‘Indeed they can’t,’ Gilroy replied affably, ‘“We want EIGHT. And We Won’t Wait!” but although I’m not surprised by your attitude—your personal attitude that is—I must admit that I am by its broader implications. After all, it’s plain to me looking across the Sorrel that you’re as deeply traditionalist as was my father and you’re far more attached to the old way of life than I am, who was born to it! How do you marry your cricket-on-the-green notions to the clamour for a New Order, led by men primarily concerned with industrialisation?’
‘I’ve never set my face against change,’ Paul said defensively, ‘and I should have thought that was known in this area. I admit I want to preserve, and even people like Grenfell regard me as a bit old-fashioned but if the old system isn’t prepared to bend it will break and I wouldn’t like that to happen. I suppose that’s why I’m a Liberal.’
‘Curious,’ Gilroy said thoughtfully, ‘for I believe the exact opposite and that’s why I vote Unionist. I don’t think our system was built to bend but if it’s tampered with too much it will break, and then we’ll all be in trouble! Still …’, and he stood up extending his hand, ‘I’m bound to say I respect your views, Craddock. I’ll fight you when the election comes up and I’ll fight damned hard but I hope you’ll never regard me as a personal enemy, or associate with me all the party mudslinging that is inevitable!’
‘I’m delighted you called,’ Paul said and meant it, for the feud had always seemed to him very childish. ‘I take it you will inform the new candidate and the committee that the lost sheep prefers to remain lost!’
‘I will indeed,’ Gilroy said, chuckling, ‘as a matter of fact I shall rather enjoy doing that, Craddock,’ and Paul walked him to the forecourt where his shiny French motor awaited him, a strait-faced chauffeur sitting erect behind the enormous brass steering wheel. The big car moved off smoothly, trailing a cloud of blue exhaust and Paul thought, ‘Damn it, one can’t help liking the chap, but if he’s so keen on preservation why the devil does he have to poison the Valley with that stinking contraption?’
Claire came to him, calling, ‘Who was it?’ as she crossed the paddock and he said, helping her over the rail and slipping his arm round her waist, ‘That was only young Gilroy kite-flying. He wanted to know whether I would jettison Grenfell on account of Lloyd George’s land piracy!’ and her laughter comforted him, for he could not help reflecting how differently Grace would have reacted. ‘It’s odd,’ he said, ‘the last time a Gilroy called here he succeeded in getting me married! Did you ever hear about that?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘but before I forget to tell you the twins are talking!’
‘That’s Simon’s idea of talking, to me they only gurgle.’
‘No,’ she protested, ‘Andy can say a word or two—he’s already about three months ahead of Steve and he’ll be walking in a matter of weeks. Simon has him in the nursery now. He’s very good for them, you know, and they worship him,’ and he forgot all about Gilroy as she talked of the relationship between the three children so that he thought, as soon as she had gone, ‘She’s so different from Grace and I suppose some husbands might be bored with her but I’m jiggered if I am!’ and went whistling into the yard calling to Chivers to harness the trap for a seed-buying trip to Paxtonbury.
As though Valley drums had relayed news of Gilroy’s visit to Westminster, Grenfell wired he was coming down that same week and Paul, meeting him at Sorrel Halt, drove him across Blackberry Moor and listened to lobby gossip that never found its way into the West-country editions of the London newspapers.
He found the Member depressed and glad of a few days’ rest in the country, as well as an opportunity to confide in Paul his fears of the outcome of the next election.
‘In spite of our majority we’re having to fight every inch of the way,’ he admitted. ‘We’ve had to compromise on the new Dreadnoughts to get the support we need for social legislation and Irish Home Rule but the P.M. has his hands full with that Cabinet and finds them a difficult team to drive! Some would call the Kaiser’s bluff and let him build as many blasted battleships as he likes but at the other end of the scale we have the well-britched, who think L.G. is biting off far more than he can chew! The Lords will throw the budget out, of course, but that only means we shall have to go to the country. I promise you, it’s been a devil of a sitting! I can’t tell you how glad I am to turn my back on it for a day or so.’
He talked, with his customary lucidity, on a wide variety of topics but Paul noticed that he avoided mentioning women’s suffrage and the havoc the militants were causing at the public meetings, doing this, he felt, out of motives of delicacy. In the meantime, however, Paul was content to listen, receiving an account of Grenfell’s stewardship up to the end of the third year of the Government’s span and asking for details of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s proposed new land taxes. Grenfell, he thought, hedged a little on this, as though he shared the local Unionist’s suspicions that a man owning fourteen hundred acres might jib at facing a stiff increase of taxes including a levy on increment value and the exploitation of mineral rights, so that when Paul told him of Gilroy’s visit he made no attempt to hide his relief. ‘By George,’ he said, ‘I’m delighted to hear that, Paul! I couldn’t help wondering if you’d be tempted to ditch us and I suppose one could hardly blame you if you did! Was it loyalty to me that made you spit in his face?’
