Light & Dark

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  Lorianna couldn’t help laughing, ‘Clementina, I am only thirty-three.’

  ‘Thirty-three!’ Clementina echoed in a mixture of sympathy and horror as if the number had been ninety-three.

  ‘You will reach that age soon enough yourself, dear.’

  Her daughter shrugged. ‘All the more reason to enjoy life while I can, I suppose.’ Adding as an afterthought, ‘And that means getting a bicycle.’

  Lorianna waited until the maid had served the rabbit in tarragon with creamed potatoes before saying, ‘What about the challenge of marriage and motherhood?’

  ‘That’s not a challenge.’

  Lorianna raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh, don’t you think so? I can assure you from the experience and wisdom of my great age that it most certainly is.’

  ‘Well, it’s not the kind of challenge I need. I need a bicycle, Mother, not a man.’

  ‘Oh, Clementina!’ she laughed helplessly this time. ‘Really darling, I wish you wouldn’t say such ridiculous things.’

  Clementina stiffened indignantly. ‘What’s so ridiculous about it? It’s a perfectly true statement of fact.’

  ‘You have never had a gentleman friend and that’s to be expected because up to now you have been too young. But now it’s only natural that you should at least show some interest. Aren’t you looking forward to meeting all the nice young men I am inviting to your first dance?

  ‘No.’

  Lorianna stared at her daughter curiously. ‘Don’t you ever think of men at all?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Now it was Clementina’s turn to be curious. ‘You were married to father at my age, you said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you ever feel you have missed a lot in life, Mother? Your own freedom and individuality, for a start. I mean, you have never had the chance to develop the real you, have you? You have always lived through a man. And now you’re so set in your ideas and ways that you’re not able to change.’

  A soft dreaminess drifted over Lorianna’s face. ‘If it’s the right man, if you really love him, freedom has no meaning. If you love a person you want to become part of him, merge into him, become one with him in spirit, in mind, in body.’

  ‘Is that how you felt about father?’ Clementina asked with interest.

  ‘Get on with your dinner,’ Lorianna’s words were suddenly as sharp as icicles. ‘Your food is getting ruined. If you must sit at table with me, please keep quiet and at least try not to spoil my meal.’

  Clementina lowered her head and pretended to be interested in the contents of her plate, but she was having to struggle to keep her breath even and not betray any sign of the unexpected distress she felt. She had been so happy for a few minutes, imagining she was getting close to her mother. Even when they had been arguing it had been a new and wonderful experience.

  Lorianna was unable to prevent her eyes straying to the bent head and heaving shoulders. It was unbearably pathetic to see how the girl loved her and could be so easily hurt by her. She longed to draw the still, silently struggling spirit close. Clementina was her own flesh and blood and at moments like this she knew without a doubt that she loved her daughter with more passion and tenderness than Clementina would ever be capable of. Yet even now she could not bring herself to touch her.

  All she could manage to say was, ‘I’m sorry, dear; I did not mean to sound harsh, it’s just my nerves. I did warn you that I needed peace and quiet at mealtimes.’

  ‘It’s all right, Mother,’ Clementina said, keeping her head down but starting to energetically cut up her food, ‘I won’t talk any more … except—can I have a bicycle?’

  40

  The bicycle proved a great joy and the freedom it gave Clementina was most satisfying to say the least. Up and down and around the hills she pedalled with great concentration. She became a familiar figure busily whirring about the streets of Bathgate dressed in her pleated skirt, neat white blouse, long tailored jacket and no-nonsense hat perched on her cushion of glorious blonde hair.

  At first she had thought that time might lie heavily on her once Miss Viners had left and no more hours had to be spent in the schoolroom. Now, on the contrary, she never seemed to have enough time for all she wanted to do and see—and of course, as she was still relegated to the tower house for most of the day, alone and unsupervised, she had more freedom than many of her friends.

  She had known every corner of the countryside around Blackwood House since her childhood, but there was so much of West Lothian that she had not seen. It was an area, she soon discovered, of great diversity.

