But then, when she slipped out for a walk along the Embankment after their help—old Mrs. Robbins had come with the shopping and could keep an eye on the children—she had an unlooked-for opportunity to read at least part of his speech, the important part, hours before his return. A Star news-vendor was standing opposite Cleopatra's Needle with a contents bill clipped to his board and the legend on the poster read, in handwritten script, "STIR IN COMMONS— LIBERAL PLEDGES SUPPORT FOR SUFFRAGETTES." She fumbled in her purse for the halfpenny, taking the paper across the road to read under one of the globes glowing there beside the plinth.
It was not much of a stir. Whoever scrawled that contents bill must have been desperate for an eye-catching item, but it made her start to see the heavy print of the lead-in that began "Today, in the House of Commons, Mr. Giles Swann, newly elected Member for Pontnewydd, caused a brief uproar during his maiden speech in support of the second reading of the Minimum Wage Bill…" And underneath, a side-heading arrested her eye as it swept down the column, "Liberal Pledges Support for Labour Motion."
She folded the paper, aware of a quickening of her pulse and a painful thumping of her heart, and almost ran back across the Embankment and under Charing Cross arch to the flat. She had a near certainty that he would be there, long before he was expected, and in need of her, but when she let herself in and called, "Giles! Are you there, Giles?" only Mrs. Robbins poked her head over the banister and hissed, "Shsh, M'm! I on'y just got the baby orf… It's his teething, like I said." She waited a moment to regain command of herself, then mounted the stair slowly, holding the newspaper close to her breast.
* * *
He managed to buttonhole Lloyd George in one of the corridors after enquiring for him with mounting desperation.
"You did promise me a few minutes, L.G. Run your eye over it, no… not the first page, that's along the lines you advised… the piece I've written in," and when the Welshman glanced at it, casually at first but then with keen attention, "One of us has to say it, L.G. You think it, but won't make it public. I don't necessarily want your approval, certainly not your official approval. But if you think it's letting you down, I'll wait for Keir Hardie's motion."
"You realise what it implies. For you, I mean, and that's all it concerns really, for you'll not win anyone over at this stage. Not even the odd waverer."
"What would it imply. To me?"
"Any chance of patronage. Now and for a long time to come. No one cares to hear a change in policy so much as hinted at in a maiden speech. They'll forgive dullness, confusion even. But not originality. It doesn't become new boys!"
"You're urging me to take it out?"
"Not necessarily. You know where I stand on the issue, and I was reckoned a firebrand when I first came here. I disappointed them, however. My instinct was to lie low and watch points until I learned my way around."
"And that's your advice to me?"
"If you like, Johnny. Most of them do, you know. What I'm saying is you have to make a deliberate choice between principle and discretion, and that's a choice you must make yourself, without me pointing you one way or the other. What time will you be speaking?"
"Early on. About three-thirty, I was told."
"Well, then, skip the preamble. Take a breath of fresh air in the park and think it over."
He went out into the pale spring sunshine, cutting through Queen Anne's Gate, then across St. James's Gardens to the path circling the lake with its nesting island. The park was all but deserted at this time of day. At the nearer end of the wooden bridge a woman who looked about seventy, probably one of the many professional scrubbers from the Treasury or the Admiralty buildings judging by her cap and sacking apron, was feeding crusts to a small circle of ducks. He stopped to watch, taking in the woman's coarse, reddened hands, swollen finger joints, and badly broken nails, and the abstracted look on the craggy features under the crooked peak of the cap. A square of greaseproofed paper that held her lunch or breakfast lay on the seat behind her, and close by a carpet bag that was almost surely her scrubbing brushes and mopping cloths. His eyes travelled slowly down to the dipping hem of the skirt, noting the broken boots that concealed a fine array of bunions judging by the bulges near the toes. He thought, She's probably worked at scrubbing office floors for sixty-odd years, and she'll stick it another five. After that it'll be the infirmary at best… Then, his glance moving up again as she chirped "Chick-a-dee, chick-adee!" to the swarming ducks, he noticed a ring all but buried in the mottled flesh of her left hand and a burning curiosity to know something of her possessed him. He said, touching his hat, "Good-day. Are these your regulars?"
She turned and looked at him levelly, a hint of mockery in her eyes.
"You could call 'em that. They know me any road. I on'y got to call to 'em. There's a rare lot after it today. That'll be the dripping. They like dripping and I don't alwus 'ave it."
"Bread and dripping. Is that all you bring?"
She looked not so much surprised as mildly outraged. "Lumme, what else on their screw?" and she jerked her head towards the offices in the background. He felt in his pocket and took out a half-a-crown, offering it shyly. She looked hard at it and then up at him. "Nice of yer, gov', and I know yer mean right. But we never begged."
"We?"
"Not me, not Thompson. Nor none o' the kids when I was around to fetch 'em one. I'm working and I've got a room. There's plenty who could use that 'arf-crahn sleeping out on the Embankment."
The rebuke, for he accepted it as such, shamed him. He put the coin back in his pocket, saying, "I'm sorry. Is Thompson your husband?"
