THE GREAT WAR SAGAS: Box set of 2 passionate and inspiring stories: A Crimson Dawn and No Greater Love

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Now, standing looking back at Hebron House, its windows winking in the autumn sun like eyes in the soot-blackened elegant building, she cursed her cowardice. Felicity ran the house with a vigour and style that she had never had and it was she who now arranged the entertaining for Lord Pearson’s clients and business associates. The two women stood at an uneasy truce, with Alice keeping out of Felicity’s way and retreating more and more to her photography and the darkroom she had created out of a former pantry under the servants’ staircase.

  Sometimes she caught Felicity watching her with resentful pale eyes and knew that she would never be forgiven for getting rid of Poppy Beresford. Although members of Newcastle society came and went, Felicity did not seem to have any close friends and in that respect, Alice thought, they were alike. Two women adrift in a hostile sea, each trying to cling to the successful Pearson fleet and grab at what rich flotsam came their way.

  ‘Neither of us has any freedom of choice,’ Alice said bitterly to the panting Rosamund. ‘No matter what our class, we women are ruled and restrained by men.’

  It made her think again of the convalescing Maggie Beaton and this time Alice decided she would risk being found out and go and see the invalid.

  ***

  Maggie spent her first two weeks at the discreet Gosforth nursing home in torpor. She could do nothing to shake off her depression after the initial euphoria of being released. The kind and patient Sister Robinson coaxed her to eat, but Maggie had lost all sense of taste and food held no interest for her.

  ‘Try and remember what it tasted like before,’ the nurse suggested as she presented Maggie with a small plate of poached fish.

  ‘Never had fish this good,’ Maggie smiled wanly, pushing it away and closing her eyes.

  ‘Drink the tea then,’ Sister Robinson said patiently. ‘You must try and regain your strength.’

  ‘Who’s paying for all this?’ Maggie asked, waving a bony hand at the large airy bedroom with its view out over a rambling garden secluded by large beech hedges. Maggie’s one pleasure was to sit in the bay window and gaze out over the trees as the autumn wind tore off red and gold leaves and scattered them across the lawn like confetti. It was her only activity and it occupied her for hours at a time.

  ‘The Movement,’ the nurse answered after a moment’s hesitation, ‘so you mustn’t worry about how long you stay here.’

  ‘They shouldn’t spend their money on the likes of me,’ Maggie said forlornly. ‘I’m not worth it.’

  ‘Of course you are!’ Sister Robinson was brisk. ‘The Movement values you highly, and we want you to get better so you can go on fighting.’

  ‘I can’t fight any more,’ Maggie whimpered. She had never felt so listless. Despite the brightness of her surroundings, it was like living in shadow where everything she saw or touched was a deep dull grey. ‘I just want to go home.’

  Sister Robinson removed the tray of food and came to sit beside her, taking Maggie’s hand gently in her own warm grasp.

  ‘Dear girl,’ she said softly, ‘you can’t go home. You’re still, to all intents and purposes, a prisoner. You’ve seen the constable standing at the front entrance every day - they’re watching you in case you try to escape. As soon as they see you walking around again, you’ll be re-arrested. If you run home, that’s the first place they’re going to look for you.’

  ‘Oh God!’ Maggie moaned and covered her gaunt face with her hands. ‘I’m so alone! If I can’t go home, why does no one come to see me here?’

  ‘They won’t allow it. And it wouldn’t be safe for your militant friends to visit - they would only be followed and questioned and harassed and watched to see if they tried to help you leave.’

  ‘So - I’m a fugitive?’ Maggie asked in bewilderment. ‘I’m never going to be allowed to lead a normal life again, am I?’

  Sister Robinson shook her head slowly. ‘You stepped over the line when you stood up to the Prime Minister. Until we women get the vote, they will carry on hunting you and locking you up and treating you like a pariah.’

  Maggie crumpled as she covered her head with her arms and buried her face in her lap. Then, for the first time since prison, she cried aloud, deep racking sobs that rose up from her guts and filled the room with her misery. How could she carry on living, she thought desperately, if she was never to see her family or friends again? For the bleak choice appeared to be to submit to further torture in prison until her sentence petered out, or go on the run and attempt to hide from the police, always looking over her shoulder in fear.

