I would not have done that, she found herself thinking with certainty. Not in a million years. And then the sheer absurdity of the thought hit her and her lips twitched almost to laughter. Very likely, that Ben Patten would have offered his name to save Sally Smith from disgrace.
‘Is little Bessie’s skin complaint clearing up?’ she asked soberly.
‘Oh yes. She’ll be fine.’ He had perched himself easily on the desk, his leg swinging. ‘And young Tom’s coming on well too. He’ll be up and about in a day or so. Let’s see – how many children do we have that Ralph’s still schooling here?’
‘Seven. A couple of them are too young yet, the others will be at school next term. There are a couple he’s giving some extra tuition to, and of course he’s coaching Toby.’
‘For the scholarship?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ralph tells me he has a good chance.’
‘I hope so.’
Ben stood, leaving his mug on the desk. ‘Right – no rest for the wicked – keep up the good work.’
‘I will.’
The door closed behind him. Sally reached for the pencil and the column of figures she had laboriously been working on. Though she would never have admitted it figurework was still far from her strong point. Beyond the door she heard a child’s piping voice and Ben Patten’s cheerful greeting. The child squealed, laughing as he was obviously swept into strong arms.
She was smiling as she set to work.
A moment later she was interrupted again as Hannah’s head popped around the door. ‘Sally – can’t stop – just to remind you that we’re meeting at Clement’s Inn tonight before – oh, Sally! You can’t have forgotten?’
Sally hastily rearranged her startled expression. ‘Why no. Of course not.’
‘You are coming? It won’t be the biggest meeting in the world, nor the most exciting I don’t suppose – but Christabel’s going to be there, so you never know – and you promised you’d sell Votes for Women with me.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course. I’ll be there.’
The door closed again. Sally sighed. Damn! She had in fact forgotten the meeting and her promise to sell the Union’s new magazine with Hannah. She would have to put off talking to Maude about the little ones’ revised timetable. She leaned back for a moment, thoughtfully, in her chair. If Christabel Pankhurst were to be at the meeting there might after all be fireworks. Well, one thing she’d be damned sure not to do. She would not let them arrest her. Not this time. There was altogether too much to do.
* * *
Ben Patten was in the parlour by a dying fire when he heard the noise. Outside the wind blew like a fury, rattling the panes in the ancient windows and sending scurrying draughts about the old building. Rain hammered on the glass, teemed from the gutters.
He lifted his head, listening again. A small and stealthy sound had come from the room across the corridor that was his and his father’s surgery. Very quietly he opened the parlour door. A lamp burned dimly in the surgery where none should be. Again there was quiet movement.
He stepped to the door, pushed it open. ‘What the devil – good God! Sally! What on earth are you doing?’
Sally stood frozen in the act of opening a cupboard door. She turned her head.
‘Sit down.’ He was brisk. ‘At once. And here – take this – you’re bleeding all over everything.’
She did as she was bid, holding the clean towel he had handed her to her lower lip which gaped from the gash opened in it by a thug’s brass-ringed knuckles. She was trembling with cold, with shock and with an almost uncontainable rage. Her clothes were drenched in blood from her lip and she was soaked through from the storm. One eye was closing painfully.
‘Damned if I’m not beginning to feel there’s a war on!’ Ben growled, clattering at the sink. ‘Who the hell did that to you? Here – hold this—’
She took the dish, held it beneath her chin, clenching her teeth against their chattering. ‘Di-n’t wann – get – ’rested—’ she said, the words slurred, the gashed lip hanging and flopping obscenely.
‘What?’ He was cleaning the wound swiftly and efficiently.
‘I – didn’t – want – get – arrested—’ she enunciated a little more clearly.
‘I’m going to have to put a couple of stitches in it. Hold on. This is going to hurt, I’m afraid.’
It did. Despite all her efforts tears of pain started to her eyes. He worked quickly, his face intent. Then, stepping back he eyed the lip with professional satisfaction. ‘There you are. You’ll have a bit of a scar, but not too much. Anything else?’
