A Monstrous Regiment of Women mr-2

by Laurie R. King

  My responses consisted of Yes, of course, very well, of course not, I understand, and thank you, and I found myself giving Marie my coat and hat and being seated at a small table with two delicate chairs that I tentatively identified as Louis XIV. The place settings were luminous and paper-thin, the silver old and heavy, the glasses blown into an ornate and modern twist. I hid my twice-let-down hem beneath the table.

  “Veronica has been showing you about, I take it?”

  “Yes, it was most impressive.”

  “You sound surprised.” From her expression, it was a common reaction.

  “Mostly by the fact that I’d not heard of the Temple before Monday.”

  “We are working to remedy that. Wine?”

  “Thank you.” She poured from a cut-glass decanter into two glasses that matched those on the table, these with a twist of pale orange in the stem. “But it must be new,” I noted, accepting the glass, “most of it. One of the presses in the print shop looked almost unused.”

  “True. Five years ago, we hired a pair of second-storey rooms once a week. We now own four buildings outright.”

  I wanted very badly to know more of just how the transformation had come about, but I held my tongue. It would have sounded, if not accusatory, at the least suspicious, and even if she did answer, I did not want that note to sound just yet.

  “Very impressive,” I repeated. “I shall make a donation to the library fund.”

  “A good choice,” she said blandly, without so much as a glance at my tired clothing. “Veronica has great hopes for her free lending library.” The bluestocking will be good for a couple of pounds, she was thinking, and with a rush of mischief, I decided to surprise her come Monday.

  “I had also not expected you—the Temple—to be so politically active, somehow.”

  “Religion oughtn’t dirty its hands, you mean? Without essential changes in the law, we will be operating soup kitchens and baby clinics until Doomsday.”

  “But don’t you think—” I was interrupted by Marie, entering with a wide tray on which were several covered dishes. She unloaded it onto our table, removed the covers, and fussed with the arrangement of bits of cutlery for a moment, and then, somewhat to my surprise, she left. Margery served us, giving herself rather little and me rather a lot of the chicken slices in tarragon sauce, the glazed carrots, still firm, the potatoes and salad. She bowed her head briefly over her plate, then approached the food with neat concentration, chewing each mouthful thoroughly and washing it down with a sip of some pale herbal tea that had a slice of lemon floating in it. I drank a glass of fruity German wine. She ate a bite, then looked up at me.

  “You were saying?” she enquired.

  “I was wondering whether your identity as a, shall we say nonconforming religious leader might not count against you in the political arena.”

  “I think not. Some will take it as a sign of my dedication and will listen to me the more for it; others will see it as a mere eccentricity.”

  “I hope you’re right.” It was said politely, but she took it as a declaration of wholehearted support.

  “That’s very good of you. And actually, I have been thinking, and praying, a great deal about you and your offer.” (Offer? I thought indignantly.) “And I have come to realise that my teaching has indeed been a very personal thing, and perhaps it is time to place it on a more universally acceptable plane. It came to me in the night that perhaps once the other projects are securely launched, we might think about sponsoring an academic project, research and discussions along the lines of what you were saying the other night. Invite the more prominent thinkers in the field. Perhaps even a journal… on the press you saw standing idle. What do you think?”

  Damn it, was what I thought; then grimly, Does the woman imagine she can buy me? Something of the thought must have shown on my face, because she laid down her fork and leant forward.

  “I’m not asking you to do anything you don’t feel is right, Mary. I’m sure there are a thousand things I’ve said and done that you don’t agree with. And I’m not about to say that I’ll change. However, I want to learn. For my own sake, and for the Temple, I need to know how your world handles the questions that I grapple with alone. You say that you were surprised at our existence; it is nothing to the impression you made on me. I did not sleep at all Monday night. All I could do was think how blind and arrogant I’d been. I felt like some peasant who owned a pretty box, only to have someone take it and open it to reveal the jewels inside. I need your help, Mary. Not as a permanent commitment—I don’t ask that of you. I’m not asking you to join the Temple. But I need you, just at the beginning, to start me on the road. Please.”

