by Anna Carey
We made the decision this afternoon at the end of break. Nora, Stella and I were sitting out in the garden, as were most of the school because the weather was so nice. But we had found a quiet corner where we could talk about secret suffragette things in peace. We needed to do this because of course Johanna and Daisy told other people about our suffrage leanings (‘Well, you did say you weren’t ashamed of it,’ said Johanna, which was fair enough), and now everyone knows. At the first break today we were besieged by classmates asking questions. First of all, they all asked if we did things like the suffragettes in England.
‘Did you set fire to anything?’ asked Nellie Whelan, hopefully.
‘No,’ said Nora. ‘We keep telling you, we haven’t done anything like that.’
‘But you might,’ said Mary Cummins.
‘Probably not,’ I said.
‘I don’t really see why it’s all so important,’ said Maisie Murray. ‘I mean, our mothers don’t seem to need the vote. Mine doesn’t, anyway.’
I sighed. I didn’t want to get into a fight with Maisie, who’s quite a nice girl really, and I certainly didn’t want to insult her mother, but really, I had to say something.
‘It’s about fairness,’ I said. ‘Women have to stick to the laws, but they don’t have a say in making them. It’s not fair. Same as it’s not fair that our brothers are allowed to do whatever they like – well, practically – and we’re not.’
‘I don’t have any brothers,’ said Maisie.
‘Well, boys in general, then,’ I said. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Not really,’ said Maisie.
‘I do,’ said Mary. ‘Why shouldn’t our mothers have their say? And our aunts.’ Mary’s parents died a few years ago, and she and her sister live with their Aunt Margaret. I’ve met her and she’s much nicer than Aunt Josephine.
‘It seems a bit silly to me,’ said Maisie. ‘I don’t mean to offend you.’
‘Well, it’s not silly at all,’ said Nora, who did look quite offended. That was when the bell rang, which was probably a good thing because Nora looked as if she were going to start yelling at Maisie. But for the rest of the morning more people kept coming up and asking questions, and when the big break came along we were so tired of saying the same things over and over again that we hid in the most secluded bit of the garden we could find.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Even if I didn’t think it was necessary to promote the cause before today, I certainly do now. When I was coming out of the lav, Cissie Casey asked me if it was true that I wanted women to rule the world!’
‘You don’t, do you?’ said Stella.
‘Of course not,’ I said.
‘We just want fairness,’ said Nora. ‘And the chalking is all very well. But I can’t help feeling we should do something else. Something bigger.’
I knew exactly what she meant.
‘The thing about chalk,’ I said, ‘is that people just walk over it and smudge it, or it gets washed away the next time it rains. Which is usually about five minutes after you’ve chalked something.’
‘Exactly,’ said Nora. ‘And I don’t think people take it seriously. I mean, they think it’s silly, or funny.’
‘Well, some of them take it seriously,’ I said, remembering the man who had thought we were praying. ‘But you’re probably right.’
‘So why don’t we do it properly?’ said Nora. ‘Why don’t we use paint?’
If you had asked me to think about it logically, I could have given plenty of reasons why we shouldn’t use paint. For one, I knew that painting on something without permission was illegal. But then, so was breaking government windows, and the women in London were doing that all the time.
‘We could,’ I said cautiously. ‘That would definitely cause a stir.’
‘Oh, I’m really not sure this is a good idea,’ said Stella, nervously.
‘But where should we do it?’ said Nora.
‘Well, I suppose it should really be government property,’ I said. ‘I mean, that’s meant to be the point.’
‘If only your father’s office was closer to our houses,’ said Nora.
I was quite glad it wasn’t. I was fully prepared to paint something on a government building, but not the one Father worked in. Then I thought of something.
‘What about a postbox?’ I said. ‘Like the one on Eccles Street, at the Nelson Street corner. Lots of people walk past that one.’
‘A postbox?’ said Stella.
‘It’s government property,’ I said.
‘That,’ said Nora, ‘is an excellent idea.’
