"Why not then?"
"I suppose because I never did derive pleasure from playacting of any kind. Our sort can't, and I can tell you why. We're too curious to go behind the scenes and find out what goes on. And then there's the folk associated with theatricals. They're crazy, nearly all of 'em. I mean, who the devil can begin to understand what makes a fine-looking woman like your missus spend her life prancing around pretending to be somebody else?"
He stretched his legs, enlarging on his theme. "I remember once when the Gov'nor took us all to our first pantomime at the Lyceum. It was before you were born, I imagine. Old Alex, Stella, me, and young Giles. Must have been somewhere around Christmas 'seventy-four or five. Jack and the Beanstalk, it was, and all the others were nearly sick with excitement. I wasn't. The show itself left me cold, but I remember puzzling all the way home how the hell I could make a beanstalk grow in front of an audience and still keep 'em guessing. I worked out that it must be by a system of ropes and pulleys, high up behind the proscenium arch. It's odd how different people can be inside one family. You're the only one I've ever really understood. I suppose that's why I caught on about how you felt in that picturedrome, weighing that woman's worth against the network." He sat thinking a moment. "Shall I tell you something else? When he was your age the Gov'nor had trouble with mother, but he was luckier than you. Or more ruthless, maybe. He nursed her round to his way of thinking. Maybe, given time, you could do the same."
"I'll tell you something," Edward said. "I wouldn't bother to try. I'm over it, George, and through with it. She can go to the devil for all I care," and he broke off, stifling a yawn.
"Go and sleep it off, lad. I'll have a nightcap and follow on. We'll have another crack at that backlog tomorrow. Our way of going to church!"
Edward left him in the lounge and George was still there, puffing on his cigar, when he heard himself being paged by a boy in a pillbox hat. He called, "Hi, my name's Swann. Who's asking for me at this time of night?"
The boy said, "I don't know, sir. The night porter has the message if you'll ask at the desk."
He lounged over to the desk, thinking, The Gov'nor once told me the network was a seven-day-a-week, twenty-four-hour-a-day job, and he was right. Having identified himself at the reception desk, he was shunted on to the hall porter who said, "It's a telephone message, sir. It came in about ten o'clock. The lady asked if you would ring this number, no matter how late it was."
He took the slip with some disquiet, assuming it must be Gisela in some kind of fix, for she was chary of pursuing him on his frequent lunges up and down the country. But then he saw that it wasn't his own number but one of the inner London exchanges, and tipped the porter to call while he went over and retrieved the second half of his whisky and soda.
He recognised the voice as that of Milton Jeffs, his brother-in-law, and was at once alerted by the strained undertones in Milton's voice as he said, "George? Thank God! Debbie wants to speak to you. Something urgent… bad news, I'm afraid. She found out where you were from Gisela and badly wants advice. Wait, she's here now." Deborah came on the line saying, "Something bad has happened, George. It's Romayne. She's been seriously hurt in a suffragette demonstration outside Parliament this afternoon."
"Is that all you know?"
"She was knocked down and ridden over by a van."
"Is she with you?"
"No, no, she's in Westminster Hospital. George… she isn't expected to live."
He could tell by the catch in her voice that she was fighting very hard to control herself. He said, bracing himself, "Take it easy, Debbie. Take your time. Tell me how I can help."
"I don't know… I've been at my wits' end trying to trace Giles. He's away in his constituency on account of that trouble they're having in the mines and nobody seems to have heard of the telephone down there. I've wired his home, of course, and Huw Griffiths, but there would have been an answer by now if they had been anywhere in the Pontnewydd area. I felt so helpless and I have to get back to the hospital right away. I dare not tell the old folk so I rang Gisela and she told me where you were. We've got to find Giles and bring him home as soon as possible."
"The Welsh police could help…" but she cut in, sharply, "No, not the police! Not even in these circumstances," and he guessed that the police had been involved in what had occurred outside the Houses of Parliament that day. He said, quickly, "I'll find him. I'll hire a car and drive down. That's by far the quickest, for it's Sunday now and God knows how long we might be getting there by train. I'll find him and bring him back. By tomorrow afternoon at the latest."
"Thank you, George. I'd be very grateful. There's at least a chance that way."
"She's that badly hurt?"
"A fractured skull, so the surgeon said. She's not regained consciousness."
"Leave it to me. Go straight back to the hospital. And Debbie…!"
"Yes?"
"Don't even try to notify the old people. They can't do anything to help, or not yet, and remember the Gov'nor is over eighty."
"Very well, George. I'll be here if I'm not at the hospital. They might not let me stay… there may be no point in staying anyway. You'd handle Giles better than any of us."
"Not better than you, Debbie. But I'd waste time coming to pick you up."