‘Only the eye.’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing I can do about that, I’m afraid. You’ll have a shiner and a half by morning.’
‘Sods!’ she muttered savagely under her breath, unable to contain herself. ‘Vicious sods! Bloody spoiling for trouble.’ She was still trembling like a leaf.
He could not prevent a small smile at the heartfelt, unladylike language. ‘Doctor Patten prescribes a fair to middling shot of good brandy. Follow me. Where’s Hannah?’
‘She’s all right.’ She was talking gingerly, touching her sore lip with her fingertips. ‘Ralph got her away. They’ve probably gone back to Clement’s Inn. That was the plan.’ The headquarters of the WSPU were situated at Clement’s Inn and all operations were co-ordinated from there. Very shakily Sally followed Ben into the darkened parlour.
‘God – you’re dripping all over Pa’s best carpet! Wait a minute—’ He disappeared for a moment, came back carrying two blankets. ‘Get out of those wet clothes. No point in giving yourself pneumonia.’
She clutched the blankets to her, but did not move.
He grinned lopsidedly. ‘I’ll wait outside. Two minutes.’
She scrambled from her uncomfortable, sopping wet clothes and with enormous relief swathed herself in the warm blankets. The fire glowed comfortingly. Her lip throbbed and stung, but at least it felt better than it had as she had hurried through the winter streets holding the gash together with her fingers, her hand slick with blood. She tucked herself comfortably into the big old armchair that was normally Doctor Will’s. She could smell the pipe tobacco in the fabric of the upholstery.
‘Are you decent?’
‘Yes.’
He came into the shadowed room, went immediately to the fire, fed it with kindling until it flared brightly then tucked a small log and a few pieces of coal on top of the dancing flames. ‘There. Soon be warm.’
To Sally, chilled to the bone, the room was already warm as the womb. She snuggled further into the chair.
With movements remarkably quiet and contained for a man of his bulk, Ben went to the sideboard. She heard the clink of glass, the splashing of the brandy.
‘Here.’ He towered above her, his face in shadow, ‘Drink this.’
With hands that still shook she took the heavy, wide-bowled glass. Tilted her head. Choked. Her lip screamed.
He laughed a little. ‘Steady on. You don’t drink it like medicine, you know!’
But like medicine it was doing her good. The pain in her lip was bludgeoned to numbness, her trembling had eased. He leaned forward, watching her. ‘Slowly now. What happened?’
She sipped the brandy. Held it up between her eyes and the firelight. It glowed like dark molten gold. ‘We had a meeting. In Marylebone. Nothing special, just a meeting. Organized by the local branch; it was no big affair. There should have been no trouble.’
‘But – there was?’
‘Yes. There certainly was.’ With a swift movement she tossed back her brandy.
Ben thoughtfully swilled his around the glass, then he too tilted his head and took the last of his drink at a mouthful, savouring it. ‘Go on.’
‘There were trouble makers in the audience – young men – planted I think—’ She twirled the empty glass in her hands. ‘They heckled the speakers – I mean really heckled – they didn’t ask questions, they didn’t want to listen to answers
. They shouted. Abuse, mostly.’ Her mouth was tight with anger.
‘I can imagine,’ he said.
She turned an impassioned face to him. ‘It’s impossible when they do that! In men’s meetings, the political meetings that we attend to ask questions, they have stewards – men, strong men – who can stop people – haul them out – and they damned well do!’ She was almost inarticulate with fury and with the pain of her lip. ‘But what can we do against such—’ she tried to stop herself but could not contain the words ‘—bloody-minded hooligans?’ she finished, fiercely. ‘Our stewards, if that’s what you can call them – what are they? What would you expect them to be? – Nice, well-brought-up young ladies who’ve never said “boo” to a goose until now – what can we expect them to do about a hulking great brute who’s just out to make trouble? Ask him politely to leave? The police won’t help us, and alone we don’t have the force—’ The tone of her voice suggested clearly to her listener that on this occasion at any rate Sally Smith would have been happy to provide the force single handed. She did not, perhaps fortunately, catch the sudden faint gleam of amusement in his eyes.
