The Making of Mollie

by Anna Carey

  I ignored her jibe and kept going. ‘I’ve been thinking about everything Mrs. Joyce said at the meeting,’ I said. ‘And, well, it all made sense to me. I mean, I could see how it fitted in with other things like … well, like Harry getting all the chicken.’ I paused. ‘I know that sounds silly.’

  And to my relief and, I must admit, surprise, Phyllis shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It makes sense.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, I told Nora about it and both of us would, well, we’d like to find out more. And get involved.’

  As I said it, I realised that I really meant it. I wanted to stand up and actually do something to make the world fairer. But I wasn’t quite sure Nora wanted to join in yet, so I added, ‘At least I do. Nora wants to find out a bit more first.’

  ‘Are you honestly serious about this?’ asked Phyllis. ‘You’ve never shown any interest in politics before now.’

  I tried to explain how I felt. ‘Politics never seemed connected to anything before now,’ I said. ‘Not to real life, I mean. At least my real life. But what she said about women not being able to do the same things as men, well, I can see that every day. And I suppose I never really thought about changing it. Until now, that is.’

  ‘This isn’t a silly game, you know,’ said Phyllis. ‘It’s real. And sometimes it’s dangerous.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. But Phyllis shook her head (which of course made a hairpin fall out).

  ‘I don’t think you do,’ she said. ‘You only saw one meeting, and it was a very civilised one. When we tried to do that poster parade down Dawson Street six weeks ago – Redmond and his lot were having a meeting in town – we were treated very roughly.’

  ‘How roughly?’ I said.

  Phyllis sat down on the edge of her bed (which made another hairpin fall out).

  ‘The stewards from the meeting tried to force us away,’ she said. ‘Physically, I mean. And they wrenched our posters from us and tore them up. Mrs. Joyce fell over. And they didn’t help her up or even apologise. They just laughed at her and ripped up her poster.’

  I thought of the dignified woman I’d seen, and I imagined her lying on the ground while a crowd of men jeered at her. It made me feel a bit sick.

  ‘Didn’t the police do anything?’ I said.

  ‘They were jolly decent, actually,’ said Phyllis. ‘Not like in England. They stepped in and got us out of the crowd safely. But not before the crowd had, well, pushed us about a bit.’ She looked down at her cuffs and started fiddling with a button. ‘And thrown bits of horrid rubbish at us.’

  I remembered the cabbage leaves on her hat.

  ‘Was some of the rubbish rotten cabbage?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, as it happens.’ Phyllis looked surprised. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘You had some leaves on your hat one evening,’ I said. ‘I did wonder.’

  Phyllis sighed. ‘Well, now you know,’ she said.

  ‘But who are they?’ I asked. ‘Were they Redmondites?

  Phyllis laughed bitterly. People like Sherlock Holmes are always doing bitter laughs in books, but I don’t think I’d ever heard someone actually do it in real life until now.

  ‘They’re members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians,’ she said.

  I had never heard of this Ancient Order before. It sounded terribly grand, but I didn’t think grand organisations went around pushing women to the ground.

  ‘Who are they?’ I asked.

  ‘Just a club of stupid old men that don’t want anything to change,’ said Phyllis. ‘Some people call them the Ancient Order of Hooligans.’

  ‘I didn’t think anyone thought it was all right to go around shoving ladies,’ I said.

  Phyllis gave me a pitying look.

  ‘My dear girl, you really don’t know much about the struggle, do you?’ she said, which was a bit unfair because I had already admitted I didn’t. She got up from the bed and went to her bookshelf. Reaching behind the books on the top shelf, she pulled out a chunky volume and handed it to me. I opened it and looked at the title page. It was the book she’d mentioned on Wednesday: No Surrender.

  ‘Read this,’ she said. ‘It’s set in England so it’s not quite the same as here. Their police are much, much rougher, for a start. But it’ll give you an idea of the sort of minds we’re up against. And some Irish women have been treated very badly by the police and authorities over there.’

  And that was when I asked the question that I really should have thought of asking on Wednesday evening.