  The Bathgate hills divided the north from the south; good lowlying agricultural land from high moorland rich in wildlife. Despite misty mornings, showery days and keen winds tugging at her skirts and hat, she and her friends explored the hills when they could, often with picnic lunches packed in baskets attached to their handlebars. Hills like the Cairnpapple, which commanded one of the most spectacular views in West Lothian. If the day was clear, the panoramic view stretched from sea to sea across Scotland, ranging from Goat Fell on the Island of Arran off the west coast, to May Island off the east coast.

  Clementina and her friends enjoyed the scenery. Bumpy rides over rough roads elicited many a squeal of laughter from them. They relished the challenge of steep hill paths, and were captivated by the tranquillity and historic interest of villages like Torpichen. But their greatest joy, what they thrilled to most was their long discussions about The Cause and what they planned to do for it. At every opportunity—when they stopped to admire a view, or to have a breather, or to eat their picnic lunch or tea—they plunged into long and enthusiastic discussions and arguments.

  Eva tended to view the militancy of Mrs Pankhurst and her Women’s Social and Political Union with some trepidation. Eva was a bit anaemic and tired quickly. Even her eyes looked as if they were sinking with exhaustion into the shadowy hollows of her face. She also became out of breath sooner than the others when out cycling. It was hard for her to keep up with them for long and soon the cry would echo back to her on the wind, ‘Come on, Eva! Put a spurt on! You can do it if you try!’ Sometimes, if she got too far behind, they would say, ‘Oh, let’s stop for a bit and give poor old Eva a chance to catch up.’

  About the Women’s Social and Political Union, Eva said, ‘It’s definitely been organised on military lines, Clementina. She’s calling for “volunteers for the front for danger work”, and she talks about “the rank and file” and “raids” and other such army phraseology.’

  ‘No one,’ Clementina pointed out, ‘has ever got the vote except at the risk of something like revolution.’

  ‘What good is it doing?’ Eva had countered. ‘Just look at the awful publicity the Cause and everyone connected with it is getting in the papers. It always was sneering and belittling, but now they are accusing suffragettes of being lesbians and saying that we ought to be shot.’

  ‘Some of the suffragettes are lesbians,’ Betsy chipped in impatiently. ‘So what? That’s not the point.’

  ‘The point is they are always trying to discredit us,’ said Eva. ‘I don’t believe I have ever read a sympathetic word in any of the papers. Not ever! And just think of the amount that has been written about the suffragists and suffragettes during the past two or three years. Practically every day there has been some news item.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Clementina agreed. ‘Before 1905 when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney got arrested for heckling Churchill at that meeting—and incidentally can you imagine a man being arrested just for shouting out ‘Will the Liberal government give men the vote?’—before that meeting we got no publicity at all. The press completely ignored anything the suffragettes said or did and nobody knew anything about the cause, although lots of women had been working conscientiously for it for years. It is the Pankhursts who have brought it for the first time to the notice of the general public.’

  Kitty, who tended to be very excitable, jumped up and down and clapped her hand
s. ‘Now nothing can hold us back.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Betsy said, ‘it has to be run like a military campaign because it’s a war and all that dirty propaganda just goes to prove it.’ The lively and intelligent daughter of a gloomy widower whom she seemed destined to look after for the rest of her life, Betsy welcomed a war or an earthquake or indeed anything that might alleviate the boredom and frustration of her life.

  ‘That’s right,’ Clementina agreed. ‘It’s a war against men.’

  Eva, however, could not be won over to sympathise with the Pankhursts’ methods and leaned more towards the breakaway Women’s Freedom League led by Mrs Billington-Greig and Mrs Despard. She had been in agreement with Clementina and the others about organising meetings in Bathgate, but since the terrifying experience in the Co-op Hall she had lost some of her enthusiasm for the idea. In fact she had been having nightmares ever since that evening and the pallor of her thin face and the hollows under her eyes looked more pronounced than usual as a result.

