and smother me. I am so ignorant. I had thought books would teach me everything, but all they teach me is how little I know, and how much everyone else does. It is like swimming in mud and I cannot even swim.
Still, I have my work. When my mind gets too stuffed with worrying I bury myself in that, for I know now what I am doing and really I begin to think even Miss Lake finds me useful, although she would rather die than say so. And we are so busy.
Miss Christabel says we must all offer suggestions for how to advance the Cause, to which end she insists we read a newspaper every day, and two on Saturday. This was a struggle for me at first, not because of the words, but because of the way they are put together, which often seemed to me a great mishmash with nothing determined and a lot of ink wasted. Also, if you read one paper it will tell you we have the finest politicians on earth and in another it will say we should get rid of each and every one of them. How can you know what to believe?
I asked Miss Lake but she just shrugged and said, ‘Think, Maggie. Use your brain. That’s what it’s for.’ My poor brain will be worn out in a sixmonth at this rate. Besides, when I see what thinking does for some of the ladies I wonder if it is such a good idea after all, for there has been a mighty quarrel among the leaders. A mighty, mighty quarrel.
Truly sometimes it seems the greater our success, the greater the discontent it carries with it. I cannot understand it. Money is rolling in. Membership grows and grows. You would think everyone would be happy. Are they? Not at all.
It began slowly. A meeting which started orderly as a church service would end in raised voices (very raised!). I think perhaps some had got so used to bellowing on the streets that it came as natural to carry on indoors if they thought their opinions were not being attended to.
At first the quarrels were about little things – who should be in charge of the pamphlets or who order the programmes, but after a while I noticed the ladies did not smile so much and started to gather in twos and threes to murmur with each other when the meeting closed. Miss Sylvia saw it too, and tried with all her might to persuade them to speak out, to no avail. It took Miss Christabel to bring matters into the open and though she won the day, I think there were many wished it had never come to such a pass, including her own sister.
A special meeting was called. Miss Kerr and I were to take notes. It was a Friday evening. Sweltering. All week long the sun had blazed down without a pause, boiling, endless. Our heads ached, our clothes stuck to us like wet rags. The sky was the colour of brass. Like a furnace. Everything, everyone seemed drained. Even the air smelt like ten people had breathed it first – heat, perspiration, Parma violets – but when we opened the windows the stink from the river poured in like gas so we must slam them shut again.
As the ladies arrived we handed each a sheet of paper:
AGENDA
1) Miss Christabel Pankhurst to open meeting.
2) Mrs Pankhurst to address assembly.
3) Resolution.
They sat in rows, all gloved and hatted like they were attending a funeral – which, I suppose, in a way they were. Nobody spoke, but even in that silence you could feel this great dark swirl of anger. Truly, I feared that night for Miss Christabel and her mother. How little I knew!
At a quarter past seven Miss Christabel appeared, fresh as a daisy in a pale green dress with white embroidered trim. ‘Good evening, ladies. I hope I have not kept you wa
iting?’
Since they had been there a good half hour, half of them wearing velvet, there was a bit of a rumbling.
Miss Christabel passed quickly on. ‘Let us get to the point. It is my understanding that certain of you have been unhappy with decisions made by myself and my mother on your behalf. May I remind you that the purpose of the WSPU is to promote and advance the cause of women’s franchise by whatever means we deem necessary? Are you saying we have not done this? That we have in some way failed in our duty to the Cause? If this is so, please do make our failings known to us that we may strive to remedy them with the utmost speed and diligence. It is, after all, difficult sometimes to orchestrate matters as one might wish from behind prison bars.’
She paused, smiling so patiently at those damp pink faces. No one spoke. ‘Am I to take it that you are satisfied, then, with our conduct as your leaders? In which case I suggest you ratify the resolution to be put before you, confirming your acceptance of our continuing authority, and then I shall be more than happy to close the meeting and let us all escape this appalling heat which I can see is causing a degree of distress to so many of you.’
I had thought that would be the end of it and was starting to put my notes away when Mrs Despard stood up, calm, cool as a statue in her black lace robes. ‘If I may address the meeting…?’
Miss Christabel smiled. ‘Of course, Mrs Despard. That is what meetings are for.’ I wondered about that, for I have heard her silence others for asking just such permission.
Mrs Despard turned to face the meeting. ‘First, may I say that there can be no doubt in my mind nor, I am sure, in any other member’s, that the contribution of both Miss Pankhurst and her mother to the cause of women’s suffrage and our fight for equality cannot be overestimated.’
Several ladies murmured, ‘Hear, hear.’
Crooked Pieces Page 15
