‘Huh! That’s so like a man.’
‘I am a man.’
‘You know perfectly well what I mean.’
‘Where are you going, by the way?’
‘To visit my friend Agnes.’
‘It would help if I knew where friend Agnes lived.’
‘Oh,’ she flushed with annoyance at her own stupidity. ‘It’s only a few minutes along the Glasgow Road—a house called “The Elms”.’
‘Ah, yes.’
Clementina felt acutely self-conscious driving through Bathgate beside Douglas Monteith. He had such an arresting appearance that she imagined that everyone was bound to notice him and feel as upset and disturbed as herself. She kept trying to concentrate her thoughts on the agenda for discussion at Agnes’s house. It was so important to plan the following day’s suffragist meeting down to the last detail. Nothing must go wrong and they must make sure they took every advantage of the platform to put across their message in the clearest and most logical way. But sitting next to such a virile man, with his long legs taking up most of the space and, as the gig rattled along, one of those legs sometimes brushing against hers, she found it impossible to think clearly and logically.
Then, unexpectedly, he reined the horse to a standstill, ‘Here we are!’ he announced and jumping down came round to help her alight.
Before she could stop him, instead of taking her hand to assist her he had caught her by the waist and, despite her indignant cries of protest, whisked her playfully up in the air before depositing her on the ground. For the first time she realised how tall he was in comparison with herself. Her head barely reached his shoulder. She looked up at him, trying to appear calm and unflustered. ‘That was quite unnecessary.’
‘But nice!’
‘Good afternoon,’ she said, hastily escaping from the look in his eyes and marching briskly towards the gate of ‘The Elms’.
41
Rhona Lindsay read the notice with bitterness and derision. It urged everyone to come along to the first meeting of the newly formed West Lothian Justice for Women Group. The meeting was to be held in the Co-op Hall and the speakers were to be Miss Betsy Kyle-Ormiston and Miss Clementina Blackwood. Rhona turned away from the notice hugging her shawl tightly around her shoulders, eyes and mouth flint-hard. Justice for women as dished out by the double-barrelled Miss Betsy and the wealthy mill-owner’s daughter, Miss Clementina—what a laugh! What did the likes of Miss Blackwood, of all people, know about justice or the lack of it?
‘What justice was there in my mother’s death?’ Rhona thought in sudden anguish.
Her mother, like many other workers in the Blackwood Mill, had wasted away, coughing and spitting blood, poisoned by inhaling too much cotton fluff from the air. All her life her mother had slaved for the Blackwoods. Her father had toiled for them too and eventually been killed in one of the all-too-frequent and horrifying accidents in the mill. Both their lives had been sacrificed so that the Blackwoods could live in luxury in their grand house somewhere up in the Bathgate hills. But not content with that sacrifice, her mother was not cold in her grave when Mr Gilbert had tried to put Rhona out of the mill house which had been her home all the nineteen years of her life. This was despite the fact that she had worked in the mill since she was eleven, when she had started as a half-timer, doing school lessons as well as work. Most of the children had been so exhausted with working that when they got to school they just fell asleep. But not Rhona. She had had enough restless energy and determination, even at that age, to make the most of the few opportunities that came her way and she had paid alert attention to the teacher and learned all she could.
When, the day after her mother’s funeral, the order had come via the foreman for her to quit the house, she had been incensed with bitterness and grief and kicked up hell at the injustice and inhumanity of it. All the other women at the mill had become infected by her anger. There had been dark murmurings among the men workers too and meetings began to be held around machines during meal breaks.
The foreman had eventually reported back to Mr Gilbert, who had then sent for her. She remembered his office with its dark wood-panelled walls and desk, buttoned leather chairs and sofa and turkey red carpet. There had been a big fire burning in the hearth and she had felt instinctively drawn to its luxurious warmth. She remembered too the way Mr Gilbert had looked her up and down and how she had thought to herself, ‘He’ll know me again, that’s for sure.’
