Park Lane

by Frances Osborne

  ‘They’re nearly there, Celeste.’ Bea opens and closes the cigarette box again. ‘They just have to put a suffrage bill through Parliament.’

  Celeste has taken a cigarette out of her own case, and waves the hand holding it, sending up a spiral of smoke.

  ‘And for how long have they been saying that? They’ve been “nearly there” for a decade, darling, and each time they come close, Irish Home Rule inevitably raises its head and pushes the vote off the agenda. And now we’ve got the Cat and Mouse Act to contend with. It’s ridiculous, Beatrice, you know it is.’ She slightly angrily flicks her ash to the side, where it misses the ashtray and falls on to the Turkish rug at her feet.

  ‘Don’t look so horrified, Beatrice. Your father sold the original as soon as he turned twenty-one. Anyhow, listen. You know jolly well that you can’t release a hunger-striker when she’s about to pop her clogs and then, just as a bit of colour is coming into her cheeks, take her back inside. It is inhuman, and if you saw what they look like after force-feeding, the poor lambs.’ Celeste leans back and upright, fist raised, come-with-me-in-anger. ‘But according to the law of this land, of course, we women are barely human. And “talk”, bah! As if talk is enough. It’s real action that counts, you know that. It’s exciting, Beatrice. Little feels more alive than being out there.’

  Out there. Bea has a vision of Celeste in the middle of a riot, bearing down on a policeman with an Indian club held above her head by an arm in a flowing silk sleeve.

  Bea walks towards the window and stares at the traffic now moving freely down Park Lane.

  ‘I’m not sure that hurting people is the way forward.’ Bea’s more than not sure. Peaceful protest has been dripped into her by her mother for as long as she can remember. That ends do not always justify means. That there can be no progress through destruction. That being hauled off in handcuffs does not advance the argument that women should play a role in governing the country. It sticks. What mothers say always does.

  ‘You can’t worry,’ Celeste replies to her back, ‘about using aggression. It is the only currency men understand. We don’t set out to hurt anyone. The churches, buildings, they’re all empty. When any blood is spilled, it’s self-defence. If they will try to arrest us—’

  Bea turns around. ‘What rot, Celeste. The exploding letters? Sulphuric acid, phosphorus? Those hurt.’

  ‘Nobody has been hurt by them.’

  ‘That is chance. And this time last year, you all planted a bomb …’

  ‘Lloyd George’s house was a building site …’ It is Celeste’s turn to stand up from the sofa, and she sashays over to Bea and puts a hand on her shoulder. Bea doesn’t flinch. ‘At night it was as dead as a doornail. Beatrice, it is the only way, and you have to do something with your life. Do you want to become one of those people who exhales hot air and achieves nothing?’

  Celeste is looking Bea in the eye almost imploringly, but Bea looks away. Celeste removes her hand and strides back towards the chimney piece, where her elbow resumes its earlier position on the marble.

  ‘She is too damn stubborn, your mother,’ she continues, ‘to admit that she will not succeed. She was jolly stubborn right from the first. She came down to Sussex and walked into the dining room at Beauhurst on her father’s arm with a look of “Don’t think you’ll make me withdraw with the ladies” written over her, top to toe. I blame it on her mother. Too jolly confident, these Americans. No wholly English girl would be so bold at that age.’

  But, thinks Beatrice, I rather admire Mother for that, and Celeste can hardly talk.

  Celeste lifts a cigarette out of the enamel box on the chimney piece and lights it with a silver lighter abandoned there. ‘She was only nineteen, and already as political as they come. Still, a politician’s daughter … but I am that, too … Christ alive’ – Celeste grimaces, and blows the smoke out sharply – ‘where does she find these cigarettes? They are quite ghastly.’ She throws the cigarette on to the fire and walks back to the small crocodile-skin bag, sitting upright at one end of the sofa, and pulls her own cigarette case out. ‘Yet look how different we are. Anyhow, by the end of dinner, she’d bagged my brother. All those dollars and he was so happy to go along with it. And the one time anyone’s pulled the wool over your mother’s eyes was letting her believe there was much railway money left.’ Celeste returns to the fireplace and lighter. As she exhales, she blows the sweet smoke down towards the fire, eyes and mind in some other place.