"Was. Watchman on Grimshaw's buildin' sites for forty-odd years 'til he caught his death, winter before last. Never missed a night until the bronchitis got 'im. Then lay there worrying about it all the time. I told 'em that when I went to collect the half-week's screw they owed 'im."
"How many family have you?"
"On'y two, now. 'Arry's in the army. Middlesex Reg'ment and he'll sign on for another twelve years if he takes my tip. Minnie's married to a streetlighter and they got five kids. I told both of 'em to watch out lars time I saw 'em. God knows how many working days I lorst wi' kids comin' and goin'. "
"Coming and going?"
"We buried five. 'Churchyard luck' Thompson called it when they went straight orf, tho' he never said it about 'em when they got parst the first stage."
The incredible hardships of their lives, together with their matchless fortitude, struck him like a blow in the stomach. Her age, and still scrubbing. Thompson, gasping his life away and worrying about his job as a night-watchman on around twenty-five shillings a week. Seven children, five dead in infancy. He said, "Have you finished work now?"
"Finished?" She scratched a mole on her chin, a gesture of mild surprise. "Gawd no, Mister. I got me offices in Oxford Street now. I knock orf around four an' go 'ome for me tea an' kipper. Rose'll 'ave it all ready."
"Who is Rose?"
"Another White'all scrubber. We share the room fifty-fifty. Whoever's first back puts the kettle on."
"What time did you start work this morning?"
"Five. I do second floor, Adm'lty. Bin doin' it twenty years now."
"Do you mind telling me how much they pay you?"
"Why should I? Regular rate. Tanner an hour."
Big Ben boomed the hour, and she wiped her hands on her sacking apron. "I gotter go now, Mister. Nice 'avin' a chat. Alwus someone to chat with in the park."
He handed her her carpet bag and touched his hat, and she mocked his gallantry with a jaunty twitch of her cap. He watched her trudge away towards the Mall, her bunions causing her to roll slightly as she put her weight on her heels and the sides of her feet. He thought, She's better than ten sermons and fifty blue books. What the devil do the bishops and the economists know or care about the Mrs. Thompsons? Yet they keep the whole lot of us going, the way the miners do. But miners qualify for a vote! The memory of a recent visit to Henley Regatta returned to him,
the river teeming with blazered young bucks displaying their prowess with the sculls, every man jack among them entitled to a say in who ran the country, although few of them would ever do a full day's work in their lives. Certainly not a day beginning before sunrise. He sat down on the seat where Mrs. Thompson had eaten her dripping sandwiches and reread the paragraph he had shown Lloyd George, hinting at support for Hardie's bill to extend the suffrage to women. It sounded apologetic, an aside in the main purport of the speech that was concerned with the economics of the coalfields. He detached the sheet, took out his pencil, struck it through, and wrote in its place:
And now, at the risk of seeming to introduce an irrelevancy into the argument, I am putting on record, in my first speech to this House, my resolve to fight not merely for a basic minimum wage for the men who dig the nation's coal at the risk of their lives, but the right of their wives to join them in having some small say in the nation's affairs; women now classed, like all women in this so-called free society, as second-class citizens, wise enough to raise the nation's children, strong enough to work upwards of fourteen hours a day, but disqualified, for ever it would seem, from a voice in the future of their children, or the regulation of the rewards of that toil. And I do this in my first speech advisedly, for I believe that every Member of this House, rising to his feet to address it for the first time, should avail himself of the privilege of making an unequivocal declaration of his intentions and the fundamental beliefs that were factors in bringing him here. My intention is to battle for universal social justice in this realm. And my fundamental belief is that all adults attaining maturity should participate in the counsels of the nation. The Honourable Member for Merthyr Tydfil is, I understand, preparing a bill to put that right into the statute book. He will have my unquestioning support, as has the bill before us at this moment.
* * *
They listened to the earlier part of his speech with a mixture of indifference and lazy tolerance. No more than about a hundred and fifty of them and of those, he would judge, about a third either dozing or preoccupied with thoughts of their own. Very few of the front bench were present, but he could see L.G. sitting bolt upright and paying him the compliment due to a protégé. But then, when he came to the sentence admitting irrelevancy, there was a mild flicker of interest, and it struck him that a few of them might be academically interested in the quality of the maiden speeches, much as sixth formers and cricket colours would bestir themselves to watch the performance of a very junior member of the team brought in as a substitute at the last moment.
The flicker widened. He saw one member nudge his neighbour, so that when he came to the passage dealing with his conception of the duty of a newly-elected member to make a declaration of intent, his real audience had increased to about three score. Lloyd George did not stir. He continued to sit bolt upright, intent on not missing a word.
At the mention of the Honourable Member for Merthyr Tydfil's forthcoming bill, a kind of growl rose from the thinly-packed opposition benches, then spread like a flame to the front bench of the Liberals, where he saw the man next to L.G. turn and gesture, without, however, deflecting the Welshman's attention. When he sat down, the response that began as a growl increased to a sustained buzz, and at least two members were on their feet trying to catch the Speaker's eye. From the area of the House where sat the small knot of Labour members came another sound, not a cheer exactly but a vocal stir that might have been a muted chorus of "Hear, hear" and "Bravo."