He was a tall, lean man with silky reddish hair like his late father and he sported a pearl tie-pin in his cravat. ‘What is the meaning of all this trouble you’re causing?’ he asked.
She tossed him an impertinent look but said in a mild voice, ‘Trouble, sir?’
‘I’ve got a family for that house. I have promised it to them.’
‘But it’s my home. Such as it is,’ she added, unable to keep the sarcasm from her voice.
‘Why should I allow you to stay there by yourself when it could give three of my other workers—a man, wife and child—a roof over their heads?’
‘Where would I go? … sir,’ she added with only the hint of a pause.
He shrugged. ‘You can find lodgings somewhere, surely.’
‘In one of the other mill houses?’
‘Why not? It’s only fair.’
Fair? She had laughed in his face, a hard, derisory laugh. This was Blackwood justice. He hadn’t even any idea of what his houses were like inside. There wasn’t enough room for one person to live in a civilised manner, far less a family and even less a lodger.
‘You call it fair,’ she asked, ‘to try to evict me the day after my mother’s funeral?’
‘Watch your tongue,’ he warned. Then, as if to help control his temper and give himself time to think, he had lit a cigar and taken a few leisurely puffs at it before speaking again. This time he sounded quite reasonable and pleasant. ‘Leave it for now. Get back to your work and I will see you later.’
He had seen her later all right. It had been dark; the streets were deserted and the village asleep when she had heard the tapping at the door. She had been sitting up in bed—a candle dancing in the draught at her side—trying not to think about the terrible ache she felt at the loss of her mother, the frightening aloneness. She thought it must be the Donaven children from next door and was immediately grateful at the prospect of their company. Their mother’s time was near and it had been arranged that they would come to her house to be out of the way as soon as Mrs Donaven went into labour.
But to her astonishment it was the tall figure of Mr Gilbert standing in the shadow in the doorway.
‘Well, let me in,’ he said quietly.
She stepped back, suddenly conscious that she was wearing only a threadbare nightgown and that her hair, free of its usual inhibiting pins, was such a thick wild mass of curls that it looked as if she had never managed to force a comb through it.
Snatching up her shawl, she hugged it around herself. He came in, shut the door and glanced around. ‘I thought I would have a look at the place.’
She stood very still and silent, not yet able to grasp that he was there, far less comprehend why.
She struggled to gather her wits together. ‘Does that mean I can stay?’
‘Not so fast,’ he said in low tones. ‘What can you do for me?’
If she had had a knife in her hand at that moment she would have killed him. But it was not only him her spirit railed so bitterly against—it was the whole unfairness of the world. The order of things that said people like her should have so little and people like him should have so much—and still want more. A weight of helplessness pressed down on her, although she still hid her true emotions behind a careless bravado.
Rhona had bought time with the only currency she had. And she needed time to come to terms with her grief not only at the loss of her mother but the thoughts of her mother’s miserable, wasted life.
Later she had looked at herself in the cloudy, rusted mirror in the on
e-roomed hovel that was her home and could not blame herself for what she had done. Indeed, she knew she would do it again with any gentleman who could offer her escape from the Blackwood Mill and the Blackwood village. Perhaps set her up with beautiful clothes in a snug little cottage somewhere? She also knew that it was only a dream and dreams didn’t come true. Only nightmares. While the world kept on turning in its usual unfair and unjust way.
The West Lothian Justice for Women Group! She laughed to herself every time she thought of it. To hear what Clementina Blackwood had to say about justice was a chance that could not be missed. Even to see the young lady in question would be an interesting experience. She had never of course clapped eyes on any of the Blackwood women. Needless to say they never came anywhere near the mill.