  How does one refuse such a request? I know that I was not able to. By the time Marie arrived with a second tray, coffee and strawberries (in January!) I found I had agreed to a series of informal tutorials with Margery and one lecture to the Inner Circle at the end of the month.

  Having gotten what she wanted, Margery sat back with her coffee.

  “Tell me a little about yourself, Mary. Veronica hints of dark secrets and exciting adventures in your life.”

  I made a mental note to kick Veronica when next I saw her.

  “Ronnie exaggerates. I had to be away for over a month in the middle of my second year at Oxford, on some rather distasteful family business, and when I didn’t talk about it later, rumours started.” The truth was considerably more complex and deadly than that, but so far I had kept my name from the newspapers. “Then a couple of months later I was injured in an accident, and that seems to have changed the rumours to fact. You know how it works. The truth is, I’m just a student. Not an ordinary Oxford student, perhaps, but a student nonetheless. My mother was English, father American, both dead. A house in Sussex, a few friends in London, and an interest in feminism and theology.”

  “A long standing interest. Tell me honestly, Mary: What do you think of what you’ve seen and heard?”

  I started to give her a polite answer, then saw in her eyes that this was no light conversation on her part, but a very serious question. I put down my cup and frowned at it for a minute, putting together a response that was honest but not too revealing. She waited, and then I picked up the exquisite hand-spun glass that had held my wine.

  “About ten years after the crucifixion of Jesus,” I began, “there was born a Jew named Akiva. He was a simple man, a goatherd who didn’t even learn to read until he was a grown man, yet he became one of Judaism’s greatest rabbis. Akiva, like Jesus, taught best in brief epigrams and barbed stories. He also, incidentally, brought in a number of reforms regarding the status of women, but that is beside the point. I shall answer your question with one of his remarks. ‘Poverty,’ he said, ‘is as becoming to the daughter of Israel as a red strap against the neck of a white horse.’ ” I put the costly glass down on the gleaming linen tablecloth and ate the last of my tiny, intense berries.

  “You don’t approve of wealth,” she said.

  “I’m not a socialist.”

  “In the Temple, then.”

  “I speak of the aesthetic beauty of poverty; you take it as a personal criticism.”

  “You feel uneasy,” she decided, “at the misuse of funds. I do understand. Were it strictly up to me, I would take the gifts given me and feed my sisters. However, there is Biblical precedent for using the expensive oil rather than selling it, as Judas would have wished.”

  “Using it as an ointment to prepare the body for burial,” I commented. “Not as a perfume for daily life. The parallel is faulty.” She studied me intently, puzzled and more than a bit angry.

  “It is a difficult thing,” she said abruptly. “A certain amount of show and glitter is necessary, in order to be taken seriously by the sorts of people I believe we must reach. The image of ourselves as fanatics can only harm our cause. It is a balancing act—to walk proudly before men and humble one’s self before God. Power and luxury are great temptations, Mary. Humility, discipline, self
-abnegation are the only ways to remain pure to the cause.”

  Her words startled me, or rather, the way they were said. Margery Childe had seemed to me the soul of rational humanism, and although I had seen evidence of strong religious feelings, had heard Veronica’s account of this woman’s mystical trance, I had not been witness to such unbridled passion until now. For a brief and unsettling moment, her eyes gleamed with fervour and she sat forward as if to seize my shoulders; then it passed and she deflected an equally brief moment of confusion into reaching for the coffeepot and refilling our cups.

  “You’ve touched on the topic for this evening, you know.”

  “Have I?”