‘I don’t think it is,’ said Stella.
‘And all we need,’ I continued, ignoring Stella’s foolish objections, ‘is some paint and a brush. We can find them easily.’
‘I know for a fact,’ said Nora, ‘that there’s some in our shed.’
Apparently Mr. O’ Shaughnessy, who does their garden every week, had recently painted their back gate.
‘Oh please don’t,’ said Stella unhappily.
‘But when will we do it?’ I said. ‘We can’t just pop into town after school and start painting like we did with the chalk. I mean, we don’t actually want to be caught.’
‘Well, it would make quite a statement if we were arrested,’ said Nora. ‘I bet it would make all the papers.’
‘Oh Nora, no!’ cried Stella.
And I had to agree with Stella. I know I was the one who got Nora involved in all this, but when she’s involved in something, she does sometimes go a little too far. Still, maybe her attitude is what I need to keep myself going.
‘We are absolutely NOT getting arrested,’ I said. ‘At least I hope not. Why don’t we get up really, really early? At four or five in the morning? Hardly anyone will be around then, not even policemen.’
‘But how would we do that?’ said Nora. ‘I don’t have my own alarm clock. And neither do you.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But Harry does.’ He got one for his birthday last year and it is awfully impressive. It even has numbers that glow in the dark. ‘And I bet I could muffle it up so it didn’t wake the entire house.’ Luckily, Julia is quite a sound sleeper so I should be able to muffle it from her too.
Nora nodded.
‘Then that’s what we’ll do,’ she said.
‘The only thing is,’ I said, ‘that it won’t be easy to get the clock from Harry. I mean, he’ll definitely notice if it disappears. He’s frightfully proud of it. He doesn’t even need it because Father knocks on our doors to wake us up, but he sets it to go off anyway.’
‘I don’t suppose he’s going away on holiday any time soon,’ said Nora, hopefully.
‘He’s going away for a rugby match next week,’ I said. ‘But only for the day.’
‘We’ll just have to watch out for an opportunity,’ said Nora. ‘I mean, all sorts of things might happen.’
‘One of us might be given an alarm clock as a present,’ I said. (Well, it is possible.)
‘Exactly,’ said Nora. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see. I’m sure something will turn up.’
So that’s what we are hoping. I will write very soon and let you know if something does. Though knowing our luck recently, it could take months and months.
Friday, 14th June 1912.
Dear Frances,
Before I write anything else, I want you to swear by everything you hold dear that you will not let another living soul see this letter. You must burn it, if necessary. Because besides me and Nora, you should be the only person who knows what happened on Thursday morning.
Have you sworn? Then I will continue. I’m sorry about all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, but it really is necessary. Because we finally did it. We took militant action. We are proper suffragettes at last! And, as it turned out, we weren’t the only ones out on the streets that morning. But I will tell you more about that later.
Anyway. Here’s how it all happened. I suppose it all began with Harry and his illness. On Monday he left the h
ouse early because he was going to Dundalk on the train with the rest of the Junior Team to play a rugby match with some school up there. Our uncle Piers, Mother’s brother, who is a solicitor in Dundalk, was going to go to the match to cheer them on and take Harry and Frank out for lunch afterwards. But Harry nearly didn’t go at all because when he was having breakfast he barely touched his toast, which is very unusual for Harry, who normally gorges half a loaf of bread every morning.
When Mother noticed how little he was eating, she said, ‘You do look pale, darling. I’m not sure you should go.’
Harry looked horrified.
‘I’m perfectly well,’ he said. ‘I’m just nervous about the match.’ And he crammed some more toast into his mouth and bolted it down. After he swallowed it, he looked even queasier.
But maybe Mother didn’t feel like having an argument with him. She said, ‘All right. But if you’re not feeling well, you mustn’t play.’