Rhona had been in Bathgate doing some shopping when she had seen the notice and, rather than tramp the long walk to Blackwood village and then return to Bathgate later for the meeting, she decided to rest in the Steel Yard and eat a bit of bread and cheese until it was time to go up to Jarvie Street to the hall. Now she sat watching the world go by, a strangely compelling figure despite her shabby skirt and boots and tattered shawl. Her restless, watchful eyes were an unusual violet colour. There had always been a wildness about her—her mother used to say it was the gipsy in her blood. Her grandmother had been a gipsy before she married and had never really settled down; she had run away after giving birth to her father and was never seen again, so Rhona had never met her. Often though, when bands of the travelling folk with their colourful caravans moved along the country roads or stopped to light their fires and cook their meals, curiosity would overcome her. She would loiter near them, burning to know if her grandmother was still alive and one of their dark-stained number.
‘All you need,’ her mother used to say, ‘is a pair of golden earrings to look the part.’
Often she used to think that she might not only have a gipsy grandmother still around, but gipsy uncles and aunts and cousins for all she knew.
Envy filled her at the sight of smartly dressed ladies passing in their elegant carriages. Every fur cape, every muff, every feather boa, every frilly parasol was unashamedly coveted by her. And oh, the gorgeous blouses and dresses and hats! Strong white teeth tugging greedily at the bread and cheese, she told herself that she could look as good as—better than—any of these grand ladies, if only she could wear clothes like that. She had no false modesty about herself; she knew she was not only beautiful, but possessed the extra almost mystic quality of the gipsies. Her mother, she had often suspected, had been ashamed and worried about this, but she wasn’t—she was proud of how she looked and what she was.
Nothing could change that. She even hoped that, like the gipsies, she had the power to bring bad luck when she cursed someone, because she cursed the Blackwoods each and every one of them, including Miss Clementina.
Rhona hoped this meeting would turn out to be one of the most violent suffragette meetings ever. She hoped Miss Blackwood and her double-barrelled friend would be heckled, set upon and if possible run out of town. Or, even better, arrested and flung into jail.
She still felt hungry after the bread and cheese was finished but there was nothing else. It had grown chilly too and a breeze had come to flap at her skirts. Getting up, she stamped her boots and rubbed her hands to try to get her circulation going again. Eventually she picked up her basket and made her way along Engine Street.
‘The West Lothian Justice for Women Group,’ she kept thinking. ‘Blackwood justice. What a bloody laugh!’
42
It was a humiliation to have had to ask Agnes’s father if she could be taken home in his carriage and it went against Clementina’s principles of self-sufficiency and independence. But it was either that or risk being accosted by Douglas Monteith on her way back home after her visit to Agnes. It was such an irritation altogether, because she felt a long energetic walk would have done her good. Anyway, Agnes’s father was such a pompous bore—she had naturally hoped that he would simply order his coachman to drive her home. But oh no, he had to take full advantage of the situation and insist on coming too.
‘Ah, you see!’ he guffawed. ‘This suffragist nonsense is all very well but what would all you helpless little creatures do without us, eh?’ His hairy cheeks puffed out. ‘You’ll grow out of such silly notions of course and then you will he only too glad of the lifelong support and protection of a good husband.’ He leaned back in the carriage, hands clasped contentedly on his huge corporation. ‘But meantime my dear, take my advice and have a little thought and care for the future. You may spoil your chances of getting a man if you’re not careful.’
Agnes had made an urgent whispered plea to Clementina before she had left ‘The Elms’: ‘For pity’s sake, don’t let Papa provoke you, Clementina. It will only make everything more difficult for me and we don’t want to risk anything going wrong before tomorrow’s meeting. Just ignore him.’
Clementina was not used to bottling things up and it was only with great difficulty that she refrained from saying anything. By the time she reached Blackwood House and had been subjected to a continuous lecture on how to please men and the rewards and joys of devoting her life to being a wife and mother, she was ready to explode with her frustration. He seemed to think that because she had no father it was his duty to give her appropriate fatherly advice. It was the same with Eva’s father. It was also as if they sensed that, although she was the youngest of the group, she was the strongest and most dangerous and therefore the one most needing to be disciplined and taught a thing or two.