  She became aware of the nurse’s arms about her, trying to comfort.

  ‘You do have friends, Maggie,’ she insisted, ‘and they’re not going to desert you. We’ll think of a way to get you out of here to a safe house where you can recover your spirits. It’s perfectly normal to feel depressed after what you’ve been through. But you must believe that what you did was worthwhile to the movement and worth all the sacrifice.’

  Maggie had little recollection of the following days, except that the nurse’s staunch words kept on coming back to her, until a week or so later she found her interest in small things returning. Tea began to taste pleasant and she started to comb and pin up her dark hair. She dared to look in the mirror and instead of staring at the garden from her bedroom window, she ventured across its dank lawns for her first walk, leaning heavily on a stick.

  She nearly fainted from the heady scents of newly turned earth, heavy dew and the sweet acrid smell of burning leaves. As nature began to droop and turn in on itself for the winter, Maggie found herself emerging from her depression and rediscovering a will to live.

  She ate. Her appetite returned and she finally began to regain weight. Sister Robinson observed that it was time to act.

  One frosty morning, Maggie was completing her circular walk round the garden and contemplating joining the other elderly residents in the sitting room when Sister Robinson beckoned her inside.

  ‘You have a visitor,’ she told her, unable to keep the excitement from her voice. ‘She’s waiting for you upstairs.’

  Maggie hurried for the stairs, but the watchful nurse took her arm and helped her up. At the top, Maggie was breathless but carried on in a fever of anticipation. Surely it would be Rose come to see her at last with news of the outside world. Or maybe even her mother had sought her out...

  ‘Good morning, Maggie,’ a cultured voice spoke as she pushed open the door with her walking stick.

  There before her stood Alice Pearson.

  Chapter 14

  Maggie stood in disbelief. Alice Pearson was the last person on earth she wished to see.

  ‘How are you?’ the tall aristocrat asked. She was dressed in expensive day clothes: a green velvet cape with a black Medici collar and a belted lilac dress. Maggie wondered bitterly if the suffragette colours were deliberately chosen.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Maggie asked stonily.

  ‘Maggie,’ Sister Robinson interrupted from behind, ‘Miss Alice has come at great personal risk. There’s no need to be uncivil.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Maggie answered with disdain, ‘and me thinking she’d come to spy on me for the Pearsons.’

  Sister Robinson was about to protest again when Alice asked for them to be left alone.

  ‘Please let’s sit down,’ she said when the nurse had gone. Maggie stayed leaning on her stick, her anger ready to boil. Alice hesitated, unsure, and then lowered herself onto a straight-backed chair by the window.

  ‘I can’t say how sorry I am for what you’ve been through. My life has changed too. I’m constantly watched by my family and no longer free to associate with the movement,’ Alice told her hostile listener.

  ‘I got the impression you’d turned your back on us anyways,’ Maggie said, her whole body tense. ‘The last I saw of you, you were hobnobbing with Asquith.’

  Alice’s powdered face flushed at the accusation. She was about to deliver a stinging rebuke to the young woman before her f
or daring to speak so insolently, when she checked herself. Maggie was so thin and vulnerable, her wasted face and body like that of a child and it made Alice ashamed of her robust size and health. This woman had started with so little in life and yet had been prepared to sacrifice what freedom and security she had for the millions of women better off than her, even for those women who despised her for trying.

  ‘You’re right,’ Alice answered with a meekness that cost her greatly, turning to stare out of the window, unable to face the girl’s huge, haunted grey eyes. ‘I pretended to myself that I, the great Alice Pearson, could reason with the Prime Minister, that I alone could persuade him to change his mind about women’s suffrage. Others had tried and failed, but I would cause his Damascus, a blinding conversion. What vanity!’ Alice mocked herself.

  She caught sight of a rabbit running across the frosted lawn and disappearing under the root of an oak. It would be so easy to run away now without telling the whole truth, Alice thought, but somehow she felt compelled to confess to this working-class woman. She was startled to realise that she wished to win Maggie’s approval.

