Octavia

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘But even so…’ Amy said. ‘You were so ill when you got back from that funeral. I wouldn’t want you to suffer another setback.’

  ‘It wasn’t a setback, Mama,’ Octavia said rather crossly. There were times when her mother’s concern, loving though it undoubtedly was, could be decidedly trying. ‘I was tired, that was all. It was a very moving occasion. We were all tired.’ She was remembering her fatigue as she spoke, the ache behind her knees as the great cortege wound through the streets, the staring crowds lining the pavements, many of them moved to tears, the dizzying scent of the flowers they’d carried, the white lilies and purple irises, the impact of so many women all wearing the suffragette colours, and marching with such strength. She’d felt so proud marching behind the hearse in the place of honour with all the other hunger strikers, wearing her silver arrow for the first time. Her pride had carried her along, that and the strength she’d felt at being in such a powerful crowd, following such a courageous martyr. ‘In any case,’ she said to her mother, ‘even if I was tired, it was the right thing to do. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’

  ‘I don’t think you need to worry, my love,’ J-J said to his wife, interceding before his two darlings could quarrel. ‘As far as I can ascertain, the waiters on the cross-Channel ferries are not yet force-feeding their passengers. Given a fair wind and a strong tide, I think she will be safe.’

  ‘It is all very well for you to make light of it, J-J,’ Amy rebuked him, ‘but health is a serious matter.’

  ‘And Octavia takes it seriously,’ her father said. ‘Do you not, Tavy? When do you intend to go?’

  ‘In a few weeks I expect,’ Octavia said. ‘They will write and tell me.’

  But the situation in the Balkans was so difficult that it was August 10th and after the Bucharest conference before Tommy could wangle the leave he wanted so much.

  How beautiful Paris is, Octavia thought, all those chestnut trees heavy with high summer and the city so at ease. Of course, it was the month of the fermiture annuelle, so it was deserted by its inhabitants and their usual bustle and left to the amble of visitors. The Gare du Nord was full of them when she arrived, most of them British, and as heavily laden as the chestnut trees, talking excitedly in their now foreign language. Outside in the sunshine along the Rue de Dunkerque, the touts and taxi cabs waited in line for their custom and the café tables were set out on the opposite pavement under their bright scarlet awnings primed to tempt them.

  Their clarion colour was the first thing Octavia saw as she walked out of the station, sniffing the familiar air. The second was her darling Tommy, striding across the road, elegant in a cream summer suit, dodging the traffic and watching the road. Then he saw her and stretched out his arms towards her. It was such a yearning, loving gesture she ran to answer it, calling his name. It would have been hard to say which of them was more in need of the other. They tumbled into an embrace, oblivious to the smiles and nods of the passers-by, and clung together kissing hungrily. ‘Oh, my darling, darling Tommy!’ ‘Sweet, sweetheart!’

  ‘How husky you are,’ he said, surprised by the timbre of her voice. ‘Have you taken a cold?’

  She had grown so used to the change that she hardly noticed it. It was improving gradually and didn’t really concern her. ‘No,’ she assured him. She would have to tell him what had happened to her, but eventually, not at that moment. ‘I am quite well,’ she said, smiling into his eyes. ‘It is nothing. Kiss me again, my darling.’

  So he ignored her husky voice and raised an imperial hand to call a taxi. They kissed all the way to the hotel, where they registered with such impatience that the receptionist could barely conceal a snigger and the concierge looked askance at them. And at last they were in their room and alone together and could satisfy the aching sharpness of their desire, this new, driving, painful desire to be loved and comforted. After such a rapturous greeting they knew it would be a blissful coming together. But it wasn’t. It was a disappointment to both of them. He was too rough and too quick and was demoralised to have felt so little, she was left unsatisfied and puzzled. Worse, instead of lying lazily beside her and lighting his usual cheroot, he got up again and went to stand by the window where he looked down at the boulevard, stroking his moustache and frowning.