‘No,’ Paul admitted, ‘not entirely. If I was that interested in money I wouldn’t be down here pouring it into the Valley. I’m all for giving the working chap a larger slice of cake but not, if I’m honest, for philanthropic reasons. Universal suffrage means they’ll get the slice one way or another and if it’s denied them indefinitely they’ll just up and take it! Gilroy and his people don’t appear to realise that. They think that they can keep all the advantages of feudalism and still use the short cuts of a highly industrialised society. I notice he’s running around in a damned great motor and it wasn’t even British made! Maybe you could score a point there in one of your election speeches, James.’
Grenfell did not respond to this quip but continued to look preoccupied, so that when they reached the river road Paul reined in, saying, with a smile, ‘Well, what is it, James? Has it anything to do with the suffragettes?’
The Member looked confused for a moment but then his brow cleared. ‘You’re getting very sharp in your old age, Paul! I always did say you’d make a politician. Yes, it has to do with the suffragettes! The fact is, I intend to back them at the recall in the autumn,’ and when Paul exclaimed in amazement, he went on hurriedly, ‘No, wait! I haven’t told anyone this because I felt you should be the first to judge my motives. I suppose, knowing your first wife so well, I got in on the ground floor of the controversy but for a long time I wasn’t convinced. There was so much else to be done and all of it uphill work. Then it became clear that the Cabinet was very divided on the subject and that many Liberal Members, as convinced as I am that women’s suffrage is inevitable, are hoping to hold it at bay as long as possible and maybe pass it to the Tories as a hot potato! Well, some of the colours have faded for me since I graduated from soap-box to the House and discovered how fiendishly difficult the art of government really is but not so much as I can’t distinguish black from white! What our people are doing to those women at the moment is a damned outrage! If the Tories did it we should make all the capital we could of their manhandling women in the streets and forcibly feeding them in gaol!’
‘I’ve only unpleasant memories and newspaper talk to help me form an opinion,’ said Paul dryly, ‘but it does seem to me that some of them enjoy martyrdom! Besides, can we really afford to let a noisy minority blackmail Parliament?’
‘One thing at a time, Paul,’ Grenfell said. ‘First, are you capable of viewing this issue without prejudice?’
‘No,’ Paul admitted, ‘I don’t suppose I am, for “The Cause”, as they call it, made a bad joke out of
my first marriage. For all that I don’t still bear a grudge against Grace. Why should I? I’m happier now than ever I was in my life and by every conceivable yardstick Claire is a far better wife and, for that matter, a better mother to Grace’s own child. However, no man cares to remember he was once the laughing-stock of everyone about here!’
‘That’s prejudice for a start,’ Grenfell said, ‘for you were never that, Paul! I’ve always had my fingers on the pulse of the Valley and everyone who mattered was deeply sorry for you at the time.’
‘All right, they were sorry for me but either way I’m not predisposed to suffragettes!’
Grenfell picked up his briefcase, unstrapped it, and took out a buff folder. ‘Take a look at this,’ he said, ‘it’s one of several and not the worst by any means! It isn’t a fake either, although it was suppressed by the editor whose photographer took it. He thought it might enlist too much public sympathy.’
Paul looked at a picture, an eight by six photograph, reproduced on coarse newsprint. It was a close-up of a mêlée outside the Houses of Parliament. In the foreground two bearded policemen were frog-marching a young woman through a mob of bystanders, most of whom appeared to be shouting abuse. The woman had been well dressed but her clothes were in terrible disarray, blouse torn, one shoe gone and hat lying on the ground under the horse of a mounted policeman in the background. The woman was screaming. He said, handing it back, ‘Well, I must say it doesn’t do the London police much credit,’ and James, dipping into his folder again, handed him another picture, this time printed on glossy paper. It showed a similar scrimmage but in this case a policeman was looking on, whilst three young men in straw hats bundled a middle-aged woman down a flight of stone steps outside a hall. The policeman was grinning and so were several male bystanders standing under a banner reading, ‘Liberal Rally, Men Only.’ The most unpleasant aspect of the incident, Paul thought, was not the violence used, although this was shocking but the obvious source of male merriment. The lower part of the woman’s body was exposed showing her underclothes as far as her waist and her skirt was ripped almost in half.
‘I could show you a lot more,’ James said grimly, ‘I’ve made a collection of them. I think I’ll call the dossier “England, 1909—Under a Liberal Government Pledged to Reform.”’
Paul said bitterly, ‘Is there one of Grace?’ and James, touching his arm, said, ‘No, but I have an accurate cartoon from the paper she edits. It shows forcible feeding in Holloway. Will you look at it?’
He handed him a small magazine and on the front page was a drawing of a woman held by four wardresses in a tilted chair. A man bending over her was inserting feeding tubes into the prisoner’s nostrils. There was a dark smudge where the woman’s mouth should have been, arrowed with the words, ‘Metal Gag.’
‘Great God,’ Paul muttered, ‘is that what the papers call “hospital treatment”?’