She was palpitating with repressed anger by the time Agnes’s father bade her goodbye. Her irritation and frustration prevented her from getting a good night’s sleep—something which all the girls had agreed was vital so that they would be as alert and clear-headed as possible for the meeting next day.
Clementina blamed Douglas Monteith. Had it not been for him, she would have walked back and the fresh air and exercise would have done her good. Then she would have slept well and everything would have been fine. She stiffened with tension every time she thought of the aggravation he had caused. All day before the meeting she had a splitting headache. But with sheer willpower and concentration on the importance of the Cause they had to put across, she managed to control both her headache and her nerves and reach the hall to all appearances a very calm and capable young woman. She also looked beautifully turned out in her navy hat with its emerald ribbons to match her eyes, her navy jacket and skirt and high-necked emerald blouse. It was, she had discovered, very important that she should take care to look her best in order to combat the dreadful and wickedly untrue image of suffragettes that all the papers and magazines were putting across to the public. Their favourite was a weird word picture of a gaunt female with a raucous voice and truculent demeanour, who always wore elastic-sided boots and carried a big ‘gampy’ umbrella. Even the postcard manufacturers and toymakers were part of this conspiracy. The shops were full of toys such as the jack-in-the-box type she had seen, where instead of Jack popping up, there was an effigy of an ugly witch-like woman with pocked skin, wearing spectacles and frumpy clothes and holding a flag on which was written ‘Votes for Women’.
In reality, any suffragettes she had seen were most elegant and attractive women. Indeed a large proportion of them were writers, artists and actresses who were not merely attractive but stunningly beautiful.
Her first surprise was to find the hall nearly full but mostly with working-class women. There was a fair sprinkling of ladies though, and a few gentlemen as well as some obviously working-class men.
Kitty was already fussing about on the platform setting out glasses and a water decanter. The rest of the girls were sitting in the first row as if they had been turned to stone. For a horrible moment Clementina thought they had completely frozen with nerves and the whole thing would fall through. She could understand how they felt. Apart from the occasional suffragettes who caused a sensation by t
ravelling around the country speaking, it was really unheard of for a woman to speak in public.
‘Are we ready?’ she asked her friends, as if daring them to say anything but ‘Yes’. ‘We have still another five minutes, but as everyone’s here so early …’
It had been agreed that they would all march up and sit in a row on the platform to give each other moral support and to represent the starting committee of the newly formed West Lothian Justice for Women Group. Only two of them, however, would speak and answer questions—Betsy and Clementina. Agnes was to act as chairman.
‘I’m ready if you are,’ said Betsy, getting immediately if somewhat stiffly to her feet. ‘Come on, Agnes, you’re chairman, don’t forget.’
A quiet but resolute voice emerged from behind Agnes’s veil. ‘If we all keep together we shall be all right.’
‘Of course,’ Clementina said impatiently. ‘Come on!’
They had barely assembled on the platform when a man roared out ‘If you can’t get a man of your own, away home and attend to your father!’ This was greeted with some raucous male laughter and stamping of feet.
‘Ignore them,’ Clementina hissed at Agnes. ‘If we are going to fight for what we believe to be right, we must have courage. Start the meeting.’
Agnes calmly stood up to face the audience and in her sweet, ladylike voice said, ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to welcome you to this first public meeting of the West Lothian Justice for Women Group. I hope we shall gain your support in the struggle for women’s suffrage. Getting the vote is only the first step towards achieving true justice for women—’
‘The support every woman needs and wants,’ a man at the front interrupted in a loud, pompous voice ‘is a good husband and there’s no use you trying to pretend that’s not true.’
‘… But a vitally important one,’ Agnes continued, to all appearances serenely unaware of the interruption. ‘And I would like to propose a resolution that this meeting calls upon the government to grant facilities …’
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