  She sat up among the tumbled bedclothes. ‘What is it, Tommy?’ she asked. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘This is such a beautiful city,’ he said, looking at a fashionable couple who were strolling along the pavement below him: he, suave and handsome in well-cut grey and a jaunty hat; she, tall and slender and dressed in style in a wide-brimmed hat, an elegant rose-pink suit with a long straight skirt and a belted jacket and the prettiest pointed shoes. It was a lifetime away from the mud and squalor of the Balkans. ‘People look so – oh, I don’t know – intelligent, I suppose, sophisticated, cultured, like people you can understand, people you can trust.’

  ‘And that makes you sigh?’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted and tried to make a joke of it. ‘Potty, isn’t it?’

  She left the bed, put on her glasses and joined him at the window, aware that there was more to the sigh than he’d told her. The sun streamed in through the casements to light the opulence of the room, the high bed, thick carpet, heavy furniture. It was such a solid unchanging room, a place to depend on, in a city they could trust. But her instincts roared that the world was changing for both of them. ‘What is the matter, my darling?’ she said.

  He told her about the massacre, detail by appalling detail, speaking quietly and not looking at her, but gazing down at the boulevard, one hand resting on the heavy tassel of the velvet curtains. It wasn’t how he’d intended to tell her but once he’d begun he had to go on until the whole horrible business had been described. She was so appalled by the horror of the things he was saying she listened without moving. ‘Oh, Tommy!’ she said when he’d finished. ‘That’s dreadful.’

  ‘War is the most terrible thing,’ he said, turning to look at her at last. ‘It brings out the hatred in people, which God forbid you should ever know anything about.’

  ‘I know it already,’ she said. And because it was exactly the right moment, she told him what had happened to her in Holloway gaol, at first speaking quietly and sensibly but soon growing tearful at the memories she was stirring.

  He put his arms round her as she wept and they clung together for comfort. ‘Don’t cry, my darling,’ he soothed. ‘You’re all right now. You’re with me. I’ll look after you. Oh, my dear darling, don’t cry.’ He was roused to the most protective tenderness. How dare they treat her so? Torturing her and making her ill and husky. Oh, how he loved that huskiness now. I shall marry her, he thought, kissing her tousled hair, I shall marry her and look after her. She can’t go on facing horrors like that all on her own. He hadn’t thought about marriage until that moment but it seemed the natural and obvious thing. He led her back to the bed and gentled her to sit down. He must start looking after her at once. ‘Dear Tikki-Tavy,’ he said. ‘You’ve suffered enough for this cause of yours. Don’t you think so? You must stop. You really must.’

  They were being so honest with one another she told him the truth about that too, wiping her eyes and her glasses. ‘I’ve stopped already,’ she said. ‘I’ve taken a job. I shan’t have the time for demonstrations and hunger strikes. Or not so much time anyway.’

  He approved. ‘Well, good for you.’

  ‘No,’ she said, sadly. ‘It’s not good. It’s cowardly. I wouldn’t tell anyone but you, but I’m afraid it’s the truth. I can’t face being force-fed again. I’m going to work so as to get out of the way.’ She was torn by her cowardice, deeply, deeply ashamed of it. ‘Things are going wrong, Tommy. It’s only two months since Emily Davison died. Only two months. We had that wonderful funeral procession for her and there was such sympathy for us. I thought we’d made our point at last, that people understood what we were saying. But I was wrong. They’re treating us like criminals again, Mrs Pankhu
rst is ill, Sylvia’s in Holloway, we’ve had three suffrage bills put through Parliament in the last three years and they’ve defeated every single one. We haven’t made any progress at all. I feel we’re going backwards.’

  He kissed her. ‘And what is this work you’ve taken?’

  ‘I’m going to teach in a national school,’ she said. ‘I start in September.’