  ‘So I went along with police plans to keep the local militants quiet,’ Alice continued in a low shaky voice. ‘I played into their hands. I did what my father wanted. I told myself it was for the good of the movement, but deep down I knew that it was a lie. I did it for myself, for my own self-aggrandisement and that of all Pearsons. But then you evaded and defied us all,’ Alice said, turning round to look at Maggie. She saw that the young woman had moved quietly to sit in the armchair opposite.

  ‘I wondered why the police had bothered to search for me,’ Maggie said, as realisation dawned. ‘You put them on to me, didn’t you?’

  Alice nodded bleakly.

  ‘Was I that much of a threat to you?’ Maggie asked in bewilderment.

  ‘Oh, yes, Maggie. I could tell the first time we met that you were dangerous - outspoken, unafraid, subversive. Emily saw it too. She said you had the makings of a fearless militant. Deeds not words, she used to say to me and, by God, she was right.’

  Maggie smiled weakly. ‘Miss Davison put me up to it - disrupting the launch. She approached me before she went to Epsom. After she died - well, I had to carry it out, didn’t I?’

  ‘Oh, Emily!’ Alice cried, ‘I suspected as much.’ She looked at the remarkable girl before her but could not bring herself to confess how she was burdened by the death of Emily Davison, weighed down by guilt at despatching her to the Derby so that she would think no more of the launch. Dear Emily, how she had wrought her revenge, Alice thought with regret as she remembered her friend.

  ‘Why have you told me all this?’ Maggie asked, still suspicious.

  Alice gave her a frank look. ‘I wanted you to understand the remorse I feel at what you’ve had to endure while I remain in relative ease and freedom. No one else knows what I’ve told you. I thought if I explained everything to you, you might trust me. You see, I want to help you.’

  Maggie sat mutely wondering whether to believe a Pearson. Perhaps it was some elaborate game she played to ensnare her and send her back to prison.

  ‘Give me a reason to trust you,’ Maggie challenged.

  Alice leaned forward eagerly. ‘I come as a messenger from Rose Johnstone. I’ve been in touch with her and we’ve concocted a plan to get you away from here.’

  In spite of her reluctance to be won over by the powerful Alice, Maggie felt her interest quicken. Over the past days she had come to dream of escaping the clutches of the police, dreading the thought of returning to prison. A life in hiding was preferable to a creeping death in gaol.

  ‘Tell me,’ Maggie demanded. ‘Please.’

  Alice, sensing Maggie’s distrust towards her thawing, smiled with relief.

  ‘First, let me call for Sister Robinson. We need her co-operation.’

  ***

  A few days later, word got out that one of the residents at the nursing home was seriously ill. A sister and niece came to visit their dying relation and exchanged a few anxious words with the policeman at the gate.

  ‘Poorly, very poorly,’ the sister told him tearfully as she left. ‘Mary doesn’t know who I am. Me daughter’s staying to help nurse her for a day or two. Eeh, poor Mary...’

  A week later, the constable was told that the old woman had died and that the gates must be opened for the undertaker. Flicking through the Newcastle Journal announcements on his break, he found a touching tribute to Mary Halliday from her sister Millicent and family members. The funeral was to be held at a church in Fenham.

  Later in the day, the undertaker and his helper arrived in a horse-drawn hearse and carried an expensive polished coffin into the nursing home. The constable was glad of the diversion after days of cold and boredom keeping a watch on the wretched pampered criminal sheltering inside. He could see her now, a thin stick of a young woman, sitting in the upstairs window, half-hidden by the curtain, reading. He saw her every day, creeping around the garden, looking as if one gust of wind would blow her over. Whatever they had done to her in prison, he thought, had punched the stuffing out of her. She wasn’t going anywhere fast, of that he was sure.

  One of the maids brought him out a cup of tea and chatted with him for a minute while the undertakers emerged, shouldering their burden.

  ‘Old lady’s sister’s taken it badly,’ the girl confided. ‘Wants to have the coffin at her place overnight so family can pay their respects.’