  “Yes. Power, we call it, but as that sounds so very aggressive, I often present the idea as ‘eliminating powerlessness’ when I speak to outside groups. You’ll hear a great deal of energy, even anger, at our Saturday meetings. As I said to you the other night, the Vote is acting as a great deceiver, fooling women into thinking that the powers we took over for the duration of the War remain in our hands. In truth, the rights of women to own property, decide what their children will do, divorce themselves from a cruel or demeaning marriage, and a thousand other human rights held predominantly by males have developed little since the last century. We aim to see that changed. The suffrage movement is in disarray, aimless, splintered; I believe that we in the Temple can step in and pull the pieces together again.”

  “Through legislation?”

  “Supporting proposed changes, yes, through educating voters and convincing members of Parliament. But we need women in Parliament—many women.”

  “You propose to stand for election yourself, then?”

  “A seat is coming available in north London within the next two years. I have my eye on it, yes.” Something in my manner must have communicated my doubts. “You seem dubious.”

  “I think you may be underestimating the misgivings the voting public will have with the idea of a ‘lady minister’ standing for office. In America, you might get away with it, but here?”

  “I don’t agree. We English are a sensible race, ready to overlook such minor foibles as an odd choice of religion or an inappropriate sex if the candidate is obviously the best one for the job. And after all, I’ve made a specialty of wooing sceptical males.” She flared her eyebrows and I chuckled with her.

  She talked a bit more about politics, about the coming march on Parliament and a bill concerning divorcement soon to come up for its first reading, about the as-yet-underexploited usefulness of newspapers for exposing gross inequities in a variety of laws, showing as they did the human face of the problems at hand, and about the challenge of building a public face and future constituency without compromising herself. She might well have lectured me all night had Marie not come in, looking, as usual, disapproving.

  “Goodness,” exclaimed Margery, “look at the time! Mary, I am sorry, but I must run. It was lovely to have such a nice long chat. I look forward to the next one. Will you stay for the meeting tonight?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Good. Even if you’re not politically inclined, you’ll find it interesting. There are a number of very fine minds and hearts working in the Temple, and Saturday nights are their chance to speak out and be heard. However, I’m afraid it’s time for me to excuse myself. Thank you for coming this evening. I look forward to our session on Monday. And… Mary? I’ll keep in mind the red strap.”

  I went to the hall and took a seat in the back row, though Veronica would have welcomed me in the Circle’s box, and I tried my best to make sense of the proceedings. I am not, however, as Margery had put it, politically inclined, and much of what was discussed so vehemently was more foreign to me than the politics of ancient Rome. I slipped away while the opposing packs were still in full voice, then, lost in thought, walked across half of London to my club.

  I thought of Margery Childe and about the mystics I had been reading about. I thought of Rabbi Akiva, and particularly about another dictum of his: that any nonessential words in a given passage must have a special significance, one not immediately obvious, yet of potentially great import. He was speaking of the interpretation of Scripture, but there was a broader truth in his dictum, one that Freud had recognised as well, and I could not help but wonder: Why had Margery so emphatically brought the ideas of discipline and self-abnegation into a discussion of poverty? The streets of London gave me no satisfactory answer.

  TEN

  Sunday, 2 January-

  Monday, 3 January

  She wavers, she hesitates: in a word, she is a woman.

  —Jean Racine (1639-1699)

  Sunday dawned clammy and grey without, but it mattered not. Inside my head, the sun shone bright and hot. Birds sang. Today was the twenty-first anniversary of my birth, and I was free.

  It cost me several expensive gifts to recompense my solicitor and the executors of the estate for going to the law offices of Gibson, Arbuthnot, Meyer, and Perowne of a Sunday morning, but the extravagance was worth it to me, and as they were all very familiar with my feelings concerning my guardian, and hers toward me, they were happy enough to oblige. They liked me, for some reason.

  In deference to their sensibilities, I wore the sedate navy dress rather than one of my father’s suits, and took a taxi. Upon reaching the gleaming door on the deserted street, I emptied the entire contents of my small purse into the cab-driver’s hands. The last of my bridges having thus been burnt behind me, I reached past the spotless brass plaque for the equally spotless door handle, and entered my majority.