  Well, whatever money there is, thinks Bea, Mother is being rather obscure about what there is left to give. Bea wouldn’t have put it past her to have given the lot to Clemmie.

  ‘Politics is in your blood, dear Beatrice,’ says Celeste, turning back to look straight at Bea, and waving her cigarette in her direction. ‘And you cannot avoid wanting to make things happen, however hard you are pretending not to. I know you don’t believe that all that talking is going to get us anywhere.’

  Celeste finds the vein. Straight in there, needle sharp. Bea’s been going to rallies with Mother for four years or more and they engage her up to a point. The crowds are huge, impressive. Hundreds of banners above thousands of hats. Some of the speakers are rousing; Bea’s pulse rises a beat or two ready to leap in. But when they stop, the applause fades, the mood dampens, the crowds wander off and Bea, pulse still fast, feels quite alone.

  As Bea is thinking of this, Celeste, seeing her waver, offers her the address of Mrs Pankhurst’s HQ.

  ‘The headquarters on Kingsway have been raided so often that the whole operation is now in hiding. We keep moving,’ says Celeste, as she starts to pace the room. ‘It’s war, and it’s not just Parliament we’re fighting but the Home Secretary, too. Don’t tell me he’s a friend of your mother’s, please, Beatrice,’ Celeste is looking straight at her again. ‘He kept our mail back, tried to have the telephones cut. The police raided Lincoln’s Inn House again and again. It’s The Suffragette they’re after.’ Her voice grows more emphatic. ‘He’s gone and banned printers from taking it on. It’s perfectly bloody to find one, and then we have to hide every trace or we’ll be back to square one. Go along when you’ve decided you’re up to it. If you need more persuading,’ she continues, ‘come to Emmeline’s rally tomorrow.’

  ‘Mrs Pankhurst, here?’ Bea wakes up at this. Mrs Pankhurst is said to be in Paris, evading rearrest. The very rarity of the appearance has a certain appeal. Despite all that Bea believes, Mrs Pankhurst is said to be electrifying. And, blast it, Bea has let out enough of a flicker of interest for Celeste to spot a kill.

  ‘Who else? Coming back from Paris tonight and straight into Mouse Castle in Campden Hill Square.’ Celeste looks at Bea, eyes half closed, a smile spreading across her face. ‘Eight thirty in the evening,’ she continues. ‘You’ll see the crowd in the right spot. It will be announced in the press tomorrow.’

  ‘Isn’t that begging for a fight?’

  ‘Indeed. Come on, Beatrice, think where you’ve just been. There must have been some buffoons at Clemmie’s. Beatrice, they can vote, my dear. You can’t. Doesn’t that make you angry?’

  These last words Celeste speaks almost tenderly, as if she is caressing Bea with them.

  ‘It’s not just for the cause, Beatrice. It’s for you, too. I think of you as my daughter. Listen, darling, you need something to distract you. In any case, you’re a Masters, we break the rules. Doing so is simply part of us.’

  Bea is lying in the bath before changing for dinner, the water up to her chin. She lifts her toes out to see them lobster-pink and looks down at the rest of her body, which appears near broiled. She should perhaps not have added quite so much hot water to the bath Susan drew for her but there is something quite delicious about the headiness of a truly warm bath.

  Bea looks down at her body with dismay. Her breasts are too small. At least she has the shoulders to balance the width of her lower half, but she is nonetheless out of proportion, making it hard to look slender. Even if her waist does look consider
ably slimmer than her hips.

  Annoyingly, it is definitely her legs that are her greatest asset, for which she has her height to thank. However, they remain hidden – unless she is swimming, which is, of course, rare. She wonders how the order of attractiveness would change if women’s legs were bared, though fashion after fashion would inevitably be devised in order to make women’s legs look more attractive than they really are.

  She begins to feel a little too hot. Good God, how long has she been in here: she’ll look like a prune tonight. What’s more, she has somehow, perhaps from her conversation with Celeste, found the determination to collar Edward this evening before he goes out and she must seize the moment. She pulls herself out of the bath, grabs one of the towels on the rail beside her and more or less dries herself before, dressing-gowned, she pads back along the gallery to her bedroom. Maybe she should still have the bath filled in her room, but it requires such a trail of buckets of water that she inevitably tells the servants to stop when it is only a few inches deep.