  A job’s no bad thing, he thought. It doesn’t matter why she’s taken it, it’ll keep her occupied and out of prison until I can leave Bucharest. ‘I only have six more months to serve,’ he told her, ‘and then I shall come back to England and marry you. How would that be? At Christmas, if you like, or in the summer. You’ve only to say the word. And then when I’ve got my next appointment you can come and live with me, wherever it is. It might be Paris. That would be all right, wouldn’t it? What do you think?’

  She was so surprised that for a moment she couldn’t think what to say. If he’d proposed to her after that first amazing summer at Eastbourne, she would have accepted him without a second thought, but so much had changed now that she wasn’t sure. She’d adapted herself to this disjointed life of theirs, accepted that he couldn’t marry until his work and his father allowed it, grown accustomed to the deceptions that had been necessary to hide their meetings, even down to wearing a wedding ring. Most important of all, she was committed to teaching now. It would be unfair to take on a position at the school and leave it after a term. She steeled herself to tell him they must delay.

  ‘I would rather wait for a couple of years,’ she said. ‘Until the summer after next perhaps. We don’t have to rush things, do we?’

  ‘Dash it all, Tavy,’ he said, feeling rather put out, ‘I thought you’d like to get married. Most girls do.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to marry you,’ she explained. ‘I do. Very much. I always have. It’s just… If I marry, I shall have to leave my job – they don’t allow teachers in national schools to be married – and I’d like to do it for a little while at least. To prove that I can. We can go on as we are, can’t we?’ It was a genuine question because he was looking so disturbed she needed to be reassured.

  ‘But you do love me?’ he said and that was a real question too.

  ‘More than ever.’

  ‘And you’ll marry me in two years’ time?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Always providing there isn’t a war, I suppose.’

  That sounded alarming. ‘There isn’t going to be, is there? I thought it had gone quiet. The Times said the London conference had arranged an armistice.’

  ‘I’m not talking about the Balkans,’ he said. ‘The armistice didn’t work. They’re fighting again already. It’s all they ever do. No, it’s not the Balkans.’

  She was suddenly alarmed. What was he trying to tell her? That everything was worse than she thought? ‘What then?’

  ‘There could be a war between England and Germany,’ he said. ‘Our ambassador says he can see it coming. You must have heard rumours.’

  She had, of course. Her father’s dinner guests had talked about the possibility of it, and there’d been an article in The Times about how many horses would be needed if a war broke out – she’d been appalled at the huge numbers they’d estimated for – and when the old king died, all the newspapers said his diplomacy would be sorely missed and hinted that a war with Germany was imminent. But she’d assumed it was rumour and no more. People were always talking about wars of one kind or another.

  She got up and walked back to the window, needing a pause to get her thoughts in order. ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I have heard things. But it’s only talk, isn’t it? It can be avoided, surely?’

  ‘There’s no knowing,’ he told her sadly. ‘The Balkans is full of bloodthirsty maniacs and they’re all scared stiff of one another so they’ve made alliances with every major power in Europe – Great Britain, Germany, Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, everyone. It’s a powder keg down there. It only needs a spark to set it all off. Anything could happen.’

  Below the window the chestnuts shifted in the afternoon breeze and the taxis darted about like water beetles on the shining blue of the boulevard. ‘Then we must hope it doesn’t,’ she said.

  She looked so sad and bleak he was stirred to pity for her all over again, and pity triggered desire. ‘Come back to bed, Tikki-Tavy,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t good last time, was it? I mean…’

  It was so nearly an apology and so very unlike him to offer one she was quite touched by it. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t but we’ve got a month to make up for it.’

  ‘Starting now?’ he hoped.

  She walked back to the bed and stooped to kiss him. ‘Starting now,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, Tikki-Tavy,’ he said. ‘I do love you.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  On that damp September morning when Miss Octavia Smith faced her very first class for the very first time, she knew at once that it was going to be a challenge. After three weeks in Paris with Tommy, which had been luxurious in every way, the sight of her pupils was a shock. It was a very big class, much bigger than she’d expected. Forty-two nine-year-olds, so the headmaster said. They stood ranged before her, two by two beside their narrow desks, nineteen boys and twenty-three girls, most of them filthy dirty and all of them standing bolt upright as if they’d been nailed to the floor.