He replaced the receiver and stood thinking, holding the full import of her message at bay while he grappled with the practical aspects of a night journey by road to Wales. They could get a powerful motor somewhere. Edward would know where, and it would take them the better part of the night to reach the valleys. If they were lucky, and found Giles, they could refuel at the Cardiff depot and make a dash for London. But even if they encountered fair weather, unlikely at this time of year, they would be lucky to reach London before dusk. For a moment he toyed with the idea of going over Debbie's head and trying his luck with the Cardiff police, but he thought better of it. Giles was probably a marked man in that part of Wales, torn by strikes and political dissension. His wife, with gaol sentences behind her and the current one hanging over her head under the "Cat and Mouse" Act, whereby suffragettes on hunger strikes were released and re-arrested, was not likely to engage much official sympathy. It was better, in the circumstances, to rely on Edward's local contacts and his own ingenuity.
He knocked on Edward's door and, getting no answer, went in, finding his brother heavily asleep. He would have preferred to leave him sleeping and shift for himself, but that wasn't possible. He needed Edward's local knowledge if he was to get hold of motor transport at this time of night.
He shook his brother awake. "Sorry, old son, but I'm off my own patch and badly need your help. Who do you know around here who would be likely to lend or hire us a Daimler, or some motor with that kind of performance?"
Edward said, rubbing his eyes, "Grayson, the big brewer, has a Panhard. He's an old customer. So is Sir Alec Gratwick, the draper. He runs one of those new Silver Ghosts. It's a corker. But what's happened? What do you want with a car?"
"I'll tell you later. How friendly are you with Grayson?"
"Not very. I know Sir Alec rather better."
"He's in politics, isn't he?"
"Yes. He'll be the next mayor."
"Liberal or Tory?"
"Liberal. Rabid. He stood for a local Parliamentary seat last election."
"Then he's our man. Would your association with him stand for rousting him out and asking a favour of this kind?"
"If it was important. He's a good sort and has been on our books since the Gov'nor's day."
"Then take me to him and leave me to do the explaining. I'll tell you as we go along."
2
The demonstration had the makings of a fiasco from the outset. The opposition in Trafalgar Square had been exceptionally noisy and abusive, and even Christabel Pankhurst, Mrs. Pankhurst's daughter, had been unable to get a hearing. It came on to drizzle as they formed up at the top of Whitehall, flanked, as always, by police, mounted and afoot. The police see
med to be in a neutral mood today, trudging along with bored expressions and fulfilling their invidious role as a shield against the rowdiest elements of the crowd, who followed the line of march closely, eddying from pavements to carriageway and sometimes getting close enough to jostle.
Before they had passed the Horse Guards, Romayne realised how mistaken she had been in parading and volunteering to carry a banner. She badly needed rest. Three days out of Holloway, following eight on a hunger strike, wasn't a long enough interval to recuperate, much less to march, and the banner, heavy with rain, was a terrible burden. At the House, when Christabel was due to speak again, she would have to surrender it to someone, but in the meantime she thought she could manage, providing there were no mêlées. In the course of their shuffling progress to a point level with Downing Street, she had a chance to look about her, peering closely at the cavorting bully-boys and asking herself yet again what it was that made them care enough to turn out on a rainy Saturday afternoon in order to abuse a few hundred women waging a lopsided war on a Government that called itself "Liberal" and had proved, against all predictions, more implacable than its predecessors up to the landslide in 1906. It could not be fear, that she supposed accounted for most of the world's cruelty. Or envy, that accounted for the rest. It was probably no more than a mild revolt against the boredom and pinchpenny economy of their own lives, for most of the men in the crowd looked like mechanics or labourers, cloth-capped in the main and half-tipsy probably, seeing that it was payday for the majority.
The street sign at Downing Street reminded her of earlier, happier days of the crusade, when she and Debbie had earned their first arrest and spent their first fortnight in Holloway. That was getting on five years ago now, and she had been inside three times since then and twice subjected to forcible feeding before someone thought up that diabolical "Cat and Mouse" scheme, a method of prolonging the agony capable of converting a dedicated campaigner into a morose fanatic. She had not reached that point yet but she was nearing it, her entire being rebelling against the demands made upon her physical resources over the last few months; and again she thought of her stupid rejection of the offer to go down to Lynmouth, where the W.S.P.U. ran a rest home for released hunger-strikers. In her present condition she wasn't much use to the cause, dragged down by this terrible yearning for sleep and stillness, for the predictability of a humdrum day in her own home, with the children and Giles if he could spare time to comfort and counsel her.
He would have counselled her now, no doubt, and extricated her from this untidy scrimmage, hailing a cab probably, and cheering her with news of progress on other fronts, but he had been away in Wales when she emerged, unexpectedly, on the eighth day of her twenty-eight day sentence. She realised that he had troubles enough of his own, with the valleys in revolt, a lockout at the mines, and money to be raised for families who were pawning bedclothes in mid-winter to fortify their bellies against another week without wages.
She envied him his inner serenity, his ability, acquired little by little over the embattled years, to absorb the trials and tribulations of so many, allotting each its proper place in a scale of priorities. She envied him his resilience, too, and the dynamo of nervous energy that enabled him to move through a working day that would have prostrated more robust men. He had the knack, that so few of the militants seemed to acquire, of isolating injustices like microbes under glass and studying each objectively before deciding how to deal with it. But when the moment came there was never a time when his coolness deserted him, and he was tempted to abandon one plan in favour of another promising more spectacular results, a very common failing among crusaders.