  Susan has pulled a selection of clothes out on to Bea’s bed. Bea surveys the options and considers raiding her wardrobe for more. No, for God’s sake, there are half a dozen outfits here, one of them must do. As ever, there are two pale blue. Pale blue is deemed to be Bea’s colour, as it matches her eyes. However, it does make her look rather chilly, and tonight, for what will certainly be a gramophone evening, she does not want to look cool. It is not very conducive to being asked to dance. Maybe she should go for the pale green. Its beads, which almost dangle from it, and the great folds and puffs of chiffon that wind around her upper arms, give it a somewhat oriental air. If she adds the rather ornate topaz and silver pendant brought back from India by a travelling Masters, she will look distinctly exotic. She has enough of a clear line to her chin and nose to pass as some Eastern offering, but for her ice-white skin. Perhaps she could look like one of those women kept in a harem and barely allowed to see the light of day. Bea considers trying to shock Mother by declaring that is her intention. She might at least stop implying that Bea should get a move on and find someone else to marry.

  Thinking of bad behaviour, she must hurry if she wants to have a chance to dig Edward out of wherever he is in the house before each of them has to leave for dinner. She rings the bell, hoping that it will be the new girl, Grace, who comes up to fix her hair. She can somehow get the wave just right.

  Edward has not been as swift as Bea and is still in his room, being dressed by Joseph who, in his braided livery, looks considerably smarter than her brother and who is the first to see her enter.

  ‘Evening, Miss Beatrice,’ and he gives her a deep nod, apparently genuinely pleased to see her. He has, she reflects, an easy charm to him, that perhaps comes from being a couple of inches over six foot and having a decidedly classically good-looking face. Footmen are, of course, supposed to be good-looking, but even Bea’s girlfriends have joked about Joseph.

  Edward swivels around from the mirror in which he is making an attempt at straightening his collar himself.

  ‘Whoa, Sweet Bea. Doesn’t my sister look grand, Joseph?’

  ‘Turn every eye in the room, sir,’ and the footman nods, or rather bows, forward from the waist.

  Bea feels herself blush a little, and almost blushes again at the thought of it, so turns quickly away.

  ‘Thank you, Joseph.’

  ‘A pleasure, Miss Beatrice.’

  Edward breaks in. ‘That’s all, my man. Off with you. My sis can show her skills at the rest.’

  As Joseph nods to them both then turns to leave, it occurs to Bea that any man in uniform, whether cavalry or livery, really cannot help but be at least a little attractive.

  ‘You had Joseph, not James?’ asks Bea as, after Joseph has left, she finishes Edward’s collar and checks his studs.

  ‘I like the fellow. By the looks of it, so do you.’

  Bea pinches her brother.

  ‘Hey, sis, we’re not six years old any more.’

  ‘I still know how to pinch my brother when he is teasing me. I am not yet desperate enough to marry the footman.’

  ‘You don’t have to marry him.’

  ‘Edward! Be quiet.’

  And he falls into silence.

  When Bea has finished the studs, she looks up at Edward to read the expression on his face. This is her moment to talk to him, however little she may want to hear the answers. Still fired up enough to keep her gaze on the dark circles under his eyes, she begins.

  ‘Edward.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ He doesn’t look all right. He’s pale, his hands are not altogether steady and, is she imagining it, but is there the tiniest nervous tic to his smile? But he opens his arms.

  ‘Darling sis, I am on capital form.’

  ‘Or on form,’ she says, and this is what she should have said half a year ago, ‘all over the capital.’ Edward looks at her with a ‘How can you not believe me’ expression on his face, then he slumps down into the armchair behind him. The bravado has vanished, his arms flop along the sides of the chair, wrists and hands hanging off the end. He is half the size he was.

  ‘Listen, Bea darling, I am trying to be good, but it is hard to give up such a roar of a time. Or rather, what was a roar of a time, and now it’s more a case of things not being jolly unless I’ve a fan of cards in my hands. Or a stack of counters.’