  ‘Who exactly are “we”?’ I asked. ‘I mean, are you all part of one organisation or society or something?’

  Phyllis looked like she might give another bitter laugh.

  ‘You don’t even know?’ she said.

  Of course I don’t, I thought, that’s why I’d asked. But I didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’m part of an organisation. There are a lot of suffrage societies, but I’m a member of the Irish Women’s Franchise League. That’s who organised the meeting on Wednesday.’

  ‘A league?’ I said.

  ‘Do you remember me talking about Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington? She used to teach Kathleen’s older sister in Eccles Street years ago, and I met her a few times,’ said Phyllis.

  I nodded. Phyllis had always been very impressed by what she knew of Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington, whose father had been an Irish Party M.P. Phyllis said she seemed to be a teacher who encouraged girls to think for themselves.

  ‘Well, she’s one of the founders of the League,’ said Phyllis. ‘Not that her father approves of it. Her husband is a supporter too.’

  But before I could ask any more questions I heard footsteps coming rapidly up the stairs. I shoved the book inside my cardigan (under my armpit) just before the door opened and Julia came in.

  The thing about Julia is that she really does look awfully saintly. Maybe that’s why she’s become so pious. She’s trying to live up to her virtuous looks. I’m quite glad I’m stuck with very unsaintly features so there’s no danger of me becoming a little plaster saint. No one looking at me would expect me to be particularly noble. In fact, Maggie used to say that I just had ‘a bold face’. I don’t think that’s a compliment, but maybe it’s better than the alternative.

  ‘Mother’s looking for you,’ said Julia. ‘There’s lots of mending to do.’

  When is there not? Honestly, I can’t help thinking Mother actually tears things up just to give us something to do. How can so many things get torn or worn out in one household? But there’s no use arguing with Mother about these things, so Phyllis and I followed Julia down to the sitting room, where a basket of holey socks (not holy in the Julia sense) and petticoats with sagging hems awaited us.

  Harry, of course, was nowhere to be seen while we were put to work. He’d gone to some classmate’s house after that afternoon’s rugby match. He really does absolutely nothing around the house, while we girls have to work like skivvies. I bet if women had the vote and were making the laws boys wouldn’t be allowed get away with this sort of thing.

  It wasn’t until all the mending was done and Mother was playing some rather strange but beautiful music by a French composer called Debussy that I finally got to start reading the book. I was a bit nervous in case anybody asked what I was reading. I could lie of course, and, as you know, I’ve recently found out that I’m surprisingly good at this, but still, all they had to do was glance at the spine and they’d find me out. So I found it quite hard to concentrate on it, and it wasn’t until Julia and I were in bed and she was reading a book called Little Lives of the Saints (because that’s the only sort of book Julia likes to read for fun) that I finally got to read it properly.

  And once I started, I couldn’t stop. After a couple of pages, I was totally engrossed in the story. There was a rather grand Irish girl (who seemed to live in England), and a girl who worked in a cotton mill in Lancashire, and they both became suffragettes. After a while, I heard Julia making her usual hideous grunts a
nd realised she’d fallen asleep with her book in her hand. This was a very good thing (apart from the fact that I had to listen to her grunting away) because it meant that I didn’t have to worry about putting out the light and could read for as long as I liked. Though just to make sure, I put a bolster against the bottom of the door so Mother or Father wouldn’t see any light shining beneath it on their way to bed. It must have been at least one in the morning by the time my own eyes started to close and I reluctantly put the book under my pillow and turned out the light.

  I had terrible dreams that night. I dreamed I’d been arrested and I was pounding on the door begging to be let out. And then I realised someone was actually pounding on my bedroom door and Harry was yelling, ‘Get up, you lazy sluggards!’

  Somehow, Julia and I had both managed to oversleep and now we were late for Mass. What with going to the church followed by the customary Sunday visit to Aunt Josephine – during which she spent the entire time talking about the ‘dreadful behaviour of the young modern girl’ – it was late afternoon by the time I was able to return to No Surrender.