And if you want proof of just how spoiled Harry is, there you have it. If I’d been sick, I’d have been packed off to bed, no matter how much I protested! But she believes everything he says. And she regretted it later, because that evening we were just sitting down to some Peter Fitzgerald when a telegram arrived from Dundalk. I was looking forward to Peter because school had been rather awful that day. I had made an utter mess of my Latin translation and Professor Brennan was absolutely horrible to me and nearly made me cry. And then I was daydreaming in maths – not even thinking about important political things, just about Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre, which I have nearly finished – and Professor Corcoran surprised me with a complicated maths question which of course I couldn’t answer. And then she asked Nora, who had also been daydreaming, and she couldn’t answer it either. So we both have to do some extra maths exercises tonight.
On a more positive note, our classmates have stopped badgering us about being suffragettes. But in another way that’s rather depressing because none of them seem to care about the cause very much. Or at all.
So, all in all, I was feeling glum when the telegram boy came. Mother looked very pale when Maggie handed the envelope to her, and I must say I felt pretty awful myself when she opened it and said, ‘Oh my Lord, Harry.’ I knew something bad had happened, and I know he’s very annoying, but I don’t actually want him to DIE. What if there had been a train crash? They do happen sometimes and people do die in them.
‘Is he all right?’ I asked, and I was surprised at how wobbly my voice was.
Julia started to cry. Father put his arm around her and said, ‘It’s all right, you little mouse’, but his face looked very worried. And that made me feel very worried too. My stomach felt most peculiar.
‘He got sick at the match and couldn’t travel home,’ Mother said. ‘Piers has taken him back to his house.’
‘Is it serious?’ said Father.
There was barely a second before Mother answered but somehow my mind managed to think of all sorts of terrible things: Harry with a terrible fever. Harry screaming in pain. Harry coughing up blood and dying of consumption like Daisy Redmond’s mother.
‘Piers thinks it’s just bilious influenza,’ said Mother. And she showed Father the telegram.
‘Is that serious?’ I asked. Somehow my voice didn’t sound entirely steady. And Father said, ‘Not at all, just not very pleasant.’ He kissed the top of Julia’s head. ‘Now, why don’t the two of you make yourselves comfortable and I’ll tell you what Peter Fitzgerald has been up to.’
But Julia didn’t want to listen to Peter Fitzgerald.
‘It’s not fair to read it if Harry isn’t here,’ she said. She looked as though she were going to start crying again. Father gave her another hug and said, ‘Fair enough. What about The Wouldbegoods?’
We all like E. Nesbit – even Julia – although the children get up to lots of mischief, which she doesn’t approve of. And Father is very good at reading aloud, so we all cheered up a bit when he was reading.
Still, I couldn’t help wondering if Mother and Father were just putting on a brave face so Julia and I wouldn’t be upset. I know grown-ups mean well when they do this, but the problem is that you never know whether they are doing it or not, so when they say everything is all right you don’t know if you can really believe them. Mother and Father certainly seemed all right that evening, but when Julia had measles eight years ago and almost died, they behaved in just the same way, and I only found out how worried Mother really was at the time because I ran into her room without knocking and saw her crying.
Anyway, I tried not to think about Harry and just listened to the adventures of the Bastables, and it almost worked. Good stories can be very distracting when one is worried. The Bastables seemed to work on Julia too, because by the time she went up to bed she seemed quite normal. Mother went up with her, and while Father was putting the book back in the shelf I took a quick look at the telegram, which Mother had left on a table near the fireplace. It said:
HARRY GOT SICK AT MATCH. COULDN’T TRAVEL. SLIGHT FEVER PROBABLY BILIOUS FLU BUT TOOK HIM HOME ANYWAY. WILL WIRE IF NEWS. PIERS.
The telegram proved that Mother and Father hadn’t just been putting on a brave face. I must confess that when I saw that I felt so relieved I almost started crying myself. And I was very relieved I could just go back to hating (well, sort of hating) Harry again.