  The constable grunted. ‘Funny how they all get upset after the old wife’s gone. I’ve never seen that sister visit once since I’ve been here - not until Mrs Halliday was at death’s door.’

  ‘Aye,’ the maid agreed. ‘Most likely after what’s in the will. You see it happen all the time.’

  The policeman slurped his tea gratefully and watched the undertaker with the bushy side-whiskers climb back on the hearse while the other man led the horse gently round by the bridle. The constable followed them back down the short drive and made sure the gate was bolted behind them. Glancing up at the far bay window, he saw the suffragette still engrossed in her book and went back to pacing the pavement and stamping his feet to keep warm.

  The hearse trotted down the tree-lined avenue, crossed over the busy high street and veered into a back lane. John Heslop jumped down, but his helper was already prising the lid off the coffin.

  Maggie gulped for breath as strong hands reached in to pull her up. Blinking in the daylight, she gasped with shock to see George Gordon peering at her in concern.

  ‘Are you all right, Maggie?’ he asked.

  She stared at him with a mixture of disbelief and joy. She had thought she would never see George again to talk to or touch and yet here he was somehow involved in her escape.

  ‘George, I . . .’ she stammered, then saw John Heslop watching them. ‘Mr Heslop. Miss Alice told me you were going to help. Thank you. I don’t know what to say!’ She grinned, light-headed from the sudden rush of fresh air and the startling appearance of George Gordon.

  ‘Maggie,’ John Heslop said, smiling but businesslike, ‘I’m to take you to Millie Dobson’s in my van - it’s waiting up the lane. George will return the hearse that Miss Alice hired. We must move quickly before the police discover that the figure at your window is really Annie Dobson.’

  George took Maggie’s arm and helped lift her out of the coffin. She felt exhilarated by his touch and resisted the urge to bury her face in his chest and cling to him. Instead she allowed him to place her on the cobbles and merely rested a hand on his arm as he walked her to Heslop’s meat van.

  George was shocked by her appearance. He had expected to find her affected by her ordeal but not this waif-like thinness, the almost translucent face and hands. Only her dark grey eyes, which were huge in her wasted face, shone with familiar spirit. Her voice, too, had the same strong richness of tone that he remembered and it gave him hope that Maggie would recover.

  ‘You’ll come and visit me, won’t you, George?’ she
asked him. ‘So that I can thank you properly. I don’t have a clue why you’ve helped me, but I’m that grateful.’

  ‘I did it ’cos you showed me up, Maggie Beaton,’ George grunted in embarrassment, yet relieved she seemed genuinely pleased to see him. ‘What you did, standing up for yourself - well, it was bloody marvellous.’

  Maggie gave him a wide smile. ‘Does this mean I’ve made a convert?’ she teased. ‘I hope so, ’cos I’d hate to think three months in prison were for nowt.’

  ‘By heck! Not for nowt,’ George insisted. He wanted to say more, that he had missed her and was sorry for quarrelling, but Heslop was beside them now and impatient to be away.

  ‘Come on, Maggie, we mustn’t linger here, it’s not safe,’ John Heslop advised. ‘George can come to the mission sometime soon.’

  ‘As long as you don’t expect me to pray,’ George answered gruffly.

  ‘No,’ Maggie laughed, ‘we can do that for you.’

  He helped her into the van and waved her away, envious of the lanky, middle-aged butcher into whose protection she gave herself without question. George felt a fierce desire to care for Maggie himself, to see her grow strong again so that they could once more walk up to Hibbs’ Farm and talk poetry and politics and ... He forced himself to end his daydreaming. No one quite knew what lay ahead for Maggie, except the certainty that she was wanted by the police and could not enjoy such simple pleasures as walking or going to the music hall without the risk of re-arrest. Deep inside, George was filled with foreboding for Maggie.

  Maggie and Millie Dobson hugged each other warmly in the safety of the Dobsons’ tiny flat.

  ‘How can I thank you?’ Maggie laughed, close to tears.

  ‘Eeh, hinny, I enjoyed every minute of it - having that copper on about me dying sister. I tell you, I should’ve gone on the stage!’

  ‘There’s still time, Mrs Dobson.’