  There they are, the words that Bea has been avoiding for months. How long will it be before Edward, like their father, vanishes to the Continent to be occasionally sighted at the tables in Biarritz or Baden-Baden? Bea feels her stomach turn. The idea comes to her of running over to the door, turning the key and removing it, telling Edward that he is never going anywhere without her again. If she could, she’d move him back into her room, take from him some favourite toy and refuse to return it until he has mended his ways.

  ‘Edward,’ Bea says, ‘my darling, darling Edward, you must stop. You are the man of this house,’ she tries.

  ‘To all intents and purposes, it is Mother who is the steam engine.’

  ‘Steamroller, more like,’ mutters Bea.

  ‘Yet she always stops,’ replies Edward, ‘before knocking me down.’

  ‘Edward?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How much have you lost?’

  ‘How much have I won, do you mean?’

  How can he joke now, how can he treat this, what he is doing, even the conversation they are having now, so lightly? Bea feels a degree of anger rising inside her.

  ‘And where does all this take you?’

  ‘I don’t know, Bea, I don’t know.’

  ‘You do know, Edward, you know perfectly well, and you must stop.’

  His head is low again, as though there is a puzzle stretched across his knees.

  ‘I am trying, Bea, truly I am.’

  ‘You must succeed, and if—’ yes, she’ll say it, and mean it too – ‘if you do not, I shall tell Mother.’ But Edward isn’t looking at her. How odd, a maid – Grace it is – has slipped in without knocking and Edward is watching her move across the room holding a tray as if it were a cushion with a crown on it. The girl lifts her head and Edward beams at her as though he is the sun itself, and the maid blushes. Bea feels a jab of annoyance.

  ‘You’re not listening to me,’ she continues, but he doesn’t move.

  ‘Edward,’ she growls at him.

  ‘Yes, Bea-Bea, but if I do succeed, then what on earth do I do with myself? I haven’t the patience for fishing. Despite Mother’s misfounded beliefs, I am a poor horseman, and in any case, like you, feel saddened by those foxes; they’re rather elegant, don’t you think? As for shooting, well, if I didn’t miss anyhow, I’d only try to. And I can hardly become a suffragette. All that’s left to me, it seems, are the vices.’

  ‘Well, find another vice, then. And not alcohol. Why, why …’ She’s hesitating about what she’s going to say, shocking herself with the very words, but if it will sa
ve Edward, then, Beatrice, you cannot be such a prude. ‘How about a married woman, Edward? I thought all you young bucks did that sort of thing.’

  As a look of astonishment grows on his face it breaks into laughter, and so does Bea. As she laughs she continues, ‘I mean it, Edward. It’s a better place to pass your time.’

  ‘Edward!’

  Oh God, thinks Bea, and the two of them spin around to face the door to see the petite figure that is Mother, all the more formidable for being immaculately dressed even though she has just come up from the country.

  ‘My dearest boy, what a lovely surprise. Oh, how I missed you at Beauhurst. Now, I want you to tell me and your sister everything you’ve been up to. It is always such an unmitigated pleasure to hear.’

  Mother is unfailingly predictable in her bias. This, too, is what Bea has always told Edward: don’t worry about the fact that she adores you and simply does what she must with me, she’s straight out of Dickens. He laughs at this and, no doubt, if she catches his eye now, he will laugh again. Bea is careful. If they roar together, Mother will suspect that they have been up to something and will not let it rest until she has extracted an answer, and Edward does not look on good enough form to deceive well under the pressure of Mother. So Bea keeps her eyes away as her brother proceeds to nurture their mother’s mistaken belief that he could not, in a thousand years, do anything to upset her.

  5

  ALL OF DOWNSTAIRS EXCEPT THE KITCHEN MAIDS AND the boot boy are lined up, as usual, for breakfast on either side of the long table. Mr Bellows, and what’s left of his red hair, is at the top. To his right is Mussyur Fouray, chef’s hat still on even though he’s at table, and taking up a good two seats with the size of him. Then there’s Summers in his two rows of chauffeur’s brass buttons, though his chest could fit three, and James and Joseph: James first, because he’s first footman, then Joseph as second. James is as dark as Joseph is fair and their gold-braided tailcoats are as dark as their breeches are pale, though how they keep them clean is beyond Grace.