‘What happened?’
She shrugged, a muffled movement in the enveloping blankets. ‘The meeting broke up – as I s’pose our visitors had intended. When we got outside the police were there. They’d obviously been warned. Tipped off. They were hustling the women – pushing them – saying things – they were arresting us! Not them – not the trouble makers.’ She stopped, gritting her teeth against anger. The fire flared. Ben threw another log to the flames, gently relieved Sally of her glass, moved to the sideboard, came back with the brandy bottle in his hand. She watched as he splashed the clear amber liquid into the glasses. Remembering what had happened earlier this evening, the quiet suddenly seemed extraordinarily quiet, the warmth and comfort extraordinarily warm and comfortable. She blinked a little, took the glass he held out to her in smiling silence. The quiet settled easily about them.
‘Then what?’ he asked at last.
‘Oh – well, Hannah and me – we’d been selling the magazine—you know, Votes foi Women. I suppose it made us targets in a way. Like I said, the coppers weren’t arresting them.’ She tilted her glass and sipped, holding the burning liquid on her tongue before letting it slip like mellow fire down her throat, ‘They were arresting us. Or trying to.’ Her smile was quiet, a swift flash of wanton mischief, a movement of the eyes as much as of the damaged mouth. Ben stirred in his chair, and was still. ‘I’d decided I wasn’t ready for another stretch. Too much going on here. So – I dodged out. Mr Ralph had already got Miss Hannah away. I saw them go.’
‘And?’
She shrugged again. ‘Some fancy lad decided he didn’t want to see me get away.’
‘So – he blacked your eye and split your lip?’ Anger smouldered, seething beneath the light tone.
‘That’s right,’ she said, placidly enough.
In the silence they drank.
He watched her. Some small gleam in her face tilted his head in question. ‘And what did you do to him?’
She grinned her damaged, abrasive grin, ‘I doubt he’ll be pleasing his girlfriend too much for the next few weeks.’
His chuckle was warm. ‘Another brandy?’
They were sitting there still an hour later, the soaked heap of Sally’s discarded clothes steaming in the warmth of the now-roaring fire. The bottle was all but empty. For the last few minutes an easy silence had fallen. A little hazily Sally found herself wondering what on earth they could have found to talk about for that long. Or had she been talking and he listening? She could not be sure. She eyed him from beneath lowered lashes. He looked like a rock in the shadows, strong and still and utterly sure. Mischief stirred in her. ‘They tell me’, she said, looking at him through her raised and almost empty glass, ‘that you want to build Jerusalem?’
He laughed a little. ‘Is that what they say?’
She nodded slowly and pensively.
With sudden attention, the ease of the indolent moment gone, he looked at her, interest in his eyes. ‘You don’t approve?’ he asked.
The acute perception took her aback. Her question had been light, anything but disapproving. Her mouth twitched to a small, sore smile; who in the world cared if Sally Smith approved of anything or not?
‘Please. Tell me.’
She regretted having opened her mouth. ‘’Tisn’t for me to say, is it?’
He leaned forward, his face intent. ‘But yes. Of course it is.’
Cornered, she shrugged. ‘Well – all right then—’ she paused for a second, knowing her thoughts, suddenly painfully aware of her limitations in expressing them. ‘I can see what you’re after. Better now than before because – well, because I know you, I s’pose. And yes, I think you’re probably right. But what I wonder is—’ she stopped.
He gave her no help, no escape. He watched her, waiting.
‘What I wonder is what Joe down the road thinks of your Jerusalem. Your—’ she hesitated, glancing at him beneath lowered lashes, smiling self-consciously ‘—your tomorrow Jerusalem. I mean – you can see, can’t you? – if you spend the best part of your life keeping body and soul together, hanging on like grim death to the roof over your head, fighting for work, not getting it more often than not, nagged by the wife, your kids going shoeless and hungry, no decent bed to sleep on, the workhouse threatening – well—’
‘Yes?’