  I walked out three hours later a wiser woman and a richer one, slightly tipsy from the goodwill showered on me and the glass of champagne somewhat subdued by the deluge of words and a precise knowledge of the responsibilities involved by my inheritance. I walked a short distance up the street and was hit by the realisation that I was also quite literally penniless. Feeling exceedingly sheepish, I went back and borrowed a few pounds from my solicitor. I also borrowed his telephone, but no message from Holmes had come to the Vicissitude in my absence.

  I caught the next train to Sussex, and later that afternoon I supervised the gutting of my house. My aunt had left, at my instructions, taking her servants with her. Now on her heels, every stick of furniture, every carpet and curtain, every pot, pan, and picture was carried out and loaded onto an odd assortment of carts and motor lorries, some of it to be cleaned, some sold, but all to be purified: Of the entire house, cellar to attic, only my bedroom’s furnishings remained untouched. When the last heavy boot climbed into its lorry and drove away, I flung open all the windows and doors to the night and let the sea mist scour the past six years from my house. My home.

  Mine.

  Half an hour later, chagrined for the second time that day, I was cursing myself for an utter fool and an idiot and hunting for something to boil water in, when I heard a voice calling from the front door.

  “Miss Mary?”

  “Patrick!” I clattered the coal scuttle back onto my bedroom hearth and ran downstairs to greet my farm manager. He was looking around the stark, freezing rooms dubiously, and I had to admit that the house had a ravaged look to it, all bare bones and flocked wallpaper. “Hello, Patrick.”

  “Evening, Miss Mary,” he said, touching his cap. “They’ve made a clean sweep of it, I see.”

  “Precisely the words for it. The decorators come tomorrow and strip off the wallpaper, and then they’ll start painting— top to bottom, front to back, everything clean and new. Except the outside, of course—that’ll have to wait until the spring.”

  “It’s going to be a different house.”

  “It is,” I said in grim satisfaction. “Entirely different.”

  He looked at me, deliberate, phlegmatic, a friend. He nodded twice and pursed his lips.

  “Struck me, though, what with everyone leaving yesterday, you might be a bit lacking tonight. Can I offer you a bowl of soup? Tillie sent it over, with a chicken and some of her cheese bread, if
you’re hungry.” Tillie was Patrick’s lady friend and the owner of the village inn, and her kitchen attracted patrons from Eastbourne and even London. I accepted with enthusiasm and walked with him down to his snug little house near the barn.

  Later that night, warmed through and well fed, I reentered my house and stood without turning on the lights, listening to the faint shifting of 250-year-old beams, the whisper of the breeze from the kitchen window, the faint sensations of an old building adjusting itself to emptiness. I had loved this house as a child, our summer cottage before my entire family had died, killed by a car accident in California the year before I had met Holmes. I stood in the dark, wondering if I might coax back the shades of my mother and my father and my little brother, now that my aunt was gone, then walked up the stairs to stand in the door of what had been my parents’ bedroom, a seldom-used guest room during my aunt’s reign. It felt warmer in there, despite the swirls of mist. I smiled at my fancies, closed and latched the window, and went to bed.

  In the morning, I rang Holmes, but Mrs Hudson had not seen him in some days. The house was miserably cold and damp and reproachful, and I abandoned it to the mercies of the decorators by returning to London.

  Patrick drove me to the station in the old dogcart. When he had reined in, he dug into the pocket of his greatcoat and brought out a small wrapped parcel, which he thrust out in my general direction.

  “Meant to wish you many happy returns, Miss Mary. Forgot to last night.”

  “Patrick, you didn’t need to do that.” Indeed, he never had before. I undid the wrappings, which looked as if they had been used a number of times before, and found inside a fine lawn handkerchief with my initials twining in one corner and a row of tiny purple-and-blue flowers chasing one another around the border. It was impractical, pretty, ridiculous, and touching. “How absolutely lovely.”