But when I followed Julia up to bed a little later, I could hear sobbing coming through the door. And even though she is extremely annoying and smug, and even though I didn’t think Harry was going to die (after all, we’ve all had some sort of stomach complaint at some stage), I hurried in and found her kneeling next to her bed, her shoulders heaving. I crouched down and put my arms around her.
‘Oh Julia,’ I said. ‘You ridiculous goose.’ But I didn’t say it in a nasty way. ‘Harry’ll be all right. He’s just staying up there because he couldn’t get on a train home if he was being sick. Imagine having to share a carriage with someone who was sicking up everywhere.’ And I made a being-sick noise (which was very realistic, I really am a born actress). But Julia didn’t laugh or even tell me to stop being disgusting. She just wiped away her tears and sniffed some more.
‘Why don’t you say a decade of the rosary for him?’ I said. And because I am quite a noble big sister really, I said, ‘I’ll pray with you.’ Even though I just wanted to say my normal prayers as quickly as possible and go to bed. Anyway, Julia nodded and got her rosary beads out of their little box which she keeps on the table next to her bed, and we said a decade of the rosary for him.
Though I must confess that while we were muttering through all the Hail Marys I kept thinking, ‘If Harry is away for a few days, then I can steal his alarm clock.’ I hope that isn’t a terrible sin. I have a feeling it must be. It’s bad enough to be thinking of anything else when you’re meant to be praying, but it’s much worse to be thinking of stealing something from your sick brother. That must make me a terrible sister. But, after all, Uncle Piers seemed sure that Harry was fine. Anyway, the next time I go to confession I will say that I thought of unsuitable things during the rosary and see what the priest says.
The next day there was no news of Harry by the time I left for school, but Mother said that was to be expected and that Uncle Piers would only be in touch if there was any change, so no news was really good news.
‘And Harry might be back to full health already,’ she said. ‘He might arrive home this afternoon.’ I couldn’t help hoping he wouldn’t. It would spoil my clock-stealing plan, for one.
On the way to school I told Nora what had happened. She immediately thought of the clock too.
‘It’s as though fate is smiling on us,’ she said.
Though I did point out what Mother had said about Harry’s possible imminent return. We were discussing how long bilious ’flu would last when we arrived at school, but when we walked through the door we found the entire place in a state of chaos. Girls, nuns and teachers were running around all over the place and there w
ere dirty wet footprints everywhere.
‘What on earth is going on?’ asked Nora, as we watched Mother Antoninas hurry past, the bottom six inches of her habit sodden with water.
‘There’s Professor Shields,’ I said. ‘She must know. Excuse me, Professor Shields!’
Professor Shields was carrying a large pile of books and looked very harassed, but she said, ‘What is it, Mollie?’ in quite a polite voice.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘Is everything all right?’
Professor Shields sighed.
‘You know about the plumbing work that’s been going on?’ she said. A lock of her hair had come loose and she pushed it behind her ear. You know something bad has happened when Professor Shields’s hair isn’t perfect. In fact, she looked much more dishevelled than usual. Even her academic gown was askew.
We knew all about the plumbing. Some men are doing something convoluted to the pipes; there has been a lot of banging and one of the lavatories was closed last week.
‘Well, the workmen have damaged the pipes by accident,’ said Professor Shields. ‘So we have floods in this part of the school and no water at all in others. And it’s most inconvenient, especially with the exams coming up.’
‘But what’s going to happen to our lessons?’ asked Nora.
‘We might have to send all you day girls home,’ said Professor Shields, and we tried not to look too excited. ‘Don’t pretend you’re not thrilled,’ she added. ‘I know I would be if I were you.’ She seemed much more human now that a crisis had struck the school.
Anyway, she told us we’d better go to our classrooms for now, so Nora and I hurried down the music corridor, where we met Stella and some of the other boarders, who were all hanging around the Middles noticeboard.
‘It happened first thing this morning,’ said Stella. ‘Daisy went to the lav and it wouldn’t flush. And then a few other girls tried to go and we discovered there was no water at all.’