Someone in the crowd threw an egg that struck the banner pole just above her head and spattered the shoulders of the woman in the rank ahead. The procession halted for a moment, closing up from behind; while she waited, resting the butt of the pole on the road, the remaining traces of the egg slipped down the pole and over her fingers, sliming them and making the pole difficult to grasp. The yearning for sleep made her senses reel and the shouts of the crowd, apparently blocking the march ahead and being broken up by mounted police, merged into a long, incessant roar so that she thought, distractedly, I'm going to faint, and I mustn't faint here in full view of these louts. I must find Debbie and tell her to take my place for a spell, but how can I do that without abandoning this greasy pole…? And then, as though boosted from the direction of Trafalgar Square by a strong wind, the ranks behind her began pushing forward; the woman ahead remained stationary, so that the section in which she was marshalled split and spilled sideways on to the pavement, the column losing cohesion as the banner was torn from her grasp. A bellowing policeman cantered past and she dodged to one side, brushing a lamp-standard with her shoulder. Behind it, leering at her like a centaur, was a fat middle-aged man with beery breath and heavy blue jowls singing snatches of the music-hall song, "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay," and beating out the time with his furled umbrella.
Then a fresh thrust from behind flung her forward into his outstretched arms, and the whiff of his breath was so pungent and putrid that she retched. All the time he kept chanting, "Ta-ra-ra-BOOM-de-ay!" even when he lost balance and they rolled together in the gutter.
When she rose to her knees he had disappeared in a swirl of legs, and she crouched there close against the lamp-standard, shaking her head to and fro. Her unpinned hair fell across her eyes, and the sour smell of her own vomit reminded her of the cell in Holloway, where the little Scots doctor, with desperate patience trying to insert the feeding tube between her clenched teeth, kept repeating, "Awa', lassie! Dinnae mak' me do it… Dinna mak' me…" She lost all sense of time and place and became isolated from the chaos all about her.
The two-horse van appeared out of nowhere, running wild and free it seemed, so that she half rose to her feet and tried to ward off the goring butt of its shaft with both hands. It bore down on her inexorably, however, and she had an impression of being lifted as upon a wave and tossed the full width of the pavement. And after that the sustained roar of breakers on a rockbound coast dinned in her ears, and Giles's sunburned face peered down at her from the bridge arching the river Gladwyn near their old home in Caernarvonshire.
He looked so much younger than of late. No more than a youth, and he had a pack on his back that he jettisoned to climb down to where she stood waist deep in the shallow water. She was aware of the terrible importance of touching his hand and this she succeeded in doing, but only just, so that she had to scrabble with her toes to reach the level of the road. But when she got there it wasn't a road, only that long, bare dormitory of the emporium in the north where she had once lived the life of a shopgirl drudge. And then the scene changed again and they were in the bedroom of their little stone house on the side of the hill at Pontnewydd, where their life began all over again in a spirit of tender camaraderie that was startlingly new in their marriage. And suddenly she felt glad and free and at peace with the world, smiling and enfolding him, pressing him close and assuring him over and over that this would be different for both of them and that here, in this drab little room with its faded wallpaper, she would conceive his child. The sound of the breakers assailed her again then, louder and terribly insistent, so that she held him with all her strength; presently a wave broke over them both completely submerging them. But when it receded, she still had him close against her breast.
3
They got him there just as dusk was creeping up river and the lights of the Embankment were winking like a vast necklace lit by a moving candle against a background of murk. They were all three chilled to the bone, despite heavy coats and muffiers; both George and Edward tried hard to persuade him to get a hot drink inside him before he went in, but he shook his head.
"No, George. Go on home and take Edward with you. You've done enough for me, and I'll never forget it," so they left him and drove the borrowed Silver Ghost over the bridge and down Whitehall to the Strand. George said, glumly, "By God, I need a stiff one. L
et's stop at the Savoy and give her a chance to cool off."
* * *
Giles went in to the lobby and here Deborah claimed him, breaking away from a nurse and saying, fervently, "Thank God you're here! She's been conscious but only for a moment… long enough to ask…" She piloted him into a waitingroom being vacated by the last of the Sunday visitors and heavy with the scent of chrysanthemums.
"Is there any chance at all, Debbie?"
She lowered her glance so he went on, with surprising calmness, "You were on the march? You must have seen what happened?"
"Not really. I was away up at the front. The mob surged on to the road and cut the column in half. Romayne was further back, carrying a banner. Sit down a minute. You'll be able to see her but you have to know, you have to understand first."
He sat on a long wooden bench, drawing off his gloves, and slowly chafing his numbed hands. "I was at Tonypandy. They're in a bad way down there."
"We're all in a bad way," she said, bitterly. "What makes us think we're unique as a nation, when things like this keep on happening? Romayne was a fighter, Giles. She could have taken the rest-cure in Devon, with all the others who were turned loose, but when she heard Christabel needed backing for the rally she insisted on coming along. Don't blame yourself for not being here. This is a war on so many fronts."
Give Us This Day Page 58