‘I haven’t seen forcible feeding,’ said Grenfell, ‘but I’ve seen practically everything else! The police aren’t so bad—they’re often in a difficult position—it’s the public who make me vomit! I’ve seen young men drag women along the ground holding them round their breasts and some of these poor devils, whose only desire is to want a share in making the country’s laws, are half dead when they come out of gaol! I’ll tell you something else too! When a man takes his seat in Parliament he soon learns to vote with his head rather than his heart, for it is never much use judging an issue emotionally. However, a line has to be drawn somewhere, unless one is to become a mere voting machine. I’ve been pushed over that line after witnessing W.S.P.U. lobbying of Members of Parliament. Apart from that I’ve attended all-male political meetings they managed to penetrate and seen them manhandled by dirty-minded stewards. When I make my next public speech down here I’m pulling no punches! I’m not simply paying lip-service to women’s votes, I’m going to attack what’s happening inside gaol and out of it!’
‘How will that affect your poll?’
‘Very adversely, I should say.’
‘This new man of theirs, Owen-Hixon, is supposed to be a maneater,’ Paul said. ‘Do you know anything about him?’
‘Yes,’ said Grenfell, ‘I know all about him and it’ll be touch and go whether I hold the seat! He’s fought two strongly held Liberal boroughs and came near to pitching our man out on both occasions. It’s odd that Gilroy should have approached you like that but I hope you believe me when I say I would have warned you of my decision in any case. Would you like to think it over for a day or so?’
‘Yes, perhaps I would, James,’ Paul said, ‘but for a personal reason that isn’t affected by my own views. Will you lend me those pictures until tomorrow?’
Grenfell gave him the file and they drove on in silence. Presently Grenfell said, ‘You were wise, I think, to stay here and accept limitations, Paul. If more of us did that, we wouldn’t need a London talking-shop at all!’
Paul noticed at dinner that James paid Claire the same grave courtesy he had shown towards Grace, although Claire’s complete ignorance of political issues, which she was not ashamed to admit, meant that she was unable to spark him off, as Grace had done so effortlessly. The conversation was therefore confined to Valley topics and when she had retired to take a final look at the children, James said, puffing at his cigar: ‘There’s not much doubt about your luck having changed, Paul, and you need not have proclaimed your personal happiness back at Codsall Bridge—it shouts at me from all parts of the house!’ Afterwards, in the dusk, they walked together through the orchard and across the meadow as far as Hazel Potter’s squirrel oak and Grenfell stood for a moment looking down the Valley to the Bluff: ‘Keep it like this, Paul!’ he said suddenly, ‘don’t ever let them change it, so long as you’ve breath in your body!’ and Paul replied, ‘I made up my mind to that the first day I stood here, James!’ and they went slowly back to the house, now lying half invisible in a bowl of violet dusk.
It was after midnight when Paul went up to find Claire still reading in the glow of her bedside lamp. She kept a bedside book called Rural Anecdotes and often read a page or two before she slept. Paul knew the book well, a selection of passages from Goldsmith, Cobden, and Borrow, interspersed with lighter passages from Surtees and verses from Wordsworth, Raleigh and Kit Marlowe. He said, throwing Grenfell’s buff file on the bed, ‘Here’s a different sort of reading, Claire! It isn’t likely to induce sleep but it’s important to me that you see it! I’ll tell you why in a moment.’
She took the file and looked at the pictures one by one. He saw her mouth tighten once or twice but she made no comment until he had slipped in beside her and, without extinguishing the lamp, settled her head on his shoulder. This, for him, was always the most rewarding moment of the day and they would sometimes lie so for half-an-hour before going to sleep, talking of this and that, of the children and domestic problems, of topics like Will Codsall’s intention to reclaim more heath land and the comic situation in the Dell, where the Goliath of Bideford was still maintaining his brace of submissive wives, of anything and everything in their tiny world bounded by sea, the Sorrel and railway line. He told her then of Grenfell’s decision and of his own dilemma. If women’s suffrage was made a platform issue at the coming election how would he stand as Grenfell’s chairman at the meetings? Would not people find it curious that he, once cuckolded by The Cause, was publicly advocating it? Then he touched on the real issue. Might not his backing of James in this field imply that he still hankered after his first wife? For this, he admitted, was something of which he must be sure before James returned to London.
She said, after hearing him out, ‘I think you’re being morbid, Paul! It’s plain from these pictures that James has made the right decision. I don’t know what you think of votes for women but I know how I feel right now! If I was a man, committed to politics, I think I should know precisely what to do.’
‘And what’s that?’ he said, shifting sl
ightly so that he could look down at her.
‘I should back him for all I was worth,’ she said, ‘and to the devil with what people think or don’t think! I’m sure of you now and that’s all I care!’
‘Turn out the lamp,’ he said, ‘and don’t reintroduce politics again tonight on pain of getting your bottom smacked!’
She reached out and turned the screw and it was only then that he remembered that the moon was almost full, for the big room was flooded with a light as hard and bright as silver. Yet she disobeyed him after all for just before she slept, she said, as though addressing not so much him but herself, ‘suppose I must be as far behind the times as any woman alive! I’ll use the vote if we get it but I can’t work up much enthusiasm on the subject. Is that why they have to fight so hard do you suppose? Because so many women like me are satisfied to trot between nursery, kitchen and double bed?’ He made no reply and his regular breathing told her he was already asleep.
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 66