  ‘You do still believe in the Cause?’ Clementina always liked to establish the facts and know exactly where everyone stood.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Eva said with renewed fervour. She had once longed to study medicine, but it was her ‘couldn’t-care-less’ brothers who had automatically been sent to Edinburgh University. She would never be allowed to follow any profession and for no other reason than that she was a woman. ‘Definitely!’

  ‘Well, that’s all that matters,’ said Clementina.

  ‘I’m not so sure. I mean, I sometimes wonder if I have the right qualities.’

  ‘Of course you have!’ Clementina assured her. ‘Anyway, we have agreed that we’re not going to be a branch of the WSPU or the Freedom League. We’re starting a West Lothian Justice for Women Group, and we need not advertise any of our meetings in the Scotsman. We’ll just make handbills, and notices to stick up in local shop windows. That way we shall only attract local people. It was idiotic students from Edinburgh who caused all the trouble, don’t forget!’

  Agnes, who was very petite and ladylike and wore a protective veil over her hat and face, said, ‘At our meetings we’re aiming to speak to ladies of the area and make them see the truth and fairness of the Cause, so that they will join us in sisterhood… .’

  ‘Do you not think any local gentlemen will appear?’ Eva asked.

  Betsy replied for Agnes. ‘Let’s hope at least they will give us a fair hearing if they do. That’s all we need. If we put forward a good sound argument, surely everybody with any intelligence will see reason eventually?’

  Clementina agreed that it was certainly a case of persevering. Nothing, she had found, came easily in life. They had eventually managed to hire the Co-op Hall and to distribute the handbills and now she was on her way to Agnes’s house in Bathgate for afternoon tea and a last-minute discussion with the rest of the girls prior to the public meeting scheduled for the following day.

  Although she revelled in cycling out in the company of her friends, Clementina also savoured times like this when she pedalled along on her own and had time to think and plan and dream. She too believed in the Tightness of ‘the Cause’ and was determined if necessary to devote her whole life to seeing justice done to members of her own sex and to improving their lot. People like Betsy, for instance, who had a quick intelligent mind but who, like so many others, had been denied the opportunity of using it to full advantage. Her duty, her father told her, was at home looking after him. And if she tried to argue with him or disobey him (which she often did), he punished her by stopping her allowance, refusing her the use of the carriage or any of the horses. On one occasion he had humiliated her by ordering her maid to lock all her clothes in the cellar and then give him the key. She had been unable to get dressed for weeks, and had been forced even to eat in her bedroom. And of course, he never allowed her to have any friends to the house. There was not the slightest chance of Betsy going to University or of doing anything that would be personally fulfilling. Betsy and the others were lucky if they managed to escape from their homes for their cycling runs, which like their occasional evening rendezvous could only be managed as a rule if their respective parents were out somewhere and unaware what they were up to.

  Often Betsy groaned, ‘So many long empty days, so many weary evenings that never seem to end. For years I have sat watching the drawing-room clock, thinking it would never reach the ten. And just imagine, I have another thirty or forty years of this to endure.’

  Unless of course they managed to get the vote and have a say in changing the laws and the whole concept of women’s role in society, thought Clementina.

  Suddenly her bicycle swerved towards a ditch as the handlebars almost jerked from Clementina’s hands. Then she heard a hissing noise from the front wheel. She dismounted to examine the bicycle and discovered that it had a puncture.

  ‘Dash!’ she spoke aloud in her annoyance. In her rush to get out she had omitted to bring her puncture outfit and book of instructions. Now she would have to either wheel the bicycle down to Bathgate or leave it here propped against the bushes until she returned from Agnes’s house. Either way it meant a long walk and she would be late. Standing with arms akimbo and hat slightly askew, she didn’t hear the gig approach until it was nearly upon her and then she started in surprise.

  ‘Hello, in trouble again?’ the man at the reins enquired. His words had a subtle inflection of humorous incredulity which annoyed Clementina.