The moment passed. Somnolence regained possession of the chamber, and he sat down feeling a little foolish yet satisfied, deep within himself, that he had made the gesture… Mrs. Thompson's gesture, really, so that his mind returned to her for a moment, scrubbing her way down the worn stairs of some third- or fourth-storey office block in Oxford Street, knuckles gleaming as she tightened her grip on her brush, sacking apron spattered with suds, her dead husband's cap still at a jaunty angle. The thought made him smile.
An usher was plucking his sleeve and handing him a folded slip of paper. He opened it and recognised L.G.'s writing. The scribble ran:
Some might say you've burned your boats, Johnny, and perhaps you have. But I'll refer you to Stevenson—Alan Breck's defence of the roundhouse, remember? "David, I love you like a brother. And O, man, am I no' a bonny fighter?"
Four
Anniversaries and Occasions
The moment he opened his eyes and, raising himself on his elbow, satisfied himself that Hetty was still asleep, he hoisted himself carefully out of bed, buckled on his leg, and crossed the room to widen the chink of light filtering through a gap in the curtains. He stood by the window gently scratching his chest and noting the promise of another fine day, rare at this time of year. It seemed to him a good omen for, despite close involvement with his affections, he was not anticipating his programme with much pleasure. Strong winter sunshine, of the kind augured by a clear sky over the Weald and the jocund glitter of frost points on the hedges, might help to dissipate the glumness a man of his age had every right to feel at the prospect of lunching two gaolbirds. Especially when his guests happened to be an adopted daughter and a daughter-in-law.
Paradoxically (he had always been known to possess a somewhat eccentric sense of humour) the association of the word "gaolbird" with his kith and kin made him grin. Swann history, so far as he was aware, had no earlier record of gaolbirds, but he thought it probable, if one could have searched diligently, that they had existed, and if this was so it was probable that their offences had been more serious than a refusal to pay a small fine for demonstrating on the doorstep of the Prime Minister. Might have been looting, he told himself, massaging his lower thigh where, on mornings like this, the stump of his leg was tormented by the straps. The word "looting" alerted him in the way the word "gaolbird" had, setting memory bells jingling in the attics of the brain so that he lowered himself on to Hetty's dressing-stool in order to answer them in comfort. He was exploring the nearest attic in a matter of seconds, recovering something that had lain dormant there for a long time. Loot that he himself had acquired fifty years ago this month on a battlefield in India. A ruby necklace of thirty magnificent stones that had, in fact, launched him as a haulier and could therefore be regarded as the original source of all he possessed.
Twenty-nine of the stones had gone their way, some to provide initial capital outlay, others to enrich the Spanish whore his partner Avery had prized until she was murdered by her partner. One remained, set in a ring Henrietta still possessed but only wore on great occasions, although he knew she was attached to it because he had seen her take it from its resting-place in the dressing-table drawer from time to time and contemplate it, remembering, no doubt, an evening over a bivouac fire under the Pennines when he had shown her his loot.
Curiosity stirred in him and after another glance to satisfy himself that she still slept, he opened the drawer, foraged in it, and drew out the ring, holding it between his finger and thumb in a way that made it take fire in the early morning sun. He thought, I wonder if she remembers how I came by it? Or what might have resulted from the discovery that it escaped the clutches of the East India Company by travelling home in the kit of a time-expired lieutenant? His train of thought ran ahead, all the way down the years to the present moment, eight o'clock on a bright January morning in 1908, when he was debating how to tell her that he had persuaded Giles, and his son-in-law, Milton Jeffs, that it was in both their interests to keep away when the girls were turned out from Holloway.
She had taken it hard at the time. All that publicity, all those pictures in the papers and the final shattering news that she had a daughter and daughter-in-law serving time in gaol, but he had found it possible to make allowances for her. She had come a very long way in fifty years. Further than him some would say, for she had always valued the respect of neighbours, an aspect of county life that had never bothered him. As to the girls and their offences, he made very little of that. If they cared to sacrifice their dignity
shouting and brawling outside that priggish chap's house, then good luck to them for it was time somebody pricked the bubble of party complacency. Some of those chaps who had ridden to glory on the Liberal landslide of two years ago already saw themselves as the Lord's Anointed, and all who differed from them as the agents of Baal. He was old enough to understand that politics, especially party politics, were not as clear-cut as that. Even starry-eyed old Giles was beginning to learn this, having been consigned to the wilderness for taking an independent line on women's suffrage.
There remained, however, the placating of Hetty, and he wished with all his heart to spare her the embarrassment that would surely follow his announcement that he had told Giles and Milton he would meet Romayne and Deborah and give them the meal they would need after a month on skilly. For there was surely no sense at all in either husband showing up at the gaol gates. Giles would be recognised by the press, and his presence and relationship to one of the prisoners made public. Milton Jeffs, as a freelance journalist, could not afford personal involvement when the editors he worked for regarded Mrs. Pankhurst and her acolytes as hell-raising harpies, deserving all they got in the way of official correction.
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