  I certainly needed something stirring to balance out all the nonsense I’d heard from Aunt Josephine all afternoon. Even Mother started to look like she was running out of patience after Aunt Josephine had given one of her speeches about how education was a waste of time for girls.

  ‘I’ve seen the sort of girls Eccles Street turns out, Rose,’ she said. ‘Bluestockings. Office girls. That dreadful Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington, or whatever she calls herself. It’s a dangerous thing, filling girls’ heads with rubbish they can never understand. Much better to send them somewhere nice where they can learn to be good young wives and mothers without all that bookish nonsense.’

  ‘Robert and I believe that it’s important for a girl to have a well-furnished mind,’ said Mother, in the sort of voice she uses to her children when one of us has behaved badly in front of her friends and she doesn’t want to lose her temper in front of them.

  Aunt Josephine laughed, but it wasn’t the sort of laugh that has any humour in it.

  ‘Well, I suppose it depends on what you consider well-furnished,’ she said. ‘It’s not as though they will have to earn their own living someday. And I believe most men would prefer to marry a girl whose mind is devoted to her children and family. And to God, of course,’ she added.

  Mother was making a great effort not to snap. I could tell.

  ‘No man wants to marry an ignorant girl,’ she said.

  ‘You say that now, Rose,’ said Aunt Josephine. ‘But in a few years when Phyllis and Mollie are looking for husbands, you might regret it. And as for letting Phyllis go to that university …’

  Mother hadn’t been particularly happy when Phyllis first told her she was determined to go to college, but you’d never know that she had ever disapproved of it by the way she looked at Aunt Josephine now.

  ‘Phyllis is going to study English literature,’ she said haughtily. ‘And I would rather she married a man who shared her love of books. Just as I have married a man who understands my love of music.’

  This was a bit of an exaggeration, as Father isn’t terribly passionate about music, but I suppose he does join in when we sing around the piano. And he does like listening to Mother play. Anyway, I couldn’t blame her for wanting to exaggerate. Anything to wipe that superior expression from Aunt Josephine’s face! But of course you can’t wipe it away, not for long. She gave a tinkling little laugh and said, ‘If you say so, Rose.’

  Which I could see annoyed Mother even more, though she didn’t respond. I don’t think Mother actually likes Aunt Josephine very much. After all, she never visits Aunt Josephine herself apart from when we make these family visits with Father on Sundays, and I don’t think she exactly invites Aunt Josephine to our house during the week. Aunt Josephine just sort of … turns up. A bit like Dracula arriving at Lucy Westenra’s house.

  By the way, if you haven’t read Dracula, DO NOT READ IT. I found Harry’s copy of it a few months ago and devoured the whole thing in a couple of days before he noticed it was missing from his bookshelf. It was very, very exciting and I couldn’t put it down, but then I had nightmares for a fortnight and couldn’t go to sleep without putting my rosary beads under the pillow in case a vampire turned up.

  Though, of course I’ve had nightmares about Aunt Josephine too, and rosary beads would be of no use against her. Nora told me that the man who wrote Dracula is actually from Dublin, and from a part of the city that’s not too far away from here. I do wonder if he ever met Aunt Josephine.

  Anyway, even Father seemed tired of Aunt Josephine that day, and he doesn’t have to put up with her during the week too because he’s always at work when she makes her afternoon calls, so he doesn’t see her at her absolute worst. Father developed a headache when we got home (possibly as a result of having to listen to Aunt Josephine) and went for a lie down, and was too exhausted that evening to read us any more of Peter Fitzgerald’s adventures. But I didn’t mind missing out on P. F. because it meant I could read No Surrender in peace.

  It was an usually quiet evening. Father was snoring away upstairs, Mother was playing something soothing by Bach on the piano, Julia was reading her saints book, and Phyllis was embroidering what is going to be a sash for Kathleen’s birthday. Even Harry was quiet for once. He was reading a story about Harry Wharton and Co. in the latest issue of the Magnet. He pretends he’s far too old for ‘stupid kids’ school stories’ but I know he sometimes still buys the Magnet and the Gem. I made a note to swipe the magazine later because even though I may be too old for school stories myself I love reading about Harry Wharton and Bob Cherry and Billy Bunter. But right now I was more interested in reading about Mary O’Neill and Jenny the mill girl and the other brave suffragettes.