  The sight of them was daunting enough but the smell was worse. It was the first time in her life that Octavia had been nose to nose with the enclosed stink of poverty and she found it nauseating. The headmaster didn’t seem to notice it. He introduced her, told the class to stand up straight or it’d be the worse for them, strode out of the room and left her to it, but she felt too sick to speak. She stood before her new charges, swallowing hard and analysing the smell as a way of forcing herself to cope with it. It was, she decided, a combination of ammonia, stale sweat, coal dust and rancid frying fat, with traces of unwashed bodies, smelly feet, filthy hair, and rain-damp clothes, most of which were reach-me-downs impregnated with the work-stink of their previous owners. It was so strong it stung her eyes.

  After a few seconds, she pulled herself together and told them to sit down, which they did noisily, their rough boots clomping on the floorboards.

  ‘Now,’ she said, making another effort and remembering to smile at them, ‘I want you to take out your slates and your slate pencils and write down today’s date. I’ve written it on the blackboard for you. There it is. ‘Monday, September the first, 1913.’

  They obeyed her, some quietly, some grudgingly, and for a few minutes there was no sound in the room except for the scratch of their pencils. It’s such an ugly room, Octavia thought, looking round at it. It reminded her of Holloway gaol with those green walls and those awful green tiles, and the windows were repressive in the same way, tall enough to let in plenty of light, but too high for children to see out of. She remembered Wordsworth’s lines, ‘shades of the prison house begin to close upon the growing boy/ but he beholds the light and whence it flows,’ and was full of sympathy for her smelly pupils. Then she noticed that one of her growing boys was gazing round the room. It was the one with the squint and the shaven head.

  ‘Have you finished?’ she said to him kindly.

  He closed one eye and looked up at her. ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘Then bring your slate to me.’

  He clomped to her rostrum and held up his slate for her inspection. He had drawn a line of loops.

  ‘What’s this?’ she said to him.

  ‘Please, miss, it’s me pothooks, miss.’

  A girl in the front row enlightened her. ‘That’s what he does, miss.’

  ‘All the time?’ Octavia asked.

  ‘Yes, miss. He don’t know nothink else.’

  I must see about that, Octavia thought as she sent him back to his seat. Then she walked round the room to check what her other pupils had been doing. It wasn’t encouraging. About a third of them had copied the date more or
less accurately, the rest had made a stab at it and obviously hadn’t understood what they’d been writing. ‘Can you read that to me?’ she asked one tousled haired girl.

  The child twisted her apron in both hands. ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  But it was beyond her. She just sat and stared at it and after a long pause she explained, ‘Please, miss, I got summink in me eye, miss.’

  She can’t read and she can’t write, Octavia thought. What a lot of work there is for me to do. I shall start with reading. If they can’t read, they can’t do anything. I must sort out which of them can read and which can’t and then I shall start from the beginning and teach the backward ones their letters. Meantime there was a headmaster to obey – more or less – a timetable to follow and some rather peculiar lessons to be taught.

  She looked down at the timetable, which she’d pinned on her desk to remind her of the things she was supposed to do, and wondered how on earth she would manage to do them. Half the subjects listed there were incomprehensible. What was ‘drill’ for example? The headmaster had written an explanation of sorts alongside the word – ‘this is for the relaxation of mental strain’ – but that didn’t tell her what it meant. And what was free arm work? Or mechanical poetry? She had a vision of a tin robot barking out verse when she wound it up, probably with a drill in its free arm. And that made her want to giggle. ‘Arithmetic now,’ she said, to steady herself. That would be simple to teach if nothing else and it would give them a break from all that dreadful slate scratching. According to the headmaster, their arithmetic books were in the cupboard, or should be. ‘Come up and get your book when I call out your name.’ It was a long process but they didn’t seem to mind and it gave her the chance to learn a few names. ‘Now let us start with adding up. I will put ten sums on the board for you.’