‘Then p’raps you’d swop Jerusalem tomorrow for bread today. For coal in the bucket, tuppence in your pocket for a trip to the boozer. It’s hard for a bloke like Joe down the road to see that – well, that a dream’s worth fighting for.’ She stopped, oddly embarrassed at the emotive words.
He picked up the brandy bottle, eyed it against the flames, proffered it across the space between them. ‘And does that mean that no one should? Fight for the dream – the principle – I mean? That comes a bit oddly, doesn’t it, from a girl that’s been to Holloway twice and just taken two stitches in her lip for – a principle?’
She had never met anyone who argued so, sharply and thoughtfully. For the moment it was beyond her. She thought about it as she held out her glass, watched as he splashed the two last measures out. ‘I suppose—’ she said at last, ‘—I suppose that that’s what you know and I don’t. And neither does Joe. And’, she added with a touch of mild asperity, ‘I’m not saying that makes Joe and me wrong.’
With a small, guarded and appreciative smile he leaned back. ‘I should say not. Now, tell me, Sally Smith. How long did it take for you to decide not to tell us all to piss off?’
She hesitated for just a moment. Decided upon honesty.
* * *
‘So tell me,’ Ben said, ten minutes later, lifting his head, the granite-sharp features softened by firelight, ‘you aren’t sorry that you came back that day?’
Sally shook her head. Her lip was swollen now, and the stitches pulled. ‘Like I said – it was the Jug that did it. But for him I’d have gone. But – I’ve told him – I would have been wrong.’
‘It would have been our loss as much as yours.’
She smiled. Winced.
He leaned forward. ‘Your lip. It’s painful?’
‘Yes.’
He went on his knees in front of her, his hands upon either side of her face, lifting and turning her head to the light of the fire. ‘It’ll get worse overnight, I’m afraid. But it’s clean. It’ll get better.’
She laughed softly, holding her mouth still in his protective hands. ‘As I remember, that’s what I told Hannah about Holloway. Well – more or less.’
He smiled, still holding her narrow face in his hands. Then, very abruptly he released her and sat back in his chair. For a long moment they both watched the fire. The silence that had been so easy was suddenly oddly and subtly charged. Sally’s none-too-clear mind danced like a butterfly, settled capriciously, fired by the brandy. ‘Can I ask you something?’
He turned his
head. ‘Of course.’
All at once, clearly aware of possible affront, she hesitated.
‘Well?’
‘I – just wondered – someone saw off Jackie Pilgrim. Made a damn’ good job of him by all accounts. Someone who – sounded a lot like you.’
He rubbed his jaw.
She had gone too far to retreat. ‘Well? Was it?’ she asked bluntly.
And as bluntly. ‘Yes,’ he said.
There was a moment’s silence then she gurgled with laughter. ‘Oh, good for you!’ she said. ‘Good for you!’
He slanted a glance at her. ‘No one else knows. No one.’
She toasted him with her empty glass, blood trickling in a thread from her sewn lip. ‘And no one shall.’
He made her a small bow in his chair. ‘Thank you.’
Suddenly intolerably, overwhelmingly tired she leaned her head against the back of her chair. ‘I think I need my bed.’
‘I’ll take you.’
He was beside her. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should bend to her, lift her in those strong arms as if she had been no more weight than a child. She laid her head contentedly on his shoulder.
In silence he walked the darkened house, the light, tough burden in his arms. In her small room, bare as a cell it seemed to him, he laid her gently upon the bed. Blood still seeped on to her chin. He wiped it with his handkerchief. Rain hammered upon the windows. The wind tossed the branches of the tree in the courtyard.
‘You’re sure you’re all right? I could bring you a sleeping draught.’
Tomorrow, Jerusalem Page 24