  Oh Frances, you must get a copy of it. It made me cry with sorrow and with rage at the awful things that are done to women and girls just because they want to stand up for what’s fair and right. I don’t know how anyone could read it and not agree with the justice of those brave women’s cause.

  By the time I arrived at school the next day I felt like smashing some windows and chaining myself to some railings. I told Nora this as we waited in the cloakroom for the second bell to ring.

  ‘I’m not sure smashing anything is a good idea right now,’ she said, after I’d handed her the book and told her to read it quickly so I could give it back to Phyllis. ‘And you definitely couldn’t do the other thing. For one, we don’t have any chains.’

  ‘I could use a skipping rope,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not quite as dramatic,’ said Nora. ‘Though I dare say it would create a sensation.’

  ‘Imagine if I roped myself to the gates of Dublin Castle,’ I said. I pictured the dramatic scene. Me crying ‘No surrender!’ as a policeman tried to untie the ropes. ‘What a stir it would cause.’

  ‘Especially if your father saw you,’ said Nora.

  I hadn’t thought of that. Because he’s a civil servant, he does have to go in there a lot. But anyway, I’d think about that later, when I was actually chained (or tied) to the railings. And I supposed there were other places I could chain myself to. Even a post office might count as a government office.

  ‘Hello there, what are you two whispering about?’ said a familiar, sugary voice. It belonged to Grace, who is always sneaking about trying to catch people doing or saying something they shouldn’t so she can pretend to be sorry for our lack of discipline and/or tell a teacher. All of a sudden, I felt the urge to really give her something to talk about.

  ‘If you must know,’ I said, ‘we were talking about suffragettes.’

  Grace looked horrified.

  ‘Surely,’ she said, ‘you’re not interested in those dreadful women.’

  Nora rolled her eyes.

  ‘We might have known that you wouldn’t approve of them,’ she said. ‘You never like anything interesting.’

  Grace smiled pityingly.

  ‘I
f you call making a show of yourself in public interesting …’ she said.

  ‘I certainly do,’ said Nora. ‘In fact, I admire them for it.’

  I should have known that the way to make Nora really warm to my new cause was to show her that Grace was against it. I should almost be grateful to Grace, really.

  ‘Nora, you’re clearly not in your right mind,’ said Grace. ‘I really think I ought to tell your mother about all this.’

  But now she had gone too far. Nora glared at her so ferociously that Grace actually took a step backwards.

  ‘Go on, then,’ growled Nora. ‘Tell her.’

  Grace pulled herself together and tossed her annoyingly perfect curls. Then she smiled at us in her awful way.

  ‘You poor thing,’ she said. ‘I won’t deign to respond to that. I’m going to find May and Gertie.’ And she swept out of the cloakroom. At least, she tried to sweep out, but Mary McCarthy’s coat had fallen off its hook and Grace tripped over it. I must admit that she managed to regain her footing with more dignity than I would have managed in the circumstances.

  When she’d gone I looked at Nora.

  ‘Did you really mean that?’ I asked. ‘About admiring the suffragettes?’

  ‘Well yes,’ said Nora. ‘I suppose so. Though I was partly saying it to annoy Grace.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘But honestly,’ said Nora. ‘I have been thinking about everything you said – about brothers and votes and all that. And I do think it’s right. I mean, why shouldn’t we have a say in the country when we grow up? Especially when you look at some of the ridiculous boys who might be running the place.’

  ‘That’s exactly it!’ I said. I was awfully glad. Discovering this suffragette movement was so thrilling for me that I really wanted Nora to share my excitement. It’s always more fun when your friends share your interests. Of course, Nora and I don’t always like the same things. She absolutely hates knitting, for example, while I actually find working the stitches quite soothing (AND you get a cardigan or a scarf or a pair of socks when you’ve finished the soothing part).