  ‘What do you mean “again”?’

  His face was very tanned and dominated by a cleft chin and eyes that jabbed darts of mockery down at her.

  ‘Votes for women!’

  She flushed with anger at the derision in his voice. Oh, it’s you.’

  ‘You don’t sound very pleased to see me.’

  Clementina straightened her hat and tidied herself as efficiently as she could. ‘Should I be pleased to see you?’

  He shrugged. ‘Here I am, in a position to rescue you again.’

  ‘As I told you before, I am perfectly capable of walking to and from Bathgate.’

  ‘May I at least be allowed to mend your puncture?’

  His quick smile was the most disturbing she had ever seen in her life. It wasn’t merely a movement of lips but seemed to release, for a few dangerous seconds, a vital energy charge between them—a kind of suppressed lightning.

  She looked quickly away. ‘In my rush to keep my engagement I have forgotten my puncture-mending outfit. I shall have to leave the bicycle here and collect it later. Or have one of the servants pick it up for me.’

  The bicycle was already perfectly well propped up against the bushes, but she fussed with it and pretended to adjust it into a more suitable position.

  ‘I would deem it an honour,’ he said, ‘if you would allow me to drive you down to Bathgate—to save you from being late for your engagement.’

  She had never before heard a voice so cultured or so forceful. There was not a trace of either a Bathgate lilt or a soft Scottish burr, so she thought he must be English. She hesitated, not wishing to appear unnecessarily rude and he immediately held out a hand for her.

  ‘I’m Douglas Monteith—and you?’

  She accepted his help up on to the gig. ‘Clementina Blackwood.’

  ‘How do you do, Clementina?’

  She was about to correct him and say ‘Miss Blackwood’ but before she got the chance he had sent the horse galloping away and was saying, ‘I have a confession to make. I already knew your name.’

  ‘Oh?’ She looked round at him. ‘I didn’t know yours.’

  He smiled without turning towards her. ‘Ah, but I have been doing a little detective work.’

  She bristled, not liking the thought of someone trying to obtain information about her behind her back. It seemed an infringement of her freedom and privacy.

  ‘A pity you had nothing better to do,’ she said.

  Oh, we are very independent, aren’t we?’

  ‘I am. I don’t know ab
out you.’

  He flashed her a smile that seemed to tangle her nerves and melt her bones. The astonishing experience only lasted a moment before she pulled herself together again, but it disturbed her. ‘I like a woman with spirit,’ he said.

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  His laughter rang out and echoed like a bell in the clear air. ‘What an odd little creature you are!’

  ‘I’m entitled to my opinions.’

  ‘And what in your opinion, is the kind of woman I like?’

  She shrugged. ‘Most men like obedience, Mr Monteith. And not just simple obedience either.’

  ‘Oh, call me Douglas, please.’

  It would be terribly modern and daring to call a gentleman by his first name after such a short acquaintance, but wasn’t that exactly what she wanted to be?

  ‘Douglas,’ she said firmly.

  There was something about his eyes. They seemed to be continually glimmering. One way and another they made her feel most disconcerted. She tried to quell the levity in his manner by her earnest stare and the seriousness of her conversation.

  ‘Men turn the whole force of education to effect their purpose of creating willing slaves.’

  ‘Really?’ he said, and still there was the infuriating cut of laughter in his voice.

  ‘You can’t deny it.’

  ‘Perish the thought!’

  ‘Women are taught that it’s a virtue to submit, and to yield to the control of men.’

  He glanced round at her and there was something not only suggestive but positively wicked in his eyes. She fixed her attention on the road ahead and a few minutes’ silence followed as the horse spanked along, the spring sunshine flicking through the branches of the trees like the jerky pictures in the Picturedrome. Down the steep incline now towards the cosy huddle of houses in the valley, their red tiles shimmering after the recent rain.

  Then the silence began to unnerve even her. ‘You have to agree,’ she blurted out eventually.

  ‘I don’t have to do anything